Silver Stilettos

26 | don't you forget about me

Dad described a prison riot to me once. I imagined it went a little something like this.

Dominika's fists came flying as she barreled into Caroline. Both girls went toppling backward, and even as I watched in slow motion, I waited for the sickening splice of a knife and the tearing of human seams. It never came.

Fenris kicked the knife out of her hands and it went skidding across the carpet, banged against the door, and left a streak of mottled burgundy in its wake. But there was always some eventuality that was too hard to prepare for, some wild card that you never see coming. Some variable that didn't fit in the equation.

Reed.

It wasn't as though he was a boy of intimidating size, but when he balled his fists, he didn't have to do more than take one step forward before Fenris shrank back, and in the split second of distraction, Dominika forgot the most crucial variable. The one you had to solve for in order to get the answer, but somehow, the math never quite added up.

Caroline.

Her teeth sank into Dom's ankle.

A second later, Dom threw back her head and screamed. But it was Caroline's eyes that terrified me more than the banshee howl. For Caroline's eyes were not crazed with anger, like a mad dog, but calm and proud and unflappable. She had the marble gaze of a statue. And locked together like that, they looked—

"You fucking bitch!" tore out of Dom's mouth.

—like two fighting eagles.

Dom grasped a fistful of Caroline's hair and yanked until the other girl was forced to release her bloodied foot. With spittle dangling from her mouth, Caroline's head lolled to the side and even as her hands outstretched, reaching for Dominika, blows rained down on her. Dom had used one hand to expose Caroline's slender neck and the other to drive a fist into the ivory column in a way that I knew would render Caroline's vocal chords useless.

Reed and Fenris were grappling, taut hands on each other's shoulders. It was a stalemate, no matter how much their muscles winked at me, strained to gain the upper hand. But then Fenris' face contorted in pain and I saw why: Reed had raised his knee and driven it between his best friend's legs.

I would never remember what was going through my head in those seconds. All I knew was that I had to save my friends.

I had to save my friends.

I had to save myself.

The knife was in my hand. Baron's blood slicked the blade and I waited for it to feel slippery in my hand, but it didn't. Holding it felt the most right I'd ever felt in my life. My mouth grew fire-hot.

The knife was in my hand.

The knife was in his back.

I knew at once I didn't have the strength to drive it deeper. My stomach tightened. I pulled it out, ignoring Reed's scream of pain. He turned toward me and without pausing—without blinking—I slid the knife into him.

It wasn't neat.

It wasn't clean.

I was not a butcher, to slice evenly, to know how to stop a heart.

I was a girl with a knife and a spider web-thin hold on her crumbling emotions.

"Reed!"

The sound was barely recognizable. Caroline flailed her arms in agitation. One eye was purple and swollen. Her neck was blotched with bruises. Her coat had opened, revealing a sharp collarbone. It jutted out above her flat chest and though it wasn't lewd or sexual, it felt unfathomably intimate. I didn't want to see the bones of her. I didn't want to be reminded of her human flesh.