Page 126 of Glutton for Punishment

Pretty things shouldn’t bleed for lesser men. I look forward to our time together.

—Your Vex

I hold the note between two fingers until my hands stop shaking. The words are like a live wire, a threat. Vex. The last time I saw him, he was shooting bullets my way in the Iron Gut. He’s not at the academy, but somehow he knows exactly where to find me.

A loud door bangs open, making me jump as girls pour into the room to change. I shove the note and dagger back into the box and push it into my bag. I can’t let this shake me.

Chapter 36

Arwen

By the time I hit the mats, my head is buzzing—not with anxiety, but with a kind of clean, ready alertness that I only ever found here when Holly trained me last year.

I slide onto a bench and lace my boots, taking in the other students rolling their joints and cracking their knuckles. For the first time since I got back to the academy, no one looks at me like a mutant.

Professor Brady paces the floor and his voice yells. “WARM UP! If you don’t want to start your semester with a broken face, you’d better get blood circulating in those arms!”

Holly walks over to me, and we start to stretch as one psycho does pull-ups from the ceiling pipes.

Professor Brady patrols between the mats like a shark—picking out matchups. He stops hard in front of me, eyes sharp on my face, then scans down to clock my stance.

He grins. “Welcome to combat class, Davies. Ready to get ruined?”

I pop to my feet, roll my shoulders. “Don’t count me out yet, Professor. I think I’ll surprise you.” A couple of Wrath students nearby snicker. If there’s an undercurrent of “what is she even doing here,” I don’t notice it over the rush of blood in my ears. I can feel my head emptying. Only the old instinct remains.

Brady barely waits half a breath before calling, “Davies—Gale. First round.”

I roll my neck and step onto the mat, knuckles flexing, body humming for contact.

Gale is tall and reedy, with a pale triangle of a face and pale eyes that look almost colorless. He’s the kind of guy who has always had eight inches and forty pounds on me, and never let me forget it. He grins now, circling me. “I don’t want to hurt you, sinless, but this is for grades.”

Instead of rising to the bait, I plant my feet, hands up, and study his stature. He’s overconfident. His stance is textbook, but his eyes keep sliding off me to the edges of the room—checking his audience.

“I’ll take it easy,” he says, just loud enough for the whole mat to hear. “Don’t want to bruise the West family’s new toy.”

A familiar cackle explodes from the bench beside the mat. “Take him down, Arwen! You got this.” Holly’s voice is liquid confidence, pure and loud.

My world tunnels to him and the mat. Gale thinks that I’ll tap out fast so he can go brag to every Wrath in the building how he put the “sinless” in a headlock and made her whimper.

He lunges and grabs my arm. I let him—just enough to feel his wrist on mine, sweat-slick and smug. Then I pivot, drop my hips, hook my leg and pull hard. He goes down fast. I barely hear the holler from the bench as I press my forearm into his throat, both knees on his ribcage.

He bucks, tries to throw me, but my balance is perfect. His hand scrambles for purchase, finds my braid and yanks me down his body. My eyes water instantly. Hair pulling? Really?

He takes a knee to my ribs, knocks the wind from my lungs, but I’m smiling as I turn and plant my heel in his hip, knocking him back to the mat. A cough shakes his whole body, fury sharpening his face.

“You’re pinned,” I say, then let him up.

He comes at me harder this time, head lowered, arms wide, trying to out-muscle and humiliate instead of just win. His whole body is a warning letter in motion, violence written in every tendon.

But it’s messy. His rage is a blunt tool, easy to use against him. I duck the first swing and back away. As expected, he lunges for me, but it’s all emotion and no technique. I dip low and throw my weight against his lower body. Momentum and pride do most of the work for me: he topples over my hip, hits the mat with a breathless smack that reverberates up my shins.

For a second, the gym is silent. Then Brady yells, “Point: Davies!” so loud that it echoes across the gym. Holly whoops from somewhere behind.

I can’t stop smiling. Not because I beat him—though I did, and it felt incredible, like old muscle memory coming home—but because the gym is staring in perfect, synchronized disbelief. Not the usual contempt.

That’s right. Arwen’s a badass; I mentally gloat.

The pulse of restless energy that is my bond zings through my chest like a fishhook. Snapping my gaze to the other side of the gym, where the upperclassmen Pride team is already practicing advanced throws, I find Atticus. He stands at the edge of their mats, arms folded, jaw squared and perfect. And he’s staring. At me.