“This king, Charlemagne. He had a bunch of knights who died fighting a—” I broke off, suddenly realizing that I couldn’t exactly get into all the Oracle stuff. “A bad guy,” I finished lamely. I’d read everything I could on Charlemagne’s Paladins on the internet, but there was hardly a mention of Alaric. Still, it couldn’t hurt to look again.

I rummaged around on Ryan’s desk, sifting through more Sports Illustrateds, a bunch of loose change, and a stack of video games. “Don’t you have a notebook or some paper or something?”

By now, Ryan had shifted on the bed, turning so that his feet were braced on the headboard. He was tossing the mini basketball that sat by his bed on the wall above. Catching it, he tilted his head. “You’re seriously going to do homework.”

I paused, my hand still resting on a video game, the box reading War Metal 4. “It’s not really homework. More like an . . . extracurricular project. I thought it might be fun if you were more involved in the stuff I do.”

“Why?” Ryan asked, tossing the ball again. “It’s not like you’re all that involved in the stuff I do.”

He didn’t say it accusingly, and didn’t even seem that put out by it. It was just a fact. “I cheerlead at your basketball games,” I reminded him.

He shrugged. “You were doing that before we even started dating. It’s no big deal, Harper, I’m just saying we don’t have to be all up in each other’s business.” He gave the basketball another thump before grinning at me. “Unless it’s in the carnal sense.”

This time, I didn’t even try to hide my irritation. “You spend too much time with Brandon,” I muttered, and Ryan gave a bark of laughter.

“Right, because he knows what the word ‘carnal’ means. But please . . . don’t keep trying to fix us, Harper. We’re not broken.”

But the thing is, we felt broken. Really broken. And the scary thing was, I wasn’t sure how we’d even gotten here in only a month. I’d been so busy worried about saving David, saving Cotillion, saving myself, that I hadn’t noticed my relationship was also in need of a hero. Could I fix that, too?

Ryan kept thumping the basketball behind his bed and I watched him, my Cotillion dress crumpled and uncomfortable, and thought about the scariest question of all: Did I want to?

Chapter 34

WHEN I got to school the next morning, Bee was waiting for me in the parking lot. Leaning against her car, blond hair whipping in the wind, she frowned as I walked up to her. “You never texted me last night, and I called you like a hundred times.”