Chapter 18: _ Girls Like Me Don’t Get Happy Endings

With a flick of his wrist, the water sphere exploded outward, hitting Bren and her remaining copy like a cannonball. She flew backward through the air, crashing hard against the stone wall before tumbling to the ground, unconscious and bleeding from her forehead.

Her copy vanished into smoke.

"Bren!" I screamed, running toward her, but another vine shot across the floor, wrapping around Miriel’s ankles.

Miriel shrieked as she was yanked off her feet, slamming face-first onto the hard flagstones. The vine dragged her screaming across the dirt, pinning her against a stone pillar in the corner. She struggled, crying hysterically, but the thorns bit into her wrists, binding her tight.

In less than ten seconds, Tobin had dismantled us.

I turned around, dropping into a low stance, my hands clenched into fists. I had no fire. I had no replication magic. I had no water spheres or physical strength.

I was dragonless. Completely, utterly empty.

Tobin walked toward me slowly, his boots crunching over the shattered wood of the crates. His eyes scanned my face, my neck, my body, filled with a disgusting curiosity.

"And then there was one," he whispered, halting five feet away. "You know, Elira... I watched you at the assembly yesterday. I saw the way Raice Ignis-Dominus looked at you. He actually stopped. He listened to you. In the end, he looked like he’d kill you, yes, but Raice doesn’t talk to trash unless he senses something worth destroying."

When he took another step, I lunged forward, swinging a sharp right hook straight for his jaw with every ounce of mundane force in my body.

Tobin caught my fist in his palm as if catching a falling leaf.

He squeezed, forcing a gasp of pain from my lips, before yanking me forward, slamming my chest against his.

"I thought Raice was just losing his mind," Tobin breathed into my ear. "But now that you’re standing right in front of me... I feel it too. There’s something strange inside you, Elira. Something hidden. Something... heavy."

"Let go of me, you monster," I spat, trying to knee him in the groin, but his black vine whipped around my thighs, locking my legs together.

He let out a maniacal chuckle. "Oh, I won’t kill you right away. A girl who brought me two extra meats deserves a special reward. A quick, pleasurable death."

Before I could scream, two thick vines shot down from the ceiling, wrapping around my wrists. They yanked my arms straight up above my head, lifting my toes off the ground and suspending me against a stone column.

I kicked wildly, my heels hitting empty air. "Bren! Miriel! Wake up!"

"They can’t hear you," Tobin murmured, stepping directly between my dangling legs.

He then let his rough, calloused hand grip my jaw, forcing my head back against the stone. "No one can hear you down here. That’s the beauty of the Sunken Arch."

"Don’t touch me!" I screamed, biting down hard on his fingers.

Tobin hissed in pain, yanking his hand back, blood dripping from his knuckles.

His eyes flared with fury. "Bitch," he growled.

What followed was the most disgusting, humiliating, and degrading thing to ever happen to me in my miserable life.

He slammed his mouth against mine in a repulsive kiss.

I thrashed my head from side to side, groaning against his lips. My skin crawled with horror. He pressed his heavy weight against me, pinning me against the column while his free hand reached down to the hem of my skirt.

"Your last moments are mine, Dragonless girl," Tobin whispered against my cheek, his hot breath making me gag. "Every drop of whatever magic you’re hiding... I’m going to drain it out of you while you watch your friends rot."

I felt his fingers hook into the waistband of my undergarments, tugging down violently.

"No! Stop! Get off me!" I sobbed, the fear finally breaking through my anger.

I clawed at the vines binding my wrists, but the thorns only dug deeper into my flesh, drawing lines of red down my arms.

"Please! Someone!"

"Scream all you want," he sneered, his hands bruising my hips as he tried to strip me. "No one is coming. No one even knows you’re here."

For the first time since entering Last Bastion, I stopped fighting. Not because I had given up, but because some small, terrified part of me had finally understood the truth.

Tobin was right. No one was coming.

The thought settled over me heavier than the vines wrapped around my wrists.

Nobody knew where we were. Nobody knew we had followed him. Nobody knew that three girls who had barely survived their first day at the Academy had walked willingly into a place designed for people to disappear.

This was what happened to people like me. People without powerful families. People without famous names.

People without magic strong enough to make others hesitate.

In this world, strength was protection. Power was a shield. And I had arrived at Last Bastion carrying nothing except a stubborn mouth and a false belief that surviving Stonewick had prepared me for anything.

It hadn’t.

My throat tightened. I thought of my mother. For the umpteenth time since leaving home, I was angry at her.

How could she have sent me here?

How could she have looked at this place and believed I could survive it?

How could she have left me alone in a place where monsters wore beautiful faces and smiled while they destroyed people?

Tobin watched every emotion cross my face and he enjoyed it.

That was the worst part. The worst wasn’t his strength, his stolen abilities, or even the vines cutting into my skin.

It was the satisfaction in his eyes.

He liked knowing he had broken through the confidence I pretended to have.

"You understand now, don’t you?" he murmured.

I looked away.

"Everyone comes here believing they are special. That the Academy will recognize them. That someone will save them."

His fingers brushed over the vines binding my wrists, almost proudly. "But the Academy only cares about useful things."

My stomach twisted.

"If it comforts you," he continued softly, "you aren’t the first."

I froze.

"And you won’t be the last."

A cold shiver ran through me. The chamber suddenly felt smaller. The walls felt closer.

Bren. Miriel.

The girls who had trusted me enough to follow me here.

They were lying somewhere behind me because I had made the wrong choice. Because I had believed kindness from a stranger was safer than standing alone.

I closed my eyes. For once, I had no clever response, no sarcastic remark, and no plan.

Only a desperate, silent plea.

If there was truly a Flame God watching over those who prayed. If there were angels. If there was any force in this world that cared about people like me...

Please. Please, send someone.

The sound of Tobin moving closer made my heart race. He interlocked his hands with my bound ones and leaned into my neck. I squeezed my eyes shut.

Please.

A strange thing happened...