by Meg Xuemei X
“What? They left imprints in history? Why wasn’t I informed? All I knew is that they made an ancient pact at the age of the dinosaur.”
“You mean the age of the dragons?”
“Whatever. Dinosaurs and dragons are one and the same. They were all big and they ate people in one mouthful.”
“They were definitely and vastly different. And your mates can’t be that ancient, even though some of them are primordial.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “Have you spent a lot of spare time studying my mates?” If she had impure intentions, I’d slap a little sense into her.
She rolled her eyes. “Everyone knows the historical facts except you.”
Amber had been teaching me to read and write. I picked it up at lightning speed, which often shocked her to silence, to my great satisfaction. I had the genes, the instincts, and the intelligence. All I needed was someone to lead me through the door. And I told her so.
I shrugged. “Who cares about history when all that matters is now?”
“We learn history, so we won’t repeat mistakes.”
“Has human race ever done that in all its thousands of years?”
Amber opened her mouth, then shut it. I chuckled, scoring a point.
“Do you want to know what your mates have done for all races or not?” she asked with exasperation. I wasn’t an easy student. I often challenged her even during the reading sessions and threw her off with questions. She’d had enough of me.
Amber was a dork, but she was my dork.
I kicked a rock in my path, and it flew into the bushes. “Educate me, pip, so I can humor them tonight.”
“The fae, vampires, shifters, hybrids, and all the other supernatural beings maintain the status quo today because of the pact of brotherhood your mates made millennia ago. Different species constantly fight each other, but no race will commit genocide because your mates won’t allow it, and they’re the most powerful force on Earth.
“Without your mates and their bond, many species would have gone extinct a long time ago. That’s one reason the four of them bonded during the war against the great dragons: to preserve the supernatural beings.”
I grinned ear to ear. “Really? I know they’re sweet, but I didn’t know that they were that sweet.”
Amber sighed. “You missed the entire point again.”
“Hey, what do you think of the Noah dude?” I asked as we neared the courtyard.
Amber heaved another longing sigh. “He’s perfection.”
“Don’t tell me you have a crush on him,” I said. “He’s much older than you.”
“What about your mates?”
“Whatever. We’re all immortals. Anyway, did you ever have a premonition about Noah? I think you should grab his hand and get a reading. I don’t trust him. I think he might be a god in disguise. He’s concealed his vast power, but its wave made all the hairs on my neck stand up.”
“You can’t just go around accusing people like that, Cass! Besides, he can’t be a god. He’s a gentleman. As for his immense power, he gets a boost from all the mages in the Mages’ Circle, so it’s like he has a kind of godly power, and we’re lucky he’s on our side.”
A lot of cowardly and corrupt mages served the Olympian gods and betrayed their own kind.
“But he seems too perfect for an immortal mage,” I said, biting my nail as I pondered. “No one should be that flawless.”
“Your mates are perfect too!”
“No, no, no, you don’t know them. They have flaws. A lot. It’s just that I love their imperfections. Anyway, next time we see Noah, grab him at my cue.”
“I can’t just grab him at your cue. He’ll think I’m nuts.”
“You are nuts. So what can be worse than him thinking that? You’ll grab him, or I’ll embarrass you at every turn.”
“Fine, I’ll touch his hand to get a reading when it’s natural to do so. Just don’t do anything rash and stupid and dangerous when I’m with you.”
“Deal,” I said, and my smirk dropped as I spotted our magic instructors for the day—Noah and all of my four mates.
“Uh-oh,” Amber uttered in a low voice behind me.
“We’ll test your limits today, Cass,” Noah said as we approached, smiling as if inviting me to a private party.
My mates regarded me with the unreadable, distant expressions of their mentor faces.
Fine!
Warily, I eyed a crowd of at least two hundred mages behind Noah, who all looked so ready to throw shit at me. They seemed to be seasoned mages, with a few students mixed in their ranks.
I got waylaid.
“All of them?” I asked, my eyes widening, my voice a shriek.
“All of them,” Noah said calmly and kindly.
I thumbed at myself. “Against one person?”
I’d thought my life in the Academy would be easy.
But I’m Cass Saélihn. I don’t run from a fight.
“Not that I’m complaining.” I laughed to suppress my nervousness. “It’s just overkill, if you want my humble opinion.”
“We don’t,” someone said, and I recognized Mellissa’s sneering voice.
Great. She had joined the mages’ rank. Wasn’t she a fae? Where was her loyalty?
A good number of mages snickered.
My mates’ eyes hardened, but they didn’t intervene.
They let the show run.
I took an educated guess that Noah had talked them into this. My powers hadn’t progressed in the past weeks, and they had to push me.
I’d mated with warriors, and I had to be one of them.
Noah sighed. “It’s the only way to test your real power. They’ll go one-on-one against you. If you defeat them individually, then a small group will combine their powers to fight you.”
I bet he had his own agenda. He was too keen to learn my powers.
“We must establish a failsafe,” Lorcan said, standing in the shade.
“My mages’ powers connect to me,” Noah said. “I know how to shield Cass before something goes wrong. If she’s destined to fight the gods, she’ll have to go through all this, all the trials.”
My heart pounded. Reality swirled back. This was the real life for me now. No matter what, in the end, it’d be me against the gods.
There’d be death. There’d be blood. There’d be grave losses.
And my life would never be the same, even if I survived.
“What are you waiting for?” I shouted. “Bring it on, bitches!”
Gasps and angry shouts rose among the mages.
Noah sighed in resignation. “I wasn’t expecting that kind of inspirational speech.”
“What did you expect, mage?” Alaric said with a vicious smile. “That’s my mate.”
I adapted a boxing pose, my feet braced apart, my knees bent, and my fists up before my chest. “Who goes first?”
Then I realized that this wasn’t a boxing match. We weren’t going to punch each other’s face with meaty fists.
This was a magic duel.
Well, I’d managed to embarrass myself just a little even before the fight started.
I unfurled my fists and rested my hands on my sides, but it wasn’t really a relaxed posture as I was keyed up to throw my air magic at any opponent at any time.
My other magic was on call as well.
Mellissa stepped out and entered a large circle. I narrowed my eyes, seeing spells warding the ring.
