The Bully (Kingmakers)

by Sophie Lark

  “I know I am,” I say, barely holding back a laugh. “I’m better than everyone here.”

  “Everyone?” Snow asks, his voice low and dangerous.

  I realize too late what I implied. But I won’t take it back now. Maybe I am better than this washed-up has-been. He’s got to be in his mid-forties at least, maybe even fifty. I’m twenty-one years old and a physical specimen. I think I can take him.

  “Maybe so,” I say, folding my arms across my chest.

  “Let’s find out,” Snow says softly.

  Instinctively, the rest of the students form a circle around us, giving us plenty of space.

  I face the old boxer without fear, only keen interest.

  I’ve always believed I could beat anyone in a fight. Perhaps it’s time to prove it.

  Everyone is watching: Leo, Ares, Ilsa Markov—Vanya Antonov with ill-disguised malice. He wants me to lose. Fuck him and fuck this teacher.

  “Begin,” Snow says.

  I attack hard and fast, ferocious and unafraid. I’ll show the old man what I’m made of. I’ll remind him what youth looks like.

  I throw a flurry of punches directly at his face, the fastest combinations to ever leave my gloves.

  Every single one misses.

  It’s like Snow has turned to rubber. His hulking frame dips and glides with eerie speed, slipping away from me like oil on water. His feet are a blur of motion, his body tight and precise as he rolls his shoulders. My blows glance off, even ricochet. I can’t land a clean punch, not anywhere on his person.

  It’s a nightmare. All my strength and speed evaporates in the face of his skill.

  He’s not even trying to hit me back.

  With a grunt of rage, I attack him even harder, sure that if I redouble my efforts, something has to hit. I’m panting and sweating, because this is the secret of boxing: the most exhausting thing you can do in a fight is throw a punch and miss. Impact rejuvenates; punching air will suck the life out of you.

  I’m trying to speed up, but instead I’m getting slower and clumsier. Despite countless hours of running and jump rope and bag work, I’m tiring, I’m actually tiring. This has never happened to me before.

  And still Snow hasn’t thrown a single punch.

  He waits until I realize the awful truth: I’m about to lose.

  Then he goes to work on my body.

  He hits me with tight, hard punches that feel like rocks propelled into my sides. I know he’s holding back, using only a fraction of his strength. And yet the air grunts out of me, forced from my lungs by the relentless impact.

  He begins to taunt me.

  “You think because you have abs, you’re ready to box?”

  THUD. THUD.

  He hits me in the ribs, the kidney, right in the gut.

  My eyes water and my breath wheezes out, I’m dizzy and light-headed because I can’t draw a full breath. A punch to the jaw can shut off your brain, but bodywork takes the heart out of you.

  “You think because you can beat up a boy, you’re ready to face a man?”

  THUD. THUD. THUD.

  I try to block the blows as Snow did, but my arms are burning and aching. I can’t even hold my gloves up anymore. I’ve become as dazed and weak as Tristan.

  I won’t give up. I won’t be beaten—not by this old man, not in front of everyone.

  Roaring, I attack him again with a combination that never loses, my own creation that uses an unexpected overhand right, sandwiched by a jab, a hook, and a cross.

  Sure enough, as he shifts to block the overhand right, I’m able to hit him with the cross. The punch is straight and true, direct into his jaw. A punishing blow that should knock him on his ass.

  It does . . . nothing. Absolutely nothing. It’s like he can’t even feel it.

  It evokes no anger in him, no pain. I may as well not even exist.

  Snow responds by hitting me in the face two, three, four times in quick succession. The last punch feels like an explosion in my head, like he shoved a stick of dynamite in my mouth and lit the fuse. I fall straight backward.

  I sink all the way through the mats, down, down, into the blackness of the earth.

  Faintly, a low voice murmurs, “Class dismissed.”

  I hear shuffling feet.

  No jeers, no exclamations, not even from Vanya.

  They’re all as shocked as I am.

  Or as shocked as I was, when I still had conscious thought.

  I drift in darkness, until I feel something cold pressed against my face.

