Hearts of Darkness: A Valentine's Day Bully Romance Collection

by Joanna Mazurkiewicz

  She expected Jay to leave, but he shut the door and came to perch on her bed beside her, something about him ... not calmer exactly, but halfway there. “Sorry for scaring you,” he said, a furrow between his brows. “I wouldn’t have let Reyner ... wouldn’t have helped him if...” He blew out a breath, dragging a hand over his shaved head. “Look, I don’t know what happened to you these ten years. But it seems like we did some of the same things that ... that are fucking you up.” He tapped his temple. “In here. And we didn’t even ask if you had any triggers or boundaries or hard limits.” His jaw clenched. “It’s the siren way—to use and abuse. But we shouldn’t be abusing each other.”

  Celeste started to feel a bit, a tiny bit, safer around him—until he said the last bit. “So ... just abusing humans then?” she whispered.

  “Exactly,” he said, making an attempt to smile. It looked more like a grimace, but she got the sense he was trying to reassure her.

  Celeste filled with cold again. If they found out she was human ... this was just a taster. This night, this nightmare, had been when they thought she was a siren.

  And that caused several reactions in her. First, blind, debilitating terror gripped her airways and pressed them shut. Second, rage poured through her at them thinking humans were so usable, so expendable, and on its heels a firmer conviction to bring them down. They were despicable, twisted monsters. They needed to be stopped. And if she was being honest, if she was brave enough to accept reality, it didn’t seem like Celeste would be given a chance to escape any time soon. Or ever.

  But if she stayed, she could destroy them from within, shatter them like they’d shattered so many lives...

  That was the fourth reaction. An idea more than anything. She’d come here hoping to find evidence of the humans they’d broken, maybe even to find victims in the palace, but now a different idea occurred to her.

  Konstantin had staked a claim on her. But Reyner had fully intended to use her, as he’d so pleasantly put it. If she could turn Konstantin against Reyner, against the people in his immediate friends and family ... maybe she could ruin them that way. She could bring down the court in a way that would turn them on each other; they’d destroy themselves.

  And she knew just how to do it.

  Tomorrow morning, when Konstantin arrived for his promised sexual favour, she’d play up her terror. She’d tell him that Reyner assaulted her, that he used what—by their agreement earlier tonight—belonged to Konstantin. And she’d sit back and watch them destroy each other.

  So she gave Jay a brave smile and said, “I think I’ll be alright in the morning.”

  The End

  Enjoyed this story? Be sure to leave a review! Find more books by Leigh Kelsey at her website: http://www.leighkelsey.co.uk/

  More books in the Palace of Vile Hearts series are coming! You can join my reader group on Facebook to get news about forthcoming books before anyone else: https://www.facebook.com/groups/178009826319184/

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  About the Author

  Leigh Kelsey is the author of sweet and steamy books for anyone with a soft spot for steely women and the tortured men who love them. No matter what stories she’s writing – vampires or shifters or rebels – they all share a common thread of romance, heart, and action. She is the author of the Lili Kazana series, the Vampire Game series, the Moonlight Inn series, and the Second Breath Academy series. Leigh also writes new adult and young adult books under the name Saruuh Kelsey.

  Find these other books by Leigh Kelsey!

  Once Upon A Fairy Tale Night (Fairy Tale Box Set)

  Hearts of Darkness (Bully Romance Box Set)

  Bound To Change (Shifter Romance Box Set)

  Lili Kazana series

  (complete series)

  Complete Series Box Set (w/ exclusive epilogue!)

  Cast From Heaven

  Crowned By Hell

  Called By Gods

  Second Breath Academy series

  How To Raise The Dead

  How To Kill A Ghost (Coming soon!)

