by A. K. Koonce
Sialen looks straight ahead at the heavy red curtains on the far wall. He doesn’t flinch or even blink as she glares at him. The man’s a fucking brick wall with too much lashing anger in him to ever break.
Even if the headmistress looks like she’d be satisfied trying.
I’m still lost in his steely eyes as she turns away and glides back to her desk, that mechanical tail swaying in her wake.
“I have your acceptance letter here. I was very much indeed expecting you.” Slender, bone-like fingers pick up a crisp white paper and bring it to the edge of the glossy desk. Her metal nail holds the paper in place.
I take a single step when Sialen’s focused eyes slice to me. He swallows hard and stares even harder.
But never says a word.
What!? What do you want? Just speak to me, you fucking cock sausage!
Nothing. He says nothing.
It’s hard to look away from him, but I pass him with the feel of his gaze hot on my back. I’m standing in front of the watchful woman in less than one pounding heartbeat.
The sheet of paper contains swooping calligraphy at the top. It surprises me that it’s my own name rather than the Academy’s.
Emmera Lee Lucero
Born: January 15th, 1996
Race: Ancient Sakar
Height: 5’ 7”
Hair: witchen black
Eyes: dragon’s gold
Parents: Clara June Lucero, December 12, 1974 - January 16th, 1996
Robert Lee Lucero, January 15, 1972 - January 16th, 1996
The information following those lines is a blur of letters that my brain can’t seem to gather. All I see are those names. And those dates. And how completely fucking empty it feels to read it for the first time and still feel nothing.
“Clara and Robert. Their names were Clara and Robert?” I ask on a voice so small it gets lost in the silence. I hate the way it sounds coming out of my throat. I pride myself in being strong, and this seems like a sick fucking game she’s playing. Like she thinks seeing the names of my dead parents will open up a vulnerability inside and somehow break me. All it does is make me angry. Perhaps I don’t know my birth parents, but she doesn’t know that it doesn’t make me weak, and it won’t make me cry. I already shed enough tears to last me a lifetime years ago when I came home to find the last of my coven slaughtered and burning.
That hurt more than this.
“Our research is very thorough, Miss Lucero.” Her words are to the point, but I can feel her absorbing my every blink.
She’s waiting.
She wanted this moment more than anything, I think. She planned it so thoroughly, I can tell. I don’t understand her. She’s a creature I can’t discern. Neither witch, nor demon, but something other I can’t quite place. She’s a mystery, one I want to solve, because I can feel the darkness surrounding her like a heavy blanket, and sinister shadows flickering around her edges. She’s like a spider taunting its prey, and she means to make me her prey.
Too fucking bad I won’t be.
She isn’t the first to try and seduce me into submission with money or appeal to my softer side, and she won’t be the last. But she is the only one who has promised intrigue in the form of the Sekar watching me closely.
I grab the little quill from in front of her pile of papers. The moment my hand comes into contact with it, I feel something settle over me, and I instantly know what it is. Magic. I gasp aloud as a haze crawls over my mind, numbing my senses and making me groggy. I know spells, and I know fucking magic, but what the fuck is this shit? I try to drop the quill, but it’s embedded onto my fingers so tightly, I can’t even open my palm to let it go.
By its own volition and with a few slashes of ink, I’ve signed away my freedom on the thin line at the bottom. The letters of my name bleed into the pure white paper. It’s just my name, and yet, magic burns inside me like I’ve done something so much more. The runes along my arms flare with a heat that sears into me like knives. My eyes pinch closed at the feel of it, and I lift my head as if nothing’s wrong. I hold her gaze as tears prick behind my eyes.
Damios at my hip rattles against my thigh as if speaking in rambling thoughts that I should understand, but I don’t.
This . . . this is bad.
I’ve felt death absorb into my soul so many times. It’s always been a sweet feeling.
This feels like rot and decay.
