by Sofia Daniel
When the gong sounded, I followed the other frumosi to our next class, Staff Management. Raphael strolled at my side, trying to catch my eye. Micalla’s warning to stay away from the brothers flashed in the forefront of my mind. As much as I wanted to ignore him, his large body took up one side of my peripheral vision, and his warm, woody scent lingered in my nostrils.
“How are you settling in so far?” he asked.
Zarah’s comment rang in my ears. Even though I hadn’t done a thing to attract the boys’ attention, I wasn’t about to engage them in conversation and earn even more of Micalla’s wrath. I stared ahead, pretending I hadn’t heard him.
“My brother asked you a question, frumosi,” snarled a voice. It probably belonged to Nero, the aloof member of the Stryx Brothers.
Irritation flared across my skin. What did these vampires want from me?
Nero stepped in my path, his gorgeous lips twisting with annoyance. His blue-black dreads hung tantalizingly over his shoulders. Flashing his coal-black eyes, he snarled, “Why are you showing Raphael such disrespect when he’s only ever been cordial?”
My brows drew together. “I’m not.”
Dante, who had been strolling at the back of the procession between Micalla and Ponytail, rushed ahead, nostrils flaring.
Micalla raced after him and stood at his left, glaring at me through slitted eyes. The bruises remaining from when she had pinned me against the wall throbbed in anticipation of another throttling.
I backed into the wall with my teeth clenched, my heart pounding, and my lungs working harder than bellows. This was one of those impossible situations. If I spoke to Raphael, Micalla and the vampire girls would hate me, and if I shunned him, the Stryx Brothers would become my enemies. The only way out of this was leaving, but in my twenty-four hours of this hell-hole, I hadn’t found any viable escape routes.
“You never did kiss our feet,” said Dante.
“I-it’s not going to happen,” I whispered.
My gaze darted to Raphael, the only one who seemed less hostile, but the red-haired vampire shrugged as though to say I was on my own. Black, angry bile rose to the back of my throat. This was all his fault. If Raphael had left me alone, I would have already reached my class by now and not be surrounded by irritated, male vampires and a gang of blood-sucking mean girls waiting for me to trip up.
Dante stepped into my personal space, filling my nostrils with the rich, earthy scent of honey and citrus with a hint of rosemary. “You know what we do to girls like you here in the Sanguine Academy?”
My head swam. His warmth, his proximity, those sharp, aquamarine eyes confounded my senses. The pulse between my legs throbbed in time with my pounding heart, and my throat dried to the consistency of parchment. I tried to focus, but it was so hard with a creature this gorgeous a hair’s breadth from kissing me.
“Um…” He’d asked me a question. Something about girls who stepped out of line. My gaze caught Micalla’s, and I remembered what she had said while strangling me. “Make them disappear?”
Dante flinched as though he’d been struck. It was the slightest of movements, but enough for me to know that I’d upset him.
He wrapped a hand around my bicep and pulled me into his chest. His hot, angry breaths made his chest rise and fall, and the friction caused my nipples to tighten. The tips of his fangs descended past his lips, and a rush of adrenaline surged through my limbs, telling me to run.
Vampires surrounded me, their eyes dancing with amusement and malice and with the expectation of a bloodbath. Zarah strode through the crowd with Juno, the blue-haired vampire who kept sniffing her. We locked terrified gazes. Micalla shoved her to the side a second before Dante’s fingers tilted up my chin.
Adrenaline burst through my system, and my survival instinct forced my hand up and slapped him hard across the face.
The stench of burned flesh seared my sinuses, then Dante screamed.
Chapter 9
In the blink of an eye, Nero grabbed me by the back of the head and held me against the wall. Cold seeped down one side of my face from the castle’s stone walls, but it did nothing to calm the pulse thrashing between my ears. While Dante fell at my feet, someone secured my wrists with their tie. I drew in a sharp breath and tried to shove against the hand holding me down, but his grip was immovable.
A cacophony of outraged roars willed the air, and terror yanked at my heart. Sweat beaded on my forehead, and ragged, shallow breaths forced their way out of my lungs.
