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“You’re my daughter, and I will atone for my wrongdoings.” She made a gagging noise. “I’ve chosen to believe that I was conceived through immaculate conception. The sun god endowed my mother’s deranged loins. You aren’t my father.”
Yes, my aesthetic was mental illness; no, I didn’t want to talk about it.
My shoulders ached from carrying the weight of being the coolest person at the academy.
I was no man’s princess. However, I was a whore. Being a slut wasn’t a title, it was a lifestyle.
“Stop fondling me like a freak. And if you think I’ll act like your slave, then you need to be lobotomized. Actually—” She paused like she was thinking. “I recommend just preemptively euthanizing yourself. Your personality is messy, and I don’t see it improving.”
They slept in a pile of limbs. After Malum had had a tantrum and fought the wall (he’d lost), the three of them had climbed into the small bed and promptly passed out. I shivered. Men were such simple, primitive creatures.
Horse must have sensed my unease, because he made a show of pecking at John’s eyeballs. “Good Horsey.” I gave him air kisses. “Mommy loves you.” He squawked back, which roughly translated to, I love you Momma, and pecked harder to show me his devotion.
“Now who’s acting like they’re on their period?” I pointed at Malum and arched my brow. John slapped his hand over his mouth to muffle his laugh. I drew on my inner fae bitch and whispered dramatically to John, “He probably has a heavy flow, but is one of those weak bitches who refuses to use an enchanted period cup because he passes out at the sight of blood.”
Lothaire asked, “What’s going on here?” I studied my cuticles. “Malum needs a tampon.” There was a long moment where my vampyre sire—the only man I’d ever call Daddy was my fictional lover who’d raze the realms for me—stared at me like he was trying to figure out if I was being serious. “Is this a daughter thing?” he asked slowly. “Do you need sanitary products?”
I whispered in John’s ear, “At least we’re not named Corvus Malum. Talk about a mouthful. His mother must have hated him. I think the name Mitch suits him better.” John furrowed his brow and asked, “Why, Mitch?” I smirked. “Male bitch.”
Arabella asked loudly, “How does it feel?” “How does what feel?” Corvus’s voice was harsh. “I’m not talking to you. I’m asking the others,” Arabella said haughtily. “How does it feel to have chosen a misogynistic, ugly fucktard without a single functioning brain cell to be your captain?”
My Revered said, “Flipping you off with both her fingers. Now she’s miming shooting you with a finger gun. Wait, now she’s holding her arm out straight and hitting her inner elbow and pulling her arm up. She just picked up a piece of meat, then stabbed her knife through it. I think she’s pretending it’s you. Now she’s—”
Each day last week I’d woken up and said my morning affirmation: “I am the victim.”
Mentally, I was a slut. Physically, I was terrified of intimacy. Spiritually, I didn’t like men.
There were red flags, and then there were giant glowing signs that said “beware, this man is not good for you.”
Whenever I cut my hair it grew back immediately, but maybe it would grow back untangled. Work smarter not harder.
A red welt immediately appeared on his large pectoral muscle. He had bigger tits than I did. There was a long moment where I debated the merits of buying him a bra
I relaxed into her tight embrace and said, “The energy in here is way better than my room. Our room had a lot of choking and spitting going on. Very creepy.” Ascher coughed aggressively at my words, and all four men turned to stare at me. Xerxes opened his mouth like he was going to ask for an explanation, but then he shook his head like he didn’t want to know.
“Obviously,” I drawled. “Also, I’m flipping you off right now.” I didn’t bother to raise my fingers. It was too much work. “Now I’m sobbing violently,” I said sarcastically.
RIP Horace. You will truly be missed. Gone but never forgotten. Always in our hearts and memories. Fly high, sweet angel.
“But don’t worry, I fixed everything.” John pointed at my arm. A small yellow bandage was placed over a tiny, centimeter-long cut on my hand. The yellow rectangle was next to a gaping wound that ran up my forearm. My sleeve was pushed up to expose it.
As he gently washed me, my will to live went from negative ten to five. It was an improvement, but the scale was out of one hundred.
“Oh, look,” I said as I squinted open my crusty eyes. “Three bastards with mommy issues and the emotional maturity of dead fish.” “We don’t have mothers,” Scorpius snapped. The jokes really wrote themselves. Grabbing at the covers, I pulled them over my head and said, “Exactly.”
“You’re a bunch of soulless, demonic men.” “Hey, that’s offensive,” Vegar said across the room. I winced. “Sorry, let me rephrase.” I waved my hands. “The Devil Kings in this room are horrible pieces of shit. Everyone else is chill. I have no beef with the demon and pathetic human communities.”
