Page 20
E very footstep echoes with seething rage as I stalk through the Academy’s antiquated corridors, nostrils flaring with each indrawn breath. My body thrums with pent-up frustration, muscles coiled like a spring wound too fucking tight.
The maps posted at each hallway junction are damn near illegible—faded and blotchy with age, offering no sodding guidance through this labyrinthine maze. I grind molars and barrel forward regardless, scanning placard after placard along the walls in pursuit of the godforsaken Administration wing.
Around me, fellow students stream to and fro, scuttling between classes like ants crawling over one another. How I wish I could be amongst them—squabbling over credits and professors and term papers rather than this nightmare vortex swallowing me whole.
Pressure mounts with every passing moment, a ticking time bomb counting down to my inevitable recapture. Arius—or one of the others—will no doubt hunt me down soon enough, dragging me back to the dorm room.
Bile scorches the back of my throat at the mere thought, stomach roiling with nausea. Last night’s debauched memory still oozes like a septic wound—his heavy length spearing into me, rending flesh in a white-hot blaze while dozens of hollow eyes watched on. Judging. Witnessing my debasement as I writhed against his pistoning hips, silently begging for more. Not that I would ever admit to that, not to him.
The humiliation burns hotter than the four new brands blistered into my skin.
Rounding a corner, I find myself facing a crush of bodies converging on the entryway ahead. A chorus of groans tumbles from my lips as I squeeze against the flow, shoving students aside with reckless abandon. They fling me dirty looks in return, bitchy little co-eds and wankers all. As if I give a rat’s shrivelled bollocks about their vapid, empty-headed opinions in this instant.
Each step pitches me closer to my goal until, at last, one doorway bears the placard I seek—Headmistress Hansley. With a savage exhale, I lurch forward, slamming the hinged oak inward with enough force to rattle it on its frame.
The conversation within stutters to an abrupt halt, all eyes swivelling to land on me as I storm across the opulent office’s threshold. Hansley herself swivels at the disturbance, lips pursing in that perpetual state of disapproval. Her attention shifts from the lad sprawled across one loveseat, mouth still agape mid-sentence.
“This meeting’s over,” I growl, slashing him a cursory glance. “Get the fuck out.”
He baulks for a heartbeat, eyes darting back towards Hansley—who simply nods, a hint of resigned amusement tugging at the corners of her thin lips. Trepidation wars with instinctive obedience in the student’s furrowed brows before his jaw clenches in mute distaste. If I were to wager a guess, he’s not too thrilled about how their meeting is ending.
With fumbling movements, he gathers his paperwork and beats a hasty retreat, the door whispering shut behind him. His exit leaves a charged silence rippling in its wake, ozone heavy and crackling with the promise of violence.
“I see your gutter-rat upbringing still holds firm, despite our efforts to instil obedience,” Hansley remarks at length, eyeing me over steepled fingers. Her chilly stare rakes across my rigid form as she turns her focus back to a stack of paperwork on the desk. “How… quaint. Though I guess I shouldn’t expect such drastic results within the first week.”
My hands ball into white-knuckled fists, nails biting crescents into calloused palms. She expects me to quail under that casual dismissal, to slink back through that door with my proverbial tail between my legs. As if I’m some rabid mongrel she can simply kick back into the drainage ditch until I heel on command.
A savage snarl rips from my throat as I lurch forward, palms slamming down upon the lacquered desktop. Hansley’s stack goes scattering, toppling in slow motion until pages litter the floor in a confetti blur. My breath hisses hot and spittle-flecked between clenched molars, entire body taut as a bowstring as I brace my weight against crimson-stained wood.
“I’m done with your shite, you twisted old cunt,” I rasp, azure daggers piercing her unflinching mask. “I want no part of your sick fucking games masquerading behind this university’s shitty reputation. So let me the fuck out before—”
A derisive snort rattles from Hansley’s throat, the very picture of refined condescension as she reclines in that plush leather throne. One delicate hand waves a dismissive gesture, the other tapping an idle staccato upon her desk’s surface. “How deliciously spirited you are, Ms. West. We certainly chose an intriguing candidate in you. Mr. Whitlocke must be livid with how poorly you’ve settled in.”
Heat flares bright in my cheeks at the insinuation, though I grit my teeth to keep from bellowing profanities. All too easily, she’s riled me up again and I despise myself for allowing her so effortless a victory. I know better than to let the crass remarks of some poncey cunt get under my skin—my skin’s far too fucking thick for that shite.
“Listen here, you depraved old bat,” I growl, fists clenching atop the polished wood until my knuckles blanch. “I don’t give a rat’s arse about Whitlocke, or any of those bastards. I refuse to be a part of whatever backwards fucking perversion you whackjobs are perpetuating here.”
That razor-edged smirk widens into an insufferable grin of twisted amusement. Hansley barks out a scornful laugh, head tipping back slightly as if I’ve uttered some comedic gem worthy of raucous mirth.
