Theodora
followed by a month of back-breaking intellectual labour results in the most overwhelming exhaustion I’ve ever felt. A feeling like both the adrenaline rush and the inevitable crash but happening simultaneously.
By October, I’m so profoundly tired my skin feels like a burning hot veil around my body and my head and eyes ache almost constantly. Every morning, I wake up like a corpse dragged from the darkness of death, consciousness forced upon me like a disease.
So when Rose and Camille drag me to a party I desperately don’t want to go to, I don’t even have the strength and energy to fight them.
Before the party, I lie the wrong way around on my bed, head almost dangling off the end, hydrogel eye patches covering the grey shadows under my eyes. I’ve almost fallen asleep when my bedroom door opens and my eyes fly open.
“Oh. Hey, Ness.”
Inessa is still in her uniform, and there’s a packet of sweets in her hands. Inessa is one of the true good girls of Spearcrest—the Sophie Sutton of her year group. She doesn’t go to parties or make out with boys in the various hook-up spots around campus. She reads, goes to after-school clubs, and attends services in the chapel.
The ultimate good girl.
My father wishes I was like her. I know because he’s told me so many times.
“Your friends are so annoying,” Inessa says with a roll of her eyes, oblivious to my bleak train of thought.
Sitting next to me, she brushes her hands down the length of my hair, which dangles over the edge of the bed like a cascade.
“They’re just giddy girls,” I say cautiously.
I love Inessa. No matter how much my father tries to install her as a rival in my life, she’ll always be the closest thing I have to the sister I’ve always wanted.
“They keep asking when you’re coming down. Apparently, you guys have somewhere special to be.”
I sigh and reluctantly sit up. “The Young Kings are having a… get-together.”
“I thought you hated those guys? They’re so arrogant and annoying.”
“I’ve been invited. It would be rude not to go. And I don’t mind them.”
“Hm. I’m just saying. You’re too good for any of them.” Inessa gives me a little prim roll of her eyes and then breaks into a smile. “But since you’re going… what are you going to wear?”
“I have no idea.” I stand in front of my mirror to peel off my eyepatches and observe with consternation that the shadows under my eyes are just as dark as ever. “Maybe a shroud, given I look like a corpse dug up by a Victorian resurrectionist.”
“You don’t look like a corpse,” Inessa says with a frown. “Not even a little bit. You’re quite literally the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen in my life. Look at your hair. I want it so bad. Like Zarya-Zarenitsa.”
“More like Baba Yaga,” I reply belligerently over my shoulder.
I’m not in the mood for compliments, or for partying, or for anything. The only thing I want is to be in bed and unconscious. But Inessa stands on her feet with a humph of determination and goes to throw open my wardrobe doors.
“Right, come on then, Baba Yaga. Let’s get you dressed up.”
you girls,” Camille says on our way to the study room, her arm squeezed tightly around mine, “but I’ve had the most outrageously, relentlessly shit week. I need—like, I need to be so drunk, and I need someone to make me come so hard.”
Rose lets out a cackle. “You’d have better luck with Mr Gold than the boys at this party. Unless you get yourself a Young King.”
Mr Gold—or Eric Victor Gold—is the name of Camille’s bullet and the star feature of her many stories about the elaborate dates she has with it. Lingerie and caviar dates, mirror and a fifty-year-old bottle of Cabernet dates. Camille’s dates with her vibrator are better than most dates girls in our years have been on.
Not that I would know since I’ve never been on one.
“I’ve already had them all,” Camille says with a wave of her hand.
My blood runs suddenly cold, and I suppress a shudder. Rose almost stops in her tracks. “No, you haven’t.”
“Okay, so I’ve not fucked them all,” Camille clarifies, “but I got pretty close. I slept with Psycho Luca and that hot French fuckboy, and I used to fool around with Evan back in Year 9 before he went all weird for Sophie Sutton. I made out with the future Lord Blackwood in the back of a limo, and I got super drunk at a club and bumped into Iakov in the back alley when I went for a cig, and he went down on me—I would highly recommend it, by the way, the guy really knows how to eat p—”
“You never kissed Zachary,” Rose interrupts. “You’re such a fucking liar, Camille.”
“I did! We were both really drunk, but I still remember it.”
Camille looks at me from under her impossibly long eyelashes. She’s dark and voluptuous and passionate—she looks like a princess straight out of an Arabian Nights tale. How could any boy resist her?
It’s not like Zachary is my boyfriend. I have no reason to expect him to be faithful to me. It’s never something I expected from him. In fact, I’ve always encouraged him to pursue other girls.
So why does it hurt so much to hear Camille’s story?
Maybe Camille senses my pain; there’s a sadistic edge to her smile when she turns to look at me.
“Wanna know what it was like?”
I raise an eyebrow. “Why should I care?”
“You two are always at each other’s throat,” Camille says. “You’ve got to be wondering about him, at least a little bit.”
“Wondering what, exactly?”
“You know. What he’s like”—Camille blinks that slow, sexy blink that gets all the boys to fall for her—“in bed.”
“You didn’t go to bed with him,” Rose points out tartly. “You made out a little bit at the back of a limo. Hardly the same thing.”
