Chapter 32
Thirty-Two
Morgan
Istare after Kieran for long minutes after he disappears from sight. The pain in his eyes does something to me. It quiets the screaming voice in my head but my body still thrums with violence barely contained.
The blade is heavy in my pocket and my fingers itch to use it but that involves chasing after him, and I know that if I do, if I meet his eyes again, I’ll waver.
Wavering is worse than charging headfirst into the unknown because it means you lack the strength and the gumption to carry out your wishes.
Why did he say I’d take him with me? He’s untouchable. He’s the most sought after person in this school. Why is he here, anyway? Why isn’t he out there with Daddy, doing his part in the wave of terror?
I turn around the empty classroom rubbing my free hand absently over my throbbing wrist. Sighing, I reach for the book and tuck it underneath my arm. I’ve got little choice here. With painful effort, I limp out of the classroom.
My body tenses for another physical attack but there’s none coming. There’s only raw skin, clenched fists, and a searing burn where my heart used to be.
“Why should I listen to anything he says?” My words echo off empty stone. “He’s spinning tales. Manipulating me.”
Only that’s not the feeling I get from him. It shouldn’t matter, feelings, because they’re nebulous things. They have no substance of their own but they control too many people.
Empty suits of armor track my progress toward the private gym, where my footsteps take me like they have tiny minds of their own. I suck in my breath at the empty hall.
Nearly empty.
Daisy, Druella, and a handful of other maids march in a unified formation toward me without their usual weapons of mops and buckets. Everything inside of me sinks.
“Milkin’s messengers?” I call out.
They’re too far away to see me swallow, or to mark the flash of desperation at their arrival. A pinching sensation in my abdomen warns me not to engage. I’m injured and wanted.
The sickening desire to run from them strips away even the smallest veneer of civility and floods me with adrenaline.
Daisy sets her hands above her pointy hip bones, her wide mouth a splash of pink across her face. “Milkin doesn’t know we’re here.”
“Oh, so she didn’t send you to collect me? I thought for sure you’d want me up in the dragon aerie again.” I draw up straighter.
“The dragon aerie is going to be like paradise compared to where you’re going.” Druella fingers my necklace, still hanging around her neck. “Milkin sent us to collect you, but not for the aerie.”
Maybe Harbi wasn’t happy with my answer in her office, either, and sent word. This is the crew, who’ve come to collect me and put me back in chains in the dungeon.
“I’m out of this place anyway.” I spin on my heel. “It doesn’t matter what you say or what she wants.”
They’re safe to move in the corridors now, when the nobles are at play or too busy stuffing their faces with suffocating richness. This is when the hives empty and the workers who keep this place spotless are allowed a few lungfuls of air without duty.
“Faye told us you were down in the kitchen with your hands tied.” The horde marches behind me and the statement comes from a woman with an overbite and cow-eyes. “What game are you playing?”
“The kind designed to go over your head,” I mutter under my breath.
I readjust Kieran’s book and press it to my heart, leather and paper protection from their words.
They don’t know anything. They think I’m still going to the mines. Faye might have given away one of my secrets but they have no clue that Evie will be the one to end my life. I’ll be flayed open on the wrong end of a whip.
My skin tightens and the smallest shred of a survival instinct is the only thing keeping me from reacting when Daisy grabs me by the shoulders.
“Don’t get her involved in your mess. You’re the kind of poison who destroys everything around you.” Derision drips from the tip of her pointed nose. “Faye is a good girl. We’ve watched out for her longer than you’ve been here and we will keep watching out for ourselves when you’re gone.”
“Then I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know I’m leaving sooner than expected.”
Speaking of the unexpected—the tears pushing against my eyes are certainly a surprise.
Loneliness. The word sits in my chest like a blade between ribs—sharp, precise, and exactly where Kieran intended it to land.
Faye is one of the only maids who looked out for me, in her own brusque way. She’s someone who might have been a friend under vastly different circumstances. She has her own close knit community made up of other lost souls who have made tentative peace with their situation.
Not me.
I’m the outlier no matter where I go and if I’m honest with myself, I have been my entire life.
My mother and sister were cut from the same cloth and as the oldest, Elspeth was primed to take Illonia’s place as the leader of the village.
It suited them. They had their own language without the need for clunky words.
Both chosen by powerful unicorns. Both battle tested and hardheaded.
My father was a warrior but something about him set him apart from his peers, a hesitation in his heart. It got him killed.
And me. Wild. Feral. Too chaotic to be tamed, and I ended up in the same place anyway. I ended up alone.
Daisy wrinkles her nose and releases me, wiping her hand on the front of her dress. “Gotten yourself in a bit of a scrape, haven’t you? You’re covered in blood.”
