by Marie Mistry
When I left my room, I found myself directly on a landing at the corner of a square staircase. My heels sank into the plush red carpet as I crossed to the bannister and looked up and down the stairs. My room was on a floor that appeared to be roughly in the middle of the tower, and I flushed with happiness to find a sign on my door with my name on it surrounded by ornate metal scrollwork. At least when I came back, I wouldn’t need to worry about finding it again.
I hadn’t been looking around for long when a head popped out of the door on the landing below. With a grin, I recognised the blonde who had punched Rina, but instead of returning my grin, she stuck her head back inside her room and yelled at someone.
“Lulu, hurry up! She’s already out of her room!”
A muffled curse came from within, and I hesitantly began to approach the still open door.
“New girl, get in here,” the girl called. “I promise Lulu won’t be all day. Isn’t that right, Lulu?”
I approached the door, whose sign declared the occupants were Lucrecia and Cornelia Drabos, and stuck my head around.
The room was bigger than mine, but there were two beds instead of one, so it felt a little more cramped. One girl was perched atop a vanity, yelling at another who was rummaging through the wardrobe like a madwoman.
“I can’t find my other sock,” Lulu complained. “Hey Lilith,” she called as she noticed me. “Sit down while you wait. We’re taking you to breakfast.”
I nodded and stepped further into their room. Unlike my purple one, their colour theme was a deep bottle green, though it was much messier than mine.
The other twin, who I assumed was Cornelia, sighed and walked over to one of the beds, picking up a long sock, scrunching it up and throwing it at her sister.
“My sock!” Lulu smiled, pulling the knee high black sock up her leg before adding her black ballet pumps. “Okay, I’m ready.”
Her twin sighed and headed for the door. “Nelly,” she said, by way of introduction. “That’s Lulu, she’s an airhead, but we love her.”
“You suit our uniform,” Lulu complimented me. “Nelly and I are your caste mentors!” She smiled so brightly I thought her face might crack. “It’s our first time,” she confessed as we left their room and waited for her twin to lock up.
I smiled.
“Nice shoes,” Nelly said, as we walked down the stairs. “You weren’t wearing them last night.”
I smiled. “They were a gift.”
Lulu gasped. “You got an innocence gift? No way!” She sent a meaningful look at Nelly, who snorted.
“She never said it was an innocence gift,” Nelly replied. “Who were they from?” She turned to me.
“They didn’t leave a name. They just thanked me for the kiss,” I answered, wondering what on earth they were going on about.
“Do you like them?” Lulu asked.
I grinned. “I love them.”
“Pay up,” Lulu said to Nelly, holding out her hand. “She got one and she likes it. I won.”
Nelly frowned and dug into her bag, tossing one of those cheap lollypops at her twin. “Fine,” she muttered.
“Who was he?” I asked.
Nelly shook her head. “Rule number one? You never get to know who gives you your initiation kiss.”
“What’s rule number two?” I asked.
“Don’t piss off Pruitt. She’s got it out for anyone in Lust.”
“Not a problem,” I replied. “She refuses to teach me.” I gestured to the horns.
Lulu was agog. “I want horns!” she cried, as we reached the common room. “I can’t believe you get out of those lessons with that horrible woman. That’s amazing.”
I blushed. “So, what sub-castes are you two?” I asked, trying to turn the conversation away from my horns.
“Desire,” Nelly replied. “Lulu is Promiscuity.”
“I wonder what you’ll be,” Lulu pondered as we left the tower, following the path towards the castle.
“Desire probably,” Nelly countered. “It’s the most prevalent sub-caste.”
“It is?”
“It’s the simplest as well,” Nelly informed me. “I gather power from anyone who desires me. Lulu has to sleep around for it.”
“Of the sixteen Lust caste students, there are only three promiscuities,” Lulu told me.
“There are only sixteen of you?”
“It was fourteen at the start of the year. Usually we end up with about twenty or so by the time everyone has had their showings.”
I nodded. “How will I tell what sub-caste I’ll be?”
“If it doesn’t become apparent fairly soon, they’ll do a testing,” Nelly told me. “Lulu had to have one.”
She made a face. “It was awkward. Some old hag from Envy came and poked at my head with her power until she announced I was a whore.”
“Which is why I punched that bitch in the Gatehouse,” Nelly explained. “I’m rather opposed to that word.”
“Much appreciated,” I said. “I don’t understand what’s happening with her. She was alright at the start.”
Lulu made a face. “People start to get antsy when they don’t turn within the first few weeks. The longer it takes, the less likely it is to happen.”
