CHAPTER ONE
Jester's Privilege

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SHE'S RUNNING.

The pine needles weave themselves into her matted curls, plaited with flecks of mud and twigs from the grove around her. Branches fly back into her face and open cuts that weep, but she can hardly feel them when she's thrumming with adrenaline. An unforeseen downpour makes everything underfoot ten times more slippery, raindrops liquifying the rusty blood that's crusted on her face. She doesn't even know whose blood it is, really. It's one foot in front of the other as she blindly stumbles deeper into the woods — she can hardly see the stars and moon when the thick canopy of evergreen is caging her into the endless, pitch black labyrinth of the Forbidden Forest.

  Escape is impossible. Doom is inevitable. Something is blocking her from changing into her animagus, and it seems that even the forest is on the predator's side in this equation.

  Suddenly, a protruding root curls around her ankle and pulls her down, her skull thudding dangerously against the forest floor. Terror seizes her. She can feel the tears in her eyes beginning to bleed through — but she wouldn't plead for her life when he comes for her. No, she wouldn't dare beg.

  Cold air brushes past the shell of her ear, sending a shiver down her spine. She lifts her eyes and decides to face it head on, but her bravery dissipates when she hears his sardonic whistling echoing amongst the tree trunks and she forgets herself, tugging at the root until her ankle is raw in a desperate attempt to be free. She's been reduced to a wild dog, gnawing at her own leg to escape.

  A shadow looms over her, blocking the moonlight. The whistling stops, replaced by dry laughter.

  He stands there, decay and gore, grinning his boyish grin as the ground begins to swallow her whole. There's dirt on his hands from clawing through the earth, under his black fingernails and tainting his tailored clothes. He stalks towards her as if he's a hunter that's found a hare caught in his trap, cocking back his rifle and taking aim. What little humanity he had when he was alive is completely lost, the glint in his eyes telling of hunger instead of goodness.

"You're dead meat, Scarrow," he spits. He's now close enough that she can smell the rot. "Your time will come. Oh, you'll get yours."

  He lunges forward, decomposing skin melting from his bones as starvation strikes him, a cannibalistic thirst screaming to be quenched. Can it be called cannibalism if he's no longer human? His maw gapes, sharp canines beginning to clamp around her throat—

  Mallory wakes up with a scream that echoes through the dormitory, jolting upright and clutching at her neck in fear. Free of teeth marks, of injury. There's no blood around her or on her flesh. Her screaming melts into hysterics, worrying her sisters further. It was all just a dream.

  Yet, her bed is littered with pine needles and streaked with mud.

𓆣

SHE LOSES HER MIND MORE AND MORE EVERYDAY.

It isn't even the nightmares or the omens. In a man's world, Mallory feels like a caged bird — wings clipped and talons blunt. Whenever a man conducts the attention of the room with his fragile masculinity and papier-mache charm, she has to bite down on her tongue until tangy blood washes away all the anger that wears down her clemency. What's the point of a larynx when she never gets to speak her mind? A vampire bat, she wants to sink her teeth into the tender flesh that makes a mockery of her without consequence. ( A girl can dream. )

  It's not like she's unaware of what people think of her. She knows that to the people at her school, she's Bloody Mallory; corrosive and dynamite. Her and her coven of weirdos, always casting hexes or chasing after something insidious. Everyone insists that what they're doing is black magic, that they're bad enough to be Death Eaters — but people love to make their own minds up, fabricate falsities and they'll see what they want to see.

But that's only partly the truth. They can't deny that they're partial to the odd group chanting, though usually the spells they cast aren't too nasty. Mallory gets how the four of them could look a bit... evil — but it's not exactly as if they're going about doing blood sacrifices in the Potions laboratory or anything! Looking bitchy is one thing, but being a pariah for enjoying an innocent group-chanting now and again is something else entirely.

She digresses.

The main instigator of her wrath is, quelle surprise, her best friend's boyfriend. He walks with more confidence than he should; Julian Flint oozes misogyny from his pores, cruelty and dry wine seeping through his veins in place of his capillaries and plasma. His hair is gelled back from his face to put his razor sharp bone structure on display, reptilian eyes of glacial blue piercing through whoever stands before him. He's the kind of boy that lingers in the back of classrooms with a poorly concealed cigarette under his desk, his family name protecting him from being ridiculed whenever he speaks out of turn or humiliates a chosen victim. He seems to rejoice in upsetting his girlfriend, too, despite how much he claims to love her — hollowly promising to marry and cherish her when school is over, all the while bruises bloom indigo under her cardigan.

