“Placing spanking in a galaxy far, far away, maybe you’re not the King of All-knowing. I’d never put you back with the snakes and I care about you kneeling to the power of nothing. The only time I’ll be rejoicing is when the Brotherhood no longer rules as the power behind Angel World. But Ceri’s right: I should’ve already told you…”
Stranded on the boulder by myself, I stared up at Mischief and Ceri, who curled around each other like they fitted: how many centuries had they been mates? Cariads? Escaping together to the Ghost Caves to comfort each other and plot?
I’d wandered into this magical world, where I understood so little. Why did it burn that I was still the outsider?
“Are you awaiting a drum roll or a bolt of lightning perhaps?” Mischief enquired.
“I’d prefer a swarm of fairies kicking your unicorn arse but failing that…” I took a deep breath, then rushed out, “I yanked you out of the Lower Vault not just to save you…” Mischief’s hand curled tighter around Ceri’s. “…Or to piss off the Mage, but because I needed to set things on fast forward. Once I’d seen the Broken Nursery…”
Ceri had taken me past the kitchen, sneaking down spiral staircases and into the bowels of the castle. There at the end of a dusty corridor had been a locked room.
Ceri had told me that he was the castle Carer. I’d wondered what he cared about beyond sex and snuggling. Yet the way his usually cheery face had become haunted with a despair and melancholy that’d chilled me, had been all the persuasion I’d needed to follow him.
Even isolated from my blokes and reduced to an apprentice, I was a Protector still.
Ceri had hesitated outside the rusted steel door. “I’ve spent my life charming the mages to keep them out of here. But now I’ve charmed you to let you in, seeing as you’re different.” He’d chewed his lip. “I hope that I’m opening the Nursery to the rebel and not the beast?”
Then he’d unlocked the door.
“…All those tiny cots in the dark,” I whispered, clasping my hands around my knees hard enough to bruise. “Tiny faces peering up and so bastard scared. The ones who could toddle all thronged around Ceri to be picked up, as if he was their dad…” I licked my dry lips, forcing out the words, which I’d barely been able to think ever since that morning seven scratches on a post ago. “I’d never thought about where the Broken kids were kept before they were five and taken for the Ritual of the Wings or trained afterwards to be chosen by Glories on Angel World: the ones we missed who didn’t get my super juiced blood to become Blood Angels. The ones I left behind as slaves. And they’re here in the castle still with the Discipliners and only Ceri to look out for them.”
“And me,” Mischief muttered.
“When she crouched down, Fynchan crawled into her lap,” Ceri grinned. “My queen has a new suitor now: one who’s a mess of black hair and a thousand whys?”
Mischief’s mouth was tight. “And what did the queen do? Spank the child for its insolence?”
That bastard hurt.
I curled more tightly around my knees.
Ceri squeezed Mischief’s hand reprovingly. “She made fire unicorns gallop around the nursery, until the kids all giggled and called for their Uncle Mischief.”
Mischief flushed, shifting from one foot to the other. “I apologise. But you don’t understand…”
“That in a week Fynchan turns five and loses his wings?” I tilted my chin in defiance, even as my stomach turned to say the words. Fynchan’s soft wings have been so fragile rubbing against my arms: how could the Discipliners steal them? Yet they’d taken Ceri’s at the same age and my Broken slave, Gwyn’s, on Angel World. “I have to step-up now, I get that.”
Mischief nodded. “So, you rescued me out of love, simply for someone else?”
My chest ached; I blushed.
But what could I bastard say?
“No matter,” Mischief continued briskly with a wave of his hand — hell, it so did matter — as he glanced at Ceri. “We both love those children as well. They’re worth any sacrifice. Did you believe I wouldn’t understand? Someone has to be the true champion of both the Broken and Phoenix slaves, and it’d never be the mages. I’d come to believe it’d be me.” He avoided my eye as he bit out, “Yet if you imagine that you’ll survive the Initiation fighting with the Legion’s Code and their mental powers…?”
