“Never is a long time,” Rocco says. “You’ve taken Torture Techniques, haven’t you? With the delightful Professor Penmark? You’re a good student, Zoe. I’m sure you were listening when he told you that it’s possible to withstand torture for a time. Days, weeks, months . . . But in the end . . . everybody breaks.”
Jasper and Wade have an iron grip on my wrists. I look between them, trying to decide if either of them has the tiniest spark of humanity. Jasper’s face is cold and expressionless, his green eyes as pale and translucent as sea glass. Wade is much more animated, struggling to hold back his grin.
I turn to Jasper.
“Let go of me,” I plead.
Jasper’s eyes meet mine and perhaps for a fraction of a second he considers it, but his fingers never loosen on my wrist, and his lips remain tightly closed.
“He’s not going to help you.” Rocco laughs his strange laugh that’s little more than an exhale. “Nobody can help you, Zoe.”
He takes a knife from his pocket and flicks open the blade. The steel dazzles in the sunlight—it looks like it’s on fire.
“Hold her steady,” he says.
The boys hold my wrists and upper arms, shoving me against the stone so I can barely even wriggle. I wouldn’t dare thrash around. The knife is too close.
Rocco points the blade directly at my right eye. He brings the knife closer and closer, until its pointed tip presses into the flesh at the corner of my eye.
“I could cut your eyeball right out of its socket,” he says. “Then you couldn’t give me that insolent look anymore. You could still do everything I require with one eye.”
Now I do feel Jasper’s fingers twitch around my wrist. He’s not completely comfortable with this, probably because he’s scared of the Rule of Recompense.
“You can’t,” I say to Rocco, to remind him.
“Why?” Rocco says, still poking me with the knife. “Why can’t I?”
“They’ll do the same to you,” I tell him.
That’s the laws of Kingmakers. If you damage another student—break their arm, cut off their hand, slit their throat . . . the same will be done to you. It’s to prevent war from breaking out between families. It’s the old law. An eye for an eye.
“That’s true,” Rocco says softly. “Except . . . you belong to me, Zoe. Your parents already signed the marriage contract. So anything I do to you . . . it’s like I did it to myself. There’s no recompense.”
I don’t know if that’s true or not.
But I really don’t want to find out.
It’s clear that Rocco believes it to be true.
“Beg me to stop,” he says. He starts to dig the knife into my flesh.
My lips are pressed tight together.
I won’t beg. I’ll never beg.
The blade bites into me and I feel something warm and wet run down from the corner of my eye, like bloody tears.
The knife feels like a hot brand. I can feel Rocco twisting it, angling the point toward my eyeball . . .
“Stop!” I cry.
“That’s not begging,” Rocco hisses.
“Please stop!”
Now I am crying actual tears. They run down both sides of my face, stinging and burning when they hit the cut on the right side.
Rocco pulls back his knife. My blood glistens on its tip.
“That’s better,” he says.
He slashes open the front of my shirt, being none too careful with the knife. It leaves shallow cuts on my chest and the tops of my breasts. He cuts my bra open too, so my tits spill out.
Now both Jasper and Wade are intently interested.
“Holy shit,” Wade says. “Who woulda thought she had a porn-star body under those nun clothes.”
“I knew,” Rocco says, in a tone of deep satisfaction.
Three pairs of eyes crawl over my bare flesh. I’ve always been ashamed of my breasts. Ashamed of my body. Not because I think it’s ugly, but because of the way it betrays me, drawing the attention of the men I least want to notice me.
“Go ahead,” Rocco says to Wade. “Touch them.”
Wade scans Rocco’s face, like he thinks it might be a trick. “You sure?”
“I’m giving you permission,” Rocco says in his soft, hissing voice.
Wade doesn’t care about my permission. He stares at my tits. All intelligence has left his face. His cheeks are flushed and there’s nothing but dull, hungry lust in his eyes.
He cups my breasts in both hands, lifting them and then dropping them. My stomach is churning. I’ve never been more humiliated.
“Fucking hell,” he breathes. “You’re gonna have so much fun with these, Rocco.”
Seeing that Rocco won’t stop him, he squeezes my breasts hard in his hands, then pinches the nipples, making me gasp.
He’s watching Rocco the whole time. He doesn’t give a fuck how I react to this.
“Jasper?” Rocco says, offering his other friend to take his turn.
Jasper considers, his face impassive.
“I’m good,” he says at last. He’s still holding my right wrist, but not as tightly as before. I don’t think he’s enjoying this as much as Wade. Not that he’s doing fuck-all to stop it.
“What now?” Wade says, his tongue darting out to moisten his lower lip.
“Now Zoe pays her debt,” Rocco says, looking at me with his head tilted slightly to the side. In the bright sunshine, his blue eyes with their flecks of black look like panes of shattered glass. “The night of our engagement party, your stepmother promised me something, Zoe. Do you know what that was?”
I try to swallow, but my mouth is too dry. The cut at the corner of my eye still burns, and my breasts ache everywhere Wade touched them. I slowly shake my head.
“She agreed that I was free to consummate the marriage,” Rocco says, his eyes boring into mine. “Anytime I wanted.”
Through numb lips, I say, “We’re not married yet.”
“Close enough,” Rocco says, and he moves to close the gap between us. To seize me and cut off my skirt, I have no doubt.
As Rocco moves forward, Jasper releases my wrist, stepping back to give him space. Wade isn’t holding me at all, having let go so he could grope me with both hands.
I have one brief second of freedom.
Rocco swoops down on me like a vampire, teeth bared in his version of a smile.
I act on instinct, without thought or plan.
All I know is that I have to get away from Rocco. I’ll never grovel for him again, I’ll never beg. I’ll never let him touch me.
He says I’ll be a caged bird—well, I’ll fly one last time at least.
In that moment of madness, I fling myself over the ramparts.
5
Miles
I’m making the long and tedious walk from the library back to my dorm when someone says, “Stop!”
That’s strange, because there’s no one around to say “Stop.” There’s no one around me at all. It’s the middle of second period, and all the students are safely ensconced in their classes.
I’m supposed to be annotating a territory contract with Ozzy. We had all our legal textbooks spread out on the table all around us, ready to hunt down every last consideration and clause, until Ozzy realized he forgot the actual fucking document in our dorm.