gratefully. “I mean . . . I’m not trying to dazzle anybody. I just want to spice my face up a little.”
Rakel surveys my features with a professional objectivity.
“Your eyes are your best feature,” she pronounces. “And we’ll keep your freckles.”
She starts painting my face.
I watch in the mirror to see what she does.
It really is like painting, in the sense that she outlines and shades the contours of my face just as you would paint a portrait to show depth and perspective.
I’m mildly frightened to have those pointed nails so close to my eyeballs, but Rakel works with surprising gentleness. The brushes and powders and creams feel quite lovely against my skin.
Rakel uses shades of plum, peach, and golden brown that match my Mediterranean coloring quite nicely. When she’s finished, I look older. Confident and glamorous. But still myself, not a wicked fairy.
“That’s really good!” I say, thoroughly impressed.
Rakel is pleased. “I watch a lot of tutorials.”
The fresh look cheers me up a little. I’d rather be Glamorous Cat. She’d know how to keep out of trouble, and how to stand up to Dean without him torpedoing my entire life.
With new energy, Rakel and I return to our room to change into our uniforms.
I kept all the same clothes from last year. Yet, as I pull on my skirt, I notice one tiny inch of bare flesh between the top of my knee socks and the bottom of the pleats.
“Look at that!” I say to Rakel. “I must have grown. A bit, at least.”
“Wow,” she says, mockingly. “Keep it up and you might hit 5’2.”
“You’re not tall, either!”
“Compared to you, I’m Shaquille O’Neal.”
I scowl at her. “Now I don’t know if I should give you your present. But you did do my makeup pretty nice . . .”
“What present? What is it?” Rakel demands, eyes bright with curiosity.
I dig through my half-unpacked suitcase, finding the painting I made for her, carefully backed with cardboard and wrapped with paper so it wouldn’t crumple or flake on the journey over.
Rakel rips off the brown paper wrapping, eager but careful.
“Oh!” She gasps, face alight. She turns the painting so I can see it, as if I don’t already know what’s on the canvas. “I’ll hang it up on the wall.”
“That’s why I made it for you,” I say. “So we’ll have a little life down here.”
Rakel snorts. The album cover I painted for her is the furthest thing from “life” in the sense that it depicts a Dali-esque sphere of melting skulls, but it’s from Rakel’s favorite band, so I knew it would make her happy.
“This is a good gift,” she says, in her honest and unsentimental way.
I’m sure she would have told me it was shit if she didn’t like it. Which is nice, because now I know for certain that I did a good job.
“Come on,” I say. “We better hurry, or we won’t have time for breakfast before class.”
Rakel and I hustle up the stairs to ground level, dazzled as always by the brilliant burst of morning sunshine after the soft golden lamplight of the Undercroft.
We only have a few minutes to stuff ourselves with bacon and coffee before we have to run across campus to the Keep.
Kingmakers is so large and sprawling that I could stay fit just by sprinting from class to class. Unfortunately for me, that’s not nearly the only exercise I get. My schedule includes grueling conditioning sessions, combat classes, and classes that aren’t meant to be particularly taxing, like Marksmanship and Environmental Adaptation, but which strain my limits all the same because I’m so damn small.
At least I know what to expect this year. I packed plenty of Band-aids for all the blisters that will blossom on my palms and feet, and I’m already well acquainted with the location of the infirmary and the ice dispensers in the dining hall.
Rakel and I find our Interrogation class on the second floor of the Keep easily enough. I spread my notebooks and pens out across my desk, determined to take notes on every single word that comes out of Professor Penmark’s mouth. I want to score well on my exams. In my Freshman year, I was simply trying to survive. This year, I’d like to find out if I might just have what it takes to run with the rest of the mafiosi.
Professor Penmark slouches into the classroom in his creepy, silent way. He looks even thinner than last year, his pallid skin stretched tight over