Requiem: A Dark Academia Enemies-to-Lovers Standalone Novel Read online

  Contents

  Untitled

  Prologue

  1. SORRELL

  2. SORRELL

  3. SORRELL

  4. SORRELL

  5. SORRELL

  6. SORRELL

  7. SORRELL

  8. SORRELL

  9. SORRELL

  10. SORRELL

  11. SORRELL

  12. SORRELL

  13. SORRELL

  14. SORRELL

  15. SORRELL

  16. SORRELL

  17. SORRELL

  18. THEO

  19. SORRELL

  20. THEO

  21. SORRELL

  22. THEO

  23. SORRELL

  24. THEO

  25. SORRELL

  26. SORRELL

  27. SORRELL

  28. THEO

  29. THEO

  30. SORRELL

  EPILOGUE

  WANT MORE?

  WREN’S BONUS CHAPTER

  SPOTIFY PLAYLIST

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  Untitled

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  Copyright © 2022 REQUIEM by Callie Hart

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Requiem: A mass for the repose of the souls of the dead.

  * * *

  A musical composition setting parts of a requiem Mass.

  * * *

  An act or token of remembrance.

  Prologue

  “Again. Harder. Fucking mean it.”

  I strike the boxing pad with everything I’ve got, pouring all of the hatred and pain synched tight around my heart into the blow. As always, my aim is true; the impact of the hit rattles up my arm and through my shoulder, so hard that it makes my teeth crack together, but from the look on Ruth’s face, my efforts this morning aren’t even close to meeting her standards.

  “This is the problem, Sorrell.” She grabs hold of my braid—my hair is so thick and long that I have to tie it back to work out—and gives it a vicious tug. “If you’d spent more time training instead of sneaking out to parties, Rachel wouldn’t be dead right now. She’d be here, where she belonged. You both would have been safe. Focused. Dedicated.” The look in Ruth’s distant blue eyes is even colder than usual. It isn’t every day that the head of Falcon House deigns to come and train her wards. Usually, we train as a group, led by Sarai or even Gaynor, but ever since my best friend’s death, ageless Ruth, with her dark brown hair tied back into a severe bun, and her calloused hands, ramrod-straight posture and her ever-present air of disapproval, has been working with me personally, one-on-one. That is to say, she’s been making my life a living hell. As if it hasn’t been hell enough.

  Rachel was more than my best friend; she was everything. I wouldn’t have survived the past four years without her. Now that she’s gone, I’m honestly not sure I’ll make it through the rest of this week. Not with Ruth so intent on breaking me.

  I bite the tip of my tongue, knowing that my mentor is right. On paper, Falcon House is a foster home—a very large foster home. In reality, it’s so much more than that. This place is a sanctuary. We train our asses off here. Learn to fight. Learn to protect ourselves. Plenty of resources were available to Rachel and I. We should have spent more time running drills and practicing the floorwork, but Rachel was never one to conform to Ruth’s rules. And then she’d left to study at that fancy private school on a scholarship, anyway, and that had been that. No more training sessions together. I’d barely seen her at all. Months had slipped by with only text messages to keep our friendship alive. When she’d returned to Los Angeles last month, all keyed up and ready to party, I hadn’t had the heart to deny her.

  “What’s one night?” she’d said. Six hours away from the house, without our fellow sisters watching our every move? It hadn’t seemed like such a big deal at the time. Ruth makes it sound like we were tiptoeing out of the house every weekend to get fucked up, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. The house party Rachel insisted we go to was literally the first party we’d ever been to.

  I should have known better, though. It was my duty to tell my friend no, err on the side of caution, and insist that we stay on House grounds. It had never been easy to say no to Rachel. I’d relented to her ceaseless badgering in the end. We’d drunk too much. Gotten high. Gotten into a car with a group of guys we hadn’t known. And now Rachel is dead.

  It’s that simple.

  I hit the pad again, a right jab, left hook, uppercut combination, trying to throw Ruth off with a set we haven’t practiced today, but the woman who picked me up off the streets and saved my life is no fool. She sees my maneuvers coming a mile off and positions the pads strapped to her hands accordingly, once again disappointed. She shakes her head, and the weight of her disapproval is an unbearable yoke around my neck.

  “You can forget about going to the funeral,” she says.

  I drop my fighter’s stance, straightening. “Ruth! You’re not serious. I have to go to the funeral!”

  “You’re too distracted. There are only four days left until you leave, and I will not send you out into the world unprepared. It’s already reckless to send you to that school in this state. I still think it would be better to send Margo—”

  I set my jaw, hands clenched into even tighter fists, my body locking up. “I’m going to Toussaint. I’m going to be the one. You’re not sending Margo.”

  Rachel hated Margo. Everyone hates Margo. The girl’s a grade A bitch with a chip on her shoulder the size of Mount Rushmore. I won’t have her or anyone else leaving Falcon House to avenge my best friend. I’ll slip away in the night if I have to. Ruth’s right; I should have protected Rachel, and I didn’t. She’s dead because I didn’t stop her from getting into that car. I’ll be damned all the way to hell and back if I fail her in this now, too.

