by Abbie Lyons
I waited to see if my intuition powers tipped me off. If he was lying, I could call bullshit.
But I sensed nothing one way or the other—nothing telling me that he was full of shit, but also nothing to reassure me either. Maybe I was just off my game.
“Okay,” I said. I was going to have to take him at his word. But I could still keep a healthy skepticism.
“And you should also know that the school is safe for now,” Wilder said. “The student body knows what happened—well, enough of what happened. You’ll need to be discreet, of course. Is that understood?”
I nodded against my pillow. Of course, I’d be telling Morgan. But I trusted her.
“That, and we’ll need to step up our guard. The administration, the students—everyone. These are still fertile breeding grounds for Chaos.”
This was so not the conversation I wanted to be having right now. Especially with his condescending, too-good-for-me tone. It would be infuriating if I weren’t also, totally perversely, slightly enjoying the fact that Wilder—handsome, scholarly Wilder—was at my bedside.
There was still one thing I needed to know.
“What about the relics?” I managed. “The sword?”
“Restored,” Wilder said. “To where it belongs. We’re still not clear how they left the crypt—or who’s responsible. Teddy claims he doesn’t remember anything, and, well...I’m inclined to believe him.”
He stared at me, his gaze boring into me, and I couldn’t tell if it was from genuine concern, or if he was pausing just so I’d fill the silence. Classic manipulation tactic—I wasn’t born yesterday.
“Well,” said Wilder rising to his feet, probably sensing my frustration at his company. “I’ll be off. I just wanted to see your face and make sure you’re okay.”
It felt genuine. Not in a “demon powers of intuition” sense, but in a more general way. Or maybe Wilder was just suave as fuck, even after demonstrating that he kinda sucked.
He quickly left the room, immediately after which yet another fuzzy figure entered—although this one rushed inside, leaving me no doubt who it was.
“Nova Donovan!” Morgan screamed. “Gods, the nurse sent word to me was soon as you woke up, and I rushed down here as fast as I could.”
She stopped me before I could even open my mouth for a “hello.”
“And don’t you dare speak,” she snapped at me. “Nurse Aquaria told me it must hurt for you to talk. But then again I’ve never had a problem chatting your ear off without you getting a word in edgewise, right?”
Say this for Morgan: she was back at 100% already.
“Yes, I’m fine, I’m fine,” she went on. “Just a little banged up, but nothing that hasn’t healed. Gods, you were out for days. I’m so glad to see you awake. And how ‘bout Teddy?” she said with a laugh. “I am never going to let him live this one down. Poor boy, and all, and I’m absolutely flooded with relief that you’re both okay, but Chaos choosing Teddy of all people is such a laugh. Do you suppose it had something to do with how much he loves that elevator? Although I’m not sure he was even taking the elevator to get to the relics. He might’ve needed something more supernatural for that task. Hmm.”
She paused a moment to catch her breath. “And you know the worst part?” she asked with a hint of sadness. “He probably can’t even dance without being possessed. What a drag.”
“Bollocks,” I managed to say.
“Absolute bollocks!” Morgan cried, delighted. “I’m sure there’s a lot you’re wondering about. Let’s see...classes were put on hold, but they’re set to begin again in a few days. And Dean Harlowe called together an assembly for the entire school. The faculty couldn’t just say nothing again. But it was pretty rudimentary. Didn’t give us a lot of answers: just to continue our lives as normal, not panic, blah blah blah. I’m sure you’ll give me more of the actual story later, but—Gods, you look weak. I’m already overstaying my welcome, aren’t I?”
She was right. Her company was nice, but every cell in my body was telling me I needed to shut down again for another few hours. Maybe after that I’d be able to see more than just blobs of color.
“Thank you for coming,” I said weakly.
“Don’t you dare thank me!” Morgan said. “This is what best friends are for.”
