Stonewall Nobles: A Dark Enemies-to-Lovers Romance Read online

  STONEWALL NOBLES

  Klarissa King

  STONEWALL NOBLES

  COPYRIGHT @ 2020

  NO PART/S OF THIS STORY ARE AVAILABLE FOR REDISTRIBUTION, COPYING.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  STONEWALL NOBLES

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  Blaze and Drake

  Two Weeks Before

  13 NOW

  14

  15

  About STONEWALL NOBLES

  The Great War turned the earth into a desolate, radioactive world where all that survives outside the last remaining city, Stonewall, are the mangled creatures that feast on human flesh. Within the walls of Stonewall, a divide fractures the people into two groups—the ancestors of those who won and lost the Great War: the nobles and the blancs.

  Octavia is a Blanc. A descendant of the losing side of the war, and she pays the price for her life within the strong still-standing walls that keep her away from the monsters lurking outside. Not everyone accepts the Blancs in Stonewall. Especially not Blaze and Drake, two nobles who make it known just how unwanted Octavia is in Stonewall, and at their nobles-only academy. But when the two nobles discover what bought Octavia a place at their elite academy, they use her secret to their own advantage—they use it to get her.

  The Great War might be over, but the Last War has only just begun.

  1

  We fought on the wrong side of the war.

  When the world was teeming with people packed into high-rises and slums, we battled over the world’s last grains—and we lost.

  The few of us who survived now live under the iron-grip rule of the victors, the nobles. They call us cattle or Blancs, not because we are pale, but because we mostly work in the stone quarry, and return to the walled-off city covered head-to-toe in chalky dust.

  I don’t work at the quarry.

  I go to school, with them, the nobles. And it does me no favors in a place where my kind are despised, culled, and starved.

  I attend Stonewall Institute, where I am most unwelcome and surrounded by the stone walls built on the backs of serfs.

  2

  It’s morning when mum gets back from the quarry. She’s been gone days.

  Sometimes, the workers stay overnight to save the train-ride out of the walled city. Quarantine is what takes the most time.

  Our city was all that’s left of the world. The war annihilated everything else, nuclear weapons seared the land across the planet, and we—the losers of the war—face our debt every day. Only we can leave the walled city, and that’s no treat. Radiation hits those who work at the quarry harder. But we need the stone from the quarry—we need it to fortify our walls, all that stands between us and the radiation-mutilated beasts on the other side of the walls.

  Mum’s a conductor, and takes the trip away and back every six days. Today, she looks downright haggard.

  I watch as she slips into the seat opposite me. Our round dining table can barely fit us both. Our knees touch, and she looks at me as though she’s only just realized I’m here.

  “Shouldn’t you be at school, Tavs?” she asks, pale white dust sprinkled over her already greying hair.

  She calls me Tavs—everyone does—but my name is Octavia. Let’s just say I’m grateful for the nickname.

  “It’s Sunday.” I shovel a spoon of soggy oats into my mouth. We ran out of milk, so I cooked them in the water from the well. Before my time, there was plumbing. I learned about it at Stonewall Institute. Pipes that ran underground and through walls, taking away messy water, replacing it with fresh. Rumors go that some of the nobles still have access to those pipes. I think it’s a load of bollocks, really. But then, there’s a lot the nobles have that we don’t have.

  I get my water from the well in the heart of the Trim—where my kind live, the losers, the Blancs. Our homes are the ruins of a town demolished in the war long before I was born.

  “Sunday,” mum mutters to herself, as if she doesn’t quite understand the word.

  I study her, hard. Then I notice it—the streak of blood that cuts along her arm. I reach out for her, my spoon clatters to the table.

  “Mum, what happened? Look at me.”

  She does. Her bright hazel eyes, mirrors of my own, are bloodshot and weary.

  “It was …” She swallows, hard, then touches her eyes down to our hands.

  I give her fingers a squeeze, encouraging her. “An execution,” she says, and my heart sinks to my bum. I’ve seen a few of those just this past year. They’re never quick or efficient. The Force drags them out for as long as they can just to show us that they can.

  “It’s all right, mum.” How we lie to each other. It’s never all right.

  They kill us when they want to, when they need to flex their muscles and show us who’s in charge. Like we can ever forget with the daily reminders haunting us.

  Mum reaches out her free hand for my hair. It’s short, self-chopped to my shoulders, and whiter than the chalk she wears. It makes for creative insults hurled my way, often, and mostly from the mouths of two nobles worse than any other I know.

  Drake and Blaze.

  Nobles I’d pay any fee to see executed the way we are.

  “Stay inside today,” mum tells me, fingers caught in my hair. “I’m going to lie down.”

  I nod as she slips back out of the seat, then vanishes through the door to our shared bedroom. I had one once, my own bedroom, but then the Force bombed the outer parts of the Trim and we were forced in closer to the city. They did that to make way for a second wall—the one we’re building now. It’ll make us impenetrable to the beasts outside. The radiated creatures so mangled and distorted over time that no one can tell what they once used to be. Wolves, cats, humans, bears—they could have been anything.