My new aesthetic was cozy, drug-dependent swamp monster. Not to brag, but I nailed the look.
“Horse, attack the small, malnourished bitch,” I snarled. My crow didn’t budge from where he was perched on my shoulder. In fact, I was 99 percent certain he rolled his eyes at me. He’d never refused to obey me before. I grumbled at him, “I’m renaming you Rat.”
Scorpius sneered something about me being the problem. Obviously?
I was tired of pretending to heal, I was going to start traumatizing everyone back.
Horse flew around the ceiling and cawed aggressively at everyone in a show of pure might while I sucked on my pipe until the room spun. “Make him shut up,” Malum snarled as he stretched on the floor. I shook my head. “Horse is not a filthy male like you. Don’t lump him in with yourself.”
He stared at me with a sad expression, and I could tell he was trying silently to tell me he cared. I telepathically told him I wished I were adopted.
Well then, I was going to be the best person there ever was. Maybe. Eh, honestly. Probably not.
Next to him, Cobra mimed slitting my throat in the universal “you’re dead” symbol. I mimed grabbing his balls and ripping them off. Ascher glared at both of us. Instead of being intimidated, Cobra took it as a challenge. With a few well-placed hand and feet movements, he graphically depicted shooting me in the forehead. Then he mimed stomping on my corpse.
When Cobra started making another explicit hand gesture, Ascher smacked him and turned to me. “Sorry about him. He’s not house-trained yet.” The look Cobra gave him would make lesser men faint.
Great, now he definitely thought I’d been a virgin loser saving myself for marriage or something embarrassing like that.
“That’s what she said.” A long moment passed as we both processed the fact that I’d repeated a ridiculous, childish joke. I blamed Sadie. There’d been a span of three weeks where that was the only joke she told.
That he hadn’t stalked me down the hall like he wanted to hurt me. The former without the latter was hot. The former with the latter was serial killer shit, and not the endearing fictional kind Sadie was always going on about.
Usually, I ignored the kings. Their opinions were like male thongs. Useless. Disturbing. And literally no one asked for them.
“I’m gaping at you in shock,” I said loudly because I didn’t want Scorpius to miss out on my facial expressions.
It took me a moment to register I hadn’t imagined it. Malum really had suffered a stroke. He was being nice.
My jaw dropped. “Sorry that the lack of sound barrier made me slow,” I said sarcastically. “Not all of us are part snake.” Cobra nodded. “Apology accepted.” “I was being facetious.” I ground my teeth together.
Jax smiled down at me. “Sorry about Cobra. He was worried about you, and he doesn’t know how to express his emotions in a healthy way.” “I do not care about her,” Cobra said as he leaned forward across the table so he could see past Jax’s large frame and glare at me. Jax turned quickly, the chains in his braids tinkling as he put Cobra in a choke hold and whispered something in his ear. When he pulled away, Cobra pouted in his seat and didn’t say anything else.
Sadie flopped forward like she’d been shot. After dramatically convulsing a couple of times for the bit, she sat up straight and launched into an in-depth analysis of the erotic romance plot from the last book she’d read. The meal progressed. Sadie explained that the male character’s crooked penis was symbolic of his imperfect love. Straight women were so weird. Yes, I was straight. I didn’t want to talk about it.
I gave Sadie and Jax a hug, bumped fists with Ascher and Xerxes, made a face at Cobra, and flipped off Jinx,
Behind Sadie, Jinx mouthed, “Snap out of it,” and Cobra made a shockingly vulgar hand gesture. Jax slapped him.
“Does your face hurt?” I asked with concern. He furrowed his brow. “No. Why?” “Because it’s killing me,” I said snottily,
knew Malum was not lecturing me about emotional maturity, because that would be ridiculous. There were rocks that were more emotionally aware than him.
Good thing I’d never lacked confidence in myself. I knew I was right. Was I depressed? Yes. Was I never wrong? Also yes. The two were not mutually exclusive.
My knees gave out, and I sat back on the nearest rock, which put me right next to the demons. “Well, I didn’t see this coming,” I said to Zenith. He didn’t turn to look at me and said in a deadpan voice, “Don’t speak to me.” I nodded in agreement and lay back. He liked to rib on me. That was how our friendship went.
Zenith tapped. A guitar tore through notes while a male singer screamed. It was frenzied music. Violent. One corner of his mouth twitched up, and it was the happiest I’d ever seen him.
“Since you’re forcing me to be here,” Arabella said with a smirk, “I’m going to rage.” She exhaled a cloud of smoke, and it formed into a guitar, then she pretended to slam the smoking mirage onto the comforters in a fit of rage.
