Chapter 7 Amara
There is blood under my fingernails. I look down and see the half-moons of my nail beds purpled from pressure, then flex my hands looking at the indents of my anger on my palms.
The walk back to my dorm after being savagely fucked by the guy I should hate was somehow both shameful and freeing. His come dripping down my thighs and every time I thought about what he said, it triggered a blush.
And yet, now I’m here, not knowing what the fuck to do. What the fuck to think.
A deep breath in… and out… calm down.
It doesn’t work.
This room is too small for the violence inside me.
I pace it anyway, one wall to the next, slippers silent on the old hardwood, the only sound my breath tripping over itself.
Every pass brings me closer to the mirror, but I can’t bear to look at the wreckage of my face.
Instead, I count the cracks in the paint above the door, the number of times I’ve circled this cell, the seconds between heartbeats.
I should be studying. Should be fixing my skirt, should be calling my father to demand he undo what he has done, but the words wither before they reach my tongue. It’s all muscle memory at this point. Obedience coded into the tendons of my hands and the arch of my neck.
This morning, I belonged to myself.
Now, I belong to the Board.
And to Julian Roth.
Every time I close my eyes, I see him, feel him.
The way his jaw flexed. I feel the bruises on my hips, the raw scrape of his palm when he forced my face up to meet his.
There is a fingerprint on my thigh, faint but real, proof that he could do whatever he wanted and I would be powerless to stop it.
Do I even want to stop it?
I can’t decide if I want to run or beg for more.
The thought disgusts me. I press my knuckles to my mouth and bite down until the taste of iron overwhelms everything else.
A knock at the door, soft, hesitant.
I freeze, body tightening as if I’ve been caught mid-crime.
“Yeah?” My voice is raspy so I clear my throat.
The door opens just wide enough for a sliver of light to spread across the floor. Eve’s face appears.
She doesn’t ask if she can come in. She just does, her steps slow and deliberate, a stack of books balanced against her hip. There’s a thermos in her other hand, steam curling from the lid.
“Didn’t see you at dinner,” she says, tone neutral.
“I wasn’t hungry.” I cross my arms and back up until the edge of the bed hits the back of my knees.
Eve takes in the room with a single sweep of her eyes. She sets the books on my desk and places the thermos on top, then slides her hands into her pockets. “You look like shit,” she says.
I almost laugh. “Thanks.”
She sinks into my desk chair and spins it around to face me. “Do you want to talk about it, or should we do the shit you missed from class first?”
There’s a warmth to her gaze, an invitation, but no pressure. I wonder if she’s always been this way, or if Westpoint made her soft in the right places so she wouldn’t destroy herself everywhere else.
I lower myself onto the bed. The sheets are still rumpled from this morning. The hem of my skirt rides up, and I have to force myself not to smooth it.
“I can’t,” I say. “I just—can’t.”
Eve nods, as if this is a perfectly reasonable answer. “Okay. Want some tea?”
I blink, thrown. “What?”
She lifts the thermos and pours steaming liquid into the cap. “It’s chamomile. Supposed to be calming.”
I reach for the cup, fingers trembling. The tea is hot enough to scald, but I welcome the pain. It gives my hands something to do.
“Let me guess,” she says, after a long minute of silence before her lips twist up in a smirk. “You fucked Julian. Or rather… he fucked you.”
I almost spill the tea. “How did you—”
She cuts me off. “Because, I can see the flush on your face. And also you have come on your shoes. No biggie, but maybe wash it off before class tomorrow. I get it, these Boys take what they want, but it’s kinda hot right.”
I swallow hard, unable to look at her. “Is it always like this?”
Eve shrugs, her mouth a thin line. “It’s a game. The only way to win is to stop playing by their rules. But that’s the part they never tell you—you’re allowed to make your own.”
I consider this, rolling it over in my head like a marble. It feels weightless, impossible.
She sets the tea aside and leans forward, elbows on knees. “You want to hear my Hunt story?”
I nod, desperate for anything to distract me from the shiver in my bones.
She starts. “They made me run. Literally. There was this whole creepy ritual and then I ran. Colt caught me in some old building. He made it good for me.”
I flinch. “Did he?”
She smiles. “He did. Like I said before, if they ride for you, they ride hard.”
“Did you fight back?”
“Of course.” She flexes her hand, showing a knuckle scar I’d never noticed. “That’s part of the fun.”
It’s so absurd, I almost choke on a laugh of my own. “And that’s how you fell in love?”
