I wore my mask and coat that midnight, and Clive held my wrist.

"Don't go alone! I told you, I won't be hurting you anymore!" Clive's eyes were earnest and I retracted sobs.

"Are you crying?" he asked the obvious.

"I can't have the Headmaster doing this—holding it over my head like—like—"

"Blackmailing, right?" Clive hugged me tightly, as though he was off to a war. "It hurts, doesn't it?"

"It's does," I hoarsely responded.

"Let me go with you."

I heard the clock outside the dorm tick and the silence our room had besides the lantern I left on.

Did I want to bring innocent Clive into this mess? The memories of when he joked around with me losing made me waver.

He was definitely a sociopath if not narcissistic.

Call me a fool, because I felt like one as I hugged him back. "Can you really?"

"Of course," Clive grinned, and grabbed his cloak and mask. "Tonight we can end it, I hope."

End what?

Down the stairs Clive held my hand and led me down each steps, and I felt warm, although I should've seen. Should've known.

"It's definitely not your family, I've checked, after all," he whispered to comfort me. "But we need to know the source of the rumor."

"Why?"

"I can't have you being hurt," Clive whispered. "I don't think I really like it. Not like this."

"Like what?" I asked.

Clive turned to me and I saw the silhouette of his mask, and it bothered me I could not see his face.

We reached the Headmaster's room and opened the door to Stein and Vic. They were easy to spot, one with dark skin, the other pale. They were taller, but when the jumped up in their coats the Headmaster waved for them to calm down.

"Don't fight them. They'll be your replacement soon enough," the Headmaster muttered.

"Them?" Vic laughed crudely. "They waved at killing. I've watched them sometimes, and the Rottings boy even prays over their corpses! He's not fit to be a—"

"Shut up!" The Headmaster stood up. "Vagrant, I'm disappointed in you. Not knocking, rushing into my study with Nell, and most of all, your lie last time."

Was it a lie? I turned to Clive.

"It's not a lie—" I weakly refuted. "My family has no heretics!"

"What about you, Nell?" The Headmaster stood up and produced something. It was just a book.

No, my letters were in that book? How?

"Don't you look confused from what I can see? Such a silly boy." The Headmaster laughed and everyone but Clive followed.

"I didn't do it!" Clive said loudly.

Did he? Did he find my letters to myself, locked in that book? The first book father ever gave me, on a spur of the moment?

Are you toying with me?

Clive took off his mask and stepped on it. The crack was loud and Stein and Vic had grown quiet.

"I'm quitting. I don't want to be a person of Goldenvale if I have to betray my loved one! You can gouge my eye or hurt me as you wish, but I'm not weak enough to lose my humanity! Nathan taught me that!"

Clive looked up, his earrings a vibrant green, and I held his hand and with my other, threw down the mask.

"We are not your toys!" I said to the Headmaster.

Maybe in a different world, everything could've ended that year, maybe we can simply run, but then I heard something. My blood ran cold as the Headmaster opened his mouth and said it, words so clear I could not have misheard it.

"Why? Are you in love with Nathan? I was the one who told you to talk to him."

He was facing Clive, who gave a bitter smile. Then Clive brandished a knife and took up a stance.

"The past is the past. You can't dangle that in front of me forever, and Nathan would understand."

I steadied myself, but my mind was elsewhere. We had not been bound by fate, and we had not found one another. It was just the Headmaster pulling the strings from behind us.

"I'm used to my best students rebelling, but you'll be killing people again next week." He grinned an unsightly smile, teeth visible, lips pulled so back it scared me.

"You know I can hurt you if I want," Clive shouted.

"But you forgot my arms are right here," the Headmaster taunted, gesturing to Vic and Stein.

The two had gotten out their weapons of choice, and Clive made a growl as they walked, eying him up and down, sizing them up. These knives of his looked small, but across the jugular, across their brachial veins, even stabbed into the right area, made his enemies bleed out within minutes.

I've seen it, people sputtering out as they bled, not dead but not alive by any means, hanging on as they muttered they names of their loved ones.

"If I hurt one enough, let us free," Clive whispered.

"You're assuming you can hurt us?" Vic laughed. "You're so cocky. I've always wanted to prove you wrong."

