Prescott took off at a jog down the hall. “Come on, Princess.”
“We can do this,” I said, tugging her along by the elbow. “I'll run with you. He didn't say we had to do it fast, only that we had to complete it.”
“I can't,” she said. “My feet, my legs, they still hurt so bad from last week. And I’m sotired.”
“You can,” I urged, throwing invisible daggers at Luther as he watched us jog away. He’d done this because he knew how tired we were after the night race.
Vanya moaned, then slowly took off after me.
“Pick up the pace, ladies,” Luther said, clapping his hands behind us.
“Why do they have to make us miserable?” Vanya complained.
“Come on,” I said. “Don’t worry about it. If you push through it, you’ll get faster.”
“You sound like you agree with him,” Vanya snapped at me. Then a pained moan escaped her lips. When I turned to look back at her, she was hobbling along.
Vanya only made it two laps before she collapsed to her knees on the path. She was heaving in ragged, uncontrolled breaths, and tears formed at the corners of her eyes. “I can’t…”
I knelt beside her and put my hand on her shoulder. “Vanya, it’s okay. Look at me.”
But she shook her head. “I'm sorry. I just can’t. I’ve never been forced to do so much physical activity in my life. How can they expect me to keep up?”
Scarlett trotted by, tossing a venomous look at Vanya and me. Luther, who had been watching us from the back patio with arms crossed over his chest, trotted down the steps from the terrace and approached Vanya.
“That’s it?” he asked.
Vanya’s eyes brimmed with rage. “How dare you do this to us.”
Luther shrugged. “Looks like you’ll all be sleeping on the roof tonight if the princess is giving up.”
Prescott slowed to a stop ahead and spun around.
“What is this?” Luther asked. “Are you all going to stop just because the princess gave up?”
“You’ve already set the punishment for usas a team,” said Prescott. A look of anger flashed across Luther’s face, but Prescott added, “If she stops, we all stop.”
Vanya sniffed, and a weak smile touched her lips. Prescott nodded down at her, then offered her a hand, pulling her up. Scarlett looked relieved that she didn’t have to keep going.
“Very well. Have fun sleeping on the roof.” Luther stormed away. “It's going to be cold.”
Before I was ready,it was time to head to the roof. Luther stood in the common room, arms crossed, watching as the first years hustled up to their rooms for last-minute extra blankets or additional items of clothing. The temperature had dropped faster than we’d expected, and it was going to be a long night.
“How do they even let them do this?” Scarlett hissed as she waited in the hall, blanket and pillow clutched in her arms.
I strolled past her toward my room. She shot me a narrow look and then turned back to complain to Mabel.
Vanya was hurling clothes into a pile when I walked in. “I can’t believe him,” she said, not glancing up at me. Her extra wool blanket was tossed on the edge of her bed. I noticed a fur stole and a full-length fur coat piled on the bed. She wouldn’t be cold tonight. I gathered up the wool blanket on my bed and the spare from the armoire, my pillow, and my warmest jacket, fighting the bleak memories that knocked in my mind of the only other time I’d had to sleep outside on a cold night.
“Is that all you’re taking?” Vanya asked. At my look of surprise, she picked out one of her fur stoles and draped it over the blanket in my arms. “At least take this.”
Finally, we were all convened in the hall, our pillows and blankets in our arms, our warmest clothes wrapped around our bodies. Vanya looked comical with her floor-length fur coat and fur stole wrapped around her neck. She scowled as Luther eyed her up and down.
We followed Luther through the halls, up several flights of stairs, to a place in the school I had not yet visited. We reached a narrow staircase where we had to walk single file up, up, up. We reached a little door and then marched out into the cold, bitter wind that whipped across the roof of the school.
There was only one space wide enough for us all to lie down, and as the boys spread out their blankets on the stones, several of the girls froze in horror as they realized how close we would all be. Scarlett scoffed and turned back to confront Luther, but he was already walking away, chuckling as he went.
“See you in the morning, hatchlings.”
