VILLAIN

Chapter 2

From then on, Peter and I had never left each others' sides. We lived together in the woods, him introducing me to all his animal friends and me, in time, telling him of my adventures with my little sister. We'd had a beautiful friendship – the best I'd ever known.

I fingered my thimble necklace, the one I still wore, that had been his. A kiss, he'd called it, the day we had been separated. That was the day I'd been declared a Villain – yet another memory I refused to revisit.

"Moira?" Meriwether called from outside my door, shaking me from my memories.

I quickly stashed my mirror back where it always hid, scrambling up from where I'd been sitting on the floor.

"Yes?" I yelled back.

"We're going to be late for lunch if we don't hurry, and James insisted we wait on you," she explained, sounding annoyed.

However, I knew enough about Meriwether to know that she didn't really mind all that much, and was only sounding irritated to get under James' skin.

"Oh, right! Coming!" I said, smoothing out my skirt and running a comb through my hair so that it would at least look like I'd truly freshened up.

When I emerged a few seconds later, Meriwether quirked an eyebrow. "Sure was a weak freshening for being in there fifteen minutes," she remarked.

I laughed, rolling my eyes. "Yeah, yeah," I said, purposefully ignoring her underlying question and instead taking the stairs two-by-two until I reached the bottom, where James stood awkwardly, waiting on us.

"Ready for lunch?" he asked us when Meriwether had arrived.

We both nodded, and James offered us each an arm, one which I took and one which Meriwether punched – but James was used to this. It never seemed to deter him from trying.

We walked down the many staircases and through the poorly-lit hallways which had previously caused me such trouble, arriving after a few minutes in companionable silence to the Dining Hall.

The Dining Hall was a cavernous room filled with long, rickety wooden tables and matching, similarly rickety benches. There wasn't really anything special about the room, with its periodic candelabra wall sconces giving it light during the night hours and its large, rectangular windows lighting it during the day. There was a separate dining hall for the faculty, so the student hall was swarming with uniforms and chattering pupils. The food was in lines at the back of the Dining Hall, and that was where James, Meriwether, and I headed then.

It was never predictable what the Chef had the idea to cook up on any day, ranging from casual Peasant fare to spontaneous seafood dishes to questionable liquids. Today, it seemed, was to be one of the days where Chef Random – as most of the students jokingly referred to him on the basis that his true name was nigh unpronounceable – was at his most reasonable. I gladly chose a glass of water, a few slices of chicken, a roll, and an apple tart.

Meriwether, James, and I sat down together on the very edge of the only table that wasn't currently packed to the brim. There were hundreds of students at the League – hundreds of Villains, I realized, although only about half were truly Villains, in my opinion. And we desperately needed a grounds upgrade.

"Goodness, James, you'd think you were feeding an entire army," Meriwether remarked sarcastically, eyeing his plate, which was piled high with nearly every piece of food imaginable.

James looked down at his plate, then shrugged, grinning his usual lopsided grin. "I gotta get that growth spurt somehow," was all he said to justify himself.