A wave of gratitude crashed over me, and I plunged back into sleep.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I spent a couple more days in the sick ward until Nurse Aquaria allowed my release, and then life returned to normal.
Wouldn’t it be great if it were that simple?
Nothing was ever going to be normal again. The last few months had made that readily obvious. I wasn’t Nova Donovan, street-hustling smart aleck, anymore.
I was Nova Donovan, half-demon. Warrior. And student at Hades Academy.
And I knew that whatever the next few months brought for me, they were probably going to upend everything all over again.
In truth, though, things at Hades did regain a shred of normalcy. We were nearing the end of the semester, and the professors had a lot of material to cram in thanks to the nearly full week of cancelled classes. It was easier to get back into the swing of everyday life when there was so much that needed to get done—including studying for finals.
“I somehow find myself faced with the challenge of taking us from World War II through the modern day in only a few short lectures,” Lattimore began his first class back. “Certainly not an enviable task for any professor of history. Alas, I will do my best to make this work. I trust that many of you are familiar with certain modern events in human history anyway, so perhaps I will cheat a bit and skip some of that. This is far, far from ideal, but it will have to do.”
Other professors were a bit less peevish. Lamoureux was confident that her students were finally starting to grasp the most basic concepts of pyromancy.
But that’s burying the lede. Maybe it was my brush with death, but I was beginning to find myself capable of the tiniest bits of demon power.
“Just a petit flame will do!” Lamoureux instructed the class. “To get an idea of where we are.”
I was still the best in class at creating fire through manual non-supernatural methods, which made me feel like a teacher’s pet. But that day, almost without thinking, I lifted my finger and tried for what felt like the thousandth time this semester to produce a spark with it.
“Voilà!” yelled Lamoureux, seeing my success immediately.
It certainly wasn’t some big blast of fire, but it was unmistakable—I’d used more than my fingertips to create a flame. What had once seemed impossible was suddenly feeling almost second-nature. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.
I can do this demon shit after all, I thought. Transmorphs, here I come.
Professor Kawasaki didn’t miss a beat either, and had us finally graduating to full-on backflips off of her fake boulders. Best of all, I got to sit out, due to being injured and all. The look on Camilla’s face was priceless. It was hard to say exactly how much she knew, but I realized it didn’t matter—I had dirt on her, kind of. I at least knew that she’d made out with Collum, and you could bet your ass I was keeping that in my back pocket in case it came in handy.
Remedial Latin was the same as it ever was. Only a few more chapters of the workbook to get through, and then I assumed I’d be ready for Remedial Latin Part 2 or whatever they were going to throw my way next semester.
But I was mostly just happy I got to have a class where I could spend time with Teddy.
“Our boy,” as Morgan called him, was in good spirits, all things considered. He was a little beat up, and his right arm was still in a cast—the demon version, which basically was a shiny, black shell, like a gauntlet from a suit of armor—but he seemed genuinely happy to be alive. No longer was he feeling weird and nauseous for “mysterious” reasons, and he kept saying things like “I feel better than I have in weeks!”
Still, I’d put good money on him still being tra
umatized about the whole thing. He nearly killed me and Morgan—he was literally a vessel of pure Chaos. That’s not the kind of thing you can just forget about, and despite his cheery facade, I really hoped he was okay.
Luckily for him, only Dean Harlowe and a few professors knew the truth. Teddy was quickly found to be at zero fault, and it was decided that more people knowing about his situation than necessary wouldn’t do him a lick of good. The official word was simply that he was a “victim of Chaos,” just like me.
Then there was Philosophy. Wilder looked a little, well, wild for our last classes in the semester, and we spent most of the class period in small groups or reading from the textbooks. Half the time, I’d look up and see him staring at me, that tingle at my neck irresistible.
What was frustrating, I realized, was how badly I wanted to figure him out. The brilliant, booksmart demon teacher, the one so sure of himself and his theories, who nevertheless had a dark side—a dark side even for a demon. I couldn’t help but feel, because my mind was a total perv ever since I’d seen his bare chest in the showdown, that he was probably into some freaky stuff in the “horizontal activity” department. That, and Morgan had basically declared her certainty that he was when we were gossiping.