  Vampire Game series

  (complete series)

  Complete Series Box Set

  Vampire Game

  Vampire Touch

  Vampire Legacy

  Moonlight Inn series

  Books 1-3 Box Set

  Mated

  Empowered

  Unlimited

  Ascended

  STONEWALL NOBLES

  Klarissa King

  About STONEWALL NOBLES

  THE GREAT WAR TURNED the earth into a desolate, radioactive world where all that survives outside the last remaining city, Stonewall, are the mangled creatures that feast on human flesh. Within the walls of Stonewall, a divide fractures the people into two groups—the ancestors of those who won and lost the Great War: the nobles and the blancs.

  Octavia is a Blanc. A descendant of the losing side of the war, and she pays the price for her life within the strong still-standing walls that keep her away from the monsters lurking outside. Not everyone accepts the Blancs in Stonewall. Especially not Blaze and Drake, two nobles who make it known just how unwanted Octavia is in Stonewall, and at their nobles-only academy. But when the two nobles discover what bought Octavia a place at their elite academy, they use her secret to their own advantage—they use it to get her.

  The Great War might be over, but the Last War has only just begun.

  1

  We fought on the wrong side of the war.

  When the world was teeming with people packed into high-rises and slums, we battled over the world’s last grains—and we lost.

  The few of us who survived now live under the iron-grip rule of the victors, the nobles. They call us cattle or Blancs, not because we are pale, but because we mostly work in the stone quarry, and return to the walled-off city covered head-to-toe in chalky dust.

  I don’t work at the quarry.

  I go to school, with them, the nobles. And it does me no favors in a place where my kind are despised, culled, and starved.

  I attend Stonewall Institute, where I am most unwelcome and surrounded by the stone walls built on the backs of serfs.

  2

  It’s morning when mum gets back from the quarry. She’s been gone days.

  Sometimes, the workers stay overnight to save the train-ride out of the walled city. Quarantine is what takes the most time.

  Our city was all that’s left of the world. The war annihilated everything else, nuclear weapons seared the land across the planet, and we—the losers of the war—face our debt every day. Only we can leave the walled city, and that’s no treat. Radiation hits those who work at the quarry harder. But we need the stone from the quarry—we need it to fortify our walls, all that stands between us and the radiation-mutilated beasts on the other side of the walls.

  Mum’s a conductor, and takes the trip away and back every six days. Today, she looks downright haggard.

  I watch as she slips into the seat opposite me. Our round dining table can barely fit us both. Our knees touch, and she looks at me as though she’s only just realized I’m here.

  “Shouldn’t you be at school, Tavs?” she asks, pale white dust sprinkled over her already greying hair.

  She calls me Tavs—everyone does—but my name is Octavia. Let’s just say I’m grateful for the nickname.

  “It’s Sunday.” I shovel a spoon of soggy oats into my mouth. We ran out of milk, so I cooked them in the water from the well. Before my time, there was plumbing. I learned about it at Stonewall Institute. Pipes that ran underground and through walls, taking away messy water, replacing it with fresh. Rumors go that some of the nobles still have access to those pipes. I think it’s a load of bollocks, really. But then, there’s a lot the nobles have that we don’t have.

  I get my
water from the well in the heart of the Trim—where my kind live, the losers, the Blancs. Our homes are the ruins of a town demolished in the war long before I was born.

  “Sunday,” mum mutters to herself, as if she doesn’t quite understand the word.

  I study her, hard. Then I notice it—the streak of blood that cuts along her arm. I reach out for her, my spoon clatters to the table.

  “Mum, what happened? Look at me.”

  She does. Her bright hazel eyes, mirrors of my own, are bloodshot and weary.

  “It was ...” She swallows, hard, then touches her eyes down to our hands.

  I give her fingers a squeeze, encouraging her. “An execution,” she says, and my heart sinks to my bum. I’ve seen a few of those just this past year. They’re never quick or efficient. The Force drags them out for as long as they can just to show us that they can.

  “It’s all right, mum.” How we lie to each other. It’s never all right.

  They kill us when they want to, when they need to flex their muscles and show us who’s in charge. Like we can ever forget with the daily reminders haunting us.

