This Savage Song (Monsters of Verity #1)(32)

“And in the aftermath of these tumultuous events?”

August was halfway through labeling the map when he felt a pair of eyes, and glanced over to find Kate staring at his paper. He hadn’t defaced the territories, but he’d started a running list in the corner of the page with other, more fitting, names for each.

Greed, Malice, Gluttony, Violence.

Kate frowned slightly. August held his breath. All around them, the class rambled on, but for him, the room was receding, leaving only the two of them in focus.

“. . . states combined to form fewer, independent territories,” said a girl near the front.

“Good.” Mr. Brody turned to write the answer on the board, and Kate reached across the aisle. He tensed, wondering what she was about to do, when she brought her pen to his paper and drew a second V beside the one at the beginning of Verity. He frowned, confused.

By the time the teacher looked back, her hands were folded on her desk.

“What else?”

“States became self-governing,” added a boy.

“And then condensed into the Ten Territories.”

“Power concentrated in the capitals.”

“And so did the people.”

Every time someone called out an answer, the teacher returned to the board, and every time he did, Kate leaned over and added another mark—a jagged line, a swoop, a pair of dots. It took him half the class to figure out what she was doing, and then, between one scribble and the next, it came together.

The body. The mouth. The claws.

Kate had turned Verity into a monster.

He stared at her, and then, he couldn’t help it.

He smiled.





Kate enjoyed the sliver of time between classes, the five minutes Colton afforded its students to get from A to B. Being in class was exhausting: half the teachers treated her like she had a loaded gun, the other half like she had a crown. The walk was the only time she could really breathe, so she was more than a little annoyed when one of the girls from History looped an arm through hers on the way to Gym.

“Hi,” chirped the girl in a voice that was way too bright for ten A.M. “I’m Rachel.”

Kate’s stride didn’t falter, but she said nothing.

“I heard what you did to Charlotte Chapel.”

“I didn’t do anything to Charlotte.” Yet.

“Hey, I think it’s great,” she said cheerfully. “That bitch totally deserved a check.”

Kate sighed. “What do you want?”

The girl’s smile went full wattage. “I just want to help,” she said. “I know you’re new here, and I thought you could use a friend.”

Kate raised a single pale brow. Being liked was a perk, not a necessity. She supposed she could take a different tactic, try to conform, go out for homecoming queen, establish a more traditional form of popularity, but it all seemed so . . . juvenile. She could still feel the blood beneath her nails. How could anyone care so much about which table they sat at when Malchai were ripping out throats in the red? Then again, that’s why they lived in North City. That’s what their parents were paying for. Ignorance. “You don’t want to be my friend, Rachel.”

The girl’s cheer settled into something colder, more calculating. “Look, Katie.”

“Kate.”

“Everyone needs an ally. You can go around acting invincible, but I’m willing to bet you’d rather be liked.”

“Is that so?” asked Kate dryly.

Rachel nodded solemnly. “We all know who your father is, but you don’t have to be like him.” She took Kate by the shoulders and looked her straight in the eyes, as if she was about to say something vitally important. “You’re not your father.”

Kate tensed imperceptibly at that, then managed to draw her mouth into a small, cruel smile. “Can I tell you a secret?”

“Of course,” said Rachel.

Kate leaned in and brought her lips to the girl’s ear. “I’m much worse.”

She pulled back, taking a moment to savor Rachel’s expression before walking away.

The first week of Gym was supposed to be a segment on self-defense—Kate had several issues with Colton’s interpretation. The first—and biggest—of which was that there were no weapons. Kate couldn’t imagine someone stupid enough to wander the streets of V-City without at least a knife on them, but Colton insisted on a “safe” environment (she was starting to hate that word).

She could have skipped, but watching students try to defend themselves (poorly) against imaginary attackers was more interesting, so she sat on the stands with the rest of the class and pretended to pay attention.

“Who can tell me what S-I-N-G stands for?” asked one of the instructors.

“Sing?” offered a girl, chewing gum. A few people snickered. Kate hoped she was joking but feared she wasn’t.

“Um, yes,” drawled the teacher, “but I meant, what do the letters stand for?”

Stomach. Instep. Nose. Groin.

A brawny boy raised his hand. “Stomach, instep, nose, groin?”

“Very good!”

Kate wanted to point out that Corsai didn’t have stomachs, insteps, noses, or groins, and if you got close enough to hit a Malchai, it would probably rip your throat out. But she kept the observations to herself, and focused on the second most frustrating thing about this alleged self-defense course, which was the fact that the teachers were doing it wrong.