  Snow has hauled me to my feet and sat me on a stack of mats. He presses a bag of ice against the swollen left side of my face.

  His broad face swims into view. Unmarked by any punch from me—bearing only the scars of better men.

  His blue eyes stare into mine. Still clear and hard as ice, but not cold. Instead, I see something far worse in them, something more painful.

  I see pity.

  “I’m not your enemy,” Snow says.

  “Then I’d hate to see what you do to people you don’t like,” I mumble, through bruised lips.

  Snow chuckles.

  “You show promise, Dean. You’re bold. Your technique is reasonably good.”

  I bristle. Even after that humiliating defeat, I deserve better praise.

  “You will never learn to conquer your opponent if you can’t conquer yourself,” Snow says.

  “There’s no one more disciplined than me,” I retort. “I never miss a day of training. Never eat one fucking thing I shouldn’t. I hone the mind and the body.”

  “And what about this?” Snow says, laying one heavy, calloused hand on my chest.

  I shake it off, irritated by his presumption.

  He doesn’t know me. He doesn’t know anything about me. What the fuck is he even talking about? A lot of spiritualistic nonsense.

  “I will be the best fighter at this school!” I inform him. “And that includes you. By graduation day—”

  “I’m only staying a year,” Snow says, standing up. “I came here as a favor to the Chancellor.”

  “To teach us to box?”

  “Actually, he needed a new medic,” Snow chuckles. “Herman Cross retired. My wife Sasha is a doctor. She agreed to fill in for a year until they could find someone permanent. I’m just tagging along.”

  “Oh,” I say, not sure how to respond. I hadn’t imagined Snow having a wife and possibly children. He hardly seemed human, before this moment.

  “Keep ice on that face,” Snow says, standing up. “I’ll see you on Wednesday.”

  4

  Cat

  I don’t know how in the fuck I’m going to survive two more years at Kingmakers with Dean, if he couldn’t wait until we got to the island to start harassing me.

  I don’t understand why he even wants to.

  I mean, I know I embarrassed him, catching him in an unguarded moment. But at the end of the day, he’s one of the most skilled and feared students at the school, while I’m a fucking nobody. If he weren’t keeping an eye out for me, he probably never would have noticed me again for the rest of our lives.

  I’ve never done anything dramatic or surprising in my whole damn life. Except the one thing Dean happened to see.

  God, what a comedy of errors. The fucking luck I have . . .

  Why, why, why did it have to be Dean who saw me? If it were anybody else, they wouldn’t have thought two things about it.

  Only Dean already had a grudge against me.

  Only Dean is conniving enough to put the pieces together.

  This man has been living in my head rent-free all summer long, when I should have been enjoying my first trip to America—two uninterrupted, blissful months in which the Griffins were overwhelmingly kind to me, including Caleb Griffin, Miles’ little brother, who was so friendly and attentive that Zoe thought he had a puppy-love crush.

  I don’t think that was the case. Like Miles, Caleb just likes to prove himself. In this case he wanted to prove what
a good host he could be.

  Still, we’re friends now, and I’m glad Caleb will be coming to Kingmakers next year.

  I shouldn’t have been fretting over Dean the whole summer, yet I could hardly think of anything else. He popped into my head a hundred times a day. He haunted my nightmares.

  But my worst dreams featured Rocco Prince.

  I’ll never forget the look of pure hatred on his face as the noose tightened around his wrist, jerking him forward. I’ll never forget the way his knife sliced down at me, missing my face by millimeters, before he was jerked over the parapet.

  And then the long, strangled howl as he tumbled down . . .

  And the birds. The fucking birds.

  As we returned from the Quartum Bellum, I saw that flock of gulls wheeling and circling over where Rocco had fallen, screeching like they were screaming my guilt to everyone around. Tattling on me.

  They dove down to the rocks, squabbling and fighting as they tore his body apart. Then they rose up in the air again, their beaks stained with blood.

  I can hardly hear the sound of a gull without vomiting all over again. Their cry is a constant reminder of what I did. An accusation and a threat. Proof that what I thought could be hidden was instead immediately discovered in a way I never would have guessed.

