Page 92 of Wicked Vile King
She spits in my face, like actually spits, and it lands wet and sticky across my right cheek.
"I swear to fucking Chr . . ."
"You swear to what?" she hisses, baring her teeth with the strangled words. "You're going to do what? Push me until I jump like you did that girl?!"
"I didn't make her jump!" I roar, pushing her away from me. If I touch her any longer, I'm going to crush the bones in her throat and see which ones fucking pop. She stumbles back and nearly falls onto her ass. I grab my hair, tugging at it until my scalp is on fire desperate to ground myself, to feel something besides the rage. No one gets under my skin.No oneand especially not Willow Mae Cadelle. She's driving me fucking nuts!
"You are nothing like her!" I growl. "And I didn't make her jump. Alicebeggedto be mine. She crawled on her hands and knees like a damn dog and begged me to let her stay there. She worshiped me like I was hergod."
She goes very still, watching me, listening, trying to catch her breath.
"She . . ." I tug at my hair again, trying to sort out the noise buzzing inside my brain, poisoning my thoughts. "She followed me around like a lost puppy, and Kill and Gabe started calling her a pet, and it stuck! Then she wore the collar on a bet. They said I couldn't get her to wear it, but I did it, and it was disgustingly easy. All I had to do was smile and say it."
She stares at me, and she's stopped crying at least, so I keep explaining.
"Alice was fun for a little bit, I guess," I say. "I'd tell her to do whatever, and she just would, no questions asked, but it got boring quickly. And she noticed . . ."
I cluck my tongue.
"Noticed?" my pet asks.
"She noticed I wasn't interested in her anymore—that I couldn't fuck her—so she went back to the booze and the drugs, all the shit that ended her up at the Asylum in the first place. She'd make this homemade shit in her dorm room from medical supplies stolen from the nurse's office. It smelled like fucking cleaning solution, and she'd drink it until she blacked out. They put her in the hole a couple of times, trying to sober her up, but where there's a will, there's a way, I guess, and that's what happened the night she fell and spilled her brains all over the sidewalk. She was drunk out of her mind, and she walked right off the roof. I saw her do it. She didn't even hesitate. She was twirling, howling at the moon, and walked off the edge. I thought she died. She looked like it, blood everywhere, but I guess they sewed her up, and she paid for it with a nasty scar and a new stutter."
I step toward her. "So believe me, pet, when I say you are nothing like Alice."
"But you're a liar," she says, shaking her head. "You admitted it to me before. Why should I believe you, Saint?"
"Ask me anything right now," I tell her, standing before her, "and I'll give you the truth."
I watch her consider it. It's not something I offerto anyone,ever, and there are so many questions creeping out of the back of her brain.
"How many have there been?" she asks, her words quiet and calm, like the still surface above shark-infested waters. "How many pets have there been before me?"
She sayspetslike it's a nasty word, but it's not. Being a pet is an honor and not something I offer everyone. She is special, treasured. Doesn't she see that by now?
No one touches my pet, not the other students, not the guards, not the staff, no one. I protect them from all the nasty, despicable things the Asylum calls home, and in exchange, they give me their unyielding obedience. I respect them in a place that gives them no respect. I care for them in a world that doesn't care at all.
Why can't she understand?!
"How many?" she repeats.
"Three," I answer honestly, and it must hurt given the way her expression tightens, her brow furrowing and her eyes squeezing shut.
She starts to cry again, and there's this thing I can't quite place—it weighs on me like an obligation, one to make it better for her. I don't know if it's the same as truly caring for someone, but I know how rare it is, for me at least. It confirms what I already knew. She means something to me, something more than just a pet.
Fuck.
"What happened to them, to the others?" she asks.
"Well, as you already know," I reply, "Alice walked off the roof. Nyx and Cordelia both graduated. After that, no clue where they ended up."
She nods. I'm not certain she's actually listening though. She looks three seconds from exploding.
"You're jealous," I tell her. I can work with jealous.
"I'm not jealous," she says, shaking her head. "I'm not."
"Then what's wrong?" I ask, tucking her hair, frizzy from the binds and her struggle with Alice, behind her ear as she sobs. Her cries are loud and broken in the small room, but I just stand there, letting her get out whatever is eating her. Maybe if it's out of her, it'll poison the air instead.
