by Meg Xuemei X
I wrapped my legs around his waist to make myself comfortable as he moved toward the exit of Lorcan’s suite.
When we came out of the golden mansion, the place was nearly vacant. The vampires were efficient, especially when they knew the gods would be on their vampire asses if they didn’t act fast. The fae twins teleported the few of us to the deck of the Brooklyn Bridge, where Alaric concealed us with his invisible spell.
Then we stepped through the veil into the land of Academy. Like a swirl of wind, we stood right in front of Reysalor’s mansion encased in lush forest and garden.
A couple of figures shuffled at the perimeter. I bet the fae guards were reacting to the vampires among us. Well, if a fight broke out, I wouldn’t get behind the vampires—except for Lorcan, or maybe Xihin.
Boone waited at the door, his gaze falling on the vampire lord and the demigod and some of their assistants, their long suit coats flapping in the wind.
“Boone,” I shouted at him with a grin. “Do you have a cake for me?”
“Yes, Cass,” he said with a smile. “I made a fresh one with five layers of toppings as soon as I learned you were returning.”
It was too bad we lost Phobos. If we had brought the god along, Boone and his excellent chief could have figured out a way to infuse Phobos’ godly energy into the recipe and make the world’s best energy cake for me. My mates could try it as well. I craved to share everything with them. I almost kicked myself for not thinking of that earlier while I had Phobos in the Court of Blood and Void.
“A cake? What kind of cake?” Alaric asked, his eyes sparkling in delight as he strode toward the house. It seemed that he was no stranger to this place, and he loved cakes as much as I did.
I shot him a worried look before glancing at the others. I hoped that they understood that I’d staked a claim on the cake since Boone mentioned that he’d made it only for me. Nevertheless, I raced into the house before anyone else, wind in my wake, and Boone chuckled behind me.
11
Reysalor enrolled me in the Academy. He was one of the seven Council members, so he had a lot of leverage in the school. I was beyond myself in excitement for two days. But on the third day, before I had to report to class, I started to worry.
I knew nothing about schools.
I’d declared in the vampires’ court that I wouldn’t obey any rules, but school was a different case. I didn’t want to be kicked out of the Academy and become a laughingstock because I was ignorant of the school regulations.
“Shouldn’t I live on campus, like other students?” I asked. “Shouldn’t all students stay together, like in a dormitory?”
“We’re your roommates,” Pyrder said. “You’ll live with us here for better protection.”
I bit my nail, all nervous again. “I don’t know if they’ll allow it.”
“Don’t worry, Cass baby.” Pyrder grinned. “I’m also a Council member, though I seldom go to their meetings. We’ll soon open two more positions in the Council since Lorcan and Alaric both have great sway behind them. Reys has sent the proposal into every Council member’s hand. The four of us will take over and decide everything.”
At my glare, he added, “The five of us, you included.”
“But I still want my own space,” I said.
Pyrder frowned. “You don’t want to stay with us?”
“It’s not that,” I said. “I can stay with all of you half of the time, but I don’t want to be your shadow. I must show my independence for the other students to respect me.”
“We can be your shadows,” he said. “We’ll depend on you.”
“That’s worse,” I said with exasperation. “I want to strike out on my own, just like everyone else. I want to earn something for myself. I want to see how far I can go by relying only on myself. I don’t want special treatment. I don’t want anyone to look at me differently because I’m living in a power house. And I want to have my own social reach.”
“You have a broad social reach,” Pyrder said. “Us, the guards, Boone, and many others.”
“I want to make friends my own age in the Academy!” I said. “I’ll never make a friend with you four towering over me and scaring everyone away.”
I remembered the first day I’d walked with them on campus. Everyone had given them a wide berth.
Pyrder blinked. “I thought you scared them away.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, cute.”
After days of debating, persuasion, seduction, and threats, the four overprotective males finally caved in and decided to give my independence a trial. But they all laid out their own rules and I compromised on some.
“You won’t reveal who you really are,” Lorcan said.
I didn’t even know who I really was, except that they half-agreed that I might be a daughter of Hades. That theory would need to be tested.
“You can’t show anyone any of your powers except your air magic,” Lorcan stated as the second condition. He regarded himself as a lawmaker.
“You don’t want me to be too cool because of your insecurity,” I said with a shrug. “Which is fine.”
Pyrder chuckled.
“We don’t require you to perform well in the regular classes,” Lorcan continued. “They won’t help you anyway, since you’re already more advanced in your power than anyone else in the Academy. I objected to the foolish idea of displaying you, but I was outvoted. So now I’m only indulging your fancy.”
I gave him a glare. I was only glad my other three mates had more sense.
“The four of us will be the only ones to train your true power, in secret,” he said. “There must be more latent powers in you, and one of them can kill the gods. We need to bring it out.”
Great, he was still obsessed with me killing the gods. I’d thought he’d abandoned his mission and passion after we mated.
Through our mating bond, he perceived my sarcastic thoughts.
