The Broken Academy 3: Power of Blood (A Paranormal Academy Reverse Harem Romance)

by Jade Alters

  I glance around at the flow of draconic traffic for openings. If I’m careful, I might just be able to zip straight there. I break away from the flow and cock my wings straight up, curved for maximum wind. With one sonic flap, I catapult for the opening. I have to spin and duck under the flinging chestplates of a small flock of others before I make it to the blade of light directly below the crack.

  I dip low to give myself more room to accelerate. For the final rise, I need speed. I need power. I focus on the fire below me to envision the one inside me. It flares as I push harder with each snap of my wings. Up. Down. Up. Down. The fire explodes as I force the air down, throw myself as high and hard as I can. I shoot straight into the crack of day. But we’re deeper underground than I thought. Glass and rock screams past me in the tight tunnel upward. Rippling wind robs me of more speed by the second. I rise slowly into the light, unable to spread my wings for another flap. It’s all or nothing, and I didn’t realize quite how much of my all I used in the flight and scuffle earlier. My strength gives out just as the cool mountain breeze hits my scales. I snap my exhausted wings open at the opening from the Kyrie Stronghold.

  I’m knocked sideways almost immediately by a racing blur of draconic color. I fumble around through the sky just feet above a rocky bald mountain, until a claw catches my shoulder. Scaly black armor lifts me up until I can straighten my path and catch some lift with my wings again. Only then does Dorian let me go.

  “Thanks,” I think to myself.

  “No problem,” Dorian answers. Right. The Soul of Fire. So we’re connected now, huh? Great. I try to remember that as I follow Dorian high up into a veritable tornado of scales and wings. Dragons of every color, size and wingspan blanket the illusory sky over the Kyrie Stronghold.

  Even behind the curtain, though, I can hardly tell that we’re above a facility at all, let alone one so expansive as the Kyrie Stronghold. But my eyes don’t linger there, or anywhere else for longer than a second. There’s just too much to look at. The endless rolling blue-gray sky. The spirals of scaled beasts spinning out to fill almost every inch of it. The saw-tooth peaks of the Sierra Nevadas below us. My father, literally spinning circles around me. I beat my wings double-time to catch up.

  I train my eyes on him, glinting back and forth between peeking sun overhead. It’s only then that I notice his scales aren’t quite so dark as they seemed in the obsidian cave. No, in this perfect light I notice that they’re a shade of violet, just darker than my own. I don’t know just why, but this turns my stomach more than anything else before. My true, draconic form has always been something that belonged to me, and me alone. It didn’t tie me to my old life on Scott Street. It didn’t tie me to any other Dragon, like the Soul of Fire did. No two Dragons have the same exact scale color, but I’d never met one at the Academy even remotely close to mine. It didn’t tie me to anything. When I spread my wings and took off, I was free.

  Now all I can look at is him. With his purple scales, just like mine. His tan skin. His dark hair. His muscular build. The only thing he didn’t give me was my crystal blue eyes. And he’s bigger than me. Faster. He’s more skilled and just more in every way. So why? For the first time, my serpentine eyes gloss over with water. Until now, I wasn’t sure if I could cry in my true form. But it’s not just another human imitation. We can cry. Proof of it streaks down between the scales of my face and plunges into the wind. Droplets from questions I swore I’d never ask sail down to the arid ground hundreds of feet below. Why?

  Why, if we’re so similar, did he leave me behind? Why, if he’s so great and powerful, did he never come back for me? Why do I even care? Why, why, why?

  “Cecelia,” Dorian’s voice hums through my mind like the lowest note of a cello. Breath catches in my throat. “Cece- sorry,” Dorian corrects himself. But I have no words to answer him, in the Soul of Fire or otherwise. I don’t know what to say to him, with the storm of thoughts I hope he hasn’t overheard raging around my head. “Are you familiar with the Phoenix-Wing Technique?” Maybe he has been dancing around inside my gray matter. He knows just what to do: ask a direct question with a simple answer.

  “No,” I tell him.

