Chapter 19
Anonymity
Sinta
“Well done, everyone. I’ll be coming around to do final checks now. You have five minutes until class ends.” Miss Ume announces.
Depositing my paint brushes into the water-filled jars and stacking the small pallets I’d used, I gather it all up and move it into a farmhouse sink at the back of the classroom.
Plugging the sink and filling it with water, I leave the items to soak and return to my canvas.
“This is what you were painting?” Imelda asks as I return.
Her eyes are wide as she stares at my oil portrait, her head tilted slightly.
I’d been inspired by the architecture of the castle and produced a piece with a medieval Victorian-era feel.
Done in blacks, browns, creams, and oranges, it was a distinctly gothic piece but was enchanting all the same.
A single creamy-white candle was held aloft, it’s flame close to dying with a trail of wispy smoke floating up the canvas.
The background was dark, starting a brownish-orange around the candle and growing darker towards the canvas’s border – as if the candle was struggling to illuminate a space.
I loved it and planned to take it back to Rising House so I could mount it in my room.
“Yes.” I gesture to the room around us. “This place is a great inspiration.”
“It is.” She agrees, still studying my artwork. “My design even came out more medieval than I was expecting.”
I shift around her to look.
It was gorgeous. More than that, it was unique and breathtaking – a mix of modern and ancient.
The dress was black, but it wasn’t solid.
The skirts of it were long and full but layered, flaring out much like a ballgown, still managing to give the appearance of being light and airy.
The waist began as a sharp point at the naval, then hugged the figure with a ribbed detailed corset. Parts of the corset, around the ribs and back, had been cut out and were covered with the same light gauze as the skirts.
The corset framed the female’s breasts, resembling a truly medieval gown with what I thought was silky material creatively sewn to appear scrunched where it settled over the chest. Long thin tassels of black silk draped from the waist and the back of the corset to sway with the skirt.
It was a modest dress, despite how subtly sexy it was, and had me in awe of its creator.
The way she had mastered the watercolours to produce it was inspiring.
“I don’t think I’ve ever wanted a piece of clothing more.” I murmur.
“She knows her shit.” Yelana chuckles.
Looking at the female, I can’t help my smile as she stands there attempting to scrape dried paint off of her hands and jacket.
“That’s artist grade paint, you’ll need to wash it off.” I warn her.
She sighs like it is a huge inconvenience but stomps to the nearby sink.
Taking a look at her splash artwork, I burst out laughing.
She’d covered the entire canvas in paint splats, the crimson red and deep black mixing in some areas while contrasting completely in others.
It would have been eye catching on its own, but she’d gone ahead and repainted the hanging stick figure in black over the violent splotches.
It was a surprisingly good-looking piece, and she’d obviously enjoyed the making process since she was covered in paint.
“At least she didn’t get bored and try to burn something.” Imelda giggles beside me.
“Has she done that?” I gape.
“Oh yeah, a few times.” She admits with a shrug. “Yelana’s dragon is temperamental – when it wants chaos not much can stop it.”
“Almost everything in here is flammable.” I whisper in horror.
Imelda just laughs and heads back to her canvas, which Miss Ume is now studying.
“Very well done, Miss Skail. Exquisite detail.” Miss Ume praises, her dark eyes tracing the delicate strokes and careful blending of the colours. “I see great promise in this work. I think you and I will be able to bring your talent to new heights.”
“Thank you, Professor.” She murmurs with a smile. “I’m looking forward to learning more. This was my first time using watercolours, and I want to explore it some more in the future.”
Miss Ume pulls her attention from the artwork and settles it on the princess. “Oh? Ambitious. What made you decide to switch mediums today?”
Imelda gestures to me without hesitation.
I have a split moment of panic, barely resisting the urge to hide behind my canvas, and end up stiffening like a statue as Miss Ume turns to me.
She appraises me for a moment, her nostrils flaring – gathering scent.
I want to cringe and look away – my scent is mostly reptile, which usually indicated snake to other Fae.
Her expression doesn’t change, it remains warm and friendly, and her full lips form a small smile as she steps closer and shifts to take in my artwork.
Imelda smiles and nods to me from behind the Professor, but I can’t muster a return smile.
I was so nervous I was starting to sweat.
Maybe I could talk Imelda into lending me some of her flawless calm.
“Hmm.” Miss Ume hums softly, bending closer.