  I rip a comb through my damp curls, trying to clear my head.

  I’m in the shared bathroom of the Undercroft, the air full of steam from the students taking their early morning showers.

  I found Dean crying in a bathroom very much like this.

  Why was he so upset that day?

  Why did the death of Ozzy’s mother strike him so hard?

  I don’t understand Dean Yenin. I don’t understand why he’s so full of rage and bitterness.

  God my head is a jumble of thoughts, none of them pleasant.

  Rakel comes to stand at the mirror next to mine, her short, choppy hair already drying, and a towel wrapped around her body. Her face looks blank without her makeup, as if she hasn’t put on her personality for the day.

  “What’s wrong?” she asks me.

  “Nothing,” I say.

  “You look stressed.”

  “I’m fine.”

  There it is again. Nobody is ever actually fine.

  I watch Rakel arrange her collection of brushes and pots, then begin the delicate process of painting her face.

  Anna Wilk tends toward classic goth makeup, but Rakel’s oeuvre is much more varied. Some days she looks vampiric with dark red lipstick and chalk-white cheeks. Others she looks consumptive with pink all around her eyes and dark shadows under her cheekbones. And some days, like today, she resembles a wicked fairy with thick black liner, two-inch lashes, and shades of sparkly purple all over her eyelids, cheeks, and even the tip of her nose.

  She finishes her look with three different nose rings, a spiked eyebrow stud, and a serpentine cuff that winds up her ear.

  “You’re an artist,” I tell her.

  Rakel smiles. “Thank you,” she says. “That actually means something, coming from you.”

  “I filled half my sketchbook this summer,” I say, with a glimmer of happiness. “The Bean, the Willis Tower, the Ferris wheel . . . now I’ll never forget what I saw in Chicago.”

  “You should show me after class.”

  I look at my own decidedly less-interesting reflection in the mirror.

  I’ve never dressed with much panache. I’m so petite that my clothes swim on me. Half the time I look like a kid playing dress-up. My hair is a mess of black curls. My face . . . cute, I suppose. But nowhere near as stunning as Zoe’s. She’s the beautiful one. I’ve always just been the kid-sister.

  “Could I borrow a little makeup?” I ask Rakel.

  “Sure.” She shrugs.

  I stare at the rainbow array of products, having no actual idea what I’m doing.

  Rakel laughs. “You want some help?”

  “Yes, please,” I say gratefully. “I mean . . . I’m not trying to dazzle anybody. I just want to spice my face up a little.”

  Rakel surveys my features with a professional objectivity.

  “Your eyes are your best feature,” she pronounces. “And we’ll keep your freckles.”

  She starts painting my face.

  I watch in the mirror to see what she does.

  It really is like painting, in the sense that she outlines and shades the contours of my face just as you would paint a portrait to show depth and perspective.

  I’m mildly frightened to have those pointed nails so close to my eyeballs, but Rakel works with surprising gentleness. The brushes and powders and creams feel quite lovely against my skin.

  Rakel uses shades of plum, peach, and golden brown that match my Mediterranean coloring quite nicely. When she’s finished, I look older. Confident and glamorous. But still myself, not a wicked fairy.

  “That’s really good!” I say, thoroughly impressed.

  Rakel is pleased. “I watch a lot of tutorials.”

  The fresh look cheers me up a little. I’d rather be Glamorous Cat. She’d know how to keep out of trouble, and how to stand up to Dean without him torpedoing my entire life.

  With new energy, Rakel and I return to our room to change into our uniforms.

  I kept all the same clothes from last year. Yet, as I pull on my skirt, I notice one tiny inch of bare flesh between the top of my knee socks and the bottom of the pleats.

  “Look at that!” I say to Rakel. “I must have grown. A bit, at least.”

  “Wow,” she says, mockingly. “Keep it up and you might hit 5’2.”

  “You’re not tall, either!”

  “Compared to you, I’m Shaquille O’Neal.”