But Wilder, of course, wasn’t the only thing to notice in Philosophy.
If I’d thought Raines could glower before, I hadn’t seen anything. His black eye was something magnificent, even as his dark hair fell over it, and a constant red glow flickered under his lashes on that side. He spent all of our classes with his arms folded, whispering with Collum and Aleksandr to the extent that he said anything at all, and flew out of there as soon as the bell rang. If he spent time in the common room at all, it was in a hidden corner where I couldn’t see him well, and God knows he never darkened the door of the library.
It was the second-to-last Philosophy class of the semester, and I was bagging up my stuff and headed to the hallway when I heard my name.
“Nova.”
Not Raines this time, though. It was Collum—the anti-Raines, basically. He nodded down the hallway, the opposite direction of the flow of students.
I glanced back at Morgan, who gave me a micro-shrug, but nodded, and slapped Teddy between the shoulderblades to ensure that he walked back to the common room with her and gave me my space.
I drew away, to a slight alcove under a torch, where Collum was waiting.
“Uh,” I said. “Hey.”
It was weird: for all I’d shared with Raines, both verbally and on the literal battlefield, I barely knew one of his closest friends. Had no idea what they talked about, had no idea how they’d met, nothing. All I really knew about Collum, besides what he looked like—which, let’s be real, was not at all hard on the eyes, especially with the light dusting of freckles I could see this close—was that he’d hooked up with Camilla. Which I still found kind of hard to believe. He just seemed like he’d have better taste.
“Hey,” Collum said. “You and I haven’t really talked much one-on-one, have we now?”
“Yeah. Can you read minds?” I said, before realizing that maybe he actually could. Who knew what powers were possible for demons?
Collum chuckled. He had just the faintest dimples when he smiled. “Alas, nah. Not I. Think it’s possible, though. Any rate.” He stuck his hands in his pockets. “Don’t mean to make this awkward, eh, but Raines didn’t want his half-brother seein’ you talk with him.”
“Ah,” I said. Figured. “So what’s up?”
“You’re feelin’ all right, then?” Collum said, and I realized he wasn’t asking for Raines. Just for himself. I nodded.
“I mean, I’ve been better. But I’ve also never shot down a Chaos-possessed demon, either, so.”
Collum cracked another smile. God, those dimples were really a gift from the demon gods, weren’t they?
“Good.” He cleared his throat. “Well, anyway, Raines just wanted to say that, if you were out tonight, maybe channeling, like you were that one time? He might, y’know, see you there.”
Even when Raines was having someone else deliver a message, he still managed to be obtuse. I almost rolled my eyes before I remembered it wasn’t Collum’s fault.
“Got it,” I said. “Message received. You, uh, let him know that, I guess.”
Collum nodded. “I will.”
“You three are really tight, huh? With those two?”
He shrugged. “Never really known a life without ‘em. So yeah, I’d do anything for ‘em.” He dipped his head a little. “Well, wouldn’t want to keep you.”
“Sure. Thanks.” I turned to go, and then, before I could lose my nerve, spun back around. “Did you actually make out with Camilla?”
Collum looked absolutely stricken. “What now?”
“At the ball,” I said. “I heard you guys, you know, snogged.” Or more, maybe.
Collum slowly shook his head from side to side. “Well, I dunno who’s been telling you that, Nova, but they’re a damn liar.”
Interesting. Very interesting. I knew it sounded too convenient to be true. At the same time, my intuition had told me Camilla wasn’t lying about messing with the relics, and that I did believe.
But if she wasn’t with the relics, and she wasn’t with Collum...where was she?
“Just between us?” Collum said, leaning in closer to me, even though we were alone. “I’ve got better taste than that.”
