King of Swords (Stormcloud Academy 1)

I arrived at the dining hall after the majority had found their seats and were eating. Once my attendant saw me enter, he leaped up to get my food. I noticed that those around me kept a wider distance from me than before. I liked the way it felt—it felt powerful. I was getting high on the word alone.

I went to my normal seat. One table over, my old spiteful dining companion Jabba eyed me sideways, but she didn’t say a word.

I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Zephyr.

“How’s my girl?” he asked. “Did Sol tell you the good news?”

“He did,” I replied cheerily. “That’s amazing.”

“We need to get you out of that dank hole. It doesn’t look right, my lady living in squalor.” He gave me a patronizing pat on the cheek.

The old me wouldn’t have tolerated that kind of manhandling. But I seemed to be willing to let Zephyr handle me any way he wanted.

“I got business,” he said obliquely. “Meet me in the portico after dinner tonight.”

With that, he spun on one foot and walked away. There was nothing to do but for me to go back to the lunch that had been set before me while we were talking. I was just about to start my vanilla pudding when Jabba began staring at me, a sniggering grin on her face. She elbowed the other creature and pointed toward me as she said something.

“What are you looking at?” I barked at her.

Jabba stopped giggling, and I thought she looked frightened. “I just spat in my pudding and then switched with yours. You’re eating my spit.”

I dropped the small bowl with a clank onto the plate and wiped my mouth with my napkin. Turning toward her to say something, I noticed her eyes were huge and bugged out. She was clutching at her throat and looking wildly around. A terrible, gurgling sound emitted from her throat, and then, without any effort whatsoever, her head dropped forward into her bowl of pudding.

The other creature screamed, and even I called out, “Help! Get a medic!”

People stood to see what was going on, and it took the medic precious seconds to sort out where the call had come from amid the milling curiosity seekers. By the time they got to Jabba, they went for a pulse but shook their heads.

Jabba was dead.

Chapter 21

Biba

Jabba’s body wasn’t even wheeled to the morgue when I found that my belongings had been moved into her room.

“We changed out the mattress and the bedding,” one of the custodians assured me.

I was still shellshocked. Never in my life had I seen someone just die in front of me. Plus, I couldn’t help shaking the fear that the poison came from the pudding that she took from my tray.

The flip side of that particular fear was that the poison might have been meant for Jabba after all. All morning, the Kings had been assuring me that I’d have my own accommodations soon. And wouldn’t you know it … now, I did.

I glanced out the open door into the corridor. Standing about twenty yards away, my first roommate, Buffy, stared uncertainly at me. I looked back and gave her a wan smile. She had been kind to me during my first hellish days at this school, and I didn’t repay her especially well. I would have to fix that. If Zephyr Williams could become my lover, Buffy could surely be a friend.

She didn’t return my smile, though. Her big eyes went wide, her pink Southern cheeks went pale, and she hurried away.

Buffy was scared of me. They all were.

“Did you do this, Zephyr?” I demanded to know.

It was dusk, and the waning daylight filtered through the stained-glass dome above us, casting little diamonds of gold, glue, and carrion red. I couldn’t stomach dinner, so I walked straight to the portico without eating and waited.

“What are you talking about?” he replied peevishly.

“The room. The dead girl’s room.”

“Oh, yeah. The German chubby. Tough luck for her.”

“Was this the plan to get me a room, Zephyr? I’m serious. I need to know.”

For a moment, Zephyr’s face was stone. His stare pushed through me, unimpressed with my resolve. Then, he blinked. Then, he grinned. Then, he cracked up.

“Are you serious, Quinn?” he chortled. “Do you think I would kill someone to get you a room?”

“It’s not crazy,” I protested.

“Um, yeah. It kind of is. We were gonna make some guys shack up three-to-a-room for the rest of term to free something up. I was just deciding which poor kids had to move. Whatshername keeling over made things a little easier. Did you seriously think we poisoned that fatty? Do you even know how rich her family is? They build half the industrial drills in Austria.”

“You and I both know that fucked-up stuff happens in this school.”