The Legend of the Eight: The Charmed (Book 4)

17: Biology

SEVENTEEN: BIOLOGY
OCTOBER 10
WIL DIAMOND

NUMBNESS SET IN. SHE COULD have been hit by a bus and she wouldn't have known. Sweat pooled down her back and beaded across the top of her lip but it wasn't from the temperature. She tried to steady her breathing but any breath she took that was smaller than a gasp left her head throbbing and begging for more.

She ran out of the tower, leaving Kate behind to stare at the blood on the floor. The blood that painted a picture neither of them could have expected. They weren't twins. Wil wasn't Pure.

She wasn't Clarion's daughter. She was Bernadette's.

She couldn't wrap her mind around the possibility. How her parents had lied to her. How they'd lied to the entire Realm. Seventeen years. That had to be some kind of record.

Vision blurring, Wil leaned back against the wall and grabbed at her chest, gasping for breath. Tears spilled down her cheeks as she cried but she didn't make a noise. She couldn't. She was actually incapable of making a sound. She squeezed her hands into fists. Hard. Her nails dug into her palms, drawing blood, and the cut from earlier stung.

She spent the next five minutes like that—manic, devastated, and alone. But not a second more. Then she sniffled, wiped the tears from her eyes and the blood from her hands. Once composed, she walked the rest of the way to her dorm and took a deep breath before walking inside.

"There you are," Oliver smiled from his spot on the bed where he was answering emails using her computer. Usually, it was a little more difficult for him to spend the night in her dorm but rules in the North Hall had been rather lax lately. Dr. K was much busier with other things—like the beasts that had been found in the words—and he hadn't been around to enforce the guest policies.

Also taking advantage of the lack of supervision was Levi, who was there to visit Chloe. The Lawson girl looked at Wil, curiosity in her chocolate eyes.

"You okay?" she asked, noticing the blood drying on Wil's palm, to which Wil replied with a swift nod.

"Yeah," Wil nodded, tugging on her sleeves to cover her hands. Then she climbed into bed beside Oliver and rested her head on his shoulder. "Just had to take care of something."

THE NEXT MORNING, WIL SAT for breakfast with the rest of her friends, pushing a spoon around in her yogurt. She was silent—alarmingly so—but no one said anything about it. They were too busy talking about last night's game against The Alchemist School.

"It was a good game," Phoebe said with a mouth full of orange slices. "Even though this one was playing with a partially-broken nose." She nudged Drew teasingly, peeling the orange for another slice.

The bruising around Drew's eyes from his altercation with Leo last week was yellowing but he still seemed to be harboring a bit of anger from it. Not that Wil was surprised. The relationship between Leo and Drew was once friendly but since Phoebe and Drew had been together, it had become very complicated.

"You seem to be forgetting your part in all of this, darling," chuckled Drew, gesturing to his face. When Phoebe giggled, he kissed the side of her head. For the first time in a while, they seemed happy. Then Phoebe's eyes fell to Wil.

Her curls were tied up in a messy bun and she was wearing the same outfit she fell asleep in. Her eyes sported two purplish bags beneath them from a lack of sleep and the skin on her lips flaked off from a lack of chapstick. Wil hadn't looked that bad since the time she died and came back to life. This felt worse.