Page 23 of Ruthless Knot

The letter. S.W.

Maybe a response is waiting for me.

Please let there be a response.

Please don't let him be dead.

Please—

I shove the thought away, forcing my smile wider, my humming louder.

Three more blocks.

Two more.

One.

The post office doors are just ahead, promising fluorescent lights and bored civil servants and the possibility—however slim—that maybe I'm not entirely alone in this nightmare.

I whistle and hum, singing on my way to the post office despite that mini "distraction."

CHAPTER 3

When The World Takes And Takes

~SERAPHINE~

Something is wrong.

I feel it the moment I push through the post office doors—that prickle at the back of my neck, that twist in my gut that's saved my life more times than I can count. The air inside is different today.

Heavier. Charged with something that makes my skin itch and my fingers twitch toward the blades at my back.

The fluorescent lights buzz overhead, casting that sickly yellow pallor over everything that makes even healthy people look like corpses. The walls are the same institutional grey they've always been, decorated with faded posters about postal regulations and package weight limits that no one reads. The floor is scuffed linoleum that squeaks under my ballet shoes with each step.

Everything looks the same.

But it doesn't feel the same.

I skip anyway.

Because fuck the heaviness.

Fuck the wrongness.

Fuck the way my heart is already starting to race with something that feels suspiciously like dread.

Skip, skip, chassé, skip.

My pink hair bounces with each movement, catching the fluorescent light and probably making me look like some deranged fairy who wandered into a government building. The dried blood on my shoes—from this morning's "distraction"—leaves faint rusty smudges on the linoleum that no one will notice until later.

Evidence, some distant part of my brain whispers.You're leaving evidence.

I ignore it.

Evidence only matters if someone's looking for it, and in Ruthless Academy, bodies are so common that the cleaning staff probably have a dedicated budget line for bloodstain removal.

The usual alley stretches before me—that narrow corridor between the service counter and the wall of P.O. boxes that always makes me feel like I'm walking through a throat. Like the building itself might swallow me whole if I'm not careful.