Novels by MARYEM KBS

The wall cracked on the seventh punch.Not a big crack. A small one. A thin one. A crack that said, "I was a perfectly good wall and now I am slightly less perfectly good." Kai pulled his fist back. Looked at it. Looked at the wall. Looked at his fist again. His knuckles were red. Not bleeding. Red. Warm. The warmth was spreading. Up his wrist. Up his forearm. Not hot. Not painful. Just warm. Like holding a mug of tea in a cold kitchen. Like putting your hand on a radiator in November. Like the hand of a father you don't remember, on the top of your head, in a house that burned down twenty years ago.He hit the wall again. ×8. The crack grew. ×9. A piece of plaster fell. Hit his foot. His bare foot. His sockless foot, because Greg's grey socks were in the wash, because Greg had put them in the wash, because Greg was a man who washed socks, who owned a washing machine, who understood the basic human concept of "clean clothes," which Kai did not, because Kai's washing machine was a buck

The fifth rib went on the third punch.Not broken. Cracked. A different sound. Broken was a pop. Cracked was a whisper. A little thin whisper inside his chest that said, "I was already having a bad week, and now this." Kai felt it go. Felt the whisper. Felt the hot needle of it, deep, under the muscle, under the four ribs that Silas Vane had already rearranged in the dark.He spat blood on the white tiles. Looked up.Dante Vane stood in front of him. Marcus's brother. Silas's son. Alpha-rank. Twenty-two years old. Hair slicked back. Uniform clean. Not a wrinkle. Not a stain. Not a single thread out of place. He looked like he'd ironed his socks. Kai had never ironed a sock in his life. Kai had never ironed anything. Kai owned one shirt that was technically ironed, and that was because it had been ironed by a woman at a laundrette in 2019 who had taken pity on him and said, "Love, you look like you slept in a hedge," and he had said, "Technically it was a bus stop," and she had said, "

The first kilometre was the worst.Not because of the ribs. The ribs were bad. Four of them, broken, singing a little song inside his chest every time he breathed, a song that sounded like a man stepping on dry pasta. Not because of the collarbone, which had gone from "broken" to "broken and angry" somewhere around the second traffic light. Not because of his bare feet, which had stepped on something wet and cold and probably alive in the first thirty seconds and he had chosen, consciously, with the full authority of a man in penguin pyjamas at two in the morning, not to look down.The first kilometre was the worst because of the cameras.Northside had cameras. Everywhere. On every pole. On every building. On every shop front and every traffic light and every ATM and every bus stop. Cameras that belonged to the city and cameras that belonged to the Vane family and cameras that belonged to people who just liked watching other people walk. And Kai Ashford was walking. Barefoot. In pengu

The first thing Kai felt was the carpet.Not the floor. The carpet. Thick. Expensive. The kind of carpet that cost more per square metre than his monthly rent. His cheek was pressed into it. His bare toes were curled. His jaw was clicking. And his right hand was on the floor, palm down, warm, glowing faintly amber in the total dark, like a coal somebody had forgotten to put out.He hadn't fallen. He'd been put there. He didn't remember being put there. One second he was in the chair, in his penguin pyjamas, listening to Silas Vane talk about his father's hands, and the next second the lights were gone and his face was in carpet and he couldn't remember the middle. The middle was just a sound. A wet sound. Like someone snapping a celery stick wrapped in a towel."That," Kai said, into the carpet, "was rude."No answer.He pushed himself up. His arms shook. His left arm shook more than his right, which was annoying, because his right was the one that was supposed to be doing the work. H

The man sitting next to Kai in the back of the car breathed through his mouth.Loud. Wet. Like a dog. A very large dog in a three-thousand-pound suit who had forgotten, somewhere between the tailor and the car, that humans were supposed to inhale through their noses. His name was Greg. Not Kai's roommate Greg. A different Greg. A bigger Greg. A Greg with a neck that had its own postal code.Kai sat between Greg and another man whose name he hadn't been given. The second man didn't breathe at all. Or did it so quietly that Kai couldn't tell. He just stared at the window. At the streetlights passing. At nothing. His hands were on his knees. Very still. Very clean. Manicured nails. Kai looked at those nails and thought, "those are not fighting nails. Those are 'I have never washed a dish in my life' nails."The driver had a name. Terry. Terry had introduced himself. "I'm Terry." Then he'd driven. That was twenty minutes ago. Terry had not spoken since. Terry drove like a man who had been

Marcus's knee hit Kai's jaw.Not a punch. A knee. From above. While Kai was on his knees on the arena floor, blood running from his nose onto the white tiles, and three hundred students in the Thornwall Academy stands were clapping. Clapping. Like he was a dog doing a trick. Like he was something you'd film on your phone and send to a group chat with the caption "lmao look at this F-rank garbage."Marcus grabbed his hair. Yanked his head up. Spat in his face."Stay down, F-rank trash. You're embarrassing the floor."Kai spat blood. A tooth. A whole tooth. Molar, actually. Lower left. He looked at it in his palm. Small. Yellowish. A little piece of him that used to chew toast every morning because the toaster in his dorm was broken and he couldn't be bothered to fix it. He'd been eating cold toast for three weeks. And now this tooth would never chew cold toast again.He looked at Marcus. Smiled. Red teeth."Again."Marcus hit him. Second time. Third. Fourth. Fifth. Sixth. Seventh.And