  I sigh and lift up my oat-crusted spoon. It’s dry now, like eating cardboard. Still, we’re in no position to waste food, so I scoff down the rest, then pick the bowl clean. Its metal surface makes me shudder. One of those things, you know?

  After I rinse the bowl and stack it on the rack quietly, I pick through my school bag. It’s worn at the bottom corner, where some of my filthy and torn books poke out. I grab my artbook and spread out my supplies on the table.

  Art is home. Art is life away from this one.

  Art is my only escape from what tomorrow brings.

  Ever heard that story that, when you’re young and a boy pulls your hair, it’s because he likes you? Well, it went a similar way for me.

  When I was younger and two boys brought me wild flowers picked from the gardens in the heart of the city, and I threw out the flowers and hated them both, then they pulled my hair.

  They haven’t stopped since.

  3

  Before the bell can strike the air, I’m rushing through the door to the institute. It slams shut in my face.

  I skid to a stop before I can collide with the heavy door and shatter my nose. I lean my head on the cool wood. With a huff, I pound my fist on the door.

  No one answers. I didn’t think they would. Most of the times I’m late, either one of my tormenters will lock me out for … fun, I suppose?

  Today isn’t any different. Rarely is.

  I’ll just have to make peace with the brand-new late score that will be streaked across my enrolment papers. Someone like me can’t afford any red marks on their papers, but someone like me shouldn’t be at the institute to begin with.

  I
sigh and loop my arms through my back. It sits snug at my back as I round the decaying face of the building.

  It was once an old bakery with apartments stacked on top of it. Now, it was Stonewall Institute, where all the nobles went to train and learn … and then there is me, the Blanc pushing up an old, jammed window down the side of the building.

  It gives way under my forced weight and opens halfway. It refuses to budge another inch.

  My huffs come out with muttered curses as I heave myself up and slide through the window. I land with a thump inside.

  As I brush hair out of my face, I see the room I’m in clearly. Too clearly.

  I landed myself right in the middle of farming class.

  All eyes are on me, some curious, others burning with unveiled disdain. I mutter a sorry to the teacher, then rush out of the first-year class into the halls.

  I am already late, so running through the halls doesn’t do me any good. Still, I can’t help myself, and I take a corner at full speed—

  And I smack right into a body built from stone.

  I see a blur of a muscular body sheathed in a white shirt and tight-fitted black jumper.

  “Sorry,” I mutter, and take a step away. Through the fabric of the jumper facing me, I can see the outline of muscles.

  Looking up, my apologetic expression hardens.

  Drake, the noble monster, stands there. He stares down at me with such cruelty in his steely eyes that an involuntary shiver runs down my spine.

  One hand is tucked in his pocket, the other holds a shiny new textbook by his side. His porcelain-white face, once so beautiful to me, twists into a hateful sneer.

  I stiffen, feeling the nips of danger at my heels.

  “I’ll have to burn this now,” Drake spits, glancing down at his jumper. “Do you know how much this material costs, dreg?”

  Dreg.

  A shiver of rage raced through me, curling my fingers into fists. A wretched word sometimes used to describe someone like me—a Blanc, a loser of the war, a dreg of our rebuilding society.

  I hook my thumbs through the straps of my bag. “More than a bit of respect will cost you.”

  I shouldn’t. I don’t know why I bite back, it only makes everything worse for me. Now, I’ll find tinned dog food in my bag later, or walk home with chewing gum clinging to my hair, or—the worst—he’ll sweettalk some girl at school into throwing paint over me. He’s done all of that before. And I still haven’t learned to just keep my fucking mouth shut.

  “Respect,” he repeats. “Something you should learn.”

  His tone has deepened into something … dangerous.

  I don’t show it in my fierce hazel eyes or my calm expression, but as Drake stares down at me with mercurial eyes … I felt uneasy. More than usual.

  I’m tempted to run the opposite way, as though he’ll strike me down with his bare hands. Those aren’t the rules. I don’t run, he doesn’t strike. It’s games—at least, I hope it is.

  The door to the right swings open.

  My other curse, Blaze, steps out of the boys’ lavatory.

  “Tavs,” Blaze acknowledges me with mild amusement. As he fiddles with his smooth black hair, combing it to the side of his olive-skin, he adds, “Found your way in, I see. How unfortunate.”

  So he was the one to lock the doors on me.

  Prat.

  “C’mon Blaze,” Drake growls, staring down at me still, his eyes glacier compared to Blaze’s eyes that can only be described as deep pits of black. “We’re late for Art Theory.”

  He smirks, as if to strengthen a hidden meaning in his words, before he steps to the side, closer to Blaze. Distantly, I wonder what game he’s got tucked up his sleeve for me later.

  I eye him warily as I make to pass him, but I freeze—

  His hand reaches out to my face.

  Every nerve in my body screams for me to run, run fast and far before he can tear off my skin with his bare nails.

  Still wearing his icy smirk, he uses his thumb to brush over my forehead. Then he shows me the smudge of dirt he’d wiped from my brow. Must’ve picked that up climbing through the window.

  “You’re dirty enough as it is,” he mocks darkly.

