Chapter 30 #2
Jullia buzzes beside me as we follow everyone else making their way into the arena. The warehouse styled building is massive enough to hold all of us, but how they’re going to organize us will be intriguing to see.
“Asher says for the next week or so they’re just going to be testing us to see where they’ll place us and ask if we want to actually train.”
“I figured. Though it would probably be more helpful for the school itself to notify us instead of us having to figure it out.”
Jullia frowns at me as she pulls us into a line where the check-in is.
“I’m going to say this, but I want you to know I do not mean it maliciously or negatively,” she starts and I raise a brow waiting for whatever it is. “But you are very oblivious sometimes.”
“I’ve been told,” I say dryly, but she makes a face and bites her lip.
“Yes, but – “ She cuts herself off and shakes her head. “I know it’s not your fault because of everything and you need to be very internally concentrated, but the school has been notifying us. I know everything going on not just because of Hanna or Asher, but because the school is telling us.”
Oh.
“But I understand,” she rushes, “you have a lot going on so of course you’re not going to look at every email or notification or hear every little thing all the professors say. But this is stuff everybody knows.”
I sigh to myself and mentally flip fate off. Of course the school would be more organized than just what I’ve perceived. I am too internally concentrated. But it didn’t just start recently. I’ve been too self-absorbed all year.
That’s why I didn’t know the specifics about family day or the masquerade ball. I wasn’t paying attention. Part of me also doesn’t care to, but that’s just whatever.
“Welp,” I say, popping the p. “Can’t argue with that.”
She smiles and chuckles as she shakes her head and turns to face the front. The line goes by relatively quickly and after a few more minutes we get to the table where a red-head who looks vaguely familiar sits.
She scoffs when she looks at me. “Oh look, our savior.”
Oh my fucking god. It’s the bitch from move-in day.
Her eyes snap towards Jullia and her glare intensifies. “With her little water buddy. How cute you made a friend. Good thing you’re both in your lanes.”
What the fuck?
Jullia shrinks herself and I officially hate the bitch.
“Can we just sign in and get our clothes, Trisha.”
The vampyr rolls her eyes. She scratches something off on the chart on the table and throws two tote shaped bags at us. Jullia fumbles to catch hers but I let mine hit my stomach and then fall to the floor. A bit frozen with confusion because actually, what the fuck?
“Still a weak, little droplet, aren’t you Jullia,” she sneers.
Ohhhh, no, no, no.
“You know,” I say, which grants me another disgusted eye roll. “They say not everybody makes it to Syngenia graduation.”
The vampyr curls the corner of her lip in a dark grin revealing her fangs. “Exactly.”
“Exactly,” I repeat. And then I use her blood to fracture her heart.
Like a light switching off behind her eyes, faster than a bullet through the brain, her face slams into the table. It happens so fast that my aura didn’t even become known and my eyes stayed pink.
Jullia’s heart trips and it takes a moment for people to process what happened.
Not that I killed her, of course, but that her head banged into the table.
Stooping down, I pick up my bag which looks like it has clothes for us to change into right as someone approaches the girl. It takes another moment for them to realize she’s actually dead and there’s a light commotion as some professor approaches.
Not many people around us pay attention as this isn’t the first time someone has dropped dead.
Most people at this school don’t make it to gradation – usually because they either fail or drop out, but occasionally because they end up dead.
It’s a common enough occurrence. We are in a magical world with magical anomalies, after all.
Only when people of importance are involved do others tend to get in trouble. Case in point, when I burned down the demon councilman’s son’s rooms.
“What happened?” the professor gruffs, not really angry, just annoyed.
I shrug. “Probably a heart attack.” Then I nudge Jullia and ask, “Where do we go to change?”
The professor scoffs before ordering someone to come clean this up. Jullia frozenly turns and starts pulling me towards where some other girls are going. Probably some kind of locker room.
When we enter it she wraps her hand around my upper arm and shoves us into a corner away from the other girls in here already changing. Pulling up a sound barrier Asher must have taught her, she simply stares at me. But I can feel how fast her blood is moving.
“I didn’t feel your aura.”
She states it like a fact. Her body is lightly tensed but aside from her blood flow she’s not giving me anything about what she’s thinking.
“That’s because I did not release it from my blood.”
An emotion I can’t name flashes through her eyes. “How did you kill her then?”
There’s no emotion behind her words. Maybe mild curiosity, but there’s no anger, no judgement, no resentment.
Killing her was probably overdramatic, but there was something vile about her. Like Nana’s mother. A coating of oil slick with so much grime. I wouldn’t have went so far, but Jullia made herself smaller because of the vampyr. That cemented her fate.
“I crushed her heart.”
“Without using your aura?”
I slightly shake my head. “It was a fraction within a fraction of time. I did it so fast nothing was perceivable from me.”
Her eyes widen and finally I can see a clear emotion.
“Just like you were so fast you were able to kill a blood witch before her written fate was finished.” And now she smiles.
“Good. Trisha used to try and slander our family and for a time convinced Asher’s family to even hate us.
She did other things, but. . . well, I’m not sorry she’s dead. ”
I smile back at her. “Good. She was also a bitch to me my first day on campus so even if you were I wouldn’t be sorry.”
Jullia rolls her eyes and drops the barrier. Then we actually enter the locker room and my first dilemma of the day appears. All the girls in here are changing like the girls in the brothel house do. And there’s not a changing curtain in sight.
“Oh,” Jullia winces out. When I turn to her she’s holding up what our gym clothes are supposed to be. And tell me why it’s barely more than what I was wearing in the cages.
Someone throws an arm over my shoulder and I turn to find Hanna in the exact same thing Jullia is holding up. A tight fitting tank top and short biker shorts.
“Hope you’re not a prude, Mavyn,” Hanna jokes before recognition flashes and she winces exactly like Jullia just did. “I apo – “
“No need,” I brush off and dig in my bag. “I did grow up in a brothel house. Also I highly doubt my scars are going to bother me more than they do everyone else.”
“They are a bit. . . intense.” The three of us turn and Ricka stands in the same outfit with her arms crossed. “But if you don’t care, then they don’t matter.”
Hearing her say that warms my chest a bit.
The honesty through her words. Because they don’t matter.
I never cared about giving them a symbolism of how much I survived because that’s bullshit.
Children shouldn’t have to survive what I did.
Me being here and now proves I survived, I don’t need the scars to do that for me.
So I choose to let them be meaningless.
“Well,” Ricka chirps, which sounds weird coming from here, “hurry up and change so we can get out there. I wanna see you guys fight.”
How comforting.