7. Addie
ADDIE
VEGSO – MORIOR INVICTUS
“What the fuck?!” an oily, outraged voice spluttered—triggering sixteen other initiates to sit bolt upright in their cots. Myself included.
I grinned, delighting in the sight of Sebastos receiving the ice water alarm on this fine, frosty morning. With an expressionless Beckett standing over him, holding the bucket, no less.
Beckett with a bucket.
I bit down on the giggle so hard I tasted blood, my gaze instinctively seeking out Fleur’s across the room to share in the vindication of karmic backlash.
Except, in typical Fleur fashion, she was still fast asleep.
That girl could sleep through Armageddon.
Smiling, I stood to remake her bed, lamenting the fact that I’d be back in my own incomparably uncomfortable cot tonight. Since I was the first to rise, the movement caught the attention of both men previously locked in a staring contest over by Seb’s bed.
Beckett spared me the briefest of glances, doing a quick head-to-toe assessment of my body as though making sure the other bastard hadn’t acted on his threats overnight. He nodded once—the smallest of head-jerks, having confirmed my wellbeing—and resumed glaring at Sebastos.
Contrarily, Sebastos stared at me like he’d seen a ghost.
His cold, shark-like eyes bugged out of his thick skull, and his pale face blanched further. He sputtered incoherent sounds, looking for all the world like a blubbering fish.
“Close mouth, think words, then speak, asshole. Jesus Christ, did it really only take one bucket of water to drag you all the way back to your pre-foetus days?” I snarked as I stalked past them to rouse Fleur before she copped shit for sleeping in and being late to formation.
Sebastos apparently wasn’t all the way fish—he didn’t take the bait.
“Fleur,” I hissed, shaking her cold, blanket-covered shoulder. The air smelled off in this corner, and I pounced on her for it. “Come on, Fleur, quit dropping bombs—you’re not being funny. Beckett’s staring—actually, everyone’s staring. Let’s go, fartass.”
Fleur flopped onto her back, eyes wide open, a shadow covering her from the neck down as I stood over her. However, her expression was completely at odds with the scenario I’d thought was playing out.
They were too wide. Too vacant. Too cold.
And that shadow at her throat wasn’t a shadow at all.
It was old blood—dark from the time spent oxidising, drying around her pretty neck like a morbid necklace—all while I slept peacefully in her cot, happily oblivious.
“Fleur?” I breathed, shaking her again.
I waited for the gotcha moment—for the light to return to her eyes as she winked and cracked up for having played the darkest joke imaginable in a room full of would-be assassins.
But Fleur remained motionless.
“No. No, no, no,” I begged, grasping at her neck to staunch the flow of blood, knowing abstractly that it was a futile endeavour because there was no longer a flow to stem. Instead, I flinched at the frigidity of her skin, jerked my hand away, and stared at the crimson stain on my fingers.
I couldn’t see anything else—didn’t think I’d ever see anything else.
Somewhere, a distant scream pierced through the murkiness in my ears.
Somewhere, a metal bucket crashed into the floorboards.
When the breath hitched in my throat and the scream died out—when my eyes blurred with a torrential downpour of tears, I realised that the scream was mine—and the blood was hers—and I would never be the same again.
A warm set of arms wrapped around my torso, hoisting me off the floor.
But all I could see was red.
Dark red.
Never the same.
Never again.
Never, never, never.