Page 23 of Storm of Shadows

Despite the scowl, she’s really damn beautiful: olive skin, big green eyes and thick glossy brown hair, braided down her back.

“You slut!” she says, and before I can respond, she spits at me, a large glob of her saliva landing right in my face. “You spread your legs already. When was it? In the forest on the first night? Is that why they chose you? Did you suck their cocks and let them fuck you in the ass?”

“What the hell?” I say, wiping spit from my eyes. How can all those vile words come flying out of such a pretty mouth? She looks like an actual angel.

“You’re not going to have them! Do you hear me, Slate scum? You fucked them one time and one time only. Eat dirt, you slut!”

Before I can respond, before I know what the hell is going on, she drives her hands right towards my shoulders. Hard and violently. So hard, so violently, I lose my balance.

I scream. The netting slips from my grasp.

I fall, hurtling towards the distant ground.

Chapter Eleven

Briony

I screw my eyes shut.

I’m going to split my skull or snap my spine. Either way, I’m going to die. I only made it to the second day.

Except rather than hit the floor, my body stops flying through the air, and instead, it’s yanked violently. And then I’m hanging upside down by the ankle, my left foot caught in the netting.

I hang there, swaying slightly, other students clinging to the net and staring right at me.

Realizing hanging around like this so that some other fucker can come at me and try to kill me, I grit my teeth and pull myself upward, free my foot and start climbing again. Only it’s even harder than it was before, because now, as well as the pain in my ribs, my ankle is throbbing too. When I try to bear weight on it, I have to chomp down hard on my lip to stop myself from crying out.

I climb the rest of the net on my knees, the measly tracksuit doing nothing to protect my skin from the harsh rope, my legs and hands sore with burns by the time I reach the top.

The brunette is long gone – obviously not bothered about watching me die.

I straddle the top of the net and catch my breath. From up here, I can see the end of the course, people crossing the line and collapsing in heaps, the gruesome twosome making a note of their times.

If I peer back in the other direction, the one I’ve come from, I realize I’m right at the back of the group now. Only a few stragglers behind me.

I swing my leg over the top of the net and start my slow descent. There isn’t any point in hurrying and anyway it hurts too much. Then I limp the final four hundred meters, towards the finish line.

The two twins watch me come, making no effort to help me and grunting my time at me as I finally stumble over the line.

“If you’re injured, get yourself to the infirmary,” one of them yells at me as I collapse down on the cold ground. “You need to be ready for this afternoon’s assignment.”

I don’t move. I can’t, not yet anyway.

“Did you hear me?!”

“Yes, I heard you,” I mumble. “I’m going.”

“Sir!” he yells. “Yes, I heard you,Sir!”

I roll my head to the side and stare over at him. He’s glowering at me, his two beady eyes bulging. “Yes, I heard you, Sir,” I mumble, as I roll up onto my feet and hobble away.

I don’t have that map with me so I have no idea where the infirmary would be. Instead, I limp in the direction of my room. I can bandage my ankle myself with one of my shirts and run my injured fingers under the tap; I don’t need any help.

I’m halfway across a courtyard with an ancient oak towering in its center, its heavy boughs sprawling over the cobbled stones, when someone calls out my name.

“Briony!” Fly comes jogging towards me. He’s already changed out of the tracksuit and into the actual academy uniform.

“What happened to you, Cupcake? I waited ages. They sent me away in the end. I was just coming to find you.”