“Chad was struggling to come up with ideas, and a fail on the concept stage was an automatic fail of the subject. I tried to help him.” She laughed bitterly. “I seriously tried to help the ungrateful jerk. I sat up past midnight every night for the week leading up to it, brainstorming ideas with him, when I should have been polishing my own submission.”

She sighed, releasing my shirt button and smoothing the fabric. “The night before the assignment was due, he apparently had an epiphany. He was soooo grateful for all of my help that he had to thank me with … well, you know the kinds of things a boyfriend might thank his girlfriend with …”

A low growl rumbled up from my throat, quite without any permission from me. Her eyes found mine, wide and … surprised.

I cleared my throat. “Keep talking.”

“Then he waited until I was asleep, and … well, I don’t have any solid proof, but I’m almost positive he stole my visual diary, the one I was planning to hand in.

“Anyway,” she continued with a little shrug. “What he handed in was an exact copy of my notes, my sketches, my concepts. While I was begging our professor for an extension because my diary had gotten ‘lost’, Chad was getting a high distinction for my ideas.

“My sketchbook miraculously reappeared a week later, and I turned it in. The professor called me into his office, accused me of plagiarising Chad’s work, and failed me on the spot. No questions asked. Told me I wasn’t welcome in his class again. Which meant I couldn’t complete my degree.”

None of this made much sense to me. Hell didn’t have universities or any learning centres. It wasn’t like one needed a degree in torture to work the Pit, and all other Hellish occupations were in serving the royal family. Serving my father and my sister. Serving me.

But what I could understand of it was tingeing my vision with blood red fury.

“So, he wooed you,” I rumbled. “He … he fucked you. He stole from you … and you were punished for this?”

She nodded. “Oh, and he cheated on me,” she added with a bemused chuckle. “That girl serving us at the table? I went to his dorm to confront him about stealing my diary, and they were …” She shrugged again as if this was all silly. Meanwhile, I was filling up with murderous intent. “Well, I think you can probably guess what they were doing.”

I inhaled slowly, my nostrils flaring. I was the merest thread away from razing this entire eatery to the ground with ‘Chad’ and his little wench inside.

“And your brother thought it a fine idea to sit you down and force you to listen to a lecture on how to be successful as an artist with that … that anal smear of a human?”

A guffaw burst out of Jemma.