“Oh you petulant child,” she chuckles throatily, swiping at an imaginary tear with one crooked finger. “You honestly believe you’ve any choice in the matter?”
Rising from her chair, Hansley rounds the barrier between us until I’m forced to straighten or else be pressed back into the unyielding desk edge. She perches one hip atop the glossy slab, mere inches separating our bodies, close enough that I’m enveloped in the sour tang of potpourri and aged parchment clinging to her robes.
“Tell me, Ms. West,” Hansley croons, eyeing me with thinly-veiled delight as if enjoying some personal joke at my expense. “Does Mr. Whitlocke’s cock feel as deliciously wicked raw as it does sheathed?” Her gnarled hand lifts towards my face and bile surges up my throat, threatening to expel the meagre meal my stomach managed this morning. Does coffee and a piece of toast count as a meal? Probably not.
Slapping her groping fingers away with a hiss, I recoil from her touch as if burned. “What the actual fuck are you on about, you twisted old crone?”
Hansley titters again, tongue darting out across paper-thin lips to moisten them before replying. “Oh just an old woman’s curiosity… Did he make sure the pretty little plaything felt the scrape of piercings with each stroke, or did he temper his ministrations out of some misguided sense of chivalry when he fucked you in that club last night?”
White hot fury surges within me again, blinding me to all but the overwhelming urge to wrap my hands around that scrawny throat and throttle the life from her rancid frame. My molars grind audibly as I clench my jaw until my temples throb.
“How fucking dare you! You depraved hag—you’re absolutely fucking repulsive!”
Her lips peel back in a leering smile, the crone’s pearly teeth exposed in what could almost pass for a feral leer of triumph. “Bold words from a common gutter-rat who spreads her legs on command,” Hansley purrs, clearly basking in the raw hatred blazing in my gaze.
Goading me further, one of those wicked talons lifts to trail a featherlight caress along the stark bruises circling my forearm in various stages of fading. The intimate invasion of my personal space leaves me trembling with impotent rage, nostrils flaring as my chest heaves. Somehow, I choke back the torrent of vitriol cresting on my tongue—though whether from fear or spite, I couldn’t rightly say.
“Such spirit,” the old bitch croons almost reverently, her vulture-like countenance mere inches from my own. Close enough her breath ghosts across my cheek in a rotten exhalation. “No wonder Arius delights in bending that rebellious streak to his will.”
Bile burns the back of my throat, my empty stomach roiling with visceral disgust at the woman’s perverted implications. Still, I refuse to recoil or flinch from her grotesque proximity—to do so would be the same as admitting outright defeat.
No, I hold that soulless stare steadily, teeth clenched together until my jaw aches. Only the slightest tremor in my frame betrays my discomfort. And even then, it could just as easily be misinterpreted as fury given the whirlwind of volatile emotions churning within.
“You listen here, you diseased fucking harpy,” I finally rasp, words etched in acid. “I don’t give a solitary fuck about your pathetic Ivy League boys club, or the centuries of inbred nepotism that prop it up. Whatever unresolved childhood traumas led you sorry fucks to form your depraved little cult is of zero consequence to me.”
Wrenching my arm free of her bony clutches, I take a single menacing step forward and Hansley falters. Her smugness slips for the briefest of instants, a flicker of unease disrupting her bravado. Good, let the withered dinosaur feel a modicum of the bone-deep trepidation I’ve lived with each day since awakening branded like fucking cattle.
“I may be ‘just’ a gutter-rat to you aristocratic old cunts,” I sneer, palms bracing on the desktop to loom over her wizened form. “But know this—I survived the darkest pits this world could throw at me when your pampered ilk scurried behind locked gates and hired security details. And if any of you twisted fuckers think you can simply pluck me from the streets, slap some bullshite ideology on me and play make-believe, then you’re sorely fucking mistaken.”
My chest heaves with exertion, shoulders rising and falling in ragged pants as if I’ve just sprinted here from one of my old bolt holes back home. I might as well have for all the good this confrontation seems to be doing for me. Because rather than cower, Hansley’s lips twist into another derisive sneer of her own.
“Such passion,” she rasps mockingly, clutching a hand to her sunken chest. “Positively swoon-worthy delusions. Sadly, all that pretty bravado will win you naught but a broken spirit and—if you’re fortunate—a modicum of obedience.”
One of her fingers raises to waggle before my face in a condescending gesture. “This university’s roots and doctrine run far deeper than your insignificant life and paltry existence. You’re living on borrowed time now that you’ve been entered into our care. Best start embracing the inevitability of your new role as chattel before someone far crueller than Arius decides to impart those lessons. Mr. Whitlocke is hardly the worst of our stock. Should consider yourself lucky you were placed with someone who still has a beating heart buried in his chest.”