“Dulcis, we’ll be the defense line between the gods and you,” he said. “But we need to prepare you in case we all go down. I can’t bear the thought of them getting their hands on you. And now they know you’re the only one who can take them down, they’ll come hunt you.”
The High Lord of Night was unable to sugarcoat anything.
So far, we knew, the Olympian gods hadn’t led their minions to stomp the Court of Blood and Void. But a team of Lorcan’s vampires, who were left in Portland to watch the area, had spotted a few suspicious mages and humans checking out the vacant court.
The gods might have designed a different move, or Phobos was carefully planning his own revenge instead of informing the entire Olympus race.
“Cass can’t be a secret weapon anymore,” Reysalor chimed in. “Eventually, we’ll need to let the Council know her existence and get the whole army behind her.”
“Wow, wow,” I called out. “Wait a second. I don’t need the pressure. I don’t need the whole dark force behind me. Just you guys shadowing me is a tough pill to swallow on a daily basis.”
“That hurt my feelings, Cass baby,” Pyrder said.
“Eventually, but not now,” Alaric said. “I agree with Lorcan. Cass needs to remain anonymous.” He gave me a wink. “Let her blend in with the other students and see how she fares.”
School was a huge deal for me but not for them.
“I’m not sure Cass can ever blend in with any group,” Reysalor said.
“What?” I shouted as I gave him a stinky eye. “I thought you’d always be in my corner.”
Reysalor spread his arms as if to say, “I’m just telling the truth.”
“I strongly object to presenting Cass to the Council,” Lorcan said. “I made one mistake trusting my own people and I almost cost our mate her life. We don’t know who we can really rely on when the gods’ spies are everywhere. If Phobos could infiltrate the massively warded fae club in the mortal realm, who can say some of them, or their spies, aren’t already in the Academy? What if a major god is one of the Council members?”
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“You’re now paranoid, vampire,” Pyrder said. “No god can be in the Council. We’ve taken enhancive security measures.”
“Usually I don’t take sides when you guys fight,” I said, disliking the way he was setting boundaries around me. “But you did sound paranoid, Lorcan.”
“We thought we could detect a god’s presence, but we failed to detect Phobos initially, and he was only a second-tier god,” Alaric said with a brooding expression. “The fuckers have upgraded this time. They have new spells that can disguise their godly essence.”
My mates shared a dismayed look.
“We must design something that can spot the gods and flush them out,” Reysalor said. “That’s the second priority next to Cass.”
“If any of them is already in Academy, we’re screwed,” Pyrder said.
Alaric nodded. “Sooner or later the Olympians will all know about Cass, if they don’t already. They won’t accept the blow that they aren’t at the top of the food chain for the first time in history. Zeus and his siblings killed their father for that. They won’t allow anyone to turn them into food and they’ll do anything in their power to root out the threat.”
And from there, the conversation got even grimmer.
“Guys, thanks for reminding me the gods will soon bear down on my ass until they erase me from the face of the planet,” I said. “That’s very comforting. So I’m going to bed now. Inform me tomorrow morning of your final decisions and I’ll review them and see if I approve any.”
But I already knew what their decisions were. Easily.
First, I’d still go to the school.
Second, I was still a secret weapon.
And third, even if I made new friends, I would never let anyone outside our tight circle know that I’d once captured a god and drained him.
12
We moved to the large campus suite of Prince Pyrder, since my mates wanted to keep close to me while I attended class. Actually, the whole floor was assigned to fae, and the prince’s suite had six rooms arched like a half ring with a spacious sitting room in the center.
I’d wanted to live in a dormitory with other students, but my request was denied as soon as it was out of my mouth.
“You’re a mated female now,” Lorcan grated.
“To at least two of us, sweetheart,” Alaric said.
Two and a half actually. Reysalor and I would finish our mating, probably next week. I wondered how we should do this rotating schedule thing.
I narrowed my eyes. “So?”
“So you’ll live with your mates like one,” Lorcan concluded.
He loved to assign me responsibilities. The High Lord was a keeper of traditions and rules, and I happened to be the opposite. If I weren’t his mate, he would have snapped my head off my neck already.
But then I made his heart beat and gave him many more interesting challenges in life.
“That’s your old concepts talking, vampire dude,” I said. “I’m a modern woman, who is all about being up-to-date and independent. And I don’t want to tell you a third time that you need to keep up with me.”
“Most women in this age would envy what you’ve landed, Cass,” Pyrder said.
Every now and then, his annoying arrogance would pop out, though most of the time he was cool. But then, as I’d mentioned before, Pyrder and I almost disagreed on everything, so I wasn’t even surprised.
“Tell me, panther,” I said. “What have I landed?”
Pyrder opened his mouth, saw my sneer and look of challenge, and shut it.
“We got a better deal with you as our mate, dulcis,” Lorcan said. “Pyrder was only suggesting that you need to learn to compromise sometimes, even as a very modern woman.” He could be smooth as silk as well.
“I bent a lot for you guys already, as I’ve never bent for anyone before,” I murmured, deciding to retreat.
I wouldn’t chance riling up my mates too much and becoming a quarrelsome brat in their eyes. At least I’d gotten what I wanted—I was on campus now and enrolled in the school.