  I scowl at her. “Now I don’t know if I should give you your present. But you did do my makeup pretty nice . . .”

  “What present? What is it?” Rakel demands, eyes bright with curiosity.

  I dig through my half-unpacked suitcase, finding the painting I made for her, carefully backed with cardboard and wrapped with paper so it wouldn’t crumple or flake on the journey over.

  Rakel rips off the brown paper wrapping, eager but careful.

  “Oh!” She gasps, face alight. She turns the painting so I can see it, as if I don’t already know what’s on the canvas. “I’ll hang it up on the wall.”

  “That’s why I made it for you,” I say. “So we’ll have a little life down here.”

  Rakel snorts. The album cover I painted for her is the furthest thing from “life” in the sense that it depicts a Dali-esque sphere of melting skulls, but it’s from Rakel’s favorite band, so I knew it would make her happy.

  “This is a good gift,” she says, in her honest and unsentimental way.

  I’m sure she would have told me it was shit if she didn’t like it. Which is nice, because now I know for certain that I did a good job.

  “Come on,” I say. “We better hurry, or we won’t have time for breakfast before class.”

  Rakel and I hustle up the stairs to ground level, dazzled as always by the brilliant burst of morning sunshine after the soft golden lamplight of the Undercroft.

  We only have a few minutes to stuff ourselves with bacon and coffee before we have to run across campus to the Keep.

  Kingmakers is so large and sprawling that I could stay fit just by sprinting from class to class. Unfortunately for me, that’s not nearly the only exercise I get. My schedule includes grueling conditioning sessions, combat classes, and classes that aren’t meant to be particularly taxing, like Marksmanship and Environmental Adaptation, but which strain my limits all the same because I’m so damn small.

  At least I know what to expect this year. I packed plenty of Band-aids for all the blisters that will blossom on my palms and feet, and I’m already well acquainted with the location of the infirmary and the ice dispensers in the dining hall.

  Rakel and I find our Interrogation class on the second floor of the Keep easily enough. I spread my notebooks and pens out acr
oss my desk, determined to take notes on every single word that comes out of Professor Penmark’s mouth. I want to score well on my exams. In my Freshman year, I was simply trying to survive. This year, I’d like to find out if I might just have what it takes to run with the rest of the mafiosi.

  Professor Penmark slouches into the classroom in his creepy, silent way. He looks even thinner than last year, his pallid skin stretched tight over his bones, his many tattoos a jumble of colorless shapes. He has a long, unsmiling face and dark eyes without any glimmer of life, like a dead thing dug up from the ground.

  I always found him off-putting. Now I despise him.

  I’ll never forget how he dragged the chained-up Ozzy across the floor of the Grand Hall without a hint of sympathy in those black eyes. I almost think he enjoyed it.

  I know he enjoys teaching the Torture Techniques class. He forces us to practice non-lethal torments on our fellow students, including electrocution, stress positions, pressure points, and dry-boarding. If we don’t comply with enough enthusiasm—aka sadism—then he “demonstrates” the procedures himself.

  Luckily, today’s Interrogation class involves only psychological techniques.

  We’ve already covered ego-fragmentation and learned helplessness. Now Professor Penmark lectures us on deception.

  “Information is useless if you cannot tell if it is true or false,” he says, in his thin tenor. “How do you know if your subject is lying?”

  His dark eyes crawl over us as we sit captive behind our desks.

  “Lack of eye contact,” Joss Burmingham guesses. His room is across the hall from mine, but we’ve never spoken because I’ve never seen him outside of class not wearing headphones with the volume turned all the way up. He and Rakel must be in a competition to see who can go deaf first.

  “No—too much eye contact,” Lola Fischer contradicts him.

  Dixie Davis gives Lola an approving nod. The two girls share the room next to mine. They’re both from Biloxi, Mississippi, and were already best friends before they came to Kingmakers.

  “Correct,” Professor Penmark says. “And also incorrect.”

  Lola’s smirk of satisfaction fades away as quickly as it arose. She scowls at the professor, as confused as everyone else in the room.