The sound of splintering wood was like music to my ears. I kicked again, my energy renewed, the adrenaline of a possible escape rushing right through me, making it so much easier to ignore the pain. Eventually, I managed to separate the door from its lock entirely, and then I was prying it open.
Take that, bitch-face, I growled internally, not even sure if I was aiming the curse at Elowin, or the door. I slipped through, turned around and flipped the room my middle finger, before sprinting off down the hallway. If anyone else had been stuck in there, I was sure that they never would have found their way out; the hallways all looked the same, and some of the stairways led to nowhere. The wing wanted to keep people locked up. That much was clear. But the wing couldn’t do shit against a soul-splintered dweller, with an in-built tracking device leading right back to her Abcurses.
I mean, not mine. The Abcurses.
I spilled out into a main corridor of the academy just as another girl passed by, colliding with me.
“Oh, gods, I’m so sorry—Willa?” Emmy screeched, before grabbing my shoulders and shaking me, far too violently for my protesting bones. “Do you have any idea—ugh, you know what. Never mind. Tell me what happened. I saw Elowin throw a bag over your head and drag you this way like three rotations ago, but then she disappeared and I couldn’t follow her. Your … sols were nowhere I could find so I’ve just been scouring these hallways …”
I pushed her hands away and pulled her into a hug. “Thank you,” I muttered, pressing my face into her shoulder.
It felt good to hold her. To celebrate the fact that I had battled not only a pain-gifted mega-sol, but also a magical room. A magical damn room! Hugging my almost-sister seemed like the best way to celebrate, and she didn’t seem to mind. Until she realised that I was crying.
“What did they do to you?” She jerked back, pressing a palm to my cheek, her murderous eyes flicking over my shoulder.
“Happy tears, that’s all,” I choked out, mostly lying. Her gaze narrowed, clearly disbelieving, but I started to move past her. “I need to find the Abcurses. This pain is killing me, and I don’t mean that in the way I usually mean it, because I’m pretty sure it’s actually killing me.”
I let my body drag me in the right direction, and Emmy trailed behind, occasionally tossing a glare to whomever dared to get in our way.
“Are you skipping some kind of cleaning duty or something right now?” I asked her, concerned. It wasn’t that I didn’t think she would drop everything if she thought I was in danger, but I didn’t want her to jeopardise her future just because I seemed to have a gift for trouble.
“No, I finished everything early, and then I came looking for … watch out!” she suddenly exclaimed, but it was too late.
I smacked into another body and the sounds of silver serving dishes and cutlery clattering against the stone made me wince.
“Willa?” a familiar voice questioned, before hands steadied me.
“Oh, hey, Atti.” I crouched down, helping him gather up his stuff … except that I wasn’t really helping, because he wasn’t doing anything. He was staring at Emmy with the weirdest look on his face.
“Thanks for coming to get me earlier,” Emmy said softly, returning his weird look with a weird look of her own.
What the hell? When did that happen?
“Did you get to the arena in time?” he asked, stepping around the fallen crap that I was still trying to gather, and looking down at her, the absolute picture of gentlemanly concern.
Maybe I should just leave all of his stuff and give them a bit of privacy, except … well, it was kind of hard to look away. Besides, I was right there. Right in front of him. So she obviously got to the arena on time. Seriously.
My chest throbbed again, distracting me from Emmy’s answer. I dropped the platter I had been holding, glancing at Emmy over Atti’s shoulder. Emmy and Atti. Hah. Even their names rhymed. That was so lame. And cute. I clearly had mixed feelings about it. Emmy wasn’t even looking at me. Her eyes were stuck on his, pink rising in her cheeks. I quickly turned, hurrying down the hall in the direction of the five idiots who had accidently stolen my life-force.
Fifteen
I stormed back through the castle like some kind of wild buckhorn, with the huge, cumbersome antlers that topped their deer-like heads. Except that my antlers were my arms, and they kept swinging out and accidently whacking all kinds of people and things. If I didn’t already know it to be impossible, I would have said that my clumsy-curse had suddenly gotten a whole lot worse, but that really was impossible, because it was already about as bad as clumsy-curses got.