He winked, and my mouth fell open in delight.
“See ya round, Nova.”
And with that, he strolled off.
SO YEAH, I WENT OUT to channel that night.
Not that I could clear my mind in any way, shape, or form. Finals notwithstanding, it felt like all I’d done for the last three weeks was just process information.
Chaos is real, and took over Teddy, but he’s fine.
Someone was screwing around with the relics, but no one knows who.
Wilder maybe wanted me to die, but maybe not.
I might have some crazy weird powers, but maybe not, because I’ve barely been able do shit with them yet.
Although sometimes my eyes glow yellow.
And I can intuit whether someone’s telling the truth.
And I made a not-too-shabby flame in Pyromancy.
Oh, and Raines has fucking wings.
“Nova.”
I opened my eyes. Raines loomed over me, in classic Raines style. It was a decidedly cold night, so I’d bundled up in an extra layer of a down vest over my thermal, and put on wool socks beneath my Docs and a pair of fingerless gloves. Still, the chill was getting to me more than I wanted to admit.
“Raines,” I said, in the same dead-serious deep voice that he always used. Raines flicked his eyes upwards, in an almost eye-roll.
“Can I sit?”
“You’re asking now?”
That made him genuinely roll his eyes. He sat.
“So what, are you here to thank me?” I said, only half-jokingly.
“Not yet.”
“Not yet?” Okay, I guess I’d let that one slide, because I had something bigger I wanted to know. “Fine. Whatever. I just want to know one thing: what the hell is up with those wings?”
Raines’s eyes—both of them—flared red. “I don’t want anyone to know. No one can know, Nova.”
“That’s an answer to a different question,” I said, “but okay. So who does know?”
“You,” he said. “And Wilder.”
“And your boys? Collum and Aleksandr.”
Raines looked away. “They don’t.”
“Seriously?” I gaped. “I thought you told each other everything.”
“Almost. Almost everything. It kills me not to tell them. But it’s better that they don’t know.” He leveled his gaze back at me. “I don’t like you knowing, Nova. I really don’t. If I could wipe your memory, I wouldn’t hesitate to.”
“Is that a thing?”
“No,” Raines said. “Not that I know how to do, anyway.” He p
lucked at a blade of grass as a gust of icy wind blew over us, stretching the clouds that obscured the moon from view. “So I have another option.”
“Kill me?” I said. “Because sorry, Raines, but that’s not the way I’m going to go. I’ll take your secret to the grave if I have to, but that grave is a long way off.”
“I’m not going to kill you,” Raines said. “Even if I kind of want to sometimes.”
“So you and your brother have that in common.”
Raines’s eyes blazed brighter. “Don’t say that. Don’t ever say that. Never again, Nova. That’s an order.” He seized my wrist and pulled me close so that we were almost dead eye-to-eye. “Understood?”
I had no choice but to nod. I wasn’t a girl who liked being bossed around, and yet, at the same time, it only added to whatever twisted appeal I saw in Raines.
And that was something Raines had in common with Wilder, whether he liked it or not.
“What I need you to do is something else,” Raines said. “Something serious. But ultimately something for your protection as much as mine.”
“Okay?” I said. “Because you know my demon abilities have the firepower of a dollar-store sparkler, right? There’s probably barely anything I can do for you unless you want me to rig you another game of three-card monte.”
“Your powers won’t matter,” Raines said. “Just your soul.”
My soul?
He can’t mean—
“I need you to soul bind with me, Nova.”
My heart almost stopped in my chest. The cold of the night felt like it was pressing in from all sides, chilling me to my core. Raines wasn’t meeting my eyes as he spoke.
“It’s a last resort, but there’s nothing else I can do. My being half-guardian, my wings”—he said it with such loathing in his voice—”it’s the only way I’ll know that secret is safe.”
“Hang on,” I said, holding up a hand. Wasn’t soul binding like demon marriage? That was...quite a leap to be taking.