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Verity

It must be cold,but I can’t feel it. I put one foot in front of the other, feeling the twinge in my center, but numb to it in some odd, fundamental way. On either side of me, the paintings of cherubs and old dead men watch my humiliating, slow march down the hall. Behind me are the footfalls of my three Princes, escorting me back to the suite. I don’t need to listen to know they’re there. I can feel them in every pang. Every bruise. Every ache. I can feel them deeper, into the very core of me, painful and knurled.

I keep walking, because if I don’t, I’ll fall.

And there will be no one to catch me.

My arms rub against my bare sides, just as sticky as the inside of my thighs.This isn’t my body. I say it over and over again in my mind, like a mantra.Not mine. Not mine. Not mine.

This has been true since I walked in the front doors of this place, but it has a different slant now. Where these words used to be the angry, bitter curse that roiled in my gut like poison, I now clutch to them as the only source of comfort afforded to me.

This isn’t my body, so I don’t need to deal with it. Simple. Clean. I’m just a machine of ropes and pulleys and tangled gears. I’m the skeleton, but not the flesh. I’m the veins, but not the blood that pumps through them.

I’d forget to stop at my door, except when I round the corner, I see Stella down there, waiting, her body curled tight around itself. She takes a step forward when she sees me, face falling, but then stops when she notices I’m not alone.

I approach her as if I’m a ghost–someone invisible–because the other option isn’t possible.

The Princes stop when I do.

Stella wrings her hands. “Er, I’m not familiar with the procedure,” she says to them. “Can I clean her up?” It’s only the tone of her voice that draws my eyes to hers. There’s a thread of anguish there and I feel it like claws scraping at my lungs.

There’s a sharp scoff behind me.Wicker.“Bathe her, parade her around the campus, push her off the balcony–do whatever you want with her.” His voice is suddenly closer, hot breath washing across my ear. “We’re done,” he growls.

I hear them leave more than I see it, a door closing somewhere to my left. It reverberates as loudly as a gunshot, and when Stella’s gaze moves to mine, she says, “Come on, Verity. We’ll wash it away.” Her voice is soft and coaxing–completely unlike her–but that’s not what chips at the crack in my armor. It’s not even that she uses my name instead of calling me ‘Princess’.

It’s that she reaches out to take my hand.

Despite the disgusting gunk clinging to me, she folds our hands together and gently pulls me into the room. She’s uncharacteristically silent during the whole process of starting my shower and gathering my clothes. No dresses or silk gowns for tonight. No, she goes into the closet, drops to her knees, fiddles around behind a stack of boots, and pulls out a soft pair of leggings and a worn sweater. Clothing I’d brought with me.

That’s the first time I really smell myself.

Acrid, musty, the thick scent of men clinging to me like a toxic cloud. It sticks to the back of my throat, and suddenly, I feel it everywhere: arms, belly, shoulders, thighs, neck, chin. It’s the reason my vision is blurry, a mixture of semen and old tears gluing my eyelashes together. It’s on my nose. It’sinmy nose.

No part of me isn’t covered in them.

Stella jumps out of the way when I dart to the toilet, bending in half to heave.

My body seizes the contents from my gut in a hard, violent way. The muscles around my ribs spasm and clench as I toss it all up, sour and too hot.

A hand lands on my back, rubbing up and down my spine. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

Stella’s the one to flush, reaching over me with her clean-smelling hair, and it’s all I can do to not sink into her. I jerk away instead, ignoring how her face falls. I want to apologize, but I don’t. This revolting sickness all over me feels too infectious to risk spreading it.

The first thing I do when I climb into the shower–a Royal Cleansing, I think, feeling hysterical–is crank up the heat until it scalds me. The pain is as close to being purified as I can get. But no matter how hard I scrub my skin to stinging rawness, I’m filled with a certainty that makes the tears return in full force.

What happened tonight was more than a punishment.

It was the end.

An end to my family, who’s going to see the full scope of what I’ve become. An end to whatever fragile, curious spark had been growing between me and the three men I’d only just begun to catch a real glimpse of. An end to the girl who thought she had what it took to hold them, and worst of all an end to the girl who first drove over that bridge, wide-eyed and painfully pure, the world spread out so hopefully ahead of her.

As I wash those forty-three men from my body, I grieve for her the hardest.

“Rise and shine!”

I flinch as Stella yanks open the drapes, expecting the explosion of bright, cheery sunlight.

None comes.