Mischief and Ceri exchanged a knowing glance. Then they dived on me. I eeped, falling back amongst the shifting ghost crabs and seaweed bed of the pool.
Feathers, warm skin, and mingled hair.
Their bodies pressed against mine, just as their lips tongued my mouth, throat, and wings…
I arched, lost in the tingling sensation, until I jolted because something was passing through them to me, as they held me down on the boulder.
Magic: It popcorn crackled from their wings and kisses. It sparked in silvery waves down my bowed spine, bubbling the cold Legion magic…taking over.
I rode the thrill because if this was possession, I belonged to the silver magic already.
Wake your sailor doll arse up, Violet-pea.
Alarm bells are ringing, and you only have minutes until the real bell will toll.
I’m a Violet filling in a feathery sandwich right now. Let me dream I’m licking the silvery cream, yeah?
While I gag on that image, you’re gagging on a magic that was never meant for you.
I told you there was danger out here.
Battling through the glimmering tide that whispered…home, home, home…I shoved at two angelic shoulders.
At last, Mischief raised his head. “Tasted enough true magic?”
Hell, no…
Ceri held my hand to his mouth, nibbling at each finger, whilst he sucked. The sparking inside didn’t fade: it sank tendrils even deeper.
I forced myself to nod. “Why…?”
Mischief raised his hands. “Some of us don’t fear sharing power: we embrace it.”
Silver spun out into discs flickering between his hands.
Bang — he flexed his fingers, and the discs soared across the cave, crashing into the wall in a shower of smouldering rock.
I hollered, covering my face.
Was that power — magic — now inside me?
“Why would you hide that type of talent?” When Mischief flinched, I drew his still glowing hands between mine, shuddering at the way the magic between our skin reached for each other. “If Ceri has magic too, why’s he a Broken?”
Mischief tried to pull away, but I held onto him, as his cheeks pinked. When he cast a glance at me, his gaze was clouded with shame. “The Lower Vault is the fun punishment for captured witches: for women. My magic shouldn’t be silver, despite how powerful it is. It’s wrong. A mage’s magic is gold, whilst mine is…” I shook with rage at the cruel judgement on Mischief just because his magic had been assigned feminine. “I’m sorry. Have I sullied your queenly image by touching you with my womanly—”
“Bastard stop it,” I snapped. “Your balls are bigger than any blokes, and no, I don’t need to feel them, we’re talking in metaphors. The whole Legion and Angel World gender divide is screwed. Do all Broken have this silver magic?”
“Not like Mischief.” Ceri slid a hand to Mischief’s neck, massaging. “And he hides because there’s nowhere safer than the shadows. But we all have something wired differently in us that makes our magic wicked—”
“Is kissing you the only way to silence your tongue?” Mischief hissed. “There’s not a wicked feather in you. You’re more courageous, devoted—"
“Sexier?” Ceri smirked.
“More powerful than my brother who beats you.” Mischief’s eyes blazed. “You’re right, both of you. Now is the time to take apart this Legion from the inside.” He narrowed his gaze at me. “You’ve been granted our special magic to help you do so. No one can complain that a Glory is too feminine to use it.”
Too late, Violet-sweets, it’s dawn…
I scrambled around: gold
en light flooded the entrance cave, as the molten sun gleamed over the ocean.
Bong, bong, bong.
I gasped at the deep ringing of the bell, which echoed through my head.
Morning breaks and the bell tolls…at my victory or my funeral.
10
Dawn’s golden light flooded over the Bailey, but scarlet pooled on its amber cobbles.
Numb, I stared at the whipping post: if I only focused on the fisted hands bruised in the shackles, then I didn’t have to admit the bloke hanging from them was…
Swish — thud.
Rebel screamed, as the corded cat o-nine tails sliced through the morning silence, then clawed red down his back.
“Ninety-five,” Och intoned, combing through the bloody tails to stop them sticking together.