I’d never heard that before, but it did explain her behaviour.
We’d just reached the entrance when I spotted a head of familiar shaggy brown hair.
“Bane!” I called, he looked back at me, smiled, and walked over.
“That’s Krossian’s son?” Nelly raised an eyebrow. “I’d do him.”
“Definitely,” Lulu agreed.
“What does he think about Lust?” Nelly quizzed me, as Bane weaved his way around people to get to us.
“I don’t really know,” I hedged.
“How was your night?” he asked, as he finally arrived.
“It would have been better with you, handsome,” Lulu cooed.
He gave her a look. “Not on the market, sorry,”
She pouted, but I could tell she wasn’t really upset. “Such a shame,” she announced.
Bane turned back to me, and I answered his original question. “I can’t really remember much of it,” I told him. “I think whiskey is my nemesis.”
Nelly smirked. “It is when it’s triple strength.”
Lulu coughed. “I’m Lulu.” She stuck out her hand.
“Charmed.” Bane kissed her knuckles with a bow.
Nelly smiled, and introduced herself, but refused to let Bane kiss her hand.
Bane excused himself right before we joined the breakfast queue, and Lulu barely waited till he was gone to fan herself with her hand.
“If only he hadn’t declared himself off limits.” She sighed, filling her tray with a little bit of everything on offer.
“Yes, well he did. Remember the rules,” Nelly cautioned, picking up a small bowl of porridge and an apple.
I helped myself to a few slices of toast and a tiny dish of jam then followed them over to a table. To my dismay, she chose a seat right next to hand-job guy.
“Lilith, this is Ryon, Babette, Triston and Aeron.” They all gave me nods as she pointed them out.
Aeron. His name is Aeron. I told myself, trying to get over my natural inclination to call him hand-job guy. Now that I was close to him, I could see him more clearly. Stubble covered his jawline, while his dark hair and eyebrows highlighted the paleness of his eyes.
“Babette is the one who was feeling up your horns last night,” Lulu supplied cheerfully, distracting me from my perusal.
The other girl smiled. “Can you blame me? They’re so sexy.”
Everyone at the table laughed. “You’re forgiven,” I told her.
“She got an innocence gift this morning,” Lulu blabbed.
Babette gasped. “No way.”
I nodded and stuck a foot out from the bench, so she could see.
“They’re gorgeous.” She leaned out from where she was sitting to look at them. “Do you like
them?”
I smiled and nodded emphatically.
“What castes were your parents then?” Ryon asked me. “You don’t seem like you were raised by Lust.”
“My mum is Pride, my dad’s Sloth,” I replied. “You?”
“Both Lust,” he replied. “Same as Nelly and Lulu,”
I looked questioningly around the group.
“My dad’s Greed, and my mum’s in Wrath,” Babette informed me. “They weren’t too happy when they found out I was in Lust, but they got over it.”
I grimaced. “I don’t think mine will be so forgiving.”
Triston spoke for the first time. “Both my parents are in Gluttony.”
I looked questioningly at Aeron, who shrugged and went back to his breakfast.
“His mum is Greed caste and his dad is Lust like him,” Lulu helpfully interjected.
He glared at her. “If I had cared for her to know, I would have told her myself,” he reprimanded, barely sparing me a glance as he got up and moved away.
“What crawled up his ass and died?” Nelly wondered in a hushed voice.
“His mother isn’t Professor Saxon, is she?”
Lulu nodded. “The very same.”
Then, without qualm or warning, she turned and kissed Ryon in a full-on, open-mouthed snog.
“Ignore her,” Nelly advised. “She never really wakes up until she’s gotten her daily dose of power.”
Sure enough, Lulu turned directly from Ryon and straight to Triston, giving him the same treatment.
I watched in amazement. “Is that allowed?” I asked and then became even more confused as Ryon and Triston kissed each other as well.
“Unless they state otherwise, all Lusts engage with each other at will,” Nelly told me. “They are the three promiscuities. For them, the more people involved the better.”
“Are you opposed to being with women?” Babette asked curiously. I gave her a guilty look and she sighed. “All the gorgeous ones are always straight.”
“She’s not in a relationship anyway,” Nelly smirked. “Hardly your type,”
Babette shrugged. “I can have people who don’t feed my power, y’know,” she retorted. “I’m in the Adultery sub-caste.” She explained to me, then hurried to explain. “I get power from making people become unfaithful, but it’s not always cheating. Sometimes I get power just from making people late for meetings with friends by distracting them, once I even made a girl forget about her sandwich and I got a boost.”
I leaned forward, interested. “Is that a common sub-caste?”
