“It got better as I grew older, as the magic faded. Not enough—never enough—but people started to remember my name. The internet was a blessing. No one needed to know what my face looked like if they only spoke to me in text. I focused on my studies, got good grades, and decided to do everything in my power to help other children who found themselves in the position I had been in. I had to save them, you see, as no one had come to save me. I had to save you, Miss Miller. It’s not too late for you to be saved.”
Solemnly, Cora nodded. “I appreciate your efforts.”
The headmaster blinked, looking somewhat taken aback. It was clear he had expected her to argue with him, or at least to put up more of a resistance. “Good,” he said. “Now it’s time for us to test your new resolve.”
“Sir?”
“Your class will be on the grounds, enjoying their nature walk. I want you to go find them.” The headmaster smiled his terrible smile again, seeming to have his equilibrium back. “There are trees outside. There’s a lake elsewhere on the grounds, gloriously deep and inviting. I want to see if you can ignore those things to make the responsible choice. I want to see if you’re serious.”
“Thank you, sir.” Cora stood. “I won’t let you down.”
“Then you will be very surprising indeed,” said the headmaster.
Cora left the room as fast as she dared. Rushing might send the wrong impression, might make him think she was in a hurry to be away from him—which she was, of course she was, but she didn’t want him to think that. She wanted him to think they were the very best of friends now, or at least that she understood and respected his position.
It was good to know that he’d been through a door himself, and better to know what kind of world he’d gone to visit. There was no way he could hear how fast her heart was beating, or smell the mixture of terror and elation rising off her skin. His world had been organized and fixated on rules and rewards, and that explained a few things, too, because Virtuous travelers could never understand that Wicked children weren’t entirely built of spite and breaking the rules, that they could be obedient, or wild, or anything else a Virtuous child could be. As long as she seemed to be following the rules without complaint, he wouldn’t see the Wickedness in her. And as long as she remembered why she was doing this, she wouldn’t lose track of it herself.
The hall was still empty. Cora walked with quick, efficient steps to the nearest approved exit, nodding politely to the matron there, who made no move to stop her. That was another advantage of this school’s narrow way of looking at its students. Everyone knew she was Wicked-forged. While she was behaving like she wasn’t herself anymore, she was doing what they wanted. She could be forgiven.
The air outside was like a slap to the back of her throat, so sweet it hurt. Cora sucked in a greedy breath, holding it as she walked, so that it became a pleasant burn when she finally breathed out again. Walk, inhale, walk, exhale. The sky was gray, studded with clouds, beautiful in its own way. She kept walking, heading for the line of the trees, where the nature appreciation trails would unspool themselves.
Nature appreciation was a key component of the Whitethorn method. By teaching students to appreciate the world they had, they could convince those same students to loosen their grasp on the world they were supposed to be forgetting. Cora liked nature appreciation. It was all lectures and hands-off, no-touching, but at least it was outside, in the open air. She’d take outside even without the lake any day.
Some of the girls weren’t even allowed that much. They were the ones who’d gone to worlds with too much nature and not enough civilization, the ones who looked at the walls of the school like they were some sort of affront and needed to be torn down. When the rest of the class went on a nature walk, those girls sat inside and read from a pile of carefully selected books and magazines, all touting the wonders of human innovation and the spread of human technology.
Regan was normally part of that group, kept away from anything that might make her think too much about the talking horses and endless farmlands of her home. It was a shock, then, when Cora stepped around a curve in the nature path and nearly slammed right into her.
She was standing right in the middle of the walkway; head tilted back she could see the spreading green branches struggling to block the watery gray sky, and there were tears in her eyes, like this was the most beautiful, impossible thing she’d ever seen.
It was a trap. A trap and a trick and Cora noted its nature even as she felt vaguely insulted that they’d thought she might fall for it. The Serpent had had far more respect for her as an adversary, and the Serpent had hated her. These people. They ran a school filled with heroes, and somehow they still thought they could treat them like children and get what they wanted without ever really trying.
They were too far from the school for anyone to be listening in, unless Regan was being more closely escorted than she seemed. Cora stopped, falling back into her polite, polished pose, and tried to pretend to be enthralled by a particularly fascinating bit of lichen. It was purple, ruffled like a lace cuff, and remarkable only because it happened to be positioned so that looking at it offered her an excellent view of the athletic field. There were no matrons hiding in the tangle of the wood, of that much she was sure; they lacked the grace to work their way that deeply into the brush without breaking a trail, and once a trail was broken, students would try to take it, driven by their unkillable need to see more than they were technically allowed.
There was no one. She and Regan were alone. Well, really, she was with Regan, and Regan was alone, still so focused on the trees that she hadn’t noticed Cora at all.
“That’s a good way to wind up dead, where I come from,” said Cora. Regan jumped. Cora paid her no mind. “Ambushes are way easier when the people you’re trying to ambush aren’t paying any attention to the avenues of attack. You’re a trap, you know.”
“I thought that might be why they let me outside, but I didn’t care if it meant I got to smell the green things, and I still don’t care,” said Regan. Her voice was worn out, resigned, like she had considered every way this conversation could play out, and decided none of them were worth fighting for. “I guess they know I’m not going to graduate, and they don’t want to send me home still broken. So they might as well dangle me for someone like you, to see whether you’ll take the bait.”
It took Cora a moment to understand what Regan was implying. She scowled, too offended to measure the expression against the sort of things that were considered appropriate and acceptable for a girl like the one she was pretending to be. “So they sent you out here, and you went anyway, even though you thought they were going to have someone come along to kill you?”
“You let your friend hit me the last time we talked.” There was a flicker of humor in Regan’s eyes. Under all the weariness, she wasn’t broken yet.
“Yes, yes, to cover for you so you didn’t get in trouble for talking to us,” said Cora. “I’m not that kind of killer.”
“Don’t you mean ‘I’m not a killer’？”
“I say what I mean, usually,” said Cora. “I’m a killer. I’d bet most of us are, here. Doesn’t matter whether you admit it or not. Once you’ve killed, you’re a killer. The difference between a person they write songs about and a person they tell their children to avoid is volume, and how many lungs you ripped out.” Cora visibly caught herself, wincing. “Sorry. That was a little … intense. I’m not going to hurt you. Actually, I’m glad you’re the honeytrap they set for me. I have a question for you.”