Chapter 18 Wronging My Rights #2
“You didn’t.” I raise an eyebrow as shadows slink through the room. The chill touches my ankle first, then crawls up my legs, holding me down in the seat. “Seriously?” I whisper.
“Let’s get one thing straight,” Lucian says, lowering his voice. “You are only walking in this academy because I have not yet alerted the Royals of your nature. I will watch you, study you, and you will accept this because you know that the power is in my hands—not yours. Do you understand?”
I flash my teeth, and with the full force of my heart, I mean these words, “I hate you.”
“Darling,” he says, but it’s not the same way he used to.
His voice drips with disdain, twisting the word into something derogatory, suggesting I’m beneath him.
“The feeling is beyond mutual,” he finishes, leaning closer, invading every inch of my space as his lips brush against my ear.
His warm breath blows through my hair. “Because I don’t simply hate you.
” His tone is venomous. “I want to ruin you.”
“Be my guest, Prince.” I glare up at him as his shadows release me. “There’s nothing left to ruin.”
“That’s true,” Hogan says. I look up, finding his eyes pinned on me.
“I’m sorry?”
“I said, do you know, Miss Althenia?”
“Do I know what?”
“The answer to a very simple question.” He smiles. “What makes you different from every other killer in this room?”
“They’re all killers?” I ask, feeling a strange sense of hope. I look around the room at the students, all staring forward blankly. Their eyes are hollow, as if there’s nothing behind them.
“Most, yes.” Hogan’s voice takes on an airy quality as he repeats, “What is the difference?”
I take a step away from Hogan, wishing I could move farther from the students. “I killed to survive,” I answer.
“Ah,” he whispers. “Yet you are immortal.”
I wait for the class to react. No one does. My head whips back in his direction.
His shirt—even his pants—are laced in red.
“Is that blood?” I mutter, eyes roaming over his body.
“Look at your hands.”
I do as he says, glancing down. My heart plummets into my stomach, and I choke on it, standing on trembling legs. A severed head rolls out of my lap, making an awful squelching noise as it hits the floor.
Not just any head. Bernice’s. The boy—my friend—I killed when I was a kid. He’s covered in dirt, his hair singed at the ends, his skin gray and rotting away.
I wasn’t trying to survive when I killed him. But this one—this was an accident.
“The difference,” Hogan says, “is that we don’t kill the people we love.”
I look down, and when my gaze meets the floor, I expect to see Bernice’s head once more, but it’s not there. The floor is clean—the blood is gone. As if this is all…
“A hallucination,” I whisper in realization.
When I look up, I do so with intention. Hogan’s eyes aren’t brown, the telltale color of the Folk. They’re green, vibrant and dazzling and not Hogan. He smiles, like he knows I understand. The gesture transforms his expression from calm to terrifying.
“You’re adapting,” he muses. “I expected you to. Now, I want to see what you can do.”
Chairs screech across the floor, hissing in my ears. Every student rises to their feet, footsteps echoing as they walk toward me.
I shake my head. “What are you doing?”
The teacher smiles—an ancient curve of his lips—as he says, “Give them your worst.”
One by one, the students approach. I shrink away, backing into a corner that wasn’t there before. The room closes in. Fingers latch onto me—my arms, shoulders, torso, then my face. They grab my skin, pulling, prying, scratching, like they’re trying to rip the muscle from my bones.
“Stop it!” I scream as chunks of my flesh are pulled from my body.
It hurts, more than I imagined it would—like they’re not just stealing my physical form, but my soul.
The agony shatters my resolve. They’re pulling layers from me, as if they enjoy the view of my veins.
Claws reach for my eyes, scratching hard and nearly blinding me.
“I said, stop!”
My words reverberate through me, shaking me to the bone, as if snapping every ligament. Then… a moment of peace. A raft pulling me from deadly waters. No sound echoes after. No pain grabs me. It’s peaceful and quiet, and when I open my eyes it’s—
Red. Limbs and bodies and more limbs on the floor. The only person intact is Hogan, covered in blood and guts.
“You say you don’t want to be a monster.” He speaks slowly, still smiling. “But you were born for this.”
I reach for the dagger in my shoe. “I wasn’t born for shit!” I scream, hurling the blade at Hogan’s face. The moment the dagger flies through the air, the blood vanishes. The students’ bodies are no longer splattered across the room; they’re all in their seats, all eyes on me.
The room isn’t a nightmare anymore. It’s just a classroom.