“More common than some.” She shrugged. “Not as common as Nelly though.”
“Is Aeron a Desire?” I asked.
“No.” Nelly cast a cautious glance his way. “Aeron is an Aphrodisia.”
“A what?”
She shrugged. “I’m not really sure how to explain it. He feeds his power off the … intimacy people feel?” She turned to Babette, who nodded.
“That’s how I understand it anyway,” she confirmed. “Sex works, obviously, but so does hand holding, eye contact, even brushing against someone.”
I stared at his back, completely confused by all of this. And when he sensed my look, and turned to stare me in the eye, I stared back, surprised by my own boldness.
I broke the stare first, only because Nelly called my attention back to the group with her announcement. “Lilith has gotten out of Pruitt’s classes.”
Ryon broke from the entanglement that he was in with Lulu and Triston and stared at me in shock. “How did you manage that?” he demanded.
I pointed at the horns. “She refuses to teach me because of these.”
“What are you going to do when it comes to the summer solstice ball?” Babette asked. “I still mucked things up and I had a full year’s worth of lessons under my belt.”
“I guess I won’t go…” I murmured.
Nelly dropped her spoon at my reply, splattering herself with porridge. “You have to go!” She argued. “That’s the event where they formally recognise you as a demon.” I stared blankly. “You’re as bad as unshown without the elders’ blessing,” she told me. “You need a teacher.”
“I’ll just ask to copy someone’s notes,” I assured her.
“Make sure you do,” Lulu told me, breaking away from Triston with a last kiss. “They can refuse to recognise you if you don’t observe the proper formalities.”
I groaned. Just when I thought life had gotten easier.
Chapter 8
A month later, frustration began to gnaw at me. Three more students had joined Lust since me, and all of them had nearly instantly discovered their sub-castes. Two were Desire, and the third had discovered they were Adultery. All the while I remained in the dark as to my own source of power.
As I chucked clothes across my bedroom in an effort to find my lost hairbrush, I wished that I’d eaten more at dinner. Now I was back at Carnal Tower, waiting for the bell to sound downstairs that signalled Vrosis was ready to teach us. Lulu hummed absently as she lay on the bed, drawing my attention to her.
“You know, it would have been so good if you’d just been a Desire like everyone else,” she echoed my earlier train of thought. “If only there weren’t so many sub-castes.” She sighed.
Nelly and Lulu had taken it upon themselves to try and help me discover mine in an effort to prevent me from needing to undergo a testing, something that Vrosis was beginning to hint at constantly.
Vrosis was our caste tutor. He was an elder of the Lust caste and every night would tutor us in the history of our caste. He was also ultimately responsible for helping each first year discover their source of power as soon as possible, which I was failing desperately at. I chucked a cushion across the room in frustration
“I don’t understand what’s wrong with me!” I groaned. “Why can’t I be normal? Why did I have to have horns and a stupid unknown sub-caste?”
Lulu shrugged and tried to placate me. “I really thought the intimacy experiment would work.”
I growled as I remembered sitting in a dark room staring into Ryon’s eyes for hours. He’d been sweet about the whole thing, but I definitely wasn’t an Aphrodisia.
“Maybe you have to go further for it to show,” Lulu suggested. “Perhaps it will only show up if you go all the way.”
I cringed. “I don’t want to go all the way with anyone though,” I complained. “Ryon and Triston would just use it as a way to feed their own power.” And there were no real alternatives to the two of them.
“Aeron?” Lulu asked.
“Are you kidding? The man hates me!” I growled, thinking of all the petty things he did to continuously piss me off. Like the tiny staring contests and tripping me up with his power in the corridors, not to mention the sensation of phantom fingers on my horns that wouldn’t leave for hours afterwards.
And then there was the fact that he happened to be one of the most attractive males I’d ever seen.
Lulu chucked a cushion at my head.
I looked up, only to find a scowling Aeron looking down at me.
My eyes widened. Lulu hadn’t been suggesting him, she’d been telling me that Aeron had come into my room.
He raised a single, quizzical eyebrow, and the sensation of having my horns stroked happened again. I slammed a hand down on one, trying to itch the sensation away, all the while glaring at him.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“This came for you,” he told me, amusement flickering in his yellow eyes. “And for the record, I don’t hate you. On the contrary, I adore irritating you.”
I snatched the letter from him, still itching at my horn.
“Thanks,” I muttered, instantly recognising the writing.
My mother had finally written back. After receiving a letter a day from her until my showing, her prolonged period of silence had worried me so much I had written to her. I’d been waiting for a reply for over a week.