  To put it in simpler terms: Julian Flint is the bane of Mallory Scarrow's fucking existence.

The rain pours outside, condensation beading on the stained glass windows. Wind howls in the branches of the Forbidden Forest, snapping twigs and hurling them for miles around. Mallory has her nose in her almanac, skimming over the moon cycles with intrigue as her sisters chatter around her. Ceridwen's homework is strewn across the mahogany table top, her crow feather quill having gone limp in her hand after an hour of ferocious writing. Althea and Nina are threading bracelets together, a mess of embroidery thread tangled up all around them as they plait them into flowers and various patterns. Mallory smiles softly, revelling in the serenity they're all blanketed in. However, the peace is disrupted when the sound of expensive leather shoes drag across the floor.

Nina beams. The rest of them scowl.

  Julian's bergamot cologne is almost as asphyxiating as his personality, nearly as awful as the scent of death in her dream. It's an overly pretentious smell that invades Mallory's senses and manages to linger for hours after he's gone, much to her chagrin. His tie is practically undone, hanging loosely around his collar in an attempt to make him look hard. ( Plot twist, it fails miserably! )

"Hi, love," Nina says. "What are you doing here? D'you not have Herbology?"

"Nah, I'm bunking. I came here to see you," he cloys, leaning over to kiss her lingeringly.

Althea gags. "I think I'm gonna be sick."

  "Oi, shove off, Osbourne," Julian snaps, winding his arm too tightly around Nina, almost as if he's showing off that she 'belongs' to him. It makes Mallory simmer. "Show some respect."

"Oh, I'll show you respect—"

Mallory puts a hand on Althea's shoulder before she can lunge across the table. "Don't talk to her like that, you melt."

"Yeah? What are you gonna do to stop me?"

She has a long list of hexes and curses that she'd use on him without batting an eye, but she just narrows her expression into a glare. The last thing she needs is being excluded for maiming the school's court jester, or being further outcast just because she stood up for herself.

Holy Hecate, this school is beyond a joke.

"Just leave it," Ceridwen interjects, ever the peacekeeper. "He's not worth it, Mal."

  "Don't worry," she says coldly. "I know."

  Nina chews the inside of her cheek. She peers up at Julian with an exasperated look. "Can you not wind up my friends?" she mutters. "Be nice to them."

He grabs her chin and pulls her closer, ignoring the way that she flinches. "I'm always nice, baby."

"That's rich," Althea mutters to herself.

"What was that?"

She smiles a syrupy sweet smile. "Nothing."

  "What can I do for you, darling?" Nina asks politely.

  "Am I not allowed to see my girlfriend now?" he tilts his head to the side in feigned wonder. He laughs like a hyena. "I'm only having a laugh. Come and hang out with me." He lowers his voice, but everyone can still hear him. "Nobody's in my dorm, baby."

  Ceridwen grimaces. "You're vile."

  Nina shifts uncomfortably in her chair, as if she'd rather be burnt at the stake than go anywhere with him. She plasters on a smile. "Yeah, okay."

  She takes his hand, her knuckles white from the force he's handling her with. As he leads her away from the table, Nina peers over her shoulder and pulls a cryptic expression for the three of them to decode. It tells a million things; a cry for help, an apology for leaving them behind, the sorrow of a caged animal.

  Julian Flint is a cage, golden plated but still a prison. Nina is confined in the luxury of it's aureate glamour, kept in her chains by precious stones and material things that make her eyes glimmer with greed — and yet, she's never been the greediest of all her sisters. Without a doubt, she's too good for Flint, but too naive to break free of his manipulation.

  Mallory snaps her quill inadvertently. They had to do something about him.

author's note!

decided to revamp this bc the old version of this chapter that i published back in july was bothering me lmaoo

cue me cringing everytime i make julian call nina 'baby' — it's so icky idek it makes me hate him more

also, i'd like to point out that despite me calling the four of them sisters, none of them are actually blood relatives! they're bonded so closely together through their coven and magick that they refer to each other as sisters (sisters of the moon)