  Ruth flares her nostrils, eyes roving over the determined features of my face. “You can stay here and train until your hands bleed, so that you’re ready for what comes next, or you can go to the funeral. No, wait. Let me phrase it another way. You can make things right for Rachel, or you can go and stand by a grave site, and sulk and cry like it’ll change anything. Your call. But I know what my decision would be.”

  Rachel’s already been dead a month. The coroner refused to release her body for weeks; the squat old man in charge of determining Rachel’s cause of death dragged his feet and then some. I’m not the only one who’s been waiting to attend Rach’s funeral in order to bid her a proper goodbye, but I am the only girl at Falcon House who loved her the way I did. Most sisters aren’t as close as I was with Rachel. It feels like a betrayal not to attend the service now, to see her pale face at peace, witness her lying there in her open casket, to watch them close the lid and seal it shut. To see her safely lowered into the ground, where she’ll decay and rot and never grow old, while I am left behind to navigate this waking nightmare of a life without her.

  But avenging her is more important.

  I adopt the fighting stance that’s been hammered into me since the first day I arrived at Falcon House and launch myself at Ruth and her pads. She staggers back a step with my f
irst strike. The second unbalances her less, but she still needs to right her own stance to compensate for my fury. I rain down blow after blow, throwing all of my hurt, and guilt, and pain behind my fists until I finally do something I’ve never done before: I catch her off guard.

  My left fist connects with Ruth’s jaw—a sweeping backhand that takes her by surprise. Her eyes widen, her head whipping to one side, and a small spark of satisfaction blooms to life inside me, when a pearl of bright red blood swells from my mentor’s bottom lip and trickles down her chin.

  I’ve split my knuckles open with the hit, but the bright flash of pain I feel is nothing compared to the roaring chasm of hurt within me that tears open a little further every time I remember that my friend is gone.

  I will gladly shed my own blood if it enables me to avenge Rachel.

  I’ll shed Ruth’s.

  I’ll shed Gaynor’s blood, and Sarai’s, and the blood of anyone else who stands in my way.

  I make this promise to the universe as I charge again at Ruth.

  Even if it means that I can’t go and be with Rachel when she’s interred into the ground. Even if I have to stay on my feet, locked in this training room for four solid days, until Ruth is satisfied with my progress and I put her on her ass. I’ll do whatever it takes…

  Because the guy who killed Rachel is still out there, walking around, free as a goddamn bird, and I will not tolerate that injustice. Theo Merchant is going to bleed, too, and I won’t stop bleeding him until there isn’t a drop of blood left in his body.

  Ruth smiles, sharper than the edge of a blade. “Good. Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  1

  SORRELL

  Allegedly, Toussaint Academy is one of the best private schools in the country. Eighty percent of its graduating students go on to attend Ivy League institutions, who then go on to become astrophysicists, and politicians, and doctors, and bankers. Rachel applied to the school as a joke, never thinking she’d be awarded a scholarship, but I wasn’t surprised when she’d come racing down the hallway one morning, screaming at the top of her lungs, brandishing an acceptance letter in her hand. She was smart. Like, genius smart, with a photographic memory. She volunteered at soup kitchens. She was in the Big Sister program. Of course stuck-up, pretentious, ridiculous Toussaint Academy wanted her. She was the perfect candidate on paper—underprivileged enough to make them look good, like they’re giving back to the community, but smart enough to keep their numbers up and ensure their stats remain stellar.

  Lord knows how Ruth swung me a spot. I am not smart. Not like Rach. I can hold my own and take care of my assignments, but I’m not special like she was. I’m of average intelligence. I do not volunteer in any soup kitchens. You will never find my ass signing up for a Big Sister program—I’d be a horrible influence on impressionable young minds. Ruth must have done some digging and straight-up blackmailed someone in order to pave the way for me to complete my senior year at a place this prestigious.

  Five hours outside of Seattle, nestled away in the topmost eastern corner of Washington State, Toussaint Academy is the last bastion of civilization nestled at the center of one point five million acres of the Colville National Forest. One point five million acres.

  There’s one road in. One road out. No townships to speak of. No stores. No malls. No Starbucks. No cell phone reception. I’m going to have to connect to the school’s shitty satellite internet to be able to message and call Ruth for our daily check-ins, for fuck’s sake.

  The drive is interminable and boring as fuck. Two hours out from the Academy, Gaynor, who drew the short straw and is accompanying me across state lines, turns the radio off and yawns, shaking her head.

  “If you turn the music off—” I begin.

  She holds up a hand. “I can’t hear myself think, Sorrell. If I have to listen to one more Rage Against the Machine song, I swear to God I’m going to cry.”

  “Put something else on then.”

