by Jayme Morse
There was also the fact that forming a relationship with her could have been deadly for just about anyone.
Besides that, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to resist Lux for much longer. And tonight, she looked… well, she looked stunning. There was just no other way to put it.
All I wanted to do was kiss her, but I couldn’t—not yet, at least.
Kassidy’s chin was burrowed into my shoulder, but at that moment, she pulled away and glanced up at me with a sad look in her eyes.
“You’re watching her, aren’t you?”
I couldn’t help but feel slightly caught off-guard by her question.
“Well, yeah, of course I am. I have to watch her. I am her Guardian, you know,” I replied pointedly.
Kassidy rolled her eyes at me. “You know that’s not what I mean, Zay. I mean that you’re… watching her. The way you would watch someone who…” she trailed off.
“Who what?” I asked, even though I already knew what her answer would be.
“Someone who you love.”
It may have been a statement, but when her eyes flicked up to meet mine, I could see the question behind her stare.
I stared down at her for a few moments, not answering her. I wasn’t even sure how to answer her. Even though I didn’t love Kassidy, that didn’t mean I wanted to hurt her. How was I supposed to tell her that I no longer cared about her the way I once had and that it was all because Lux had come into my life?
I may have had Demon blood, but that didn’t mean my intentions were impure. The last thing I wanted was to break anyone’s heart.
“Do you love her, Zay?” Kassidy pressed after a few long moments.
“Is it even possible to love someone who you only just met?” I asked aloud.
But even as I spoke the words, I knew that it was possible or else I wouldn’t have felt the way I did about Lux. Watching her dance with Tyler wouldn’t have made rage course through my veins the way it did. I wouldn’t have been trying to resist the urge to walk across the dance floor, take her in my arms, and kiss her—even though kissing her was the worst possible thing I could do.
“I guess not.” Kassidy smiled up at me and then pressed her chin against my shoulder again. She pulled me closer, and I knew what that meant.
She didn’t want to let go.
If only the feeling was mutual.
***
Lux
“Would you like some punch?” Tyler asked me as the song we’d been dancing to came to an end.
“Yeah, sure,” I agreed.
“Okay. I’ll be right back.”
As he walked away from where we’d been dancing, I did the one thing I had been trying to avoid doing all night. I glanced over at Zay and Kassidy.
Kassidy’s arms were wrapped around his neck, and they were swaying together to the tune of a Bruno Mars song.
As I watched them, I could feel my stomach drop a little. I knew that I shouldn’t have felt so bothered about them dancing together. I knew that Kassidy had basically forced Zay into bringing her as his date to the dance. I knew—and believed—what Zay had said about the way he felt for Kassidy. I understood that his feelings for her were complicated but that they were far from mutual, that this was all just for show.
But none of that mattered.
I tried to glance away from him, but I just couldn’t seem to. The longer I stared at them, the more consumed I felt by jealousy. Even if this whole thing was fake for Zay, I still couldn’t help but think about how lucky Kassidy was. It only made me wish that I was the one dancing with him. And part of me couldn’t help but wonder if he would have rather danced with me instead of Kassidy.
I forced myself to pull my eyes away from them then. It just hurt too much to watch him dancing with another girl, especially after he called me beautiful in the hallway.
Glancing over at the refreshments table, I saw that Tyler was standing there, talking to a girl. Even though I knew it probably should have bothered me that my own date was talking to someone else, I couldn’t help but feel… relieved. Hopefully, this meant that he would dance with that girl and I could just hang out by myself.
Being at the dance solo was much better than dancing with a guy who I had zero interest in and who I was pretty sure had zero interest in me, too.
At that moment, a weird feeling took over.
All of the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end and goose bumps erupted all over my arms. I got the feeling that someone was watching me.
I turned around slowly, just in time to catch Kieran staring at me from across the room. Just as his eyes caught on mine, they quickly darted away from me.
A knot tightened in my stomach. There was just something about the way he looked at me, something about the way he stared, that made me feel uneasy.
I turned back in the other direction so that I wouldn’t have to look at him, and that’s when I felt it: a sharp pain shooting through my back, spine, and shoulders.
I didn’t even need to question what was causing the pain, because instinctively I already knew.
My wings had finally decided to make their arrival.
I shot a quick glance in Zay’s direction. He was still facing the other side of the room with Kassidy’s head burrowed in his shoulder. I knew that he wouldn’t even notice that I was gone.
Without thinking twice about it, I ran out of the ballroom and headed in the direction of the bathroom.
As I stepped inside the Ladies room, I closed the door behind me just as I doubled over in pain. It felt like something was tearing through my skin, ripping through it like sharp daggers.
Why had no one warned me about the pain that would come the first time I got my wings?
At that moment, the pain stopped, almost as suddenly as it had come on.
Moving in front of the sink, I glanced at myself in the mirror. My breath caught in the back of my throat. It didn’t matter how many other Demons at Demon Blood Academy I had seen wings on; I had never pictured what they would look like on me.