  “I thought they’d have taught you that by now, in your third year. Have you taken Advanced Transformation?” Dorian asks. This lights a fuse that sets my mind off racing. Has Bart been telling him about me? Or was Dorian, too, a student of the Broken Academy once? There seems to be a general understanding around the Stronghold of Academy life – are all members of the Kyrie Academy dropouts?

  “I’m in Advanced Transformation now,” I tell him, when I realize how long we’ve flown in silence. It’s around this time that I also notice how far we’ve flown from the rest of the draconic flock. A few other outliers like us sail off to scattered destinations along the Sierra ridges, but most collect in a gorgeous, fluid cloud of reflective color in the airspace above the obsidian cave. “We’re working on enlarging our forms now,” I add for Dorian.

  “A talent you’ll be known for, I’m sure,” he says. He really does sound sure, too, regardless of how little he knows me. With a few skillful cups of his wings, Dorian flips around to hover backward, facing me. I watch the particular curve and patterns he uses. His manipulation of muscle and air is truly unlike any Dragon flight I’ve seen before. His jaw hangs open to show a few choice fangs in a scaly smile. “Would you like to learn a technique a little more advanced?” For a moment we hover there, a wingspan apart from one another, eyes locked together. Inside me, curiosity and pride battle for the rights to answer Dorian’s question.

  “When was the last time you renewed your teaching license?” I prod, to delay the decision. I feel the essence of laughter from Dorian in the Soul of Fire before he says:

  “I know I’m probably the last person you want a lesson from, but…think of it as an apology gift.” I do my best to keep face, but Dorian catches a whiff of the betrayal I feel through the Soul of Fire. He knows. He knows he doesn’t even need to mention what the apology is for. He’s known all along how I must feel, and he thinks a gift is going to fix it? What buyout could possibly bridge the void left by twenty-three years of absence? “It doesn’t mean you have to forgive me. Not now or ever, if you don’t think I deserve it. I just want to give you something. Anything, to show you how sorry I am.”

  I don’t know how he’s done it, but it’s done. I don’t hate Dorian anymore. I know it right at that moment by how much I do hate the way it feels. The perfect combination of words and tone dug in a little thorn of sympathy for him in my scarred heart tissue. It doesn’t mean I forgive him for what he’s done…but I can’t forsake the man in front of me. Not when he’s trying so hard.

  “If anyone sees me do it…will they know I learned this technique from you?” I concede. Dorian snorts out a little puff of black smoke in a scoff.

  “So confident you’ll be able to match me, in the short amount of time we have together?” he challenges me. He has no idea what kind of fire he’s playing with.

  “Show me the damn technique. Then we’ll talk,” I snort right back at him. His fangs draw out a wide smile again, just before he dives.

  Flame seeps from between every one of Dorian’s scales. His dark armored body draws a crimson streak straight down towards the earth. He spins faster every plunging second. Dorian’s descent stops about a hundred feet short of the earth when he flings both wings out to their maximum expansion. I hardly believe my Dragon eyes. Crimson tongues of flame flutter up and down the length of both Dorian’s wings. From far away, they seem to be made of flame entirely. Not only that, but his shoulders have broadened. His neck has lengthened. His claws stretch wider than any I’ve seen before. Dorian’s Dragon frame has expanded to double its original size, which was already massive. Now he resembles the mythical monsters from Oriental legend. He might be bigger.

  The catastrophic flap of his wings topples several small trees at the base on the mountain below him. He rises slowly, like a living fortress
of mauve armor. Just the sound of it, my God! It shakes me in every sense of the word. When he reaches a level to look me in the eye, my reflection literally swims in its gigantic hazel color. It’s almost the size of my head. Then, at the top of a little rise, he arches his wings straight upwards. He slams them down. All the fire caught in the nets of his wings is released. An inferno spiderwebs out from around him on all sides. The hot wind from it kicks me back a few feet. I try not to gawk as I stabilize myself, but I know I’m failing. I can’t pick a spot to put my bewildered eyes: his enormous frame, or the hellfire he’s spread across the skies. It takes a full ten seconds for the furthest tongues of it to flicker out.