This time both mages and apprentices alike stood at attention to witness Rebel’s shameful punishment.
Except, the punishment and shame were mine: Rebel was simply taking my lashes. If Rahab wanted to break me, flogging Rebel, whilst I could do nothing but stand on and watch, ticked the Tame Violet box.
Yet the grim twist to Rahab’s mouth and the way he clasped his hands behind his back as he glowered over proceedings from the archway, told me I hadn’t been imagining the fondness with which he’d drawn his thumb over Rebel’s lips.
It’s just that controlling me mattered more. And wasn’t that bastard terrifying?
Swish — thud.
When the little metal balls at the end of the whip caught in Rebel’s back, ripping away the skin, Rebel shrieked. Blood sprayed across the Bailey; I jumped, when it teared sticky down my cheek.
Never before had the blood’s candy sweetness made me gag.
“Ninety-six.”
Please, just be over…
Rebel’s agony and terror struck me across the bond. I paled, swallowing hard as I swayed.
Two hands clutched mine: Mischief held me up on one side, Drake on the other. Their grips were crushing.
Rebel wasn’t my whipping boy alone. He might be my lover but he was also Mischief’s mate and something to Drake that I didn’t yet understand.
I glanced sideways at Drake. He was as ashen as me; his jaw was clenched as tightly as mine. But it was the tears glinting in his eyes that booted me in the gut.
How could the Ice Commander be melted by Rebel’s suffering?
I nudged Drake with my boot, forcing him to look away from the whipping post. He shuddered, straightening his shoulders. I fell back on our secret body language, shrugging:
What?
He rolled his eyes:
Have you been hit with the crazy stick, bitch? The angel having his punk ass whipped, duh.
I shrugged again:
What’s it to you, bro?
Drake raised a shaky finger to his chest:
My fault.
My eyes widened. In the freakery of the tolling bells, Rebel’s punishment, and the nightmare start to this Day of Initiation, I’d never stopped to think what Drake would believe about it.
Or maybe even what his dad had told him.
I shook my head frantically, steeling myself to ignore Rebel’s wailing and the fall of the lash again, as I pointed at myself.
Not your fault: mine.
Och shook out the tangled tails, casting a concerned gaze over his shoulder at Mischief. Something unreadable passed between them, as secret as my special way of communicating with Drake. It only truly hit me then that they were brothers: like my half-brother was mine, except we were strangers.
Would we ever be like true siblings?
Yet when it was Rebel who was being flogged like a midshipman, why was Och shooting the Apology Eyes at his brother? The prick wasn’t going easy now either, not in the way he had when he’d struck Mischief’s palm with the whip. Instead, he swung the rope above his head, bending his body to give it full force, before bringing it down, carving deep enough to show white slivered bone beneath.
Rebel arched and writhed, before his head lolled forward.
Bastard, no…
Panting, I shuddered between relief and horror. For ninety-nine strokes I’d hoped Rebel would pass out and for once discover that the dark could be an escape from pain.
The sadists, however, had a cute little trick to stop the mages hiding in unconsciousness. The whip already cut open the disciplined angel’s sensitive shoulder blades and lower wings (and my own feathers cringed in sympathy to imagine that), but throughout the flogging the disciplined had to stretch out their wings as if about to take flight: Rise. If their wings fell, then the cat would mangle their most sensitive angel parts.
Wake up.
I blasted the thought through our Blood Bond, even as my guts roiled that I was violating Rebel through the connection to force him to obey my commands.
That I was compelling him to suffer for love.
I’d once thought that I craved my blokes to be my puppets but after enduring Rahab’s false world where everyone in it became his toy, I knew it wasn’t real control.
It was an illusion. A kid singing to itself to drive away the monsters.
And this monster was coming for Rahab.
Rebel’s head snapped back up on a howl, and I winced. Rebel swept out his wings.
Swish — thud.