“But I think Theodora would want to know what that’s like,” Camille says, addressing Rose even though her eyes are still on mine, “to make out a little bit with Zachary Blackwood at the back of a limo.”
There’s a deep, lush part of my mind that’s reserved for poetry and literature, the part of my mind that transforms words into rich imagery. It’s normally a sacred place, but its sanctum is suddenly violated by Camille’s words.
A picture appears in my mind, vividly detailed.
Black leather seats, city lights blurring past, dark, cold glass. The smell of expensive leather and champagne mingled with a sophisticated cologne, sandalwood and blackcurrants. A warm lap, an arm around my waist, surprisingly strong, and a hand on my back, fingers fanning out, digging ever so slightly into my skin through the silk straps of my dress. Zachary’s mouth opening against mine, molten heat and desire so strong it makes me undulate like a flame in his embrace.
I swallow and fix Camille with my iciest smile.
“My standards must be a little higher than yours. I can conjure more satisfying fantasies than fumbling kisses with my old debate team rival.”
“Really?” Camille lets out a bark of incredulous laughter. “That’s all he is to you, your old debate team rival?”
“What else would he be?”
and sense Zachary’s presence like a beacon. He sees me but doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even raise his hand in a wave.
That’s fine, of course. Zachary doesn’t owe me anything. As he said, he’s only ever one step removed from a stranger, and after this year, he’ll go back to being a complete stranger.
But I’m shaken—so much more shaken than I ought to be.
It’s as if the blow Camille landed somehow left an opening big enough for every other blow to land. I feel it all, all at once.
The pain from the summer, the fear of my father, the loss of my dreams, the dread of the future. My longing for Zachary, the realisation I can never have him, that he’ll go back to being nobody. The crushing pressure of Spearcrest, of killing myself getting the best grades when my qualifications will become little more than pretty paperwork. Being an Apostle, the desperation to beat Zachary even though I know I won’t be able to accept the mentorship, lying to Mr Ambrose.
It all hits me like an avalanche.
Rose hands me a bottle of something strong, watching me with amused eyes as I take a sip. She holds her hand out, waiting for me to give her the bottle back after a sip, but I shake my head and drink in long, hard gulps.
The liquor leaves a burning trail down my throat, filling my belly with fire. Rose’s eyes are wide with a mix of surprise and admiration.
“You’re getting fucked tonight, Theodora?” she asks.
“Literally or metaphorically?”
She waggles her eyebrows. “Thoroughly.”
Weak laughter rises in my throat, strong enough only for a single exhaled chuckle. I’m shaking all over, I feel feverish and stripped raw.
“I don’t want to remember a single second of this night,” I answer, the bottle trembling in my hand. “I want to be so drunk I don’t even remember my own name. I want to find the kind of obliteration that will make me doubt my very existence.”
“Jesus, girl,” Rose says. “Doesn’t sound like you’re looking to have fun.”
“Oh, I’ll have fun.” I take another gulp. “Why shouldn’t I have fun?”
“You should,” Rose says, “but—”
“I want to have fun,” I assure her. “I want to stop feeling like this.”
Rose is frowning at me now. “Like what?”
But I’ve already turned and plunged into the crowd.
and burn and laugh.
Later, when the music becomes a loud, urgent beat and everyone gathers close together to dance, I join them. I dance with every girl I know and every boy who dares to approach me. I even let Luca Fletcher-Lowe, who has soulless eyes and laughs like the god-defying Satan of Milton’s Paradise Lost, take me inside his arms and hold me a little too close, his fingers digging into my upper arm.
“Come outside with me,” he murmurs in my ear during a lull in the music. “Come on, mysterious Theodora, lonely ice princess. Let me rough you up a little bit.”
I lurch away from him in disgust, and he throws his head back with a feral laugh, melting back into the crowd of dancing bodies like a pale, nightmarish vision.
Fury fills me, but it’s not aimed at Luca. It’s aimed at Zachary. Because why isn’t he the one pulling me into his arms, whispering dirty, dangerous things in my ear?
He’s probably too busy finding a limousine in which to kiss Camille, that’s why.
The jealousy inside me sears like poison, and I know it’s making me sick. I’m well-read, logical and intelligent—I know jealousy, I know it’s a green-eyed monster which only mocks the meat it feeds on. A parasite that only ever harms its host. I need to get away, sleep it off, let it run its course and be reabsorbed back into the general ache of being alive.
But I’m too drunk and tired. I’m dizzy with a sort of bright, coruscating pain. My skin feels so brittle it might shatter at a touch. I’m freezing inside, so cold I ache, but my skin burns like I’m in the grip of a mortal fever.
And then, somehow, I’m standing in front of Zachary, simmering with anger. He’s drunk too, I can tell, and he smiles at me like he knows the real reason I sought him out.
We argue—I don’t even know what I’m saying. I angrily tell him I came to claim the kiss he promised me—but I don’t want it. I don’t want it at all.
I wouldn’t want to kiss Zachary Blackwood if I was cursed to die an endless, torturous death for a thousand years and the only way to break the curse was to kiss him.
“I’ve not forgotten,” Zachary says, with a hateful smirk on his angelic face, oblivious to my fury. “Claim it.”
