Chapter 9
Nine
Morgan
Something snaps inside of me.
Anger blazes, heady, and dissolves any trace amount of good sense or self-preservation.
“You can’t steal from me.” I punch her again and her eyes widen as she stumbles.
The back of her knees hit the nearest single cot and she goes down, sprawling over the mattress. Those fluttering hands clutch her ruined chin.
“You’re insane!”
The plume of darkness inside me grows and I throw myself on her. The clash of our bodies colliding echoes through the empty chamber. The girl screeches out a curse and I ignore her, focusing on her neck.
Her delicate and breakable neck. For every hit I land, my sanity recedes. I push past the pain but it doesn’t matter. She’s not matching me blow for blow. She’s taking everything I give her with her arms lifted in front of her face to defend herself.
“Stop! What do you think you’re doing? Girls!” Mrs. Milkin’s shrill and insipid screech rings out from across the room.
It’s lost in the roar inside my head.
The maid blinks up at me in surprise, her jaw already discolored from the hit. She finally finds her nerve, or her wits, and brings her knuckles up to drive them into my soft belly.
“You’re insane.”
The hit barely registers. Neither does her whisper. There’s a disconnect between my head and my body. I’ve fractured into two pieces, the anger the only link between the two of them as I knock her off the cot and onto the floor.
She lands hard on her back. I leap on top of the maid, oblivious to the audience growing around us as the others return from their duties.
My legs fall on either side of her hips to pin her in place as I pummel her.
Control slips. The girl manages a few hits I’ll probably feel later. At the moment, none of it matters.
“It’s my necklace,” I hiss through my teeth. “Mine.”
The housekeepers and cleaners cluster, pressing their ranks closer to us, either keeping us contained to allow the fight to play out or hiding us from Milkin’s view.
But it’s too late.
She sees. And I’m dimly aware of the consequences for this.
The housekeeper pushes her way through the circle to get to us as I leap on top of the maid.
“I didn’t take your stupid necklace!” she yells in my face.
She might have, though, if I hadn’t caught her in the act. I’d been so careful to stash it when I arrived—
Of course someone saw me.
It’s the only thing I have left to my name when everything else has been taken. My future, my existence, my identity, they’re all in the hands of someone else. Someone who doesn’t know me and doesn’t care about my wishes or dreams or safety.
They only care that I’m alive when I shouldn’t be and want me to suffer for someone else’s resistance.
I’d change it, if I could. I’d have put myself on the field with the others before dragon fire turned them to dancing embers on a heartless wind.
I slam my fists into the girl’s face repeatedly, control slipping until it’s gone entirely, beating her harder than I should have. Someone is screaming, the sound agonized and heartbreaking.
Distantly, I see the blood. I know the girl is kicking weakly before she gives up even that attempt to dislodge me. Her final weak punch lands on my clavicle before she shields her face again. Blood streams from her split lip and cheek.
I wrench them aside and slam my skull down into her nose before someone pulls me off of her.
I’m the one screaming, thrashing, fighting as though some infernal demon has taken up residence in my soul. It takes three girls to keep me contained while the others stop to help the beaten and battered maid on the ground.
She’s a pile of tears and blood, her nose cracked, and her pale skin stained crimson.
“She’s out of her mind.” Her swollen mouth obscures her words. “You saw her! She’s dangerous.”
“Miss Whyte! What do you think you’re doing?” Mrs. Milkin blocks out the view as she steps between me and the girl.
Her normally ruddy face has gone full red and her nostrils flare like a bellowing bull.
“She tried to steal from me!” My chest heaves, my insides swollen like they’re attempting escape as well. “I saw her.”
My body shakes and the distant drip of the faulty pipe is a slow scratch in my brain.
“I didn’t touch her stupid necklace. She went feral on me.” The girl sniffs and cries out at the pain from her broken bone.
The sound does something strange to me. It twists things already bent out of shape and I lunge for her again.
Milkin steps with me, making it impossible to get around her bulk, then slaps me across the face. One slap, two, and the hurt doesn’t register until the third stroke.
“Control yourself, Miss Whyte.”
The sound of flesh meeting flesh rings dully inside my head and the throb of my pulse is almost enough to block it out. Almost.
“This sort of behavior is unacceptable! Do you hear me?” Milkin, in a rage, grabs one of my ears and twists hard enough to wrench it off my skull. “You never attack your fellow worker. Did I not make myself clear when you first arrived?”
