Chapter 2 CHAPTER 2: The Morning After

ELIZABETH’S POV

Nobody slept in the girls dormitory last night. I could hear them talking through the walls. 

Jasmine Donid was rushed to the medical wing with blood coming from her mouth and eyes, and now everyone wanted to know what happened. 

By midnight the story had already changed three times. By morning it had reached every corner of the school.

I layed on my bed and stared at the ceiling all night because I didn’t sleep at all as I kept looking at my right hand from time to time.

The doctors in Greyfield were very clear when I was nine. My mom had explained to us that I have no powers, but I shouldn’t worry because Elizabeth Siege was just a girl with a good brain and that was a power too.

So what is now happening. I stared at my hand until the sun came up and still didn’t have an answer.

I got to breakfast early to avoid the crowd. It didn’t work. The moment I walked into the dining hall the noise dropped and people looked up and I felt every single pair of eyes follow me to my seat.

I took a tray and found a corner table and kept my head down.

“You should probably know that half the school thinks you used an illegal weapon on Jasmine.” Someone sat down across from me. I looked up and it was Kae Armstrong. The Werewolf king. I recognized him from the orientation file. “The other half thinks you somehow have powers you’re hiding.”

“I didn’t use anything.” I said.

“I know.” He said it like it wasn’t a big statement at all. “I was nearby. I saw what happened.” He started eating like we were old friends who did this every morning. “You should eat something. You look like you didn’t sleep.”

I didn’t answer that. But I picked up my fork and started eating slowly.

Morning classes were uncomfortable. People were whispering and not hiding it. 

In the second period a werewolf boy knocked my books off my desk and when the teacher looked over he shrugged and said I knocked them myself. The teacher looked at me apologetically. I said nothing as I just picked them up.

Jasmine wasn’t in any of the morning classes. Neither were her two friends. But the vampire crowd was watching me differently now. 

Andy Jostled sat two rows ahead of me in the third period and didn’t turn around once. But he also didn’t make any attempts to answer a single question the whole class. 

Based on everything I had read about him before arriving that was very unusual. And I didn’t know what to do with that.

During lunch break, I was in the second floor corridor heading back to the dorms when I heard a loud crack and then a girl crying out. 

I turned and followed the sound till I got to a few doors down. There, I found a first year looking girl on the floor holding her wrist, her bag spilled open beside her, with her books everywhere. 

She was young, maybe fourteen, wearing a witchery badge on her uniform.

I walked over. “Are you okay, what happened?”

She looked up at me and her face was full of fear.

“I’m not going to hurt you.” I muttered calmly.

She grabbed her things quickly and backed away from me, then she quickly left without saying anything. I stood there confused for a second then turned around.

There were students in the corridor who had seen the whole thing. Three vampires with their phones already out. Two werewolf girls whispering to each other with their eyes on me.

I looked at the floor where the girl had been sitting. Her wrist was hurt before I got there. I didn’t touch her, I didn’t even do anything.

But I already knew how this school worked and I had been here less than two days.

By the time I got back to my dorm the story was already moving. 

Elizabeth Siege pushed a first year in the corridor.

Elizabeth Siege has been hurting people since she arrived. 

First Jasmine Donid, now this.

I sat on my bed and pressed my hands flat on my knees and breathed slowly. I didn’t touch that girl.

A knock came at my door. I opened it and it was one of the vampire prefects with a cold expression and a printed slip in her hand.

“Come to the disciplinary office.” She held the slip out. “By four o clock. Don’t be late.” And with that being said, she left.

The vice principal was a tall woman with reading glasses and a file already open on her desk with my name on it. 

She asked about Jasmine, and after that, she also asked about the corridor incident. I answered every question calmly and told her exactly what happened both times.

She listened and wrote things down and told me to expect a formal hearing and to stay out of trouble in the meantime.

I walked out and stood in the corridor and let out a long slow breath.

“Elizabeth.” Somebody called my name from behind. I turned around and my stomach twisted till climax.

Because standing at the end of the corridor with a visitor’s badge clipped to her jacket and a small smile I had known my whole life and never once trusted was my stepsister. Marian.

“What are you doing here.” It didn’t come out as a question.

“Is that how you greet family?” She tilted her head. “I heard you were having an interesting two days. I wanted to see for myself.”

She looked around the corridor slowly then looked back at me.

“Also.” She held up her phone and showed me the screen. It was a video from the corridor footage. The first year girl on the floor. Me walking toward her. But the angle was wrong and there was a cut in the middle where a second had been removed and what was left looked like something very different from what actually happened.

“Funny thing about visitor passes,” Marian said, smiling wickedly. “You can go almost anywhere with one.”

I stared at her. “You did this to me.” I was already foaming inside.

She put her phone back in her pocket and smiled. “Can you prove it?“​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​