Chapter 28
Twenty-Eight
Morgan
The ropes bite deep enough to cut off my circulation.
I wiggle my toes and feel nothing. My fingers are similarly numb and I work my wrists to get the blood flowing again. Kieran certainly knows how to tie a knot. The bindings only get tighter when I work to free myself.
I push up on tingling feet to connect the chair to the stone wall. If I can break it, then I’ll limp out of here still attached to the cursed thing, but I’ll be free.
Whatever Kieran wants to say to the headmistress, I don’t care. Even his cold friend Astrid thinks whatever plan he’s formulating is a terrible one.
So it won’t be good for me. I feel it in my bones.
Sweating, bleeding, I work the leathers. They’re worse than the ropes, and Kieran’s knots are superior to Tristan’s.
Doomed.
The word circles in my head again.
Stomping footsteps grow louder and I glance up at the ducked heads of two of the professors in their matching black academic robes.
“Please. Please help me.” I lean forward, straining. “Please let me go.”
They lift their voices to drown out my pleas. And hurry their steps to get past me sooner. That’s how this place works. And I’ve done a poor job of blending in the way I needed to.
I bounce in the chair but the old wood is sturdy and well made. Not entirely comfortable but then again, it’s not supposed to be. It’s meant to put the person gracing the seat in a state of nerves before Harbi swoops in for the kill.
I’ve heard about her before.
My lip peels up as I watch the professors’ retreating backs.
I know the headmistress once went to school with the general and that she was so fierce even her teachers couldn’t tell her no. Not much is known about her beyond her old reputation, but it’s served her well for years, a well-made shield, almost impenetrable. No one has questioned her.
I’m a subject in her domain and maybe I should be happy to not have our orbits cross until now. Because my knees shake.
Kieran is probably petitioning her to let his dragon eat me or something.
The murmur of voices in the distance gets louder and a rush of students cuts through the corridor beyond.
“Help!” My throat hurts from yelling. “Someone, help me! Please!”
There’s laughter and conversation, there’s yelling and stomping, and sweat pools underneath my arms. Stupid girl. When are you going to learn? No one is coming to help you.
The tears threaten to spill, and I bite my cheek hard enough to taste copper, using the sharp pain to force them back. I’ll never learn.
Searching my soul, I have no excuses. I’m in this position because of my choices and no one else’s.
But Kieran is worse than I am. There’s a glimmer in his eyes when he looks at me, something like compassion, and it’s the dirtiest tactic anyone has played. He makes me believe he actually does care even when he has me on my back.
People like him don’t care. They use and use until there is nothing left for them to take and then they throw people away like they really are tools. Disposable.
What does he want to do with me? The question plagues me and the sweat drips from my arms down my sides. The dress fabric is too poorly made to absorb most of it. Beads of moisture slick down to my legs and I shift on the uncomfortable seat.
“How much longer will I have to sit here and wait?” I scream.
Hopefully Kieran hears me.
The corridors slowly clear out and the sun marching outside the window at the end of the hallway marks the hour.
I wasted too much time in the dining hall cleaning.
The dinner bell will toll any second now and the process will start all over again once the elite have had their fill of heart clogging richness.
The door to the office swings open after an eternity. Heart skipping a beat, I stare at the sliver of darkness from the other side.
Even if it’s my cue to enter, I’d rather not; I don’t want to see what’s on the other side and hear them tell me their decision on my fate. I don’t know if it’s changed or not. The way Kieran overpowered me, the way he took control—
There’s no such thing as leniency. There never has been. The only currency that matters is power and who is in possession of it.
“Morgan?”
Kieran’s come to retrieve me. His gaze is cold, unreadable, and the moment stretches out between us before he grabs the ties near my wrists and tugs.
His knot, which I’d found almost impossible to undo, slips free easily with a few pulls.
Then he straightens and pierces through me with those eyes like an abyss. Rather than look away, the way I want to, I force my chin up to meet his gaze, expecting cruelty. Instead, I find something that steals my breath—and I hate myself for the way it captures me.
“On your feet,” he whispers.
Slowly, I rise. “Touch me and I’ll scream.”
“I’ve already touched you. And you’ve already screamed.”
He’s made it painfully clear from the start but I guess somewhere in the middle of everything that’s happened, I’m still surprised.
