Chapter 145: _ Waiting On Her Nemesis
Morning comes slowly like a thing on crutches — the light in the dormitory is thin and reluctant, slipping in through the high windows in pale and suspicious bars. Val is still asleep, drawing in shallow breaths, but Heidi can see the tension in how her fingers curl under the blanket and feel the tremor at the corners of her mouth even in rest. It’s a fragile sort of peace, the kind that coats everything after a storm and makes the world look like it might keep breathing.
Heidi eases off her bed and moves quietly. The room smells faintly of detergent and the ghost of sweat and iron from all-night nightmares. The whole dorm carries that same smell. She pads down the hall past other doors, past the soft, dangerous hush of other girls who know, all of them, what the labyrinth did. A pair of Moon Blessed sit on the common steps outside the baths, the ones who were in the labyrinth with them.
Helena and Jia’s eyes are rimmed red where sleep abandoned them. They look like people who have been rearranged by violence.
"You okay?" Heidi asks.
However, the question is so small next to what’s really there: did you see them? Did you hear them? Did you dream of Junie like I did? Her voice comes out neutral, shoes squeaking on the tile.
Helena blinks like she’s forgotten how to be part of the living. "No," she says. "No, we..." Her voice breaks.
Jia’s hand finds the back of her neck in a reflexive, useless comfort. "I keep seeing the mouths," she whispers. "Like they were wide, forever wide. I can’t shut them up."
Heidi kneels, steadying herself on the cold stone with a hand. The bath water hisses in the next room; steam fans out, smelling like mint and the antiseptic sting of dorm soap. She thinks of Junie, and Junie’s hand that never regrew right, and of the way the rune blinked out. Of the possibility that the labyrinth kept her. Of the image of three ragged bodies that morning in the dirt.
"You’ll be okay," Heidi says, and the lie and the prayer are the same shape on her tongue. "We’ll be okay. We get help, we talk..."
Even as she says it she feels the thinnest thread of hope, the ridiculous almost-laughter that says sometimes people survive horror and then build houses out of it.
They give her a hollow smile. "Thanks," Jia sighs.
Helena nods. "Thanks."
They don’t look at her the way they used to. You know, with the small, indifferent attitude the Moon Blessed gives one another before the labyrinth. There’s respect there, but it’s cut through with pity, and Heidi hates that more than anything. She hates being a person made of soft, visible wounds.
A hot, scalding shower wakes the rust and the bruises out of her limbs. The water is merciless and perfect — she lets it beat her shoulders and wash the nightmares loose. Soap bites at the salt of her skin; the steamy mirror blooms and hides her reflection for a moment. She studies the faint, angry red of the marks at her neck through the fogged glass. They sting still. She traces the outline without thinking. The touch is a small, betraying comfort.
Morgan and Grayson’s mark. Her mates to whom she’s now bound.
.
Val is still out cold when she comes back to the room, hair damp, robe clutched at her body. Heidi stands in the doorway for a second, waters dripping, thinking that for one strange, private minute she might have just fallen apart into the sheets and never woken up. But the world will not wait for anyone to grieve properly. There is an interview with the school.
A crown for the "top Year One Boy and Girl" to be decided. She cares about being the Top Girl... hell, it’s her goal. However, there’s a little something that can sabotage that. Sierra’s phone. That stupid thing was waiting like a viper to poison her silvered reputation. There is a list of chores and horrors that the world insists on treating as routine for her.
She tells herself she’ll deal with the school and their theatre of platitudes later. First, she has the small, petty battle to win: Sierra and her lackeys.
She dresses quickly, choosing clothes that keep her safe and invisible: a loose jumper that hides the neck mark’s outline, dark jeans, sneakers scuffed to death. She ties her hair up in a severe knot she hopes appears as practical and not wild. Then, because courage is a muscle she practices in private, she steps out into the morning and avoids the places where the Alphas might be congregating.
She keeps low, walking past the fountain that used to look romantic before it had so many names carved into it by grief.
Sierra’s suite is in the council block where the Alphas’ suites are as well. Moon Blessed aren’t meant to be here. They’re meant to be in that damn old dorm building. Which is exactly why Heidi tugs her turtle neck up and stands back against a pillar, watching.
First out of the heavy doors are Nash and Lucan. They seem engrossed in a conversation as they walk towards the west wing of the school. Heidi’s heart melts at the sight of Lucan—the only familiar figure in this new world of hers. She has to hold that thought because Isolde comes out after them, dark as she always is, makeup smeared like a storm just passed. She’s watching the NAY boys with a look that’s not mockery but something quiet and raw; Isolde’s usual armor seems to have a dent in it. Heidi notices it and her brain scrambles: could Isolde actually like Lucan instead of Nash as she initially thought?
Yesterday convinced Heidi it was Nash because it was him whose Isolde’s eyes were on. However, after careful consideration—Isolde hating Nash and all, she has come to the conclusion that it could just be Lucan instead.
But... no. Lucan is Lucan, and as far as Heidi knows he prefers boys. The thought is small. She feels a small grief — someone else’s that she feels like she’s stealing because that misery is Isolde’s. Liking Lucan is a rock end.
Isolde’s eyes flick across the courtyard and land on the council block’s doorway like a small animal marking a scent. She sighs and walks away, and Heidi swallows whatever she’d thought and files it under "things I cannot process today."
For now, she needs to scout and ambush Sierra. Hence, she waits, hidden in a corner where the morning sun slices warm through carved stone but doesn’t quite touch her. The suite building is a stage, and she’s the audience of one, waiting for her nemesis to appear. The stone under her palm is cool; the courtyard smells like damp leaves and the brittle thread of incense someone is burning at the far edge of the grounds for the lost.
"Thought you’d scuttle back to your mouse nest, Wulf." Someone suddenly snaps behind her.
Heidi didn’t hear the approach. The voice is honeyed and venomous, the snap of it sharp enough to make her shoulders rise.
Fuck... who the hell is that?!