I didn’t realise I was holding my breath until I suddenly felt lightheaded, sucking in startled gulps of air.
“You’ve masterfully blended the oils for the background. And the careful detailing with the smoke is very realistic.” Miss Ume eventually murmurs, her lips tilting up. “How lucky am I to have such fine talents to nurture this year?”
I don’t say anything.
Yelana rejoins us, slipping up to Imelda’s side, just as Miss Ume straightens.
“It’s haunting in a hypnotic way. Very engaging. An excellent oil work.” She announces, turning to give me a wide smile. “You should be very proud of your talent, my dear. I can’t wait to help you explore it.”
“Thank you, Miss Ume.” I whisper, my own smile small and shy before I duck my head.
Her long-fingered hand pats my shoulder before she moves over to Yelana’s piece.
The professor’s immediate booming laugh and Yelana’s subsequent explanation of her rebellion against art soon fill the classroom.
I distract myself by carefully picking up my canvas and moving it over to safely store it in a drying wrack.
“I was wondering,” Imelda begins, having followed me to the wrack with her own artwork. “If maybe you’d like to eat with Yelana and I?”
Freezing in place, feeling a lot like a deer caught in headlights, I stutter and cough and struggle to form a cohesive sentence.
The Princesses’ face falls into what I can only describe as a smooth, emotionless mask. An expression of polite indifference.
After having spent time with her, getting to know a more emotionally free and expressive Imelda, I didn’t like the change.
But she was a Princess, trained from birth to wear an emotional mask, and I’d spent barely an hour with her. Could I really say I knew her?
“You don’t have to – it was only a polite offer.” She tells me stiffly.
“No, I mean – its not that I don’t want to—” I stutter. “I would. But I made plans with my friend, and I don’t want to just abandon her, and I don’t know if she’d be comfortable sitting with you…..”
I felt like I was making a bigger mess, so I shut my mouth and just breathed for a moment.
“Does this friend not like me?” Imelda asks, not exactly confused but more like she was curious.
“I don’t know….. I just – I’m not really a person who likes,” Glancing around the room, noting the people in the class who were watching our exchange like a tennis match, I wince and gesture to them. “Attention. And I saw where you sit yesterday, who you sit with. I’d be more than happy to make private plans to hang out but becoming a part of the gossip trade around here isn’t really something I want.” I try to explain.
Realisation dawns in her eyes, leading to her giving me a slow nod. “You are a private person.” She says slowly.
“Private. Shy. Awkward. Slightly introverted.” I list with a self-deprecating laugh. “However you want to put it. I’ve been warned how vicious the gossip hounds around here can be, is all. The last thing I want is to be thrown into that particular snake pit.”
The last thing I wanted was anyone digging into my background.
Being seen to eat lunch with a princess would no doubt kickstart my downfall.
“I understand.” She says after I moment, and I can see that she really does. “Maybe a private painting session, then? Like a study session but a little more…. Fun?”
I glance at Yelana, standing bored a few feet behind Imelda and fingering a cigarette.
“I’d love that, but we might need a boardgame or something to distract Yelana.” I joke.
“I will just buy her new blades, and she will sit and clean them for hours.” She hums. “It’s a deal then. Did you, um, want my number?”
“If that’s okay.” I hand over my phone and she carefully enters the digits before sending herself a text from my phone.
Accepting the phone back, I share a small smile with her.
“It’s okay if I text you tonight to arrange it?” She confirms.
“Not a problem at all.” I agree, noticing the subtle way she fidgets with the simple rings on her fingers.
She was nervous.
Knowing she was unsteady left me able to relax further.
“We better finish cleaning up.” Gesturing to the sink, I offer; “Do you want me to show you how to clean different types of paints?”
She beams a smile. “Please.”
“I’m so glad you said no.” Kenya moans, peeking upstairs where the Princesses and their makeshift court were eating. “Listening to gossip is one thing, being involved in it is another. I’m already low enough on the food chain, I don’t need to be stomped any lower.”
“I want my time here to be drama free.” I agree, taking a bite of creamy pasta. “She understood that, which was really cool of her.”
“It is. If that’d been Grande, she would’ve thrown a fit and had you jumped or something for essentially rejecting her.” Kenya mutters.
Glancing at the female who sat like she was seated on a throne and dictated to those fluttering around her, I had to silently agree with Kenya’s observation.