“Thank you ever so much, Miss Lucero,” Krist says with a slicing smile that reveals sharp onyx teeth within her mouth. “Let me be the first to welcome you to Hallow Hill Academy. Your watch of death begins now.”
That whispered word rips through my brain like a tornado on fire. It’s all I hear, over and over and over again.
Even as my knees give out. And my head hits the desk hard enough to crack.
But not hard enough to kill.
It's a shame, really. If I knew then what I know now, maybe I would have wished for death.
Chapter Three
Sharp ties bite into my wrists. I twist this way and that, but all it does is cause an ache to strain through my arms that are bound tightly above my head. My strength and magic that are always so ripping and roaring are weak and tired now.
That bitch poisoned me with whatever vow was written on that paper. I should have fucking known better. I should have known to read the fine print or searched for binding spells, but the moment my hand touched the quill, I’d been lost. I’d been too focused on the temptation the Sekar promised and the mystery of the darkness that surrounded the headmistress.
It’s always been like that for me. If the darkness calls to me, I respond. It’s almost hypnotic, like my Holy Lady of Death lives within the shadows and beckons my kind like a siren. Whether it be to our salvation or our destruction.
I should have known better.
This isn’t an Academy. It’s a fucking prison.
My teeth grind, but what pisses me off the most is that coarse lace covers my eyes. The room I’m being kept in at this place is muted and dark through the thin cloth. It’s a large space. Cold. Drafty and empty, it seems. A large object takes up the far-right wall, but I can’t tell what it is from here. My attention drifts across the enormous room, but nothing really takes shape with this fucking lace. I move my head slowly, feeling a heavy weight drift down my neck, and curse. Tiny pinpricks of a thousand needles are embedded into my skin, and I feel the liquid injections painfully easing into my bloodstream. I bite back my groan at the feel of my weakening magic.
The bitch is smart, I’ll give her that. Not many know or understand Sekar. Fuck, I don’t even understand me most days. Somehow, she knew that belladonna counteracts our magic.
The bitch has done her homework.
A frustrated breath shoves from my lungs as blood trickles down my wrists from how hard I’m pulling against my bindings.
“You look pathetic,” a voice says on a growl. His deep tone crawls across the spacious room in annoyed echoes, and I tense immediately.
I—I hadn’t realized anyone was in here.
My lashes scrape along the lace as I glare into every shadowy corner. Nothing. There’s nothing that I can see.
“Never assume you’re not being watched. And never show how fucking weak you are. Never.” His haunting voice is something that oddly sounds soothing as well as menacing. It carries a touch of warmth and strength.
And controlled hostility.
Then I feel him.
The heat of his chest sears into me, but his skin never touches mine. He just hovers. I can nearly make out his intense features from this proximity. A dark stare of pure steel with the brightest flecks of starlit silver press down on me. The man, Sialen, tilts his head slowly as he studies every inch of me.
My chin lifts as though I’m not strung up before him. As though I’m not terrified of what he could do to me in this position. Without my magic, I’m fucking helpless.
My tongue slides over my painfully dry lips. “Are you playing thera
pist now? Why don’t you save your fucking brilliant advice? You can’t be the assailant and the savior, sorry to break it to ya.” My eyes adjust to the darkness and I can see his tragic features better from his new unwanted closeness. My breath fans my hair between us, and a single thin piece of my inky locks flicks against his lips, but it doesn’t distract his brooding gaze.
His chin dips low, and I feel his warm breath against my ear as he speaks so quietly, it’s like he really is trying to help me.
If only his words weren’t laced with so much venom, I could choke on it.
“That’s good. That’s really good, little Sekar. Keep pretending you’re not afraid. Keep pretending. Because false confidence, that’s all that’s going to keep you alive in this place.”
My toes press against the freezing cold stones, and I arch up to lift my head to him even more, stretching myself so I meet him more at his impressive height.
“I’m not fucking afraid of you.” My voice doesn’t break, despite how tight my throat feels. “And I’m not faking anything.”
