Chapter 32: Violation's Aftermath
The water was a scalding punishment I craved.
I scrubbed until my skin burned a furious pink, raw under my nails, the cheap soap stinging in every new abrasion. Steam choked the shower stall, a thick, cloying fog that should have erased everything. It didn’t. I could still feel them—not just on my skin, but deeper. The phantom pressure of Xenon’s hands on my waist, the invasive slide of his fingers, the cold, slick feel of the catacomb wall against my back. His touch had etched itself into a layer beneath flesh. The water swirled at my feet, tinged pink with blood—mine from the scrubbing, maybe his from the fight—and disappeared down the drain, taking nothing with it.
I slid down the wall, the tiles shockingly cold against my spine, and curled into a ball on the floor. The spray beat against my shoulders like tiny, insistent fists.
My mind was a broken reel.
The look in his silver-red eyes, a predator’s gleam. The whispered words, just a touch. My own frantic, desperate nod. The searing humiliation that followed, hot and sour in my throat. I’d asked for it. I’d wanted the heat, the distraction from the hollow fear. I’d traded a moment of feeling for this—this crawling shame that felt like it had infected my marrow. I retched, but nothing came up. Just dry, painful heaves that echoed off the wet walls.
Time bled away. The water cycled from scalding to lukewarm to cold. I didn’t move. I shivered on the floor, replaying every second, every mistake.
The sudden, sharp click of the shower valve cutting off was a physical shock.
The drumming water ceased, leaving a ringing silence broken only by the drip from other stalls and the distant clang of pipes. A hand reached through the curtain, not hesitant, but firm. Aria’s hand. She pulled the curtain back. She didn’t gasp. Her violet eyes held no pity, just a deep, unsettling calm as she took in my huddled form on the wet floor.
“Come on,” she said, her voice low. It wasn’t a request.
She helped me stand, my legs numb and uncooperative, and wrapped a thick, rough towel around my shoulders. It smelled of generic cleaner. I’d walked in here with nothing, just the torn clothes I’d peeled off and left in a heap by the lockers. I let her guide me, a lifeless doll.
The common room was a haze of muted activity. Hannah was polishing her bow components at the large table, Alex lounging on a couch, flipping a knife end-over-end in the air. They both looked up as we passed.
The silence was a physical weight.
I felt their eyes on my back, on my damp hair, on the way I clung to the towel. A current of silent judgement hung in the air. Did they know? Had rumors from the forest already seeped into the barracks? Or did they just think this was about Ren? That my pathetic, public confession had finally shattered me, sent me into another one of my infamous, uncontrollable spirals. The freak can’t handle her feelings. That’s what they’d believe. It was the easier story. It was, in part, true.
Aria led me into the dorm room, away from their gaze. She moved to my footlocker, pulled out soft leggings and an oversized sweatshirt. She helped me dress, her movements efficient, gentle. I stood passively, my arms limp as she maneuvered them into sleeves.
“Aria, I…” My voice was a rusty whisper.
She shook her head once, sharply. “Don’t.”
How could I explain? The words were a tangled mess of guilt and revulsion, and beneath it, a terrifying, thrilling current of power I’d felt when I’d burned him. It was all my fault. I’d followed him. I’d wanted the kiss back. I’d let it happen.
Silent tears broke then, tracking clean lines through the residual damp on my face. They were hot and silent and endless. I lay down on my cot, turning my face to the wall, the rough fabric of the pillowcase against my cheek. I wanted to dissolve. To let the cot swallow me whole and rot quietly in the dark.
Aria’s hand rested on my head for a single, heavy moment. Then it was gone. I heard the soft click of the door closing.
Exhaustion was a black tide. It pulled me under into a sleep that was no refuge.
I dreamed of sinewy, black vines sprouting from my own skin, wrapping around my throat. I dreamed of Xenon’s laugh, not warm and easy, but a cold, grating sound that came from all directions. I dreamed of a pair of intense, dark eyes watching from the shadows, full of a disappointment that cut deeper than any blade.
I surfaced to the sound of the door creaking open. Evening gloom filled the room. Alex stood there, backlit by the common room light, holding a steaming bowl. She looked uncharacteristically solemn.
“Hey,” she said, her voice softer than usual. She crossed the room and set the bowl on the small crate beside my cot. “It’s just broth. Hannah thinks you’re coming down with something. Ren thinks you’re slacking. I think you look like hell.”
I stared at the swirling vapor. “I’m not hungry.”
“Figured.” She shifted her weight, thumbs hooked in her pockets. “Left it anyway. In case the ‘rotting away in bed’ plan gets boring.”
She didn’t press. She didn’t try to joke again. She just gave a little nod and left, closing the door with more care than I’d ever seen her use.
The broth cooled. The room darkened fully. The others came in to sleep—Hannah’s quiet breathing, Alex’s eventual, soft snores. The bowl sat untouched, a silent testament to my inertia.
Morning arrived on a cacophony of alarms and rustling fabric. I kept my eyes closed, listening to the ritual of dressing, the clatter of gear, the muffled, morning-tense chatter. No one tried to rouse me. The door opened and closed as they filed out for drills.
The silence they left behind was absolute and heavy.
It lasted maybe five minutes.
The door swung open again, boots striking the floor with deliberate, unhurried force. I didn’t need to look. I knew the rhythm of that walk, the particular density of the silence that surrounded him.
He stopped at the foot of my cot.
I could smell leather, cold air, and a faint, sharp ozone-like scent that was uniquely his. I held my breath.
He cleared his throat. The sound was like stone grinding against stone.
He seemed pissed.
He seemed pissed.
