"There's something else you should know," she says, and the heaviness in her tone makes my stomach drop all over again. "The new rules... they're not just about postal services."
Should I possibly be surprised?
"What else?" My voice comes out flat. Dead. The voice of someone who's already bracing for the next blow.
"The art sector. Performance spaces." Maria's eyes flick to my ballet shoes—the mismatched red and pink stained with dried blood—and something like understanding passes across her face. "I know you dance, yes?"
I nod slowly.
Dance. The only thing besides letters that keeps me sane. The only way I can purge the darkness without spilling blood. The only...
"New requirements are being implemented. I don't know all the details, but..." She hesitates. "I think it's some sort ofpunishment. Restrictions on who can access the performance spaces and what activities are allowed. It's unfair…but if you could maybe figure out a way around it? A temporary pack arrangement, or?—"
"A pack." I laugh again, but there's no humor in it. Just the hollow sound of someone watching their last refuges burn. "Right. Because Alphas are justlining upto bond with the crazy Omega who's killed sixteen people and writes letters in blood."
Maria winces.
"I'm just saying...there might be options. Loopholes. This place is brutal, but it has rules, and rules can be manipulated."
Rules can be manipulated.
The words sink in slowly, finding purchase in the strategic part of my brain that's kept me alive this long.
She's right.
Ruthless Academy runs on rules—twisted, sadistic rules that favor the strong and crush the weak, but rules nonetheless. And rules, by their very nature, have gaps. Weaknesses. Ways around them if you're clever enough to find them.
Am I clever enough?
I guess I'm about to find out.
"I'll look into it," I say, and my voice sounds almost normal. Almost stable. "Thank you for... for being kind."
Maria shakes her head, a sad smile crossing her weathered face. "It's not necessarily kindness, sweetheart."
I pause, halfway to turning away.
"Your loyalty to this man…your pen pal…it's impressive." She pulls the letter from her pocket, looking at it like it's something precious. "Five years of writing to someone you've never met. Blood on every seal. Commitment like that...it's rare. It'sbeautiful."
The tears threaten again.
I blink them back savagely.
"I hope maybe one day," Maria continues, her voice soft, "he'll find where you are. Rescue you from this cycle. Because that's what it's like, isn't it? Being stuck in the heart of Ruthless Academy. It's a cycle. Violence and survival and more violence, spinning round and round until you can't remember what it was like to be anything else."
The words hit me like a physical blow.
A cycle.
Violence and survival, and more violence.
Round and round and round...
I say nothing.
What is there to say?
She's right. She's absolutely, devastatingly right. And hearing it spoken aloud—hearing someone else acknowledge the hamster wheel of horror I've been running on for a decade—makes something inside me want to curl up and never move again.
