Page 59 of Wolf Trial

“Oh, this old thing,” Paige replied coyly, unrolling the ball of fabric in her arms to show a slim, wine red dress. “This, madam, is for you.”

Elix’s face went pink. She shook her head. I can’t wear something with THAT neck line.

“Sure you can, look at Sadie. She’s showing off all the gifts that God gave her.”

I held up my hands. “Hey, this is the only dress I have. Take it up with Rogue.”

Paige arched an eyebrow.

“She’s just being kind,” I sighed. The eyebrow arched further. “You’re seeing things that aren’t there.”

“Mmhmm,” she said. Only that, nothing else. Just mmhmm. I gave her my middle finger, and proving she was one of the greatest people I’d ever met, she threw her head back and laughed.

“Trust me,” she said to Elix. “You’re gonna look killer in this. You’re hot, girl, and you deserve to have one night where you feel confident and sexy.” She shimmied when she said sexy, making her chest jiggle in the tight black dress she wore, nowhere near as long as the ones I’d be given or the one she brought for Elix. I had a feeling she had taken a pair of scissors to the original dress, and she was going to scandalise the people of Lunova. I couldn’t wait.

Elix sighed, and accepted the dress, hurrying into the bathroom to change into it. Two minutes later the door opened a crack, and her notebook thrust through.

I can’t wear this.

“Why not?” I asked. “Scared to give all the men of the Academy a heart attack when they see how incredible you look?”

In reply, Elix thumped her head against the other side of the door. And in reply to that, Paige began to chant, sending a snort up my nose so suddenly that my hands flew to my face and I almost tripped over the hem of my dress.

Get your tits out for your friends, Paige amended the familiar laddish chant, and once again I got that feeling that it was worth coming here, even with the death and the danger, to have friends like these.

CHAPTER 33

SADIE

Someone was watching me. I felt it in the prickle on the back of my neck, and all my instincts flared, lighting up like a fairground ride. Appropriate, since that was the only thing this ball was missing.

I threw a look over my shoulder as Elix and I walked past a vendor selling jars of orange jam and spiced pickle, the smells almost enough to entice me over. Paige ditched us minutes ago when a tall, handsome slayer offered to buy her a drink. Don’t worry, she said when Elix and I protested her leaving with the man, even in such a crowded space. I’ve got poison.

How the fuck she’d found that, I had no idea. I was kind of jealous.

The music coming from the lively band on the stage set a fun, upbeat atmosphere, but the feeling of being watched made me feel like I was in a horror film. That this fun, harmless festival was just a backdrop for something far more sinister.

The killer, I assumed, stalking us around the academy, from the booths to the tent where refreshments waited, to the stage where people already danced with reckless abandon, as if this wasn’t a school full of killers, as if these people were ordinary. And for once, they didn’t look like murderers and wolf hunters. I would never look at the scene and think most people had blood on their hands.

But I could never forget it. I could never forget that the historic halls I walked had been walked by generations of killers, that the room in which I slept sat upon a hallway full of active murderers who would butcher me the second they found out I was a wolf. Or maybe they would anyway, if I fell behind in our sessions.

Cheer up, Elix wrote on her part. She’d found a way to attach straps to the red dress, which had improved her mood, and she hadn’t stopped smiling since we stepped outside the main doors and into the fair that had sprung up around our murder school.

To aid me in cheering up, she purchased two long skewers wrapped in deep fried cake, basted in a cinnamon syrup. She handed me one with a smile as sweet as the delicacy.

I knocked my shoulder into hers, and said, “Thanks. I’m just in my head about what happened with Lawrence. I didn’t mean to beat him up like that, I just wanted to humiliate him.”

Elix knocked her shoulder back into mine. With her cake shoved in her mouth so she could use both hands, she wrote, don’t feel bad about it, that’s what these lessons are for, right?

“Yeah,” I agreed, but my heart wasn’t in the reply. It was hard to explain why losing control was a bad thing when I could never tell her why. I could never explain that it wasn’t beating Lawrence up that was the problem but risking exposure.

“I’m just not used to it,” I added when she waited for me to elaborate. “Fighting people, hurting people like that.” Flippantly I added, “Selling shoes isn’t much of a contact sport, you know? I’m not used to…”

Liking it, she wrote, syrup dripping down her chin. Yeah, me too. Sometimes during training, it starts to feel too good.

“Exactly,” I agreed, relieved that she understood even if she could never understand why I feared how much I enjoyed sparring.

There were eyes on the back of my neck again. I squinted into the forest behind the refreshment tent. Movement flickered in the dark, just beyond the boundary. The killer.