“Looking forward to Combat?” I question.
“Not at all. I’ve never thrown a punch in my life, so this is going to be a big learning curve. You?”
“I took some self-defence classes the past couple of years, only basic stuff. High school was a battle ground until I graduated.” I laugh.
Kenya grimaces. “Yeah, I never had the chance to take defence classes. I learnt to duck and hide until I could get out of that place.”
I nodded along because, from years eight till the start of ten, that’d been me too. The self defence classes had helped to fend off physical attacks, but I’d had no defence against magical. My last few years of high school had been a mix between constant battle and learning when to bury my head in the sand.
Hearing a loud clatter from upstairs, the noise of the cafeteria dies.
Grande was standing before a female, the girl pretty with tightly curled blond hair, a delicate build, and simple but elegant clothes.
What had once been a nice light blue blouse and white jeans was now covered in orangey-red spaghetti sauce and chunks of food, the mess somehow even in her hair.
I couldn’t see her exact expression from here, but the poor girl’s head was bowed and her shoulders stiff.
“Oh my, I didn’t know you were such a klutz, Penelope.” Grande drawls, eyeing the girl. “But really, what were you thinking wearing white jeans?”
Penelope’s head falls lower, and I can’t hear if she replies or not.
Grande waves a haughty hand, smiling wide. “Doesn’t matter, I’m sure you’ll learn from this little incident. However, you can’t sit near me looking like that.” She says with a grimace.
“Oh gods.” Kenya whimpers, her face falling. “It’s like a train wreck. You just can’t look away.”
Suddenly all of the Elite females near Penelope back away, as if she were a leper.
Gaze wandering, I find Yelana and Imelda sitting at a table a good few feet away from the drama, both of them watching with stiff emotionless expressions.
Though they look disapproving, neither of them seem to be willing to intervene.
“Poor girl. I wonder what she did to lose the top spot.” Kenya mutters.
“What do you mean?” I whisper.
Kenya nods to Penelope, who is now shaking slightly as Grande steps towards her and says something I can’t hear.
“Penelope is the daughter of one of High Lady Dalimia’s closest cohorts, a Lady of House Earth and Bronze. She’s been Grande’s top minion and right hand for as long as I can remember.” Kenya explains. “Where one is, you usually find the other. Penelope also usually helps Grande ‘punish’ people; I’ve never seen her be punished. So, I wonder what she did to piss the Princess off.”
“Why don’t I give you a hand, hmm?” Grande announces.
She takes a large step away from Penelope, her hand rising towards the female.
The people around me tense and make sounds of sympathy, or they lean forward as if engaged in some amazing drama.
Caught in the spectacle, I’m assaulted by memories. Too many times had I been in the same position as that girl.
It was too familiar. Jarring.
And where are the faculty? Why aren’t they doing anything?
Kenya catches me looking around, likely sensing where my thoughts had gone. “They won’t interfere. If it were two average Fae causing a fuss, they’d do something, but the faculty and staff don’t interfere in Elite business.”
“I thought the Academy wouldn’t be like High School.” I mutter harshly, clenching my jaw.
“I hoped so too.” She sighs.
Grande begins to mutter something under her breath, her lips moving like lightning, her hand held steady before her.
A phantom breeze pulls at her clothes and hair, swirling around the two females.
As I watch, a swirling ball of water begins to form against Grande’s hand, increasing in size the longer she chants.
Penelope shakes her head and says something to Grande – possibly a plea for mercy – but the Princess only gives her a savagely smug smile.
Penelope doesn’t fight back, her form tensing.
Grande hisses a word and thrusts her hand forward, water slamming into the girl like a cannon ball and drenching her, shoving her to the ground.
I flinch.
She remains on the floor, spluttering desperate coughs.
Grande moves to loom over her, all haughty authority. “Clean yourself up, Penelope. I have no use for sloppy servants.” She sneers.
Penelope says nothing, still coughing, her head still bent low.
Wearing a smugly triumphant expression, Grande saunters back to a table adjacent to Imelda’s and takes a seat at the head, her minions following.
Not one of them stops to help Penelope – they just leave her on the floor, soaking wet and shaking like a leaf.
Staring at Grande with incredulous anger, I also feel disappointed in myself.
Having seen people be bullied and having endured it myself for years, watching so many people stand by and just allow it to happen angered me.
But was I any better? I could go up there and help her up, get her out of here and maybe take her to the nurse or something.