I snort derisively at Hansley’s arrogant threat, shoulders squaring as liquid fire surges through my veins. “Best start trying it then,” I snarl between gritted teeth, fists clenched at my sides. “And don’t act so fucking shocked when you find the poor fucker choking on his own blood for daring to lay a hand on me.”
A sinister chuckle rasps from the cunt’s withered throat. Hansley’s lips peel back in a mocking facsimile of a grin, her papery skin stretching taut across prominent cheekbones. “Oh you fiery little minx,” she croons almost reverently, giving a dismissive shake of her head, the tidy bun of hair nestled on top swaying gently. “Kill as many of our brothers as you wish—or try to, at least. The chances of you actually succeeding are… well extremely slim, and I believe that’s being more than generous with the analytics.”
Hazel eyes rove over my tensed form in a leisurely perusal that sets my hackles rising. I stiffen instinctively under the weight of her assessing stare, muscles coiled to either attack or flee at the first provocation.
“Your futile efforts at disobedience will only serve to make this transition all the more difficult on yourself.” Hansley continues casually as she gives a short, amused scoff. “While the rest of us revel in the sheer amusement of watching you flounder with all that impotent bravado.”
She straightens to her full stature, the slight elevation of her heels granting a few meagre inches as she looms over me with an imperious air. Those soulless pits bore into my defiant glare as she leans insolently close, her sour breath ghosting across my cheek when she tenderly brushes the pad of one deceptively soft thumb along my cheekbone. I flinch violently at the grotesque caress, nostrils flaring in visceral revulsion that has my empty gut roiling.
A soft, throaty chuckle rumbles from her chest as Hansley turns away, swaying back to the plush depths of that wingback chair and settling her haunches amid the faded crimson upholstery. “You seem to be labouring under some delusions about just how much agency you possess here, Ms. West,” she muses with an insincere smile twisting those puckered lips. “Let me… enlighten you.”
Steepling her refined fingers beneath that thin nose, Hansley quirks one wispy brow in a silent challenge for me to rebut whatever vile revelation is pending. I bristle at the implied goading, jaw clenched until the tendons cord in stark relief beneath my skin. But the whiplash of her next words still manages to blindside me in its sheer audacity.
“This institution owns you. Mind, body and wretched soul—all contractually bound to do our bidding the moment your reprobate father sold you into our care before you’d even left your mother’s womb. It was so easy to get him to sign when they realised they were having another girl.”
My brows crease in an instinctive frown, brain scrambling to process the outlandish claim amidst my simmering fury. That can’t be right… both my parents died almost two decades ago, lost to the ever-present spectre of gang violence and drugs ravaging our neighbourhood. I was just a year old when their bullet-riddled bodies hit the pavement, bounced from one foster home to the next until I finally aged out.
Well… not entirely alone. There was Wren—my sister, adopted by a wealthy couple up in Albany while I languished in the system’s clutches. But I haven’t spoken to the chit in years, not since… Well, sometimes blood isn’t as thick as you think it is.
A spike of unadulterated rage ripples through me at the audacity of Hansley’s claims. “You can’t fucking own people,” I snarl through gritted teeth, the tendons in my neck straining with the sheer force of my seething vitriol. “Regardless of whatever bullshite papers you claim were signed—a contract doesn’t give you dominion over someone’s life!”
The matriarch heaves a long-suffering sigh, rolling her eyes heavenward as if beset by a petulant child’s tantrum. “Ahhh but that’s where you’re mistaken, my dear girl,” she intones in a saccharine drawl, steepling her bony digits before that sunken countenance. “While slavery is indeed frowned upon by modern society’s… niceties, we here at Ashtiroch have always held ourselves above such prudish conventions.”
An imperious eyebrow arches skyward as that serpentine smirk curves her lips. “Our roots—our very doctrine and existence—stretch back centuries before your ilk even crawled out of the primordial muck to befoul this earth,” Hansley sneers with no small amount of disdain. “What some might consider a mere ‘piece of paper’ holds far more gravity and weight here than your insignificant life ever could.”
She seems to grow bored of my silent fuming, waving one wizened hand in a desultory gesture of dismissal. “But I’ve wasted enough breath on illuminating the harsh realities of your existence,” the old biddy tsks, reclining further into the cradle of that chair with an air of finality. “You’ll attend your classes with all due obedience, mind on the curriculum designed to elevate you into something resembling a proper woman befitting of this institution. And when the next Trial comes…”
One hooded eye slits open as Hansley pins me with an assessing stare, her voice oozing with thinly-veiled menace. “I expect you to conduct yourself with the utmost decorum due our hallowed traditions. Failure to comply will be… hmm, well…”
She lets the unspoken threat dangle ominously between us, the weight of its implication sinking into the rift widening within my psyche. This depraved place doesn’t follow the same rules as the outside world, clearly operating under its own arcane set of twisted laws and horrors. And whatever fresh hell this ‘Trial’ represents, I’ve no doubt my continued defiance would only serve to worsen the torments in store.
Table of Contents
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- Page 20 (Reading here)
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