I squeal as she pushes me to my knees and towers over me, gripping me by the back of the neck.
“It’s my mother’s necklace,” I grind out.
“I’ll hear no excuse,” she yells, drilling her words into my brain. “One more foot out of line and you’re going to the mines. Do you understand? Nod if you do!”
Tears leak from my eyes, squeezed shut, and I force a nod.
Milkin sends me forward and kicks me in the kidneys again for good measure. Her signature move and one I take with a tamped down groan. Several of the others slither the sobbing thief out of sight and I stay on the ground, my hands covering my face, silent cries wracking through me.
“I don’t care if she sets your clothes on fire,” Milkin adds. She grinds her shoe against my tailbone to pin me. “I don’t care if someone throws your bed off the damned cliff. You will adhere to the rules. Consider this your final warning.”
I’m sick of being abused.
Sick of being made to feel inferior for the simple fact of existing.
Sick to death of having my identity stripped away piecemeal because someone else is stronger than I am. Milkin only has power because someone gave her the position, I guarantee it.
The sounds of the crowd slowly fade and when I force my eyes open, only a single maid remains behind. Her luminous blue eyes are slits as she considers me, her black hair short and choppy.
I sniff, running a hand over my nose, my mouth. “What are you looking at?”
I’ve seen her before. Actually, I think she’s the girl on the cot beside mine, the single one.
She shakes her head and rejoins the others.
Mrs. Milkin hovers at the edge of the room. She waits for the conversation to fade before calling back to me, “I’m relegating you to the dragon aerie. Alone. Clean the perches, Miss Whyte, and do not return until there isn’t a scrap of dung left. Consider that your punishment.”
It takes less than an hour for gossip to ooze through the rest of the housekeeping staff and into the rest of the castle. Another hour beyond and word has gotten around to the students.
No one will tell me how to get to the dragon aerie. Six-person job, someone had whispered as I dragged my supplies up here. Always done by a team. Always.
But here I am. Alone. As intended.
Dragging a fresh bucket with lye and hot water behind me, I climb to the steepest part of the castle and the wide stone terrace leading into a tower open on three sides.
My knees buckle.
Cleaning the dragon aerie has been whispered as the worst, and it takes seconds to realize why.
The open air does nothing about the stench of so many lizards in one area and their urine and musk. Their dung piles are the size of a horse.
I lose my grip and drop the bucket, scattering soap and water everywhere.
It’s too much for one person to do alone.
You should have controlled yourself better.
The nightmarish tone in my head belongs to me. And it’s right. On bruised knees, I thrust my hands into the lye water and wince as the soap sinks through the cracks in my knuckles. This is what I deserve.
And this day is one of the most difficult of the journey. After the first bucket of water cooled, I’d retrieved more, the boiling water from the tap searing my skin. Repeatedly, I’d sunk my hands into the soapy, scalding water, until my knuckles split open and my blisters popped.
The pain does one thing right, and leaves me with no time to dwell on the chaos haunting my mind.
I clamp down on a cry, bunching my fist on my lap and letting the linen absorb the dung-colored water, only to give my hands a break.
The stolen necklace, Milkin’s malice, this place… the gothic castle is made up of shadows and despair and the maids are only one source of fuel. A large source.
DragonSpear will leave me broken as well.
Drawing in a breath, I submerge my hand again and slash the scrub brush across the underside of one of the stone perches.
Better to push it all down. The pain, the fear, everything, and let the finality of the situation consume me.
Sure, it’s a bit of a bleak outlook for someone my age but what’s the other alternative? To cling so tightly to the kernel of hope left that I let it carry me through my duties for the next year? Or two?
The sharp edges of stone dig into my knees through my dress until my skin bleeds.
I scrub, dunk, dump the water and go for fresh. The same desperate routine as countless others who have come before me. Unlike my other days here, today it’s clear how far I’ve gotten from the person I used to be and my cherished plans for the future.
“If a dragon had tried to choose me, I’d turn them down,” I bite out. “There’s no way I’d want to connect myself to one of those beasts.”
It’s a hollow boast that means nothing.
I’m not here as a student. I’m here to survive this punishment and if Milkin has her way, I’ll soon abandon whatever dreams I’d kept tethered to me, like throwing a stone into a lake and watching it disappear.
Soon, even hope will vanish.