Eve shakes her head, grinning now. “No. I hated him for all of this, but love is learned. He shadowed me everywhere, like a goddamn wraith. He fits me. Despite how it all happened, he really does. He protects me. Keeps me safe.”
I drain the cup, feeling the heat pool in my stomach. “ So you won.”
“Well, yeah, but we’re all working on a way to end it all. The Boys… as much as they’re psychopathic assholes, they don’t want this anymore than you do. You only see that it took away your choice, but it took away theirs too.”
There’s a light in her eyes now, a kind of fierce pride. I want to reach out and touch it.
“What if you can’t fight all of them?” I ask, voice small. “What if you freeze, and they just do whatever they want?”
She doesn’t look away. “Then you turn the freeze into a wall. Make it so nothing gets in. And if they break through, you remember who you were before. Because that’s the only thing they can’t take from you.”
A lump rises in my throat. “He didn’t even ask me. He just—” I can’t finish.
Eve stands and crosses the room. She sits next to me on the bed, close enough that I can smell the soap on her skin.
“Julian Roth is an animal. He set his sights on you and there’s no backing out, no escape.
But… I’m willing to guess that despite the fact he didn’t ask, you’re just as attracted to him as he is to you, is that close? ”
I nod, but the tears are already leaking out.
Eve doesn’t try to comfort me. She just waits, her presence a buffer between me and the rest of the world.
When I’m done, I wipe my eyes and laugh, shaky and hollow. “I probably sound pathetic. How fucked is that?”
She bumps my shoulder with hers. “You sound human.”
I look at her, really look, and see that she believes it.
We sit together in the quiet, the only sound the click of the old radiator and the soft buzz of the desk lamp.
After a while, I ask, “Did you ever want him, like I want Julian?”
She thinks about it. “Not at first. But after a while… yeah. It’s like your body remembers what it’s supposed to want, even if your head hates it.”
I bite my lip. “I hate that.”
Eve laughs. “Welcome to womanhood.”
Womanhood. What a wild concept that this is what it’s meant to be. A series of choices being stripped from you until you’re a raw, bloody mess.
She stands and stretches, then surveys the mess on my desk. “You have a lot of reading to do.”
I glance at the textbooks, the smears of ink and torn pages. “I can’t focus.”
Eve shrugs. “You will. Eventually.”
She heads for the door, then pauses. “You’re not alone, Amara. Even if it feels like it.”
I nod, and this time I almost believe it.
After she leaves, I stare at the ceiling until my neck aches.
I’m not sure what I’m supposed to feel.
But I know I’m not the same as I was this morning.
And maybe that’s something worth surviving for.
Sleep never comes.
I try every trick—deep breathing, counting the slats of the blinds, clamping a pillow over my ears to drown out the racing in my head—but every time my eyes flutter closed, I see a flash of teeth or the shadow of a contract or a pair of hands pinning me to a desk.
Sometime after two, the silence thickens enough to suffocate. I throw the covers off and sit at the edge of the bed, elbows on knees. My nails dig into my palms. All I want is to get out of my skin. To escape.
A soft tap at the window breaks my spiral.
At first, I freeze, expecting Julian or worse—my brother’s bodyguards. But the silhouette behind the glass is smaller, bundled in a hoodie. There’s another tap.
I move closer, heart jackhammering.
It’s Eve. She motions with her chin. Come on.
I slip into slippers and pull on a hoodie, then slide the window open. She helps me over the sill and we drop quietly into the overgrown quad below.
“Sorry, couldn’t get into your wing. Wanted to take you somewhere. Figured you wouldn’t be able to sleep either.”
The night air bites through the thin cotton, but the cold is bracing. I breathe it in and for the first time in hours, I feel alive.
Eve’s hands are quick—she shoves her own in her pockets, shoulders hunched as she leads me along the wall, away from the main walk. “If you’re up, you might as well do something with it,” she whispers.
I half-walk, half-jog to keep up, avoiding the yellow shafts of security lights and the old, twitchy cameras that guard every entry.
We cut behind the dining hall, then duck through a door marked STAFF ONLY. The air inside is warmer but heavy with the scent of bleach and ancient carpet. Eve takes the stairs two at a time, her hair trailing in a dark, untidy rope behind her.
At the basement, she pauses. “You ever been to the archives?”
I shake my head. She grins. “Figures. They don’t let the precious ones down here.”
We walk in silence, the only sound the distant hum of the night crew’s vacuum on the floor above. The door to the archives is solid oak, a lock as big as my fist. Eve pulls out a little plastic wedge, inserts it in the door seam, and shimmies it with an expert wrist-twist.