  Mum reaches out her free hand for my hair. It’s short, self-chopped to my shoulders, and whiter than the chalk she wears. It makes for creative insults hurled my way, often, and mostly from the mouths of two nobles worse than any other I know.

  Drake and Blaze.

  Nobles I’d pay any fee to see executed the way we are.

  “Stay inside today,” mum tells me, fingers caught in my hair. “I’m going to lie down.”

  I nod as she slips back out of the seat, then vanishes through the door to our shared bedroom. I had one once, my own bedroom, but then the Force bombed the outer parts of the Trim and we were forced in closer to the city. They did that to make way for a second wall—the one we’re building now. It’ll make us impenetrable to the beasts outside. The radiated creatures so mangled and distorted over time that no one can tell what they once used to be. Wolves, cats, humans, bears—they could have been anything.

  I sigh and lift up my oat-crusted spoon. It’s dry now, like eating cardboard. Still, we’re in no position to waste food, so I scoff down the rest, then pick the bowl clean. Its metal surface makes me shudder. One of those things, you know?

  After I rinse the bowl and stack it on the rack quietly, I pick through my school bag. It’s worn at the bottom corner, where some of my filthy and torn books poke out. I grab my artbook and spread out my supplies on the table.

  Art is home. Art is life away from this one.

  Art is my only escape from what tomorrow brings.

  Ever heard that story that, when you’re young and a boy pulls your hair, it’s because he likes you? Well, it went a similar way for me.

  When I was younger and two boys brought me wild flowers picked from the gardens in the heart of the city, and I threw out the flowers and hated them both, then they pulled my hair.

  They haven’t stopped since.

  3

  Before the bell can strike the air, I’m rushing through the door to the institute. It slams shut in my face.

  I skid to a stop before I can collide with the heavy door and shatter my nose. I lean my head on the cool wood. With a huff, I pound my fist on the door.

  No one answers. I didn’t think they would. Most of the times I’m late, either one of my tormenters will lock me out for ... fun, I suppose?

  Today isn’t any different. Rarely is.

  I’ll just have to make peace with the brand-new late score that will be streaked across my enrolment papers. Someone like me can’t afford any red marks on their papers, but someone like me shouldn’t be at the institute to begin with.

  I sigh and loop my arms through my back. It sits snug at my back as I round the decaying face of the building.

  It was once an old bakery with apartments stacked on top of it. Now, it was Stonewall Institute, where all the nobles went to train and learn ... and then there is me, the Blanc pushing up an old, jammed window down the side of the building.

  It gives way under my forced weight and opens halfway. It refuses to budge another inch.

  My huffs come out with muttered curses as I heave myself up and slide through the window. I land with a thump inside.

  As I brush hair out of my face, I see the room I’m in clearly. Too clearly.

  I landed myself right in the middle of farming class.

  All eyes are on me, some curious, others burning with unveiled disdain. I mutter a sorry to the teacher, then rush out of the first-year class into the halls.

  I am already late, so running through the halls doesn’t do me any good. Still, I can’t help myself, and I take a corner at full speed—

  And I smack right into a body built from stone.

  I see a blur of a muscular body sheathed in a white shirt and tight-fitted black jumper.

  “Sorry,” I mutter, and take a step away. Through the fabric of the jumper facing me, I can see the outline of muscles.

  Looking up, my apologetic expression hardens.

  Drake, the noble monster, stands there. He stares down at me with such cruelty in his steely eyes that an involuntary shiver runs down my spine.

  One hand is tucked in his pocket, the other holds a shiny new textbook by his side. His porcelain-white face, once so beautiful to me, twists into a hateful sneer.

  I stiffen, feeling the nips of danger at my heels.

  “I’ll have to burn this now,” Drake spits, glancing down at his jumper. “Do you know how much this material costs, dreg?”

  Dreg.