If I kept pissing off the High Lord, he might campaign for us to go back to ShadesStar.
“All right,” I said on a sigh. “I won’t insist on living in the student bunk.”
But I insisted on striking out on my own in my first class.
“Who can pose a threat to me since I’m so advanced in magic, as you all have admitted?” I said. “And there aren’t bad guys here. Everyone is keyed up to fight the gods.”
“We’re better safe than sorry if one of us is always with you,” Reysalor said.
“When you first sought me out, you wanted a weapon,” I said. “And now you want to sheath this little knife? Make up your mind. If one of you constantly babysits me, how can I fight the gods when they come looking?”
“It’s probably a worse idea to even let you fight the gods,” Reysalor sighed.
“Too late,” I said. “They’ll never give up their hunt for me. And now, with little scheming Phobos running back crying to his daddy, they’ll come for me sooner rather than later, and I need to learn as much as I can before they’re hot on my ass.”
“They won’t get on your ass.” Pyrder tried to convince himself. “We took out the Goddess of Track and Trace.”
“Phobos has the seer in his pocket,” I said. “It was her who first saw me and sold me out to him.”
Alaric pondered. “We need to find a way to disguise Cass.”
“Give Cass what she wants for now,” Reysalor said. “We won’t win an argument against her, based on my personal experience. All she wants is to wander the campus alone without us even two hundred yards away.”
The cunning fae heir could cut through my bullshit and knew what I truly desired.
So, on the first school day, I went to the campus without my mates tagging along. I’d gotten my class curriculum and a map. I couldn’t read the text, but I’d had Boone add the star sign on the map telling me where I should be today.
I squinted at the map, then stared at the buildings and outdoor corridors and turns in front of me. The classroom would be seven blocks from the dormitories and three blocks from the dining hall, and I’d passed both. It should be around the corner, but I didn’t see any student enter any classroom.
I was probably too early. I didn’t think other students were as eager as I was, wanting to get to class half an hour early.
Anxiety shot into me. I needed to make a good impression. I didn’t care about rules, but school rules were different, in my opinion.
For the first time, I wanted to fit in instead of standing out. I even dressed like most students here—in army fatigues, since the Academy was a military school.
Then my peripheral vision caught a moving blur. As I pinpointed it, I realized that Hector was on the other side of the campus square. He was far enough away, but he could watch my every move.
And then, not surprisingly, I caught Ambrosia loitering at my five o’clock. She didn’t even mind me spotting her.
I was losing the battle with my overbearing mates. The fae warriors would always follow me around, even when they had to do it at a distance. And then at night, the vampires would shadow me. Celeb, Alaric’s hybrid demon guard, would spy on me in between.
I straightened my back, not wanting the annoying fae to know I was lost in the cobble-stoned square of the campus.
A leaf tore from a branch of oak tree, floating in the wind, and I let my eyes follow its drift, pretending to be interested in nature, while my mind busily calculated how to ditch the guards.
I should just cut across the path of a few students and ask them where the heck the classroom was. I smiled humbly at everyone walking in my direction, but no one returned my smile.
Half of the students had a funereal look, as if there was no tomorrow. And the rest had an air of self-importance. No one seemed to give me a second glance. Maybe that was how they treated a timid newbie in the elite Academy.
Anyway, they’d all soon go fig
ht the gods’ army, knowing that few would survive. What could one more new recruit do to tip their fate? If I were them, I’d probably look somber too.
I used to consider myself reckless and bold, but put in this kind of social setting, I wasn’t completely sure of myself anymore.
I didn’t want to embarrass myself, either.
A girl who looked seventeen, a stack of books in her arms, scrambled along the edge of the square near a red-tile roof courthouse kind of building.
She didn’t stalk through the center of the square or puff her chest up like others who had the attitude of the humankind’s saviors. She was trying to avoid attention.
It dawned on me that she didn’t fit in. Almost all of the students I’d seen, males and females, had a soldier’s build. She was slender with no muscles and a fragile look.
Maybe I should go ask her about the classroom. She didn’t seem like one who would look down her nose at me, judging by her meek brown eyes etched wide apart on her pale, heart-shaped face.
Or I could just follow her. Or I could offer to carry some of her books, relieving part of her burden.
I wasn’t usually shy, but if I made a fool of myself proving my independence, Hector would report back to his princes and I’d never live it down.
Then the scene suddenly changed before I strode toward the girl.
A teenage mage lunged at the girl from the outdoor corridor of the courthouse building. She yelped and jumped away, fast enough to avoid being crushed to the ground but not enough to come out a winner.
Her books dropped from her hands and spread over the ground.
I scowled at the boy.
Then another blond boy, nearly the same age, shoved the girl while she squatted to pick up her books. She fell on her ass.
“Hey, soothsayer, I just touched you,” the blond boy shouted. “Did you see my future?”
A group of six—five muscled boys of mixed species and one tall fae girl—surrounded the human girl. I now realized some of them had been hiding behind the column, waiting for the human. They’d marked her as their game.