I could’ve intervened before Grande drenched her in water.
But that would have put me on Grande’s radar, the very last place I now wanted to be.
I felt cowardly as I sat there and watched her pick herself up, her legs faulting her as she stumbled away and practically sprinted down the stairs.
She leaves to a chorus of taunts and laughter – people heckling her, mocking her.
Very few watched her with sympathy. I glimpsed some that simply resumed eating, unmoved by the tableau.
But no one tried to help.
How many times had I been in the very same position? How many times had I wished someone would help me?
I’d really hoped the Academy would be different.
I now felt like a na?ve, gullible idiot.
“Ah, Sinta?” Kenya whispers urgently.
“Yeah?” I look back to my friend, taking in the shock on her features.
“You told me your sister wanted to be, like, part of the Elite.” Kenya murmurs. “Do you think she’s the manipulative, scheming sort?”
Brow furrowing, I bite my lip.
I mean, Aletha had sure been part of the popular crowd growing up. In recent years she’d become the leader of it in New York, invited to all the best parties and fawned over by everyone.
Only recently had I started to realise that, being so socially powerful, she could have stopped her cohorts from bullying and mistreating me.
But she never did, and it opened my eyes to what my sister had become. What our foster parents had made her into.
A status-hungry self-serving attention monger.
“I guess. I was pretty blind to her until recently, so I never really paid attention to what she did until it was too late. Why?”
“Because that is where Penelope used to sit.” Kenya mutters and gestures upwards.
Turning to follow her point, my mouth went dry and my stomach dipped.
There was Aletha, seated on the Princess’s left.
She was dressed to impress and positively glowing with happiness, tossing haughty glances down the table in between conversing with Grande.
Had……. Had my sister done something to get Penelope’s position?
Had she engineered that poor female’s public humiliation?
Thinking back hard, I realised it’d been Penelope that had waved Aletha over to Grande’s table yesterday, inviting her into the group.
Aletha had taken the invitation and swiftly discarded someone who, I now realised, she’d seen as an obstacle in the way of her goal.
How many times had she done that in the past, and I had wilfully ignored it because we were blood?
How many times had I listened to her sweet words and half-hearted gestures and chosen to remain ignorant?
“I don’t know how to feel about this.” I whisper.
Everything was jumbled. I was angry – at Grande or Aletha or the situation in general – and I was sad, but I think I was also scared.
Yes, scared.
I think my reality was starting to sink in. That even though I’d been aware I was entering an Academy for the Elite, and then consequently finding out I technically was Elite – or would be if I survived – brought with it expectations and stereotypes that I not only abhorred but had been the victim of.
Realising the power and status I would automatically gain should I shift was panic inducing. What I would be expected to be, how I would be expected to act.
I didn’t want it.
I didn’t have a choice.
I couldn’t fight it.
“Look, there’s already a video of it. And pictures of Aletha – the comments are claiming she’s Grande’s new handmaiden.” Kenya shows me her phone, scrolling through the videos and pictures displayed by the Elite Addict website.
I give it a brief glance, but I don’t care about it.
I look to the female that I had connected with in my Art class. The female that wanted to be friends.
Sitting there with an aloof expression upon her face.
Watching Grande act as if she hadn’t just murdered the reputation and self esteem of another female, Imelda occupied by her phone, the other Elite females blatantly ignoring the situation – or perhaps striving not to be treated the same.
Competing for the favour of a haughty entitled Royal.
It left a sour taste in my mouth.
Turning to Kenya, I watch her as she digs into her food, reading an article on her phone.
Her eyes crinkled with a smile, her lips twitching.
It was a mundane kind of innocence and a soothing sight.
Yes. I’d much rather be down here.
I think I decided, in that moment, that I would not change. Shifting would not alter my personality, I wouldn’t let myself become like them.
I would never treat someone like they had.
Fae society was complicated and bias and relied on hierarchy, but how you wielded your position was a choice.
Fate made me, but I choose how I go on.
“Do you want to walk off lunch?” I ask Kenya, checking my phone to find we had fifteen minutes before the start of class. “Exercising with a full stomach is never a good idea.”
“Okay! Do you want to go see the library with me? I haven’t gotten the chance to see it yet.”
“Sounds perfect.” I agree.
When we left the cafeteria, I made sure I was leaving behind every ounce of their toxic mentality.