Theodora
horrible.
Endless studying, endless work, endless parties. I’m voted head girl, which also means more responsibilities, meetings with the other prefects, with teachers, with the school leadership team.
My father insists I perfect my Russian, so I’m taking my Russian GCSE as an independent candidate on top of all my other GCSEs, which means taking online classes with a tutor and practising with Inessa for hours. I’m forced to drop out of most clubs, aside from the debate team, since I’m still the captain of my team.
Everyone is stressed this year—and the coping mechanism of choice is sex. The days in Spearcrest are intense, especially in the top classes—and the parties match that intensity. Everyone is partying hard when they can, and I can’t blame them. For them, it’s an outlet.
I don’t have an outlet.
I go to those parties and stick to my limit of three drinks. Any more and I risk being drunk—and being drunk at Spearcrest means being filmed by no less than a dozen people. Too many scandals have erupted after footage from a party was posted online, and I’m paralysed by the fear of my father ever finding such footage of me.
I wish I wasn’t so scared. The idea of letting loose grows more tempting as the year goes on. Even a single night of freedom from the constant stress and anxiety would be a godsend at this point. Would the payoff be worth the risk?
I don’t think so, and I’m not going to find out.
As depressing as it is to watch everyone have fun at the parties while I remain rigidly in control, it also comes with a gift of its own.
Just like I’m friends with the most popular girls in the year, Zachary is part of a small and elite group of boys, the Young Kings of Spearcrest. That group includes Séverin Montcroix, the heir to the aristocratic Montcroix family; Evan Knight, the star athlete of Spearcrest; Luca Fletcher-Lowe, the fencing champion and heir to the Novus group; and Iakov Kavinski, whose father is even more powerful in Russia than mine is.
Zachary has little in common with them—he outshines them all in intellect, manners, and pure quality of personhood.
The Young Kings represent everything you would associate with wealthy, privately educated boys: they are entitled, arrogant, horny and immature.
I imagine Zachary is friends with them in the way I’m friends with Giselle and the others—because social ties are a necessity like food and air here at Spearcrest. When I see him with his friends, it’s obvious he’s not like them—I often wonder if he feels as alienated as I do.
If he does, I can’t tell. But one thing I can tell is that Zachary isn’t as averse to partying as I am. Maybe he drinks because he, too, wants an escape from the stress of Year 11. Or maybe he’s drinking to keep up with his friends—but he drinks and plays party games, and I never see him leave a party before I do.
This is unexpected, and at first, I’m a little disappointed in him—until I realise the position of advantage it puts me in.
For one, while Zachary is nursing hangovers at weekends, I get some extra studying time. Since all the Young Kings seem pretty determined to sleep their way through the year group, I’m certain Zachary must also be trying to keep up with that aspect of his social life, so that’s even more time he won’t be spending studying.
And last but certainly not least, there’s delicious power in being sober while someone is drunk.
power at the Year 11 unofficial Halloween party.
It’s a wild party—everyone is dressed up, and the party is kickstarted by a big game of boys-versus-girls hide-and-seek in the woods at the edge of campus.
I skip out the game of hide-and-seek. I have no intention of running through the muddy woods in my pristine angel costume, getting chased around by drunk, horny boys.
So I turn up late enough to miss the game and head straight for the bonfire, hoping to have a couple of drinks in the company of my friends and get seen long enough that I can then go back to my room to prepare for the upcoming winter exams.
When I arrive, the firelight illuminates a wild scene.
Everyone is in costumes, each more lavish and elaborate than the last. The hide-and-seek games must have taken on a wild edge because some people are splashed with mud up to the thighs, and others have scratches and stains on their arms and cheeks. Some girls have torn clothing, some boys have bruises. Whatever happened in the woods, it seems like it was far from innocent fun.
I spot Camille and Seraphina, whose glassy eyes tell me they’re already pretty drunk, swaying by the bonfire. Seraphina hands me a bottle of champagne, and when I drink, she tips the bottle, forcing me to keep drinking. I take a couple of extra gulps and then just pretend to drink until she finally lets me stop.
“Who won the game, then?” I ask.
Camille lets out a delighted cackle. “The girls did! Thanks to you!”
I frown. “How? I wasn’t even there.”
Seraphina and Camille look at each other and burst out laughing.
They are like reverse mirror images of each other: Camille with her raven-black curls, Seraphina with her Barbie-blonde tresses. Camille is dressed in a tiny sparkly dress and a satin prom-queen sash, fake blood smeared on her legs and chest, and Seraphina is dressed like a murderous cheerleader, her hair in long pigtails, a knife taped to her thigh.
“Exactly,” Seraphina says, stifling her giggles behind a pompom. “We told the boys you were playing, and since nobody found you, the girls won.”
I laugh, shaking my head. “Isn’t that cheating?”
“So what?” Camille sneers. “Trust me, the boys cheated too. We said no phones but I’m pretty sure that sexy creep Luca had some sort of CIA-grade tracker to find us.”
That sounds highly unlikely, but Camille is still almost definitely right about the boys cheating.
Both girls make me swear to never betray the girls’ secret, and then Camille gets pulled away into the woods by a boy, so Seraphina and I dance together by the fireside. It’s a challenge trying to keep Seraphina from falling headfirst into the bonfire; she’s so drunk she can barely keep herself on her feet.
Eventually, she spots Evan Knight, the golden-haired star athlete, standing with some of his friends, and runs off after him, tossing me her bottle of champagne as she goes.
With a sigh of relief, I take the bottle and sit gingerly down on a dry part of a tree leg next to the fire. The bottle is almost empty, so I finish it. There’s a gentle buzz in my head and body, but I’m not even tipsy. I sit, contemplating the pointlessness of being in a dark, soggy wood, dressed like an angel and huddling as close to the fire as I can so I don’t get pneumonia.