  “It looks impressive, but really, there’s a trick to it,” Dorian tells me. I can hardly hear him over all the questions screaming in my ears. How? How is he still so big? Doesn’t it tire him out?

  “I’ll say,” I manage to get across the Soul of Fire.

  “You expend a ton of energy expanding your form the traditional way. Pushing against the constraints of your cells. It hurts and it’s hard to maintain. That’s why you spin and dive,” Dorian explains. My ears perk up in wonder of just how those two things are correlated. “Ever go on a rollercoaster and feel your blood shoot out into your extremities? It’s like that, but a hundred times stronger. You’re redirecting what’s inside your body for a more conducive growth outside.”

  “That actually…makes some degree of sense,” I can’t believe I’m admitting. I can’t believe I’m considering trying it. But I know that if I don’t, I’ll bring regret home with me. “What about keeping the flames in your wings like that?”

  “That’s a little trickier,” Dorian tells me. “They probably taught you at the Academy that our scales are the only parts of our bodies capable of exuding the hallucinogen that keeps us human. It’s not true.”

  “Well, shit. Good thing I can hear the truth straight from the mind of the guy who wrote the Dragon’s guidebook,” I tease. Like I’d take the word of an acquaintance over that of my home for the past three years. Although…according to what the Academy taught me, what he just did really shouldn’t be possible.

  “I know. I know how it sounds,” Dorian tells me, both claws up in a gesture of concession. “They teach you that because it’s very easy to scorch your wing-skin that way. It’s one of the only parts of us that can actually burn, if they have direct contact with flame for too long. But our wings can actually let out the same gas our scales do. It can still burn. That’s the Phoenix Technique. It’ll get you larger and hotter than any other. But it’s risky. Maybe start with the enlargement.”

  “A-alright,” I say. I spread my wings wide for a pensive hover. My eyes wander down toward the dry earth hundreds of feet down. I breathe in the crisp mountain air, as deep as I can.

  “You don’t have to try it toda-”

  “Get ready to share the skies with someone your own size.” I shake off the jitters. I lift my backside so my scaly chest is parallel with the earth. All that bars my path is fear.

  Lee,

  I drop everything the second I feel it. Cece’s truly afraid. She’s been uncomfortable all day, verging on panicked. But this is different. I feel the skip of her heartbeat like a nudge in the back of my brain. My fingers unlatch from my books. I don’t even hear them hit the floor. I shut my eyes tight and dive into the Soul of Fire.

  I race across miles of blackness that corresponds to the miles between us. I don’t need to know where she is anymore to find her. I just follow the path of our stretched connection like a thread all the way to her. I fling through cloud after cloud of embers in the dark, all the way to hers. Her unmistakable, one-of-a-kind, sapphire flame. My own orange flame twists around hers in a scorching helix.

  Light stabs into my eyes the second the link is complete. She’s high up, outside, wherever she is. A few blinks bring the details on the ground more into focus. Dry earth. Scraggly brush. Rocky peaks. She’s in the Sierra Nevadas. I look through her eyes straight down at the ground. I know from the flap of her wings that she’s in her true form.

  “You don’t have to try it toda-”

  “Get ready to share the skies with someone your own size,” Cece interrupts whoever it is trying to talk to her. She turns her head to him just enough for a glance. That’s all I need to recognize him. You don’t mistake a legend like Dorian Darkscale for anyone else.

  “Cece! What are you doing?” I shout. She jumps at the boom of my voice in her head.

  “Lee? I should ask you! I didn’t call for you!” Cece shouts right back, though only I can hear her.

  “No, but it looks like you damn well should have,” I clip back. “I sensed you were afraid, so I checked in on you and-”

  “I can’t explain this right now, Lee, I’m busy!” Cece tries to cut me off.

  “I’ll say! Cece, do you know who that is next to you?” I cry out. “That’s Dorian. Dorian Darkscale. The leader of the Kyrie!”

  “I know who he is, Lee, and right now I need to impress him! I’m here on orders from Thise and I won’t say any more until I’m sure Dorian can’t overhear us. Understand?” Cece shoots back.

