Zara
The world had a way of pressing its claws into me until I bled.
And I was sick of bleeding.
I’d spent weeks—months—walking around as though my skin were parchment, every new rumor searing me open, every lie carving deeper until I could hardly breathe. Alex’s whispers had become wildfire, spreading through the halls of Blackwood like smoke in the lungs. Wherever I went, eyes clung to me, not with awe, but with suspicion, hunger, glee at the idea of watching me crumble.
I was done crumbling.
If Alex wanted a villain, then she would get one.
That thought sat inside me like poison at first, bitter and burning. But poison had its uses. Poison killed. Poison, when measured, was power.
And I had nothing left to lose.
.
The day I returned to school after the break, everything was wro