Nero’s body pressed against mine, the barrier between me and the fanged, furious faces closing in and accusing me of having black magic or a biological weapon.
“Kill her,” someone shouted.
“Snap her neck!”
“Assassin!” hissed another voice.
Cold terror washed through my insides. I’d done something horror to Dante. Burned his face with a mere slap. The onion woman had warned me about the sunstone, but I had forgotten that it would transfer the magic of the sun into my hands.
“Stay back!” Nero snarled at the others.
Raphael pulled Dante to his feet. One side of his face was livid with red burns, some of which had already blistered.
The vampires continued to demand that I punished or perish. A cry stuck in my throat. I had only meant to give Dante a slap.
Within my limited line of sights, Micalla stood in the middle of the commotion with her hands raised, making futile calming motions with her hands. Her smile was as wide as a crocodile’s, with cheeks flushed with glee. I clenched my teeth. If it hadn’t been for her giving me the side-eye at each of my encounters with the Stryx Brothers, I probably wouldn’t have reacted so violently to Dante.
Someone yanked on my hair and pulled out what felt like an entire chunk. Pain radiated across my scalp, and I shrieked.
“Let me go!” I cried.
“And have you torn apart by that baying mob?” Nero growled into my ear. “You’re coming with me.”
He threw me over his shoulder and whizzed through the hallways. My muscles seized, and my stomach lurched with every movement. By the time we reached Professor Proust’s office and he set me on my feet, my head spun, and nausea filled my insides and writhed up my gullet. I doubled over and moaned.
A woman shrieked and placed a waste-paper basket beneath me just in time for my stomach to expel its contents. While I knelt on the ground and threw up, Nero explained to the headmaster that I had burned the side of his brother’s face. Tears streamed from my eyes. If I’d remembered what the onion woman had said about sunstone, I wouldn’t have lashed out.
A male knocker handed me a handkerchief, helped me to my feet, and guided me to the unoccupied high-backed chair opposite Professor Proust’s desk. Candles flickering within crystal lanterns lit the room, casting the headmaster in semi-darkness. He smoothed down a wide, oxblood-colored silk tie with long, thin fingers and frowned. “How did you maim Mr. Striga with a slap?”
“I-I d-don’t know.” The lie slipped from my lips like butter.
He leaned across the desk and steepled his fingers. “Did you stumble across any magical items at the academy?”
I gulped and shifted in my seat. My wrists were still tied up, restricting my movement. “M-magic? No, sir, I haven’t.”
“Then, you must reveal where you obtained the power to burn a vampire’s skin.”
Behind me, Nero paced the room, breathing like a raging bull. My shoulder muscles tensed in anticipation of an attack. The professor leaned closer, his brows raised, lips pursed, and eyes filled with concern.
I couldn’t tell them about that onion woman. Something told me she wasn’t supposed to be lucid, and I doubted the vampires would want a person like her sneaking about their stronghold. Rubbing the base of my throat, I said, “Do you think it’s related to being a frumosi, sir?”
He sat back and rubbed his chin. “A small percentage of your kind develop skills as they get older, but you’re among the youngest. Have you come into
contact with any enchanted objects?”
“Like what, sir?”
The professor ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. “Are you sure you haven’t been to the sorcery stores?”
I shook my head and sent him a silent word of thanks. If they ever let me go, I would search for these stores and see whether they contained anything to help me escape.
Silence stretched out for an eternity as Professor Proust watched me with the intensity of a cat waiting for its prey to move. I stayed still, my attention focussed on the ever-pacing Nero, who could strike at any moment.
Eventually, the headmaster sighed and turned to one of the knockers standing at the wall. “Could you summon Commander Shanks?”
My stomach plummeted. This was one of the men who had abducted me from the nightclub. Would he dish out an interrogation or my punishment?
