Page 7 of House of Ydril

She doesn’t say anything, but I sense the prince tense up beside me. He quickly pushes past me and walks straight to the seat that Leo wanted for himself. I follow suit, returning to my own table.

When I look at her again, I see the Pied Piper gliding towards the table on the podium at the front of the hall. I breathe a sigh of relief.

I’m so shocked to see her again, I barely register the people who I can only assume are professors filing into the hall after her.

And I guess I should feel lucky that I’ve managed to come out of this unscathed, but I just feel like an idiot.

Even without the creepy back alley serving as the backdrop, the Pied Piper’s presence sends shivers down my spine. As she glides up to her seat, a tall chair made out of wood and bone, I watch the hem of her charcoal cloak glide across the polished stone. She’s sharpness, boldness, elegance all at once.

While the rest of the professors take their seats, she remains standing in front of her place setting. She doesn’t have to say or do anything to silence the chatter. As soon as she reaches for the tall glass filled to the brim with what seems to be some kind of reddish champagne, everyone goes silent.

I notice the same glass with the same liquid appear in front of me. Then her clear, commanding, slightly bored voice fills the room, making me shudder a little.

“This is the third year I’ve had the privilege to address you all at the start of the year,” she drawls as her mesmerizing eyes sweep over us all. They don’t linger on me, which makes me at the same time relieved and disappointed.

“And I know you’d gladly listen to me for hours,” she continues, making quite a few students chuckle, “but there’s really only one thing I have to say to you today.”

When she pauses, there’s such silence, I could hear a fly.

“The blood gin is supposed to be excellent,” she says, raises her glass and downs the whole thing.

Almost instantly, the students start clapping and cheering, following suit with their own drinks. I don’t even raise my glass. I’m simply too stupefied.

Almost as soon as I found out who kidnapped me, I looked for information on her online. Johanna de Groot. She seems to have been many things throughout the course of her long life. The solemn heiress to a sixteenth-century nobleman. The woman who tracked the Mad King Aeres’ army down, ripped all of their throats out and bathed in their blood… Stuff like that.

And here she is, the 127th Pied Piper cracking jokes at the opening ceremony.

As I watch her take her seat, I down my own blood gin and instantly regret it. I feel drunk, but it can’t be. I’ve barely had two fingers of this shit.

Still, the world around me suddenly has that veil of softness drawn all over it. And I feel the familiar mix of excitement and longing flooding my senses.

I want to eat everything there is to eat, and then some. I want to take some more blood gin and go wandering around the castle until I know every nook and cranny. I want to climb to the top of its highest tower and yell ‘What the fuck is going on’.

I only do one of those things. As soon as the food starts appearing on the table in front of me, I start eating like crazy. I don’t even care that everyone seems to act as if I’m some pariah. Because Nuala was right. The Grimm Academy cheesecake is the best damn cheesecake I’ve ever had.

By the time dinner is over, I’m drunk, stuffed and sleepy as fuck. Some stuck-up fae-blooded girl comes to my table and waves me over as if I’m an animated piece of luggage. I throw on my warmest smile and I push myself out of my chair.

“Come, I’ll show you to your room,” she says when I finally manage to stagger to where she’s waiting for me.

“You’re like an angel sent from heaven,” I chuckle, thinking I might even be able to fall asleep without my run.

The girl throws me a half-disgusted look. “Angel? Cringe.”

“Wow,” I drawl. “No angels then. Gotcha.”

The girl just rolls her eyes and keeps walking, but she cranes her neck a little to add, “I’m also supposed to tell you that someone left some stuff for you in your room.”

“Stuff? For me? Who?” I ask, frowning and trying to suppress a burp.

“Your parents? Your second grade Maths teacher?” she recites as she shoots me an annoyed look. “How the hell amIsupposed to know?”

Parents. It’s the only word that sticks with me, leaving me breathless, speechless. And by the time the girl leaves me in front of my room, the entire world around me is spinning in one continuous, slow motion that makes me sick to my stomach. All my life, I’ve been alone, bouncing from one foster home to another. But it’s also true that all my life, I’d thought that I was human.

Apparently, I’m not. And it seems safe to conclude that my parents weren’t either.

Oraren’teither.

Because if everything else was a lie, maybe the bit about the dead parents is, too.

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