Sacred Devotion [Mattheo Riddle]

CHAPTER TWELVE

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The silence did not feel real, not at first.

One moment, the Great Hall was vibrant—knives clinking, laughter welling, the murmur of conversations spinning like a web around me. And then the doors slammed open, forcefully enough that the stone beneath our feet trembled, and the noise tore through the room like lightning.

Every head turned.

Professor Sinistra stood in the doorway, her robes askew, hair half-tumbled from its braid, her face white. Her chest rose and fell in shallow, scared breaths.

"They—" Her voice cracked, slicing through the air with shock. She took a deep breath and attempted again, this time louder. "They've found them. Three—three students. Dead. On the grounds. One—one was—"

She said no more. She didn't need to.

The words were enough to rip the world from under me.

The Great Hall erupted into pandemonium. Screams, gasps, the scrape of benches on stone as students leapt to their feet, craning their necks, voices tripping over each other in horror.

"What—dead?"
"Who—who was it?"
"Oh my God, no—"

The hysteria surged through the hall like a wave, destroying everything in its path.

I couldn't breathe. I couldn't move. My body fastened itself to the bench, fingers white-knuckled around my teacup as if it could keep me attached to something—anything—that wasn't spinning out of control.

Dead.

Not one. Three.

My stomach roiled violently, the tea sloshing in my cup as my hand trembled. The words twisted together in my mind, incoherent and knotted, until only one thought cut through the haze.

Mattheo.

My gaze snapped toward the Slytherin table.

He didn't twitch, shoulders loose, face unreadable. Pandemonium erupted around him—Pansy's shocked gaze, Astoria's pale hand clutched tight around Draco's arm, Blaise's hawk-like lean forward, as if trying to suck in every crumb—but Mattheo...
he didn't move. His dark eyes lifted from his untouched plate, slow and deliberate, and met mine across the room.

And I knew.

The bile rose up before the thought had even finished forming. The truth was something physical now, clawing its way up my throat, bitter and searing.

It wasn't an accident.
It wasn't a fluke.
It wasn't just Elliot.

This was him.

I could still feel the damp earth caked under my fingernails, the suffocating weight of the night before pressing on my chest. I'd assisted him in burying a boy I'd scarcely known. Had knelt there, silent and shaking, while his breathing slowed and leveled as if nothing had happened.