Page 10 of Serpentine Valentine

A whimper got caught in my throat and turned into a harsh growl. “I would never.”

I couldn’t believe she would think that of me. The knife Morgan had stuck in my back twisted under her hand. How could the two mentors I’dloved so much, so purely, betray me like this?

The agony of it all crashed into me. Black spots danced in front of my eyes, but I held on to the anger tightly, my only buoy adrift in this sea of unending agony.

“He did this,” I told President Pallas––Mina, the woman who had taken me under her wing, given me a scholarship and guidance––because I couldn’t address Morgan, not directly, not when it reminded me of his eyes as he pressed into me. “He did this to me. I didn’t ask for it. I’m not even…” I squeezed my eyes shut. “I’m not interested in men. He knew that, a-and he still did this. You have to believe me. Youknowme. You know I wouldn’t fabricate such a horrible story. You know I couldn’t…” I gestured to my body, war-torn and bloodied. “Do this to myself.”

Mina stared at me, her eyes sharp as scalpels cutting through my body like a mortician through a corpse’s chest. “I don’t know that. I don’t know that at all. Girls do foolish things for love all the time.”

For love.

My knees gave out, but Diana Strong held me tight by my elbows. I sucked a breath past my teeth even though it scorched my scream-torn throat and hurt my ribs.

I’d loved Professor Morgan in my own way. It was true.

Like a father. Like a mentor. Like someone who would always give me a hand if I needed help to stand.

Only I was practically on my knees and neither Morgan nor Mina were helping me up. They seemed content, no, determined to see me crushed beneath the heel of what he’d done to me.

“Please,” I whispered to Mina, and they felt like last words spoken to a priest. If she didn’t believe me, I honestly thought at that moment I might really die. “Please, he did this to me. I need your help.”

“Pathetic,” Morgan scoffed, and I noticed he was sitting in his fucking chair again, dabbing the blood on his cheek with ahandkerchief. “Really, Miss Gorgon, this is beneath even you.”

“I will not take you at your word,” the President of Acheron told me, looming over me like a dark cloud about to deliver a tempest. “There will be an investigation, and until you are cleared of suspicion, you are on academic suspension. You will leave campus immediately, and you will not return unless or until you are reinstated.”

“What?” I gasped, but it was the final blow.

The loss of my bodily autonomy, the loss of my idols in Morgan and Mina, the loss of my pride and sense of security.

And now, the loss of my life dream.

The loss of Acheron U.

Before anyone could say another word, my eyes rolled up in my head, and I passed out.

“Vengeance is mine, and I shall repay.”

—Tolstoy

“Her hair was long,

Her foot was light,

And her eyes were wild.”

––John Keats,La Belle Dame Sans Merci

Luna

It wasthe third week of term, and everyone was still whispering about her.

Lex Gorgon.

The girl who was raped and tried to blame it on Professor Morgan last year.

Oh, most people didn’t know the second part, but I did because my mother was the President of Acheron U.

I’d never forget her face when she came home that night, the almost blind fury contorting her features. She’d been in a rage, yelling into the phone as she stormed into the house straight to her office where she shut the door with abang.