They were stunning.
Two feather-covered wings were spread out behind my back. The sleek black color contrasted beautifully against the red evening dress I was wearing.
I couldn’t help but think that I somehow looked so much more powerful with my wings. For some reason, they just gave me this newfound authority. It wasn’t really my goal to look powerful, but I thought that maybe, just maybe, no one would try to mess with me now that I had my wings.
Maybe no one would dare write Wicked on my door again.
For the first time since I had arrived at Demon Blood Academy, it finally felt like I was one of them. It finally felt like I was part Demon, like the others.
I hesitated for a moment, trying to figure out what to do.
Even though I knew that I should probably go back to the dance before Zay realized I was gone, I didn’t want to be the only one at the dance with my wings out.
I remembered that Professor Moore had mentioned that my wings would stay as long as they wanted to stay, which meant there was a good chance that they wouldn’t be gone by the time the dance was over. I knew that my best bet was probably to go back to my dorm room.
Just as I was about to leave the bathroom, I glanced into the mirror one last time and watched, in astonishment, as my sleek black wings faded to a shade of dark gray.
They stayed gray for a few moments before turning black again.
I stared at them in the mirror for a moment. A part of me wondered if I was going crazy, if I had only imagined my wings turning gray, when the color changed again. And after a few seconds, they turned back to black.
Staring at them for a few moments, I waited for them to shift colors once more, but they didn’t change from black again.
I frowned in the mirror. No one else at Demon Blood Academy seemed to have wings that switched between gray and black. So, why did I?
Was this what Zay had been talking about when he had said my wings would be “different” f
rom everyone else’s? But how could he have known what color my wings would be when I didn’t even have them at the time? It didn’t make any sense.
I knew then what I needed to do.
I needed to talk to Zay. He needed to give me an explanation for this, even if that meant going back to the dance with my wings. Why did I even care, anyway? We were all Demons… or part Demon. Besides the newbies, everyone had seen their fair share of wings before. Who knew how long they all had been stuck with their wings before they had gone away? Surely, some of them had gone to classes, even, with their wings fully spread.
An idea rose to the back of my mind then, a legitimate reason not to go back to the dance.
What if my wings turned gray like they just had in front of the others? I wasn’t sure what it meant or how I would explain it. But I would have to worry about that when and if it happened.
Right now, my goal was to get to Zay, to find out why my wings were different. Maybe he wouldn’t tell me everything, but he owed me an explanation for that, at the very least.
As I slipped out the bathroom door, I found myself looking into a familiar face.
“Hello, Lux,” he said as his lips twisted into a smile.
Chapter 30
Lux
“Nick! What are you doing here?” I asked loudly, unable to hide my surprise as I tried to make sense of the situation.
A part of me wondered if this was all a really weird dream.
I pinched myself.
It definitely wasn’t a dream.
The bright side was that Nick was there. He was alive. That meant that my kiss really hadn’t killed him. The myths weren’t true. That made me breathe a sigh of relief. I never would have been able to forgive myself if I had killed him.
But there were still so many questions swirling around inside my mind. How had he found me? How had he gotten to Demon Blood Academy? How did he even know Demon Blood Academy existed?
It didn’t make sense. How in the world could he have gotten here?
“Shh, keep your voice down, Lux,” Nick said, pressing a finger to his lips. “I’m not supposed to be here, but I need to talk to you. Not here, though.” He motioned to the dark hallway we were standing in. “We need to get away. We need to go somewhere private.”
“Like where?” I questioned.
“I don’t know. How about your dorm room?”
I shook my head. “No, I have a roommate.” Plus, I knew that would probably be the first place Zay would go to look for me. “We need to go somewhere else, somewhere more private.”
“Then we’ll go outside. We need to go out the door down that hallway, though, because the Guardians are manning the front entrance.”
I just stared into his forest green eyes, utterly confused. How did he know about the Guardians? How did he even know that I had a dorm room? How did he know about any of this?
Nick Covington knew way too much about Demon Blood Academy, and it made me feel uneasy. It was obvious that he, too, had his fair share of secrets.
Who was he?
A question popped into my mind then.
Was it possible that Nick was a Demon, too?
It would have explained a lot, but not everything. Like why he was being so secretive, wanting to talk to me in private. It was almost as though he wasn’t supposed to be there, and yet, he was there, for some reason.
“Come on, follow me.” He began to walk down the hallway.
I shot one glance over my shoulder at the room where the dance was being held. I couldn’t help but feel bad about just ditching Zay without telling him where I was going, but… how could I just say no to Nick when he wanted to talk to me? He was obviously at Demon Blood Academy for a reason, and the truth was that my curiosity was getting the better of me.
I needed to know the reason why he was here.
Besides, I knew I didn’t even need Zay to protect me when it came to Nick. It wasn’t like he posed any sort of threat. He had been my friend back in the human world—my best friend. I had kissed him. It might not have turned out the way I had been hoping, but a kiss was still a kiss. If he had really wanted to hurt me, he would have done so long before now.