That warmth between us is a blazing heat that burns through me as he steps even closer, until his thin shirt brushes across my chest, and it just sparks even more intensity through me.
A smile slices across his full lips, and that starlight in his eyes shines even more. “Then why is your heart pounding so hard right now, it sounds like it wants to leave you behind entirely?”
Smug satisfaction is all that he gives as I, too, become aware of how harshly my heart is slamming against my ribs.
Fuck him.
My knee comes up hard and fast, and he goes down just as quickly with a violent groan.
Fucker.
“Hasn’t anyone told you that anger and fear sound the same?”
“Fucking bitch,” he seethes, and though I can’t see him, I hope he’s holding his jewels like they’re the last petty inheritance he’ll ever own.
The cunt knocker.
“I’m a little busy here, if you hadn’t noticed. Was there something you wanted?” I ask, tipping my chin up.
“You’re such a pain in the ass, and I barely even know you,” he growls from his low spot in the ground.
“Yes, well, I only get better with age.” I half-shrug, half pull my arm out of the damn socket, but I remain impassive to his annoyance.
“Your list came in.” His voice lifts back to its normal gravelly, delicious state.
Not that I’ve noticed. Not that my wet panties have noticed.
Nothing. His voice does nothing for me.
“List?” I ask carelessly.
“Yeah. You have assignments here. Pre-assignments before you can even attend class with the others.”
“Like a test of sorts?”
“Yeah. If you can call killing people a test, then yeah.” His breath fans my cheek, and I try to focus on his words rather than the minty taste of them.
I lean into him, so he can feel my words against his tongue, just like I can his. “Killing people is easy, Sialen. It’s living with them that’s hard.”
The silence that slips in between us is magnified by the broken look in his iron eyes. He doesn’t know I can see him through the scratchy fabric. That’s clear in the way his attention openly shifts slowly over my face. So slowly, I feel it like the brush of a finger dragging over my temple, my cheek, my lips.
“She collared you.” His voice is this heartbreaking sound that hurts to hear. I have no idea why my soul squeezes like that for him. “She wanted to break you.” Then the feeling in my chest drops. I’m suddenly all too aware of the slicing pain that cuts into my flesh along my neck. “It’s laced with belladonna. It’ll inject into your bloodstream if you piss them off. Don’t piss them off, Emmera,” he growls, and it’s such a delicious, gravelly sound across the syllables of my name that I have to whisper “Fuck you,” at him before I accidentally call him daddy. His head shakes slowly. “You’re going to be such a pain in my ass,” he whispers once more.
“First of all, you’re stating obvious facts that I figured out on my own, so thanks for wasting my time with that little fucking speech of yours. Secondly, you’re not my babysitter, Sialen. You’re my nothing. And I’ll be the same to you.” I shift then, and I feel the pressure between my thighs suddenly as he dips in and lowers his lips along my ear.
“I wish that were true. I’m not your nothing, though, little Sekar. I’m your fucking mentor.”
The heat of his breath lingers against my flesh as he backs away. His boots echo against the cold stone. He leaves me there with a resounding click of the door.
And I’m left in the heavy darkness wondering just what kind of deal I’ve made with the Devil Krist.
Chapter Four
I must have fallen asleep the moment Sialen left, because when I wake again, it’s with cold hands encircling my wrists. I never would have fallen asleep in a hostage situation, but the belladonna coursing through my body is making me weak in a way I haven’t been in a long time.
I keep my breathing even, listening intently with my eyes closed as the stupid fucker unties both my wrists and slowly lowers me to the ground. The footsteps are delicate, and so is the body pressing against mine. Female, then.
I have no qualms about murdering women. I’ve done it before plenty of times. Before I make any sudden movements, I assess the damage over my body. It seems like all my clothes are still intact, but I don’t feel shoes against my feet or the heavy weight of my sword at my side.
Those fucking bitch-ass motherfuckers!