When I decide I’ve been at the party long enough to have paid my dues, I abandon my empty bottle in the graveyard of empty bottles near the bonfire and make my way into the trees. I’ve not even made it three steps into the woods when an arm laces around my waist and I’m pulled back against a firm, warm chest.
I let out a cry and whirl around, pushing my captor away. He makes no effort to keep ahold of me, and I take a hasty step back to find myself face to face with Zachary.
I glare at him. “You scared me.”
He shakes his head and raises his palms in a gesture of contrition. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. I didn’t want you to run away.” His eyes rake the length of my body, lingering on the white wings at my back. “Angel,” he adds with a curl of his lips.
“I wasn’t running away,” I say.
“It looked like you were.” He steps closer and tilts his head, fixing me with a thoughtful gaze. “You always run away.”
“No, I don’t. You of all people should know this.”
“I mean from parties.” His eyebrows knit together in a slight glare. “You always run away from parties, angel.”
My eyes have adjusted to the light and I can see him more clearly now. He’s wearing an elaborate costume: black velvet doublet and breeches in the style of the seventeenth century, with an ornate white collar and buttons that gleam faintly as they catch the distant light of the bonfire. His eyes are framed with thick lines of kohl, giving his face a wild edge.
“Who are you dressed as?” I ask lightly, pointing at him.
He raises his right arm, showing me the gleaming hook at the end of it. There’s a slight grin on his face.
“Captain Hook? Thought you weren’t a fan of children’s literature.”
He shrugs. “So? It’s your favourite book, isn’t it? I thought it might amuse you.”
I purse my lips in thought and point at his head. “You’re missing the long curls.”
“‘Like black candles’,” Zachary quotes. “I know. I had a wig but took it off, it was too hot.”
It’s at this point that I realise Zachary is more than a little tipsy. It’s funny and sweet because he’s still enunciating perfectly, and his posture is still as rigid and formal as that of a royal guardsman. What gives him away is something else—something I can’t quite explain. A sort of softness, I guess.
A feeling that his drawbridge has been lowered, the gateway to him hanging open, his armour laid aside for once. The softness of him, all exposed to me, makes me want to soften, too.
“It’s a crying shame,” I tell him, brushing my fingers down his velvet sleeve. “I would have loved to see you in the wig. You know, I’ve never told anyone this, but I used to have a crush on Captain Hook when I was a kid.”
Zachary’s eyes widen. “You did not.”
I nod quite seriously. “I did.”
“What was it that so fascinated you?” Zachary lifts his arm again. “Not the hook, surely?”
I shake my head. “No, not the hook. It was the handsome countenance, the excellent diction, the Oxford education. I was obsessed with his death scene, the way he went. His final words to Peter—bad form.” I shiver. “So dignified.”
Zachary stares at me for a moment.
“I’ve never read the book,” he says in a thoughtful tone.
“No?” I sigh. “I doubt you’d like it anyway. It’s very fanciful.”
We stare at each other. Zachary speaks again, but this time, it’s not about the book.
“Where were you hiding, angel? I looked for you everywhere.”
My heart tightens without warning. “You did?”
“Everywhere.” His tone is solemn. He reaches towards me and touches the feathered edges of my wings with his hook-free hand. “Maybe I should have gone to the chapel, in retrospect. Probably the wisest place to seek angels.”
“Mm, or maybe you should have searched the heavens.”
Zachary lets out a sigh of laughter. “Yes, I imagine you’d be right at home in the sky.”
I shake my head. “I wasn’t hiding in the sky or the chapel. You shouldn’t have bothered to look for me—I wasn’t even at the game.”
He catches his breath in an audible gasp—his drunk self is more prone to melodrama than his sober self, it would seem. “You cheated?”
“I didn’t cheat. I wasn’t even there.”
“Your friends all told me you were there. They swore it. I looked everywhere. I went all the way up to the lake.” His tone is almost rueful.
It’s hard not to be amused—or touched—by his disappointment.
“Well,” I say, trying to speak in my most bracing tone, “did you at least manage to catch any other girls during your search?”
“No,” he replies glumly. “I only cared about catching you.”
Even tipsy, his intensity still unfurls from him like veils of heat from a furnace.
“Oh.” My heart is beating a little faster than it should, my throat is a little tight. I wonder if I drank more than I realised, if I’m tipsy too and just don’t know it. “Why?”
“Because catching anybody else wouldn’t feel worth it.” He smiles suddenly, a flash of white teeth. “My victories only ever taste like victories when they’re won against you, Theodora.”
He steps closer, standing inches away, and gazes down at me from the height of his stature, which is outgrowing mine at an alarming rate. His voice is low and thoughtful, his gaze is a dreamy caress as if he’s seeing me for the first time.
“Theodora Dorokhova.” He speaks my name solemnly, like a vow. His face is inches from mine. Is he going to kiss me? I dread a kiss—I long for one. My heartbeat is the flapping wings of a trapped butterfly. I hold my breath, suspended between hope and terror.
Zachary’s words brush against my lips, more intimate than any kiss. “My beautiful nemesis. My formidable adversary. My dearest rival.”
Kiss me, I want to tell him. Kiss me open, Zachary Blackwood, and take all my darkness and cold and pain away.
He doesn’t, and in the end, I’m the one who whirls around in the darkness and runs fearfully away through the trees.
But when I revisit it that night in my dreams, he does kiss me. He kisses me deep and wet and tender and lays me open on the forest floor to fill me with him like Danaë’s golden rain, and I wake up in a shock of loneliness, hot wetness between my thighs.