“What do you want with me?” The question breathes out of me as Kieran stays unblinking. “Please. Just tell me.”
If I know, even if it’s bad, then I’ll stop anticipating. There is nothing but nightmares and less than pleasant surprises in the unknown.
Silent, he turns me and propels me against the wall. I slap a hand to the stone to stop my cheek from brushing, but he pushes me harder. My face makes contact, then my chest, and Kieran wrenches my arms behind my back.
He skillfully wraps the leathers around my wrists to bind them at my tailbone. The leather snaps into place with another tug and I gasp.
Arching his body over me, Kieran whispers, his hot breath tickling the baby fine hairs near my ear. “I told you to stop fighting, once. I told you I was trying to help you. Would it kill you to actually listen?”
Yes.
The word is right there. Why can’t I force it out of me? My heartbeat quickens, but not entirely from anger, and I hate myself for it.
“Come.”
Kieran draws away and I miss his warmth instantly.
Using the leathers, he tugs me up straight and maneuvers me away from the chair, through the slight opening in the door to the office. Silent. Composed.
The seamless threshold from black marble to wide-plank polished wood surprises me. There is so little comfort in this place but the headmistress’s office is hospitable, balmy.
Twin glass doors dominate the opposite wall and lead out to a balcony and the panoramic view of the valley beyond.
Despite the size of the room, it’s cozy, a wall of books and weapons to my right and her desk to the left.
The headmistress herself watches my every footstep from her desk like a monarch on her throne. The woman doesn’t need power to be indomitable. It rolls off of her with crackling intensity, as though magic has seeped into her skin.
She’s a striking brunette approaching middle age but her face is timeless and her eyes wizened. Her fierce reputation makes sense. There is an otherworldly quality to the headmistress as though someone plucked an all-powerful sorceress off the pages of a fiction novel and brought her to life.
And there’s Kieran, keeping a hold on the leather binds around my wrist like I’m some kind of dog for him to lead along. He’s got my hands secured behind my back when he presents me to Headmistress Harbi.
Her gaze snaps to him and a brow arches as if she’s asking if this is necessary. Kieran grunts out a wordless reply.
He’s not going anywhere, much to my annoyance.
He releases me in front of the headmistress and my gaze snags on the ornate frame encasing a painting on the wall beyond her. The swirling colors are mesmerizing, putting me in mind of wings and smoke.
The ceiling mimics the colors of the painting and stretches overhead in a dome of gold and blue like the sky in the early morning hours. The attention to detail is unlike anything I’ve seen in this place so far.
I slowly drag my attention back to Harbi and the gem at her throat. The pear shaped onyx pendant is clasped in silver filigree and hangs perfectly poised below her collarbone.
A sudden ache in my chest catches me off guard. Like my mother’s sapphire.
Is Harbi’s necklace a family heirloom as well? I scour my mind for some scrap of knowledge about the woman and come up blank. The more I struggle, the harder it is to breathe, like my anxiety is catching up to me at once, and the memories get farther away. They slip right out of my grasp.
My chest tightens and the rest of me follows suit behind it. If Harbi sees the struggle on my face, she’s content to watch me, to mark my progress and see if I’m able to get myself out of the headlock of nerves or not.
“Welcome, Morgan Whyte,” Harbi says softly.
I turn my wrists in the binds and sniff, shrug, to hide the movement. “This is a less than stellar welcome, if I’m honest.”
When I thought about it in the past— because what new student would have a face to face meeting with the headmistress at some point? —I pictured equal footing. Common ground.
Not a voyeur in black and leather straps.
“Oh?”
The word hangs in the air between us ready to drop but she never finishes the statement. It’s not an apology, and it’s not an observation.
I don’t know what it is.
The edge deepens and the nerves take center stage. I bite my lip to stop panting. Get a grip, Morgan, or Ether take you.
The curse helps.
Headmistress Harbi and I alter our posture to face each other at the same time. In terms of a power struggle, I’m losing, even though I’m the one who needs to survive.
She and I are playing very different games and I pray to Ether that Kieran doesn’t stick around long enough to see what kind of cards I’ve got close to my chest. My nostrils flare.
At the moment? It’s a whole lot of nothing.
But something will come to me through the scrabble of my thoughts. I’m sure of it.
At least, I have to be sure. Otherwise I’m trapped with no way out.