  And he’s stalking off, down the main corridor. Blaze makes sure to slam his shoulder into mine as he passes.

  I lean against the wall to give them a head start.

  What’s another red streak on my records?

  Nothing really, especially not when I need to avoid Prats 1 and 2 most of my school time.

  4

  In the study hall, I sit at the long table with Milo.

  He’s not my friend, but he’s the only noble at the Institute who gives me any mind. Sometimes, we talk. So there’s that.

  Milo rests his chin on his hand and stares down at his stack of parchment. He’s supposed to be working on his City Farming essay. Instead, he draws pictures. Only a noble can afford to slack off. I’m so close to getting the boot here at Stonewall.

  Doesn’t help that I’m not paying as much attention as I used to.

  Drake sits with Blaze a few tables away, and both of them keep looking up at me. I can feel it whenever they look at me, and my eyes snap up every time. They don’t so much as bother to deflect their stares and pretend they haven’t been looking at me at all. They just … keep staring.

  They’re plotting.

  And my gut is swirling. Even my toes curl in my boots.

  I have to know what they’re up to. I can’t have another disaster big enough to draw the attention of the principle. It’ll be the last straw before I’m booted out of the Institute for good, and no amount of my secret resource will change that—the secret resource that landed me a spot at the noble-only school.

  I study them from beneath my lashes when they’re not looking. A sheet of paper distracts them, and it takes me a few seconds of squinting to realize that it’s the daily news-leaflet.

  They pore over it, engrossed now.

  Drake’s light blonde hair is tousled and hangs down his forehead. His eyes shimmer like silvery clouds struck by lightning. Blaze, just as cruel and beautiful, is Drake’s opposite. His dark hair curls around his tanned face, skin so smooth it reminds me of a milk-coffee I had once in the noble part of the city with my dad.

  “Hey,” a dreamy voice pulls me out of my thoughts. “Mind if I join you?”

  It’s Lily, a dropped-on-the-head girl from my year. She’s lower than me in scores, and I like her when she’s in her hazy forgetful moments. When she remembers who she is, she keeps to herself.

  Lily smiles tranquilly, and I know she’s in her forgetful days. She sits opposite me.

  Lily is peering at Milo’s sketches. “You’re very creative.”

  Milo tenses and, with a swift look at Lily, snatches up his pile of sketches and stuffs them into his bag. He’s sensitive about them.

  He rushes out of study hall like he’s escaping a fire. I watch after him for a moment, then there’s a scrape of a chair and a dangerous presence falling over me like a too-heavy blanket meant to crush me.

  I look up and see that Drake sits beside Lily, across from me. Blaze has perched himself on the edge of the table and picks at lint from his pristine, expensive cardigan, looking bored and superior.

  Badges wink from them both, pinned to their ties. The badge of the privileged—a group of nobles above all others with duties within the school. Part of their training for their futures, to lead.

  “Can I help you?” I bite bluntly.

  Blaze doesn’t so much as look my way. It’s Drake’s mercurial eyes that bore right into me. My defenses raise, the small hairs on the back of my neck stiffen, and even Lily senses the shift in atmosphere. She peels herself out of the chair and slips away, leaving me with the two elite noble monsters.

  “As a matter of fact, you can,” says Drake icily.

  A pang of fear clenches in my chest.

  I try to ignore it and pretend to be perfectly at ease, if not a l
ittle impatient and bored. Not sure how it’s working out for me.

  “I have no interest in helping you,” I say, and pretend to go back to my study, but really, my insides are writhing and I can barely keep my hands steady.

  Drake smirks coldly and leaned back in his chair. His smirk doesn’t reach his icy eyes—those steely silver eyes are as cold as a snowy winter night.

  I turn my gaze down to avoid his and find myself staring at something that makes my cheeks hot. His black cardigan is unbuttoned, showing his expensive white shirt that clings to his chest.

  Sometime between morning and now, midday, Blaze had lost his cardigan and just wears his shirt parted some buttons, and his tie loose, as though he fastened and unfastened it a few times already. His hair lost all product he put into it, and broke free into their curls.

  My fingers twitch. I ache to wipe at my face to make sure I have no dirt stains like earlier.

  “Are you hard of hearing?” I ask. My eyes shoot daggers into his unyielding gaze. “I don’t want to help you.”

  His smirk remains intact. He’s enjoying my impatience.

  Drake likes to watch me squirm.

  Blaze likes to watch me fight.

  Blaze picked at his neat fingernails. “I loathe uncomfortable silences. Can we hurry this up, I’d like to make a stop in the lounge before the bell rings.”

  I don’t need to guess what he wants in the lounge. Too many shadowy corners with lips locked. I stay out of there. Not because of the hook-ups, but because it only takes a minute before the wrong sort of attention turns on me and I’m forced to call myself a dreg or something equally as horrible before I can leave.

  “I merely wanted to ask a question,” purrs Drake.

  My eyebrows shoot up at the seductive tone of his voice—seductive and cruel.

  “Then ask it already.”

  The grin that sweeps his face startles me. It’s the grin of a menacing wolf, painted on the face of an aristocrat.

  “I need escorts for the outing,” he says.