Page 28 of Ruthless Reign

“Twenty minutes left, class,” Ms. Benchwright’s voice reached me, pulling me out of my intense concentration enough that I really realized what I’d done.

My stomach turned as I leaned back in my stool, feeling the tight ache in my shoulders from being hunched over for so long, but ignoring it.

A shuddering breath left my lips as I took in the additions and changes. I’d added hollow cheeks. Leached the color from my skin and stole it out of my brown eyes, leaving them a faded, milky, unseeing white. Dead eyes rimmed with red that leaked from each eye, dropping two perfect crimson tears, one for each cheek.

But what drew the eye most wasn’t the corpse of Becca Hart. It was the moth where my mouth should’ve been. Unfinished. Ms. Benchwright had interrupted me as I was finishing the skull on its feathery back.

I swallowed past a hard lump in my throat and dropped my brush.

“You okay?” the girl next to me asked and my stool screeched as I stood too quickly, turning away from her before she could see my face, the burning, angry tears in my eyes.

“Fine. Just need a new brush.”

I raced to the supply closet, locking myself inside, letting the warm scents of the wooden shelving and paint soothe me.

I couldn’t get the image out of my head. Those vacant eyes. The way I imagined that moth would be eating away at my dead lips.

Choking on a sob, I turned, pressing my back to the door and shutting my eyes. I chose to stay. Despite the danger. Despite everything.

It’s okay to be scared, I told myself. It’d be fucking insane if you weren’t.

The back shelf rattled, and I gasped, squinting to see through the shitty light in the supply room. There was only one window. A tiny octagonal thing high near the ceiling, covered in five years’ worth of dust and cobwebs.

“Hello?”

A shadow separated itself from the darkened corner, coming around the shelf. I spun, blood rushing in my ears, my hand closing over the door handle with a scream in my throat.

Strong hands gripped me. One over my mouth, muffling my cry, the other tearing my hand away from the handle, dragging me back into the dark.

I squirmed, struggling against his hold, kicking out, but my feet connected only with open air.

“Rebecca,” he whispered violently into my ear. “It’s me. It’s me.”

Aodhán.

My eyes flew wide and I stomped my feet down, getting him in his instep. A sharp curse caressed the shell of my ear.

“Fuck, stop fighting. I’m not going to hurt you. Stop. Just stop.”

The authority in his tone burst whatever panic bubble had been forming in my brain and I struggled to breathe through the grip he had on my face. I stopped fighting, standing very, very still.

“Please. Don’t scream.”

He released my face, and I hauled air into my lungs until they burned.

He held his hand up.

I looked down at his other one around my waist.

His jaw flexed, but he released me.

I waited one beat. Two.

And bolted for the door.

He easily spun me back, and I landed hard on my ass as he positioned himself in front of it, blocking my exit. “Damnit, Rebecca,” he hissed. “I’m not here to harm you.”

I opened my mouth to shout, but…stopped, something he said registering through the logic-shredding thoughts racing around in my head.

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