Nero stopped pacing and lowered himself into the seat next to mine. He sat with his back as stiff and straight as the chair’s and with his muscular arms folded across his broad chest. A scowl marred his handsome features, and his full lips pinched as though holding back a barrage of insults. Hot, angry breaths rushed out of his flared nostrils, and he kept his gaze on Professor Proust.
I sagged into my seat. It was a miracle that Nero had saved me from the mob of vengeful vampires, considering his level of fury.
Professor Proust’s brows lowered into deep V. He turned to me, about to speak, but another male knocker entered the door with a pile of scrolls. The headmaster held out his palm, indicating for him to wait.
“We do not attack our benefactors in Sanguine Academy. Consider this your first warning, Miss Stephens.”
My nostrils flared. The professor had given me a choice between becoming a knocker or a blood whore. How was he, or any of the other vampire, being benefactors? This was so insane. I would have pointed this out, but the threat of losing what free will I had left made me hold my tongue.
“What if they attack first?”
Professor Proust’s face twisted into a mask of distaste. “Attacking frumosi is against the rules of the academy.”
“People break rules all the time.” It was a struggle to keep my voice under control. What kind of educator was naive enough to believe in a comment like that, especially when I’d just hurt one of his precious vampires? “Can’t I get expelled now?”
His mouth slackened, and he blinked rapidly as though I’d said something ridiculous. “Without a noble house for protection, you’ll be completely at the mercy of the hunters.”
“I’ll take my chances.” The words came out as a rasp. I didn’t for one minute believe that hunters would attack the victims of a vampire.
“Your knowledge of Sanguine Academy will be dangerous in the wrong hands.”
“Then delete it from my mind.” Hysteria made my voice a high-pitched whine. “I never wanted to be here in the first place.”
The headmaster’s gaze flickered to the knocker standing motionless in the corner of the room and then back to me. His tongue darted out to lick his lips, and his long neck dipped into his oversized collar.
Realization hit me like a boulder. What if the two girls who had shared a room with Annette and Kat had become too rebellious to turn into consorts? What if they hadn’t been killed by vampires, as Micalla had suggested, but been transformed into knockers and shipped somewhere else? It would also explain the disappearance of Gates.
It would be like that man we had met in the dungeon on our first day.
I cleared my dry throat and asked, “W-will I become a knocker?”
His lips pursed as though the use of the word was derogatory, rather than the act of turning humans into mindless slaves. “Sanguinary servitude is a possible temporary solution until we find someone willing to take you on as a consort.”
Terror stiffened my spine. I’d rather be dead than lurching about the hallways for the likes of Micalla and Dante to abuse.
A moment later, Commander Shanks stepped into the room clad in full body armor. His silver eyes gleamed in the candlelight.
“I’m afraid we have another problem student who will require shadowing.” The headmaster steepled his fingers and repeated the account of events Nero had given him.
Commander Shanks hoisted me up by the collar of my blazer and dragged me out of the room with my bound hands still behind my back. I jogged through the hallways to keep up with his long strides until we reached a cupboard at the end.
He leaned down and stared into my eyes. “Are you going to tell me how you damaged Mr. Striga’s face?”
I fixed my gaze on the two lines between his brows and gulped. Wasn’t the real question about where I got the sunstone? The onion woman had told me all knockers carried it. If I told the Commander that I had taken it from a knocker, he’d interrogate me on how I knew about the magical stone. Then he might torture me into betraying a potential ally.
“It was only a slap,” I whispered. “I don’t know what went wrong.”
“You need time to think.” Commander Shanks opened the door, shoved me into a three by three-foot room, and slammed the door shut.
I leaned on the wall and huffed. Whatever the guard was doing wouldn’t work. I wasn’t remotely claustrophobic. Standing here was a welcome break from being surrounded by vampires. I folded my arms and leaned against the wall.
About an hour later, the gong for lunch sounded, and I rubbed my belly, wishing I hadn’t thrown up my breakfast. I slid down the wall and sat. More gongs sounded, and images of Dante’s burned face filled my mind. I hadn’t meant to attack him with the power of the sun. I’d fallen asleep holding the sunstone and forgot that it had transferred its properties to my palm.