  A shiver of rage raced through me, curling my fingers into fists. A wretched word sometimes used to describe someone like me—a Blanc, a loser of the war, a dreg of our rebuilding society.

  I hook my thumbs through the straps of my bag. “More than a bit of respect will cost you.”

  I shouldn’t. I don’t know why I bite back, it only makes everything worse for me. Now, I’ll find tinned dog food in my bag later, or walk home with chewing gum clinging to my hair, or—the worst—he’ll sweettalk some girl at school into throwing paint over me. He’s done all of that before. And I still haven’t learned to just keep my fucking mouth shut.

  “Respect,” he repeats. “Something you should learn.”

  His tone has deepened into something ... dangerous.

  I don’t show it in my fierce hazel eyes or my calm expression, but as Drake stares down at me with mercurial eyes ... I felt uneasy. More than usual.

  I’m tempted to run the opposite way, as though he’ll strike me down with his bare hands. Those aren’t the rules. I don’t run, he doesn’t strike. It’s games—at least, I hope it is.

  The door to the right swings open.

  My other curse, Blaze, steps out of the boys’ lavatory.

  “Tavs,” Blaze acknowledges me with mild amusement. As he fiddles with his smooth black hair, combing it to the side of his olive-skin, he adds, “Found your way in, I see. How unfortunate.”

  So he was the one to lock the doors on me.

  Prat.

  “C’mon Blaze,” Drake growls, staring down at me still, his eyes glacier compared to Blaze’s eyes that can only be described as deep pits of black. “We’re late for Art Theory.”

  He smirks, as if to strengthen a hidden meaning in his words, before he steps to the side, closer to Blaze. Distantly, I wonder what game he’s got tucked up his sleeve for me later.

  I eye him warily as I make to pass him, but I freeze—

  His hand reaches out to my face.

  Every nerve in my body screams for me to run, run fast and far before he can tear off my skin with his bare nails.

  Still wearing his icy smirk, he uses his thumb to brush over my forehead. Then he shows me the smudge of dirt he’d wiped from my brow. Must’ve picked that up climbing through the window.

  “You’re dirty enough as it is,” he mocks darkly.

  And he’s stalking off, down the main corridor. Blaze makes sure to slam his shoulder in
to mine as he passes.

  I lean against the wall to give them a head start.

  What’s another red streak on my records?

  Nothing really, especially not when I need to avoid Prats 1 and 2 most of my school time.

  4

  In the study hall, I sit at the long table with Milo.

  He’s not my friend, but he’s the only noble at the Institute who gives me any mind. Sometimes, we talk. So there’s that.

  Milo rests his chin on his hand and stares down at his stack of parchment. He’s supposed to be working on his City Farming essay. Instead, he draws pictures. Only a noble can afford to slack off. I’m so close to getting the boot here at Stonewall.

  Doesn’t help that I’m not paying as much attention as I used to.

  Drake sits with Blaze a few tables away, and both of them keep looking up at me. I can feel it whenever they look at me, and my eyes snap up every time. They don’t so much as bother to deflect their stares and pretend they haven’t been looking at me at all. They just ... keep staring.

  They’re plotting.

  And my gut is swirling. Even my toes curl in my boots.

  I have to know what they’re up to. I can’t have another disaster big enough to draw the attention of the principle. It’ll be the last straw before I’m booted out of the Institute for good, and no amount of my secret resource will change that—the secret resource that landed me a spot at the noble-only school.

  I study them from beneath my lashes when they’re not looking. A sheet of paper distracts them, and it takes me a few seconds of squinting to realize that it’s the daily news-leaflet.

  They pore over it, engrossed now.

  Drake’s light blonde hair is tousled and hangs down his forehead. His eyes shimmer like silvery clouds struck by lightning. Blaze, just as cruel and beautiful, is Drake’s opposite. His dark hair curls around his tanned face, skin so smooth it reminds me of a milk-coffee I had once in the noble part of the city with my dad.