Page 54 of Wicked Vile King
"You too, sir," I say before I leave.
15
WILLOW
Ileave group therapy and walk out into the hallway, the heavy wooden door softly scraping against the floor and shutting behind me with a dullthud.
"That looked like fun," Trixie says, kicking off the wall across from me with a grin. "I'm headed to the art room to pilfer charcoal sticks. Wanna joinsies?"
"Nah." I shake my head. My hopes and dreams for today are set on fictional characters and faraway lands. "I'm headed to the library. Meet up this afternoon?"
"Sure thing, roomie," she says, nodding before giving me a sailor's salute and starting away, down the hall. She turns abruptly to look at me, raising an eyebrow. "Oh and Willow, do you remember what I told you?"
"Kick ‘em in the balls?" I offer, only half-joking.
I'm pretty sure that was like rule 286 in Trixie's indeterminable list ofdo's and don'tsto survive the Asylum.
She laughs and shoots me a toothy grin.
"Yeah," she agrees, "I'm sure I said that at some point, but now I mean be careful, okay?"
"'Kay," I agree, and though I appreciate the sentiment, especially after Gabe threw invisible daggers at me during group therapy, I'm feeling pretty safe lately all by myself. No one's bothered me in weeks, well, except for the uncivilized assholes fresh out of the hole before Saint's friends stepped in and saved me from them.
Ever since the morning I stabbed myself in the dining hall and managed to topple the almighty Saint from his bullshit throne, my life at Chryseum has been okay. Sure, the teachers still suck—most of them at least—and the guards are even less stellar, but the worst treatment I've garnered is the occasional curious look in my direction. And that's completely fine by me. I'm four weeks into my stay at the Asylum, and I'm not here to make friends, though I got lucky with Trixie.
I don't fraternize. I follow the plan. I keep my head down and survive. I am left alone for the most part, and that's just how I like it.
I'm not stupid or crazy enough to think I can escape this place. Escape isn't an option anymore, not after the last time I saw Saint, when the doctor was working on my hand, and my father threatened to disown me if I even attempted it. I'd be penniless, homeless, and without anyone, and that would be worse, I think, to not have your prison confined to four walls, but instead, have the entire world an unfriendly and unforgiving cage.
So I made a new plan. I changed course, and now all I have to do is bide my time until graduation. Then Papa can't control the money Mama left me, and I'll have that at least if he won't let me come home.
The past few days have actually been tolerable at the Academy. Not nice, but definitely tolerable.
Last Friday, a fight broke out in my mathematics class—one of the few where the teacher at least tries to teach us something. A minute in, a girl landed on my desk, her palms landing flat on the top. When she looked up from my desk, dazed but annoyed, I knew what she was thinking. One punch and she could make me pay for whatever sin I had committed by my desk being in her way, but then she blinked and she recognized me. A second later, she just backed away, her hands raised in surrender.
No one wants to mess with the girl who got a Lord of the Academy dethroned and forsaken, taken away to rot in the hole.
On second thought, though, I do think Saint's friends might make my life really difficult, if they felt so inclined, but since that one day weeks ago when they saved me fromPrettyandPussyin the hall and then told me they were only doing it for Saint, I have firmly joined a new camp. It's called theSee Kill and Gabe coming? Turn around and run away!camp, and so far, it's working for me.
At the end of the hall, I pass a pair of guards in spotless black uniforms. They barely spare a glance in my direction and when they do, they eye me like they couldn't care any less before I turn away from them, down an intersecting hallway. Then I take the stairs up to the second floor to where the library is housed, the tapping of my Mary Janes announcing my arrival on each stone step.
Heck, maybe the antidepressants Dr. Cross insists I should take are starting to kick in because I swear sometimes I think it's not that bad here. On days like today, when the halls are empty and quiet, and no one's trying to shank somebody, I can disappear between the stacks for a little bit.
It helps that I am headed to the library though. Everyone knows the library is the best part of the Academy, beginning on the second floor and stretching all the way up to the sixth, housing thousands upon thousands of books in all shapes, sizes, and colors. I guess the administration thinks that maybe if you can get lost in another world, you'll be too busy to try to burn this one down.
It's true for me at least.
I open one of the arched double doors made of dark solid wood that stretches almost to the ceiling. I head inside, passing another guard walking by in the opposite direction. It's quiet in the library, though it almost always is. There seems to be an unspoken rule here, I think, to not screw up the nicest place at the Academy, the only respite from our current existence. In the middle of the massive room is an atrium that stretches up each floor to the ceiling of the building, housing a giant stained glass skylight that scatters prisms of color down onto the polished gray floor. Although the colors are dull, always muted by the weather that lives at the top of the mountain, the skylight is beautiful just the same, and as I walk by it, I admire the fragmented rainbows stitched across the floor.
The worst part of the library is also the best part, the books. They are outdated, for sure. I haven't found anything that postdates the birth of the last generation, but most of them are in good condition, well-kept, and gently used. I venture deeper into the library, past the staircases that go up to each floor and the metal bars added long after construction to the wooden spindles, no doubt designed to prevent any unfortunate student from toppling over the winding handrail down to their untimely end.
I pass a couple making out in a dark corner of the section on eastern European geography and continue toward the rear of the room, headed to the gothic fiction section. The books are old there, most from the early to mid-twentieth century, and it smells like yellowing paper and old leather, but I love it there. It's my safe space and my spot to hide from the rest of the world.
I peruse the first aisle, walking down the narrow space between the tall wooden stacks, and turn the corner at the end of the aisle to head to the next row. But what I see there freezes me to the spot.
Like the glaciers in his irises sends icicles across the floor to bind my feet.
Like he has the power to command me.