Would he heal, or would scars disfigure the side of his beautiful face? The guy was an asshole to have grabbed me and to have gotten out his fangs, but he hadn’t deserved a painful maiming. I rested my head on my knees, having lost count of the gongs, and just as my eyelids grew heavy, the door opened, and Commander Shanks pulled me out.
“Bedtime.”
He marched me back through the empty hallways and up the winding, tower stairs, and shoved me into my dorm room. The beds on the left of the room were stripped down to bare mattresses. Zarah lay face-down on her bed, fully clothed and breathing hard. Her dishwater-blonde hair fanned across her pillow, obscuring her face.
“Are you alright?” I asked.
“They’ve moved out,” she slurred. “Dante’s face is a mess, and he’s declared you persona non grata.” She sucked in a breath. “Anyone associated with you will get the cold shoulder.”
I glanced at the empty beds and frowned. “Why are you still here?”
Her response was a long sigh.
“Zarah?” I stepped forward and placed my hand on her shoulder. “Are you okay?”
“Can we talk about this later?” she mumbled. “I’m tired.”
My posture sagged, and I trudged to my side of the room. What on earth had she been doing to become so tired? “Zar—”
“Just…” She heaved out a long breath. “Leave me alone.”
The words hit like a slap. I sat on the edge of my bed, only for its legs to collapse under my weight.
Zarah raised her head with a start. “What?”
“Nothing.” I pulled myself up and walked to the other side of the room. “Just a stupid prank.”
Some idiot had also tampered with the other beds. Annette’s mattress was soaked through, and Kat’s was lined with soil. I returned to my legless bed and sat on the mattress. “Very mature.”
The next morning, Commander Shanks let me out of my room and escorted me to breakfast. My gaze locked onto Dante’s table, where he sat with his head bowed. Micalla sat at his side, fussing over him, and his brothers looked on with undisguised hatred. I would have dwelled on why they tolerated her, when Dante raised his head. A livid, red handprint marred the side of his face.
Nausea swirled up my gullet, and guilt hit me so hard, all the air left my lungs in a
single breath. I had done this.
Commander Shanks shoved me forward. “Move along, or you won’t get to eat.”
Dante’s gaze caught mine, and the incandescent hatred burning in his pale, blue eyes told me that remorse would be the least of my problems.
The cold shoulder continued for days. I was invisible except when someone wanted to play a prank. Vampires hid my books, tore at my blazer, yanked out strands of my hair, and poured sangria into my blood-enhancing foods. They moved so quickly, I couldn’t see them, let alone stop their pranks.
Everyone ignored me. I ate breakfast alone, sat alone in classes, and walked the hallways alone. I might have endured that, but I couldn’t explore the castle for escape routes or look for these sorcery stores because Commander Shanks followed me everywhere like a phantom.
Not even Micalla and the Stryx brothers acknowledged my presence. Each time I looked in their direction, Commander Shanks gave me a hard prod and growled at me to stay away. I was the new Gates, soon to be transformed into a knocker for rebellion.
One morning before breakfast, I turned to Commander Shanks. “Excuse me, what happened to Paul Gately?”
He stared down at me with impassive eyes.
“Um… He’s the boy you took from the Richley Juvenile Detention Center. Did he escape? Is that why he’s not here?”
He didn’t reply.
“You killed him?”
Still no response.
“You turned him into a knocker… I mean a sanguinary servant?”
The vampire stopped in the hallway and stared down at me, brows raised. He gave me the kind of look that told me he’d done something terrible to Gates, but was impressed that I’d worked out that he was badass enough to do it. A half-smirk, half-I’ll-kill-you-for-telling twist of the lips.
Just as I was about to go mad with the isolation, Raphael squeezed my shoulder as he passed. It was the slightest of movements but filled my heart with warmth. At least someone understood that I was a real-life person trying to survive in an impossible situation. From the way everyone else shunned me, it was like they were trying to send the message that I was ungrateful for not falling in line after being abducted into this accursed castle.