After walking for about 10 minutes, Melinda finally stopped in from of a gold door, Lilith never knew this part of school excited, probably because she wasn't the type to wander around much.
"We are here, Lilith, Good luck on your Trial, but on a second note, maybe I will take that back cause I don't think you gonna find any luck in there" Melinda said using her thumb to point towards the door.
Lilith didn't bother answering and just pushed the door open.
The Trial room was Large and arranged like a Courtroom, Administrators along the front, witnesses to the side, and at the very centre of it all, in the seat that mattered most, sat a man Lilith did not recognise.
It took her two seconds to understand why she didn't recognize him immediately.
The Founder, the original one, was gone. This man had bought the school. Or rather, he had bought enough shares of it that the distinction barely mattered. Belle's father. Of course. She should have seen that coming.
The seven administrators sat on either side of him. Mr Aryan was there too, in the back corner, watching her entrance with that small, insufferable smile.
Belle sat to the right, composed and elegant in white. Jasmine beside her.
And then Lilith's eyes found the two figures she had not expected.
Her parents.
Her mother. Her father. Sitting in the witness chairs like they belonged there. Like they had been here for a while. Like they had been invited.
Something cold moved through Lilith's chest.
She walked to the centre of the room and stood straight.
"Miss Lilith Schze," Belle's father said, looking down at his papers. "You finally decided to grace us with your presence."
"I apologise for the delay," she said. Calm. Even. "I'm here now. Shall we begin?"
A murmur ran through the room. Nobody had expected that tone from her. Good.
The complaints were read again, all five of them. Lilith stood through each one with her hands clasped in front of her, face neutral, listening.
"Does the accused have anything to say in her defence?" one of the administrators asked.
Lilith opened her mouth.
"If I may," her father's voice cut across the room.
She turned to look at him slowly.
"Go ahead, Mr —" the Administrator checked his paper — "Mr Colin."
Her father stood. He straightened his jacket. He did not look at Lilith.
"My daughter," he began, in the measured tone of a man who had rehearsed this, "has always been a difficult child. From a very young age she exhibited signs of, shall we say , detachment from reality. The dreams, the episodes, the maladaptive behaviours. We tried to get her help. She refused."
"That's not —" Lilith started.
"Please allow the witness to finish," Belle's father said smoothly.
Her father continued as though she hadn't spoken. "The pills we found in her possession, those belong to her mother. Lilith has been stealing them for months. We noticed but didn't want to escalate things publicly. We hoped she would stop on her own." He finally glanced at her, a brief, almost apologetic look that somehow made it worse. "We should have acted sooner. We take responsibility for that."
He sat down.
"Thank you," Belle's father said warmly. "Mrs Colin, would you like to add anything?"
Her mother stood. She was wearing a blue dress, the nice one she only brought out for important occasions. She had dressed up for this. She had come here and dressed up for this.
"Lilith is not a bad girl," her mother said, in the voice she used when she wanted to seem reasonable. "She is just… troubled. Unstable. The lying, the aggression, these are things we have seen at home for years. The incident with the young man, William, that doesn't surprise me. Lilith has always had trouble controlling her temper."
"Mum." Lilith's voice came out very quiet. "Mum, look at me."
Her mother looked at the administrator instead.
Something cracked, very quietly, somewhere inside Lilith's chest.
"I would like to speak," Lilith said, louder this time. "I have the right to defend myself. I have not been given a single opportunity to —"
"You will have your turn," Belle's father said, without looking up from his notes. His tone was the kind that came from a lifetime of people not arguing back.
"With respect," Lilith said, and her voice had an edge now that she wasn't entirely trying to control, "my turn seems to keep getting pushed back while everyone else in this room who has a personal interest in destroying me gets unlimited time to speak. How is that a fair trial?"
A ripple of tension moved through the room.
Mr Aryan shifted in his corner.
Belle's expression flickered, just slightly. Recalibrating.
"Watch your tone, young lady," one of the administrators said sharply.
"I'm watching it," Lilith said. "I'm also watching a man who purchased this school just recently sit in the Founder's chair and preside over a trial involving his own daughter's enemy. I'm watching my parents, who were contacted by this institution without my knowledge, give testimony against me. I'm watching five complaints be presented as fact without a single piece of evidence beyond the word of the people who filed them." She turned, slowly, and looked directly at Belle. "This isn't a trial. This is a performance. And we all know who the audience is."
Dead silence.
Belle's jaw was tight. William put a hand on her arm.
"Sit down," Belle's father said, very quietly. That was the voice he used, Lilith realised, when he was actually angry. "Now."
"I don't have a seat," Lilith said simply. "Nobody offered me one."
Someone in the back of the room made a sound that might have been a smothered laugh.
Belle's father set down his pen.
"We will take a ten minute recess…And when we resume, we shall talk about the most important of the Complaints on why you tried to kill my daughter, Miss Belle and her boyfriend" he said. "Miss Belle has requested a break."
Of course she had. Lilith looked over at Belle, who was already being handed her strawberry drink by a girl who appeared to exist solely for that purpose, and felt something hollow open up in her stomach.
"And the accusation of her poisoning Belle was a total lie, Belle set her up and spiked her drink to get her really horny so that she will get fucked and well– from the perspective she sees it, she imagined Belle wanted to video it and disgrace her or edit the video and make her seem like a sex offender molesting younger males, a lot of things Belle might have hoped to achieve by doing that, just for her plan to fail and now she's trying to turn the story, How Pathetic"
All of this. Every single piece of this. And they still got their strawberry drink break.
Lilith turned and walked out.
She told herself she was just getting air. Just ten minutes. She would go back in there and she would finish this and whatever happened happened.
But her legs took her past the corridor. Past the main building. Across the grounds.
To the Cliff.
She didn't know when she started running. She just was, her heels in her hand, bare feet on the grass, the yellow dress catching the wind, running until her lungs burned and she reached the edge and stopped.
The mist was thick today. Thicker than she had ever seen it. It swirled below her like something alive.
She stood at the edge and all of it hit her at once.
Her parents' faces. Her mother looking at the administrator instead of her. Her father's rehearsed voice. Belle's strawberry drink. Mr Aryan's creepy smile. A dropout. A fucked–up girl in a dress she sewed herself standing at the edge of a cliff with nowhere left to go.
She had held it through all of it. Through the whole room. Through every word.
She couldn't hold it anymore.
The sob that came out of her was ugly and raw and she pressed both hands over her mouth to muffle it, sinking down until she was sitting at the very edge, legs dangling over the mist.
"Why me," she whispered. "What did I do. What did I ever actually do."
She cried until there was nothing left. Until she was empty and quiet and the wind was the only sound.
Then she tried to stand.
Her heel caught the hem of her dress, the beautiful yellow dress she had made herself, and she felt the ground leave her feet before she could even process what was happening.
She didn't scream.
She didn't fight it. She didn't grab for the edge or claw at the air. She simply fell, and for the first time all day, everything was quiet.
No trial. No parents. No Belle. No Mr Aryan. No lawyer she couldn't afford.
Just the wind and the mist rising up to meet her.
"Death," she whispered. "Welcome me into your hands."
She closed her eyes.
But the darkness that swallowed her didn't feel like death.
It felt like Arrival.