The thought had barely formed when the coarse wool blanket and thin sheet were ripped from my body in a single, violent pull. The fabric whispered a sharp protest against my skin before it was gone. Cold air assaulted me.
I jerked upright, a gasped inhale tearing at my throat, and scrambled backward on the cot until my shoulders hit the cold stone wall. My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. Fear, bright and metallic, flooded my mouth.
Ren stood at the foot of the bed, the sheets crumpled in one fist. His expression was carved from granite, dark eyes blazing. “Get up.” The words were low, lethal. “You missed drills yesterday. You think hiding today is an option? Explain to me why you never returned to your bunk after the forest. Now.”
I could only stare, my mind scrabbling for purchase. He thought this was about him. He saw my crumpled form, the avoidance, and he mapped it onto his own rejection in the catacombs. His jaw tightened, a muscle flickering. He despised this display, this visible fracture. Weakness was a contagion here, and he thought I was patient zero.
His gaze, like a physical scrape, left my face and traveled down. It paused at the angry, rope-burned circle of raw skin around my wrist. It flicked to the matching one on my ankle, peeking from under the leg of my sleep shorts. It landed on the mottled, yellowish-purple bruise blooming at the side of my neck, where Xenon’s grip had sealed over my pulse.
Thank the shadows for the loose shirt. The deeper bruises, the ones shaped like fingerprints on my thighs, remained hidden.
He was silent for a beat too long. Then his eyes snapped back to mine, and something in them shifted, just a fraction. The anger didn’t leave, but it was now alloyed with a sharp, assessing scrutiny. He saw the fine tremor in my hands where they pressed against the wall. He heard the ragged edge of my breathing.
“Arisa.” His voice changed. It was quieter, but no less intense. “What’s wrong?”
He reached out, not to grab, but as if to brush a stray strand of hair from my face, a gesture so utterly alien from him it was more terrifying than his rage.
I flinched. Hard. A full-body recoil that made my skull knock against stone.
“Don’t!” The word was out, sharp as a shard of glass.
I launched myself off the cot, putting its frame between us, and lunged for the footlocker. I yanked out grey leggings and a black sports bra, my movements frantic and clumsy. I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t.
“Drills,” I muttered, the word a flat token. “I’m going.”
I fled into the bathroom, slamming the door and leaning against it, my chest heaving. I changed with mechanical haste. In the mirror, my reflection was a ghost with fiery hair and hollow green eyes. The bruises on my arms, from the vine restraints and the struggle, stood out in stark, ugly relief against my pale skin. I pulled my hair into a severe ponytail.
I emerged seconds later. Ren hadn’t moved. He watched me cross the room, his expression unreadable now, a closed door. I walked past him, out into the common area, and straight through the exterior door into the damp morning air of the training yard.
The squad was already running laps in the mist. Hannah, Alex, two others. Their heads turned as I fell into step at the rear, my boots crunching on the gravel. I felt their looks—curious, wary, pitying. They stared like I was a fractured hull about to spill my contents across the yard.
I fixed my gaze on the back of Alex’s beanie. Shut it out. The Academy’s first and greatest lesson. Shut it out to focus. Shut it out to rest. Shut it out to survive.
I would shut this out because opening that door meant staring into a void where my own complicity stared back. So I built the face, brick by brick. The face where everything was fine. Where nothing had happened in the forgotten dark.
I let out a long, controlled breath and locked my emotions in a vault beneath the hollow where my heart should be. The emptiness there was total, a void that seeped into my limbs, numbing and steadying them.
During knife throws, my arm was a piston. The blade thunked into the center of the target with monotonous, perfect rhythm. During agility drills, I launched myself over the high wall, tucking, flipping, and landing in a silent crouch that echoed with finality. During sparring with Alex, I moved with a cold, relentless economy. She came in with a joking feint, her usual grin half-formed.
I disarmed her in three motions, my borrowed practice sword point coming to rest against her sternum. My eyes held none of our usual competitive fire. They were flat, like dull jade.
“Okay, damn,” Alex breathed, raising her hands, her smile gone. “Point to you.”
I just nodded, lowered the sword, and walked back to the starting line.
After drills, I didn’t return to the barracks. I walked straight to the Academy’s med clinic, a sterile white room that smelled of antiseptic and dried rosemary. The medic on duty, a woman with tired eyes, looked up from her ledger.
“I need the tonic,” I said, my voice perfectly even. “The one for after.”
She blinked, then slowly closed her book. “The post-conception suppressant? You understand it’s not like the human pharmaceutical. It’s potent. It rewrites potential on a cellular level.” She leaned forward, her tone dropping into a rehearsed cadence. “Side effects can include severe cramping, temporal disorientation, a temporary dampening of your abilities, and in rare cases, permanent scarring of the inner—”
“I understand.” I cut her off. “I need it.”
She studied me for a long moment, taking in my bruised arms, the rigid set of my shoulders. “There are other options. Implants, regular tonics. Preventative measures that are less invasive.”
“I need this one. Now.”
With a quiet sigh, she turned to a locked cabinet. She withdrew a small vial of viscous, silver liquid that seemed to swirl with its own faint light. “It’s a three-day regimen. One vial per day, at the same time. The process must not be interrupted.” She placed it on the counter between us. “The effects will begin within the hour. You should not train today.”
I took the vial. It was warm. “Thank you.”
I left the clinic. The vial felt like a live coal in my hand. I walked to a deserted courtyard, sat on a cold bench, and uncorked it. The scent was of ozone and bitter ash.
I drank it in one swallow. It burned a path of frost and fire down to my gut.
I sat there, waiting for the void inside me to be filled by something worse.