1 #3
“I was with Avi at the halfbreed end-of-term party,” she tells me, and my mind plants that timing as back in November, making her just four months pregnant.
But she says, “I don’t know how far along I am.”
My tongue rolls around the insides of my cheeks. Because no matter what, “You chose me to be the father, then?”
“Olivia, please,” Serena’s voice comes soft. “If I told you, you wouldn’t have come—”
“You think?” My voice hitches. “I didn’t sign up for this. On the run—with a baby? You…” I point my finger at her. “You tricked me. This is entrapment.”
Serena hardens right in front of me.
A darkness settles over her, the vulnerability slamming shut like a vault door.
For a moment, I think she’s going to scream back at the very least, or even lunge at me—but then, slowly, she rises from the edge of the bed and announces, stiffly, “I’m going to be sick.”
In a blink, she’s shuffling past my bed for the bathroom. A clammer of the door follows thudded footsteps—but the door doesn’t close all the way.
So I hear it. Loud and clear.
The kind of heave that reaches all the way down to her gut.
The splash of sick hits the toilet water, and a grimace turns down my mouth.
I slap my hands to my ears and rush for the front door.
The rules are not to go out if we don’t need to and never leave the room without telling the other. But I grab a jacket, pull it on, and tug the hood as far over my face as it’ll go.
I step outside, out into the fresh air and the quiet of the sullen carpark, peppered with old, beaten cars.
Sinking back against the doorframe, I fold my arms over my chest and stare at the sedan parked opposite me.
Mud cakes the grooves of the tyres. Streaks are dragged all over the windshield. Rust flaking along the edges—and I hate it.
I hate everything about it.
I’ve seen cars like this, but only ever in passing, from the window of the Royce, the Range Rover, the Bentley—and if I’ve been travelling with the Sinclairs in their cars, the Maybach, the Aston.
I have passed these deteriorating cars on foot as I wandered cities. I never paid them more attention than a glance.
But now I stare, because that is my future.
Rusted cars, and fast food so greasy that it stains the paper bags it comes in, and coffee so stale neither one of us could finish it, and dusty motel rooms that haven’t been properly cleaned in decades.
Serena played me.
Asta’s words ring in my mind.
‘Serena is out for herself. If she’s cosying up to you, there is a reason for it.’
And it goes beyond my engagement to Dray.
Serena wanted more than to position herself as the bestie of Dray’s wife.
And Asta made sure to let me know that, just as she made sure to let me know how little Serena likes me, and how poorly she stands alone.
I was lured into a trap—and it’s bitterly ironic that Asta was the one who tried to warn me.
I run my hands down my face, feeling my cheeks tug under the pressure.
The evidence of Asta’s attack on me lingers. It hurts to apply too much pressure to my face.
I drop my hands to my sides with a sigh.
Because if I like it or not, I’m in this now.
Serena pounced on me with her proposition when I was at my weakest, my most vulnerable, my most hurt.
I wonder if she waited for that exact moment, the moment I unravelled completely before she came to me with her plan—a way out.
It takes me back to just months ago, back to the start of the first semester, when she began her lame attempts to befriend me.
Those might have been strategy to ally herself with Dray’s future wife, acting on a suspicion that wasn’t yet a reality.
But it grew from there.
It evolved when she found out she’s pregnant.
Her efforts to get closer to me really ramped up over the Solstice Season.
That’s it.
She went home over the break, suspected she was with child, and tested herself.
I wonder if she used krum tests or had to approach a witchdoctor with a penchant for accepting bribes.
She knew that baby would either be forcibly terminated or disappear into the lower ranks of the Videralli. Probably terminated, so she could finish out her time at the academy, and graduate.
And I became a pawn.
Now, I’m trapped on her chessboard.
I can’t go back, not even if I wanted to.
The consequences for running—even if I returned of my own volition—will be too dire.
I don’t know what the punishment would be. But I do know I can’t risk finding out.
I live in a new prison now.
Serena’s prison.
And it’s full of damp, mouldy motel rooms, fast food that she sicks up in the bathroom, chipped and rusty cars, and a baby on the way.
My face twists with the horror of it all.
I turn for the door—and as I edge it open, the sound of Serena’s heaving reaches me.
I leave her to it and climb onto my bed.
I tug a pillow over my head. It’s no enchanted bed curtain, and it only slightly muffles the sound of her in the bathroom, but I hold it there.
If I’m going to be running around for pawn shops in the city in just a matter of hours, catching trains and early flights, then I need as many minutes of sleep as I can get.
I need to be sharp.
Because I have no doubt that my family are already close behind us.