Clive leapt, and I followed, behind him with my rapier, but with two knives Clive stood in the middle, trying to slice the two. Vic and Stein were fighting back with a dagger and a long sword.

"Damn!" Vic jumped up and I saw his wrist turn in that way people did when their wrists hurt. Clive dealt with Stein, who began to move his prosthetic hand—no, arm, to cut Clive with a dagger, but Clive roared and bit down on the blade.

I watched as Stein clumsily tried to grab it back but Clive spat it out and kicked it my way.

"Come on, Nathan!"

I ran forward with my rapier and Stein crossed his prosthetic arm over himself.

Stop, Nathan.

Stop killing!

I pulled my arm down and the boy in front of me, skin cut in almost a perfect vertical line was pale and had a fake eye.

Vic?

"Fuck! Fuck! It hurts! It hurts!" Vic collapsed to his knees but struggled with his arms to push him up.

The blood was flowing from the back of his arm, as we learned to shield ourselves. His stomach was cut too, and I heard heavy sobbing. Hurling. Blood was on the floor, and Vic held on to his abdominal area.

"You hurt Vic...you hurt Vic!" Stein glared at me, eyes red and teeth bared. It reminded me of Daniel, crying when father hit him. It reminded me of myself—when I first killed.

"I was careful to not kill him—" I argued.

Vic reached out and Stein went to him. The sight was so sorrowful—I saw it as Clive and I. Only Vic was dying and as he reached out, tears fell. He tried to speak but gurgled blood as well as soft words.

"Stein—smile." Vic smiled.

Stein screamed. He held Vic's hand and turned to the Headmaster to ask for paramedics. The Headmaster turned to us, eyes stern.

"We did it. Leave as alone as you promised," Clive said coldly. Then with words I didn't recognize, he spoke his own language.

I grabbed Clive who followed me outside the study and I started to close the door, seeing Stein cradling Vic, whose stomach was a deep dark color. I had cut deeper than I thought. He might die.

What do I do if he does?

Give my life to Stein to atone?

I hear his sobs of grief through the door, and hesitated there. I looked at Clive.

"What do we do from here?" I whispered it to the air.

He wouldn't look at me.

"What did you say to him in that language?" I asked softly.

"I told him I need to do more research this year but to leave us be for now."

"It should've been forever..."

"What?" Clive asked.

"I killed another another man," I said. "Just for a temporary end? No, it should've been forever. Not just one year. Not just—for now."

We returned to our room and I held my eyes but I wasn't crying. I was shaking. My body shook heavily, and I realized the fear of being hurt by Wyatt Whitecastle was now deep ingrained into me.

Hurt before you are hurt.

Kill if it's what it takes.

I hoped Vic wasn't too hurt, but what I hoped was often the opposite of what I had done. Maybe I was trying to avoid admitting it, but I felt my rapier when it cut into flesh but I couldn't afford time to think, so I simply dug in and cut.

That vertical cut, his face covered by his arm, then the line that sprouted under his clothing, red and dark. The sound of Stein's cries also haunted me.

We changed and Clive snuggled into my bed, putting a pouch of lavender by my pillow. He had gotten it for me in town, and I closed my eyes to his body, warm against mine. The smell was pleasant and calming, and I pretended in this world, all the boys had flowers in them.

No matter how much you cut or hurt them, there were only flowers. Not red ones, either, but bright flowers, daisies, bluebells, camellias. Lavender. Sage, too. A world where Clive and I were never planned to be a pair but chose one another for one another.

The next day we were told Vic had died. Specifics weren't told, and I never saw Stein or dared to ask for him.

The end of that year came quickly, and for once, both Clive and I were first in the exams, and Samuel was second.

It didn't seem like it affected anyone else, and the boys and us began playing physical games outside in late March, when all snow smelted and days got warmer. We made more friends we didn't care about and occasionally we slept together, but a sadness loomed in our room, with his tongue in a different language, with my crime weighing on me.

I sensed we both knew it and though we slept together in the same bed, we had no sexual affinity anymore, and yet it was calming. Night after night flower potpourri would be by our bed, and yet we could not sleep, thinking of Stein and Vic.

Which would Clive be? Which would I be?

Which one suffers more?