9
Arianette
The late-autumn sunslants through the high windows of the humanities building, painting long gold rectangles across the floor. Outside, the maple trees have bled out into violent crimson. After being locked in the cage for days, I notice everything: how the hallways smell like wet wool coats, and the faint metallic tang of old radiators. Whispers follow me down the hallway the way they always have, but the flavor has changed. Before, they were pitying, horrified, morbidly curious: the girl who was taken, the body by the river that wasn’t a body after all. Now it’s more of a fascination. I’m no longer that girl. Now, I’m the Baroness.
The King’s wife.
The halls are crowded as everyone files out of the lecture rooms. Damon walks next to me, fingers curled around my waist. When I spot the sign above the door, I look up at him and ask, “Can I stop and… you know…”
He studies me with those dark eyes, piercings threaded through his eyebrows and lip. He knows what I’m asking for and why. “Yeah, don’t fuck around. We’re meeting Hunter at the quad in ten.”
“I won’t be long.”
I duck into the women’s restroom on the second floor. The door sighs shut behind me, muffling the hallway noise to a dull heartbeat. I lock myself in the handicapped stall, set my bag on the baby-changing station, and open the small, black leather kit Damon pressed into my hand when we got in Hunter’s truck.
“Clean it twice a day until it heals,” he’d said, voice low, thumb brushing the fresh piercing between my legs like it was the most natural thing in the world. “We wouldn’t want an infection.”
The antiseptic stings. I hiss through my teeth, lean my forehead against the cool metal wall, and count to ten. The new jewelry tugs every time I move. A constant reminder. The sound of the restroom door opening and closing tips me off that I’m not alone. I finish up quickly, and when I come out, there’s a girl at the sink.
Not just a girl.
Story.
She’s perched at the middle mirror, one hip against the counter, long dark hair spilling over the back of her sweater. She’s unfairly beautiful with huge velvet-brown eyes that meet mine as I approach the sink.
“Fuck, I look like a nightmare,” she mutters, uncapping concealer. She dots it beneath her eyes. “I didn’t get any sleep last night.” She catches my gaze in the mirror and smirks. “But you just got named Baronessandmarried the King. I imagine you know what it’s like.”
Heat floods my face. My mind flashes to the ritual from the night before and the piercing throbs in answer. I look away after noticing the leather cuff wrapped around Story’s wrist. There’s no mistaking who the gold skull in the center with the Greek letters LDZ etched across the top belongs to.
Whoshebelongs to.
Absently, my fingers drift to the black leather collar locked around my throat, which tightens with every swallow. The Barons’pentagram is affixed dead center. “I know it feels weird,” she says quietly, watching me in the mirror, “having their mark on you. But there’s value behind it.”
I drop my hand like I’ve been burned and stare hard at my own reflection.
“Oh.” Story gives a low, amused chuckle. “No talking, right?” She rolls her eyes, pats beneath them with the little sponge. “They’re all so fucking predictable.”
I stay silent. The faucet drips in the far sink:plink… plink… plink.
She caps the concealer, drops it back into her bag with a soft clack. “Look, don’t worry. I won’t tell them that we saw one another.”
She smooths the makeup with her fingertips. Already she looks brighter, like someone turned the dimmer switch up a notch.
“It doesn’t feel weird,” I say. My voice sounds rusty in the tiled room. “The collar.”
The piercing… well, that’s another thing altogether.
Story shrugs. “Well, I thought it was weird at first. But I got used to it, and now I don’t mind.”
She pulls out lip gloss next and paints her mouth cherry red in one smooth stroke.
“What do you mean by ‘value?’” I ask.
“That strip of leather is all you need in Forsyth.” She presses her lips together, blots once on a tissue. “Protection. Royal reputation.” A humorless smile. “Power.”
The Hunt. The cage. The Shadows painting me with their seed while Hunter and Damon thrust into me. I swallow and the collar shifts.
“I’m not sure I feel any of those things.”