  “Let’s just have some quiet for a second. Why…why don’t you hum something peaceful? My nerves are shot from all that shouting.”

  Jesus, she is so old. I zone out after a while, watching the tiny towns flash by the passenger window in a blur. After a while, I’m so damned bored that I do start humming, just to try and piss her off.

  “That’s pretty. What is that?”

  “Hmm?”

  “That melody. It sounded like…’Brahms?’”

  “I dunno. It was just in my head. It’s not Brahms, though. I swear I’ve never listened to Brahms in my life.”

  “So uncultured. Oh! Look. Over there. That’s the last café before we enter the National Forest. We should get you a coffee. I doubt they’re gonna have any at the school.”

  I swivel in my chair, gunning her down with an incredulous look. “I beg your pardon? What do you mean, you doubt they’ll have any?”

  “It’s a boarding school, Sorrell. I doubt they’re going to give a bunch of teenagers access to stimulants that will keep them up all night and make them loopy.”

  “I can’t survive without coffee.”

  “You’re gonna have to.”

  Fear grips me by the throat. “Pull in. Pull in right now. Maybe they sell the ground stuff.”

  Gaynor chuckles remorselessly as she swings the car into the parking lot at the last minute, slamming me up against my door. “Stay here,” she tells me, when she parks. “Watch the car.”

  “No one’s going to steal the car. We’re in the middle of freaking no—”

  She slams the door closed, mouthing at me through the window to stay put. I get out anyway. “Good lord, child, can you never do as you’re told?”

  “I’m staying with the car! I’m just stretching my legs!”

  She pulls a face at me as she disappears inside.

  It’s fucking cold. I sit on the hood of the Subaru Outback, hands stuffed into the pockets of my leather jacket, waiting for Gaynor to emerge from the run-down café, and it hits me again—the almost out-of-body weirdness of this situation. A month ago, Rachel and I were singing along to trashy pop songs on Spotify, dancing around the bathroom, getting ready to go out and have some fun. She’d been so excited. Told me there was someone she wanted me to meet. A boy, of course. We’d snuck mouthfuls of Sarai’s corked Chardonnay straight from the bottle, wincing at the sour taste of it, giggling like idiots as we’d fled the kitchen. We’d talked about ‘The Plan’ for after graduation. We were going to get summer jobs and save up as much as we could, then take a year off and go backpacking through Europe. I wanted to spend the first month in Paris. Rachel had wanted to hit London and work under the table some more before we headed to France. ‘The Plan’ was a work in progress, but we were figuring everything out. We basked in the sunshine and spent every moment we could at the beach, ogling shirtless dudes playing volleyball…

  I blink, and my memories of the week proceeding Rachel’s death fracture and dissipate, leaving me behind, planted back on top of Gaynor’s Subaru, stunned by how quickly life can flip upside on a dime if you’re not careful.

  No more beach.

  No more summer jobs.

  No more Paris or London.

  No more Rachel.

  Fuck.

  I clench my jaw, swallowing hard, refusing to give in to the stinging in my eyes. If I start crying now, I’ll likely cry forever. I won’t be able to stop. I’ll drown in my sorrow, and my friend won’t be here to drag me out of my depression.

  Staring down at my worn leather ankle boots, I try not to think about Rachel. I try not to think about anything at all.

  “Jesus, Sorrell. I can’t tell if the black cloud hanging over your head is just normal Washington weather or if you manifested it with your crappy mood.” Gaynor thrusts a to-go cup at me, steam rising out of the little hole in the plastic lid; the coffee she’s procured for me is piping hot but I don’t give a fuck. I take a giant swig and embrace the pain of the searing hot liquid, scalding my tongue and throat. It hurts like
a bitch, but this is a quantifiable sort of pain. My mouth is burned because I gulped down extremely hot coffee. Great. Makes total sense. I’ve experienced this kind of pain before. I know approximately how long it will last for. I know that I shouldn’t suffer any serious lasting damage, and by tomorrow I’ll probably have forgotten all about it.

  This other pain I’m experiencing—the pain of losing my friend—is new. I can’t quantify it. It doesn’t make sense. I don’t know when or if it will go away, or if it will leave me unscathed. I feel like I’m being crushed to death by it. That any second I won’t be able to stand the awful pressure and I’ll succumb to it, and that will be the end of Sorrell Voss.

  Frowning, Gaynor tsks at me, slapping a hand at my boots, wordlessly requesting that I remove my shitkickers from her fender. She rolls her eyes, giving up, when I blatantly ignore her, though. Sighing, she hops up beside me onto the hood of the car, positioning herself next to me, then takes a sip of her own coffee. She’s a tiny woman. The top of her sandy blonde head barely grazes the top of my shoulder. She looks like she’s being slowly eaten by the puffy, two-sizes-too-big blue coat that she’s wearing. The woman’s mascara is always a little smudged, always a little clumped together. In her late forties, she normally looks good for her age, but the grim, overcast day today makes her look washed out, her skin pallid.