  “Cece- just…be careful,” I force myself to cut short. If she really is playing double agent like she says, she’s right about Dorian. He could probably tune in at any time.

  “I will. Now get out of my head. I can’t very well do anything with you pissing my pants,” Cece demands. I say nothing more, but I won’t leave. Not until I’m sure she’s alright. As if to spite me, she plummets straight down toward the ground.

  I bite my tongue hard to keep from screaming for her as her vision hazes with a rapid spin. Then I realize what she’s doing. The Phoenix Technique. Holy shit – she’s not ready for this. She can’t be. Not when she just found out what she is two years ago. Yet Cece spins on, heat building, blood rushing. She drives herself like a drillbit, straight toward the earth. I feel her muscles unwinding and swelling like my own. I feel the heat rage around her like it’s right in my room with me.

  Cece flips over too close to the ground, and too roughly. Her head replaces her feet and vice versa several times as she struggles with her enlarged wings and body. I cringe hard as she flails towards the ground. To make matters worse, fire spittles across her scales all over, making her orientation impossible to distinguish. That’s when a claw snags her shoulder. She shoots a glance up to a smiling dark-scaled face.

  “I can’t believe you almost nailed it on your first shot,” Dorian rumbles as he holds her up. It takes Cece a few minutes of flailing around before she realizes she’s stable and lets herself droop in his hold.

  “Almost nailed it?” Cece sighs. “I would have been flattened if you hadn’t caught me.”

  “Wish someone would have been there to catch me, when I tried that for the first time,” Dorian laughs. “I made a crater in the ground the size of a car.” Cece gasps, then chuckles along with him. I hardly believe any of my senses. To see such kindness in Dorian’s face…to hear such genuine humor in both their voices… I wouldn’t have believed it if I’d heard it from someone else.

  Then, suddenly, I’m back in my room at the Academy. I have a mound of books to collect from the floor. Somehow, someway, Cece is with the leader of the Kryie…and I have to trust she’ll be fine.

  Corruption, Connection

  Bryant,

  The Broken Academy, Containment Chamber

  I twitch awake at the first knock. The following three drum through the walls of my empty room into my head. My orange gaze opens crisp, to sweep the room for threats. But everything is in its usual place. The gray walls hum with a consistent rise and fall in radiant light. The cracks of corrosion have spiraled from my body, down the legs of my cot to the floor, then up the walls to the ceiling. Now I’m awake, I flatten them all out. The cracks in the room reseal themselves but leave a scar, almost like the room is alive. If it is, it’s taken one hell of a beating from me over the years.

  My cot is still
firm as ever, and all in one piece beneath me. My books remain in a uniform stack on the floor in the far corner of the room. My tiny desk stands upright an arm’s length from the side of my sheetless cot. The single picture frame there holds an undisturbed picture of Cece and me. It’s the only picture I have, of anything. What then, was that noise? I sit up on the edge of my cot to stroll to the wall. Maybe if I put my ear to it and send some corrupting signals out to scope…

  There’s no need to do that when the same four knocks rattle my door again. There’s someone here. An intruder? An attacker? A thief with very poor taste in targets? Or perhaps…a guest? It would be my first, since taking up residence at the Broken Academy. But then, the day has already begun with a first. No one’s ever knocked on my door before. I slide off the edge of my cot and make my slow way across the floor to the heavy iron door to my room. I slide the enchanted black shutter away from the tempered glass pane that separates me from my visitor.

  “Cece?” I blurt out when I see her face. Our noses and eyes are mere inches apart, and yet I know from experience that both of our powers combined couldn’t break through the barrier between us, if we tried. That the lock on the outside of the door was left undone now was the ultimate sign of trust from the Council. A hard-earned gift for my graduation from their constant vigilance.

  “Do you live in a bomb shelter?” Cece asks. She raps her knuckles on my door a few times more just to marvel at the gong-like sound it produces. I marvel right along with her, never having heard it before.

  “In a sense,” I tell her. “A shelter for a bomb, rather than from it.” Cece’s eyebrows curve up at me, an expression I recognize as empathy. What for, I can’t quite figure out. I haven’t undergone any hardship for her to empathize with.