When Rebel convulsed, Och hurled away the cat, hurrying to unshackle Rebel from the post. “One hundred. Punishment complete.” Then he shot a look at Mischief. “Zophia, your services are required.”
Then I understood: Och’s concerned gaze, as well as Mischief’s talent to heal being used with Rahab’s permission.
Rahab beat his favourite toys, only to have their pain taken by his least favourite. And Mischief survived — was allowed to live — because he took the pain of Rahab’s golden children.
When Mischief reluctantly let go of my hand, avoiding my gaze as he darted to kneel next to Rebel’s broken body, which Och was cradling with unexpected gentleness, I hated that I didn’t know whether I wished Mischief would heal Rebel because that meant them both suffering.
When Rahab soared above the Bailey, Drake also let go of my hand.
How could the Bitch of Utopia miss something like an angel’s fingers between mine?
Yet I bastard did.
“I should similarly lash every one of you for not stopping the escape…excuse the Freudian slip…kidnap of our royal guest.” If they gave medals for terrified silences, the entire Legion would’ve been awarded one. Rahab tossed his curls. “But I believe the example has been made. If the queen were to be kidnapped again, Och’s arm would tire as much as the skin on your backs.” I shrank from the scowls. Way to make yourself popular. “Yet now the Day of Initiation begins to judge who shall be your new brother or sister. Let them walk in the way of the Phoenix!”
The Brotherhood stamped their feet on the hard floor of the Bailey, as I backed away from Drake.
My breath hitched. Show time.
Lazarus rises! Rises! Rises! And we will rise!
Drake snatched me by the hair hurling me into the centre of the arena, before kicking out my knees.
Oomph — I fell flat on my face in the copper candy of Rebel’s blood.
I smeared it wildly off my cheeks, choking as it caught on the tip of my tongue and exploded through me; I juddered, lost in the joy of our Blood Bond and yet drowning in the pain, pain, pain that sang through it.
I wiped the back of my hand across my lips.
Rebel had been dragged to the side of the Bailey, with Mischief suffering the agony of the flogging alongside him, and I was battling to save the world.
Drake knew how to distract a bitch.
Had I expected him to puppy rollover and wiggle his belly? If he didn’t win, Drake would lose his only chance to become a Lazarus Mage and gain the respect that his own dad had always denied him, returning instead to the status of slave.
But then, if I lost, so would I.
I snarled, struggling to turn over, but Drake rammed my head a
gainst the cobbles. I yelped, booting my leg backwards, but he caught it and twisted. Then I howled.
Hell, every time I’d fought Drake, he’d been holding back. No matter that his dad treated him like a reject, he was still a Commander in the angelic army, as well as the badass who’d fought the vampiric Supreme Commander in a duel and won.
I had swag but I was a newbie to this supernatural world, without Drake’s centuries of combat experience.
Death: charred corpses in circles, torching corrupted courts, attempting to murder my own dad…
Now that I had down.
I didn’t want to harm Drake, however, only defeat him. And if the cost of entry into the Legion of the Phoenix was his death…?
It was too high.
When Drake seized me by the back of my neck, I stiffened. He flung me against the whipping post, and my feathers caught sticky against the congealed blood.
Rebel’s blood.
Spiked metal balls carving into Rebel’s skin, slicing it away from the bone and spraying it across my cheeks…
I froze, catching Drake’s haunted expression, before his face became carefully blank.
The bastard was playing mind games: he didn’t want to harm me either. So, if I had a freak out over Rebel’s punishment, then he’d win.
Two could play at that game.
I smirked. “What’s wrong? Don’t want to get Rebel’s blood in your girlie hair, brat?”
I snatched Drake’s curls in my gory hands and rubbed.
Drake let out a squeal. His eyes widened, as he drew in desperate gasps. He yanked backwards, scrambling away. I was left holding golden clumps.
It also left one pissed off pretty boy.
Messing with an angel’s hair: who knew it tapped into their inner rage?
Drake caught me by the shoulder, twisting. I struggled, but the bastard was powerful.
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