Page 41 of Soulless Rivalry

“Nonsense!” She waved at me with her hand. “We’re friends, consider it an early or belated birthday gift. When is your birthday by the way?”

I could feel my cheeks redden at the intention. “It was on March 18th.”

“Oh, well, a belated birthday gift it is!”

“Sinem, I can’t let you pay for it.”

Her shoulders dropped and she frowned in confusion. The dress long-forgotten, she suddenly put both her hands on my shoulders.

“Listen, Elyssa, something tells me you are not used to people taking care of you. But taking care of people I love ismy love language, so please, please let me buy you this dress. I mean, come on, it's ten dollars. If you’d thrown a party, I probably would have spent ten times more on my outfit only.” She laughed and I chuckled along, shaking my head.

Before I could even say yes, she was at the checkout, handing over the piece of garment to Old Berthie. The woman who owned the shop had always been nice to us, one of the few inhabitants who didn’t look down on students from the Academy. When she saw us she smiled but, this time, it didn’t reach her eyes. Berthie seemed sad.

“Found what you needed, dear?”

Sinem nodded gracefully. “Yes, thank you so much. I’ll surely come back here soon. When do you get new arrivals?”

Old Berthie looked uncomfortable all of a sudden. She looked between Sinem and me before sighing in defeat. “Nobody can know I warned you, okay? But you girls should go back to that castle of yours.”

“Excuse me?” I frowned, surprised that she would adopt the same behavior as her peers.

But her soft eyes found me and she shook her head, “Not that I don’t want you here. You know I like you girls. But the others… Look, three girls have disappeared since the beginning of the school year and people are starting to get angry.”

“At us?” Mia asked, emerging from the racks with Briar in tow. “You know we didn’t do anything.”

Berthie gulped. “It happened before, girls disappearing. And at the time, their bodies were always found in your woods. Back then, people were too scared to do much, but now… they want revenge. And if they see a group of young girls such as yourselves, alone in the village?—”

“We’re easy targets,” I concluded for her and she nodded, confirming my thoughts.

“Listen, they were planning on breaking into school grounds.”

Briar puffed, “Good luck to them. This school is guarded like fucking Quantico.”

“Well, if they see you here, they might not need to go there. They must’ve been alerted by now. So go, get out and run back to your castle,” she warned, looking around us and toward the front window that gave directly onto the street.

To say I was distraught would be an understatement. That woman told us in no uncertain terms that by staying in town, we risked getting assaulted by a bunch of guys. These same guys also had planned to sneak into the castle to abduct girls and as supposed revenge.

I did not doubt that whatever was going on between the Academy and the village was shady as fuck, especially since Konstantin and I found that newspaper in the secret room the other day. But to think they’d go as far as hurting girls from the Academy simply because they suspected some of the students to have hurt their own?

That was scary as fuck.

“We need to leave.” I grabbed Sinem’s hand and nodded at Mia and Briar to follow us. “Thank you, Berthie.”

She nodded once, acknowledging me, but couldn’t wipe the worried look off her face.

We got out of the store and found ourselves standing directly on Main Street.

People had been staring or looking at us from the corner of their eyes when we arrived, but now that Berthie told us what was going on, I couldn’t help but feel wary of everyone.

“Do you think what she said was true?”

I turned my head to look at Briar who was taking in the people around us too.

“Fuck, I feel like they’re all getting ready to pounce now,” Mia shuddered. “We should get back. Even if what she said was just meant to scare us off, we need to go back.”

I nodded absentmindedly as we all started walking back towards the school grounds in tense silence. No one ever said anything to our faces but the way some of them were glaring at us was pretty telling. I couldn’t help but glance behind us every two steps, waiting for villagers to grab their torches and pitchforks while calling us witches.

The cute Fall and Halloween decorations became creepy all of a sudden; we couldn’t get to the castle soon enough. We continued walking until we finally reached the woods. The start of school property and the first guard post were still a little far, but just the fact that we had reached the tree line without getting mauled or called names somehow was reassuring.

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