When I find Krist, I am going to tear her limb from fucking limb. How dare she? Damios was a gift from my Holy Lady of Death. Only a Sekar can wield it to reap the souls of the damned for our offerings. That offense has earned her a slow, torturous death. But first, to deal with the bitch untying me.
When she is close enough, my body acts on instinct. My head snaps forward, striking her forehead. I’m on my feet in an instant, lashing out with a quick swipe of my legs. The thud and the startled cry let me know that she’s on the floor. I yank the itchy lace away from my face and look down at the cowering figure on the ground.
I’m more of a kill first, ask questions later kind of gal.
The heel of my foot comes crashing down against her face, and I have the satisfaction of hearing her nose crunch beneath the force of my blow. She cries out, holding her hands up to fend me off. Brutal sounds rip from her throat, and my gaze lingers on her long enough to see white steam begin to shoot out of her ears.
Literal steam.
There’s only one creature I know of that can do that.
Her eyes glare up at me, pupils splitting into thin slits, the irises of her eyes nearly consuming the whites with their brilliant red-gold color. She growls, and the exposed skin on her body ripples.
“You’re a fucking dragon!” Dragon shifters are about as rare as Sekar, and I just broke one’s nose. I’m confident and hopeful this moment will go down in history books once I kill her and lead her kind to extinction.
Good riddance, bitch.
Before I can continue my assault, she flings herself back against the floor, the back of her head cracking against the tile as she writhes and cries out. I blink at that. It looks like she’s fucking possessed as her whole body convulses. I look harder and note the gleaming collar around her neck. If it’s anything like mine, I know there’s something similar to belladonna injecting into her blood. What’s a dragon’s weakness?
I get my answer when the steam disappears, and her whole body starts shivering as if she’s cold. Her teeth begin chattering, and she hugs herself, rubbing her palms down her arms.
“What the fuck is that about?”
Her shivering doesn’t abate, but she gets up and pierces me with a glare. I jolt as I recognize her. The homewrecking blonde from the hallway covered in Gavin’s cum. Blood flows down her chattering lips, and she turns to spit it out against the brick floor.
“Fuck you!” she shrieks. “I just came in here to
give you your fucking list. Not deal with this bullshit!”
A list? What list? There was something about a list, but I can’t think straight, and I’m not curious enough to ask it out loud and show my weakness. I smirk at her. “You can take your list,” I purr, “and shove it up your dragon hole.”
I take a step past her to make my way to the door when I feel the needles lining my throat stab out and pierce my skin, inches deep. Liquid flows inside me in a way I wish was perverted and sexy but instead is painful as fuck. I drop to my knees and bite the inside of my cheek. My muscles spasm as a fiery sensation works its way through my system, rendering me practically useless. I tremble on the ground just like she did, fighting hard to not shout out my pain. I bite down hard until I taste the coppery tang of my blood.
Once my body stops shaking, the spasms become merely pins and needles over my skin. Little bursts of shock that make me tremble everywhere. I groan as I push myself up. My chest heaves with my heavy intakes of breath, and I try to gather my bearings once again.
My eyes meet the blonde’s, and she snarls at me. “That’s what happens when we get out of line or try to use our powers without permission, fool.” She reaches into the pocket of her long skirt and tosses a crumpled piece of paper at me. “There’s your fucking list. You’re supposed to meet with Marcen so he can give you weapons for your death watch.”
My fingers grasp for the paper, but I don’t open it and don’t look down at the scrawl there. “Death watch?” I demand. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
She groans as she stands up on shaking legs. Her pale skin looks like a light shade of blood now, like she’s frosting all over. “S-s-stupid fuck. Everyone who comes here has to prove themselves. You’re no exception. You’re supposed to go k-k-kill everyone on that list to prove your loyalty to the headmistress and our Academy.”
I open the list then and look down at the five names total. They mean nothing to me; I don’t even fucking recognize them. “Will I get to go outside?”