“Are you coming?” Nick asked me.
I took one last glance at the ballroom and then turned back to him with a nod. “Yeah, I’m coming.”
As we headed down a hallway that I had never seen before, I couldn’t help but notice had dark it was; the hallway was barely lit at all. The further we went down the hallway, the deeper we entered into the shadows.
As Nick turned a corner, leading me into a black hallway, I said, “Nick? Do you know where we’re going?”
I heard him chuckle. “Don’t you trust me, Lux?”
As a wave of panic began to take over, I swallowed hard. “Of course I trust you. I’m just afraid of the dark. You know this.”
At that moment, it came crashing into me; a memory that I had long suppressed but that kept trying to rise to the back of my mind, ever since I had come to Demon Blood Academy.
I was laying in my bedroom at the Marshall’s house, staring at the twinkling lights as they casted a glow into the room. It was Christmas Eve, and I couldn’t help but count my blessings.
It was the longest time I had spent with a foster family, and I had really grown to love the Marshall’s. Earlier that day, I had gone Christmas shopping with Mr. Marshall. I had helped him pick out a beautiful red cashmere sweater and a diamond tennis bracelet for Mrs. Marshall. Then we’d picked out a new video game system and some golf clubs for my foster brother, their biological son, Evan.
When we got back to the house, I had helped Mr. Marshall wrap the gifts and had spotted a few under the tree with my name on them. It was the first time a foster family had bothered to get me anything for Christmas. I didn’t even care what was inside those boxes or if I ever unwrapped them. Just the fact that there were boxes with my name on them meant more to me than anything.
After we had finished wrapping the presents, I spent the rest of the night baking chocolate chip cookies and watching A Christmas Story with Mrs. Marshall.
As I settled into bed for the night, all I felt was pure happiness. It was the first time in my entire life that I had really felt like I had a family.
I rolled over to fall asleep, just as I heard the sound of my bedroom door close. I glanced up, surprised to find that I was now laying in the dark.
I hated the dark. Normally I used a night-light, but the bulb had recently burnt out and I kept forgetting to mention it to Mrs. Marshall. So, instead, I’d been sleeping with my door on a crack for the past few nights.
Sitting up, I was just about to climb out of bed to open the door again when I heard a voice say, “Don’t make a sound.”
It took a moment for me to realize who the voice belonged to.
“Evan?” I asked quietly.
“I told you,” he whispered, and this time I knew that he was closer to me. “Don’t. Make. A. Sound.”
My heart began to pound against my chest. Evan had always been sort of weird, but something about this didn’t feel right.
I felt him reach for me in the dark. His fingers traced around the valley where my breasts met before moving upwards. He wrapped his hand around my neck.
I tried to pry his hands away, but I couldn’t. It just made his grip even tighter.
My whole body quivered in fear.
“Take off your clothes and don’t make a peep,” he whispered. “I have a knife and I won’t be afraid to use it if you don’t do as I say.”
“But—” I began as tears stung at my eyes and a lump formed in my throat, but Evan cut me off.
“But nothing. Take off your fucking clothes.” He paused. “I’ll let go of you so you can do it, but I’m going to leave the knife right here.”
I felt the cool metal of the knife’s blade as he brought it to my neck.
With nervous hands, I began to remove all of my clothes. Once there was nothing but bare skin, Evan clim
bed on top of me.
His body felt like a thousand pounds on top of mine, each of them weighing heavy on my heart as he completely wrecked me.
“I know you hate the dark. Relax,” Nick said, snapping me out of my thoughts and back to reality.
At that moment, I heard a sound and then realized he had pushed the door open.
As moonlight streamed into the hallway where we were standing, I breathed a sigh of relief, allowing myself to let go of the crippling fear.
With shaky hands and a pounding heart, I stepped outside and glanced up at the night sky. It was the first time I had seen it since I had come to Demon Blood Academy. Though there was a moon, it was hidden behind the clouds, giving an almost foggy look to the sky. It was one of the strangest things, which was saying a lot given how many strange things I had seen lately.
I focused my attention back over to Nick, who was standing silently next to me. “You got my letter, didn’t you? That’s how you knew how to find me here, isn’t it?”
“I did get your letter,” he replied with a nod.
“But there was no return address. Was there?” I questioned.
“Well, no, but I didn’t need the address. I already knew how to find this place.”
“How?” I questioned.
“It’s… a long story,” he replied quietly.
“I have all day,” I insisted.
“Lux…” He gave me a dismissive look, but there was no way I was just going to drop the subject.
I decided to move onto another question.
“What are you doing here, Nick?” I asked.
“Before I tell you that, I need to make sure that you’re okay first.” There was a genuine look of concern in his eyes as he gazed into mine. “Are you okay, Lux?”
I thought about it for a moment. So much had happened since the last time I had seen him—so much that confused me. But I supposed that, through everything, I really was okay.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” I replied quietly.