“Just one of my games,” I tell them lightly.
The others cluster closer to Daisy like I’m going to somehow erupt on them as well. If they only knew half of it.
Druella’s wearing the sapphire pendant proudly. Most days, she keeps it tucked under the high neck of her dress, like I did, so I’m guessing the display is special. For me.
It’s salt in the wound and grinds deep. Keeping the emotions off of my face is imperative.
But why? Why does it matter anymore? I’m out of here, one way or another, so why do I care what these women think of me? For some reason… I do.
I step in the opposite direction and walk backward past another unseeing suit of armor, one of the many medieval touches in this monument to structure and order and death.
“The best thing you can do for yourself is go back downstairs and get some sleep. I’m in a fighting mood.” I glance at Druella.
Her face has mostly healed at this point. Her eyes go round at my expression and the blood staining my teeth from the new flow of my split lip.
“I’ll take my necklace back and strangle you with it. It doesn’t matter how many of your friends you bring with you.” I jerk my chin.
Rewarded when Daisy sucks in a breath and the cow-eyed maid gasps out loud.
They call me poison. In a way, they’re right. I’ve infected everything I’ve come into contact with. Faye is better off to have these girls to protect her rather than casting any kind of lot in with me. She’d helped me.
It’s going to be the end of the story because it’s better that way.
My heart clenches again but Daisy rejoins her group without a confrontation.
She scoffs, the sound phlegmy. “I knew you were trouble.”
The others fall in line and retreat into the shadows where they’ve gotten comfortable. But my skin itches and the moon is brighter, ready to dominate the sky. Soon the final bell will toll to signal the end of dinner, the closing of the day, and the guards will be on my tail.
I consider Daisy’s arrival a warning. They’re coming for me. Harbi will send people to collect me so Evie gets her pound of flesh due. It’s inevitable.
In the scant time I have left, I head to the private gym and close the door. Only when the lock engages do I breathe as freely as a person in my position can breathe. Not well.
Kieran’s blade is double its weight in my pocket.
Slowly, I set the stolen book down on the edge of the practice mat and withdraw the dagger. Soon, the chill autumn air will push through the cracks in the stone and chill the room, but rather than going to the empty fireplace waiting for life, the kind in every room in this castle, I hesitate.
I’ll freeze.
I’ll punish myself for whatever fatal flaw makes me the way I am. Lonely, set apart, unable to fit in despite the screeching in my head warning me of the consequences. At least I got the blade, and it was easy enough to slip it free from Kieran’s holster.
Almost like he wanted me to have it.
My chuckle is anything but jolly. But then again, he didn’t charge after me, the way I thought he might. As though he’d reached his limit with my stubbornness and had to get out of sight.
In fact, he’s hardly danced to the tune of my expectations since he caught me.
I thought I had him tucked underneath a neat label of understanding with his quick smirk and the glint of mischief in his eyes. Coupled with an ego the size of the kingdom?
It’s hard not to understand a man like him on an intrinsic level. He’s dangerous outside of his bloodline.
Only he’s kept me on my toes in more ways than one. My heart spins into my throat as I toss the dagger in the air and catch it by the handle, every step onto the mat taking me farther away from what happened in the classroom.
Did he skulk off somewhere to wallow in his failure with me?
Did he go straight back to Harbi to do more dealing?
I toss the dagger at the long pole jutting like a finger from the floor. It burrows halfway up the wood and sticks firm. It doesn’t make me feel any better. There are frustrations to work off, thoughts to bully into order, and minutes ticking down.
The gym is empty, cavernous. The weapons wait to be used. I cross to the pole and rest my fingers on the handle of the stolen blade.
Kieran had been furious, not quite yelling, but certainly doing his damnedest to beat understanding into my skull with the harshness of his words.
And here we are.
Opposite sides of the same coin and neither one of us is willing to bend. He can’t justify my actions and I’ll never be able to sell out to the General and the King.
The dagger is well balanced. Sharp enough to slice through whatever I put it to work doing, as its previous owner intended. Does Kieran even realize it’s gone yet? Does he miss the weight?
“It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t matter.”
Any bit of safety I clawed out of this place is nothing but an illusion. It will shatter, the way all illusions do, and when it finally happens at least I’ll know I braced for it. At least I’ll know I wasn’t taken by surprise, as so many people are when they stay optimistic.
It’s better, I think dryly, for Faye to stick with her friends, the people who are like her.
Better for Kieran as well. He has his group and a part to play which does not involve me. When I’m gone, he will slither back into his routine and in no time, I’ll be a better forgotten memory.
So, I’m going to work my tired muscles into a frenzy until they refuse to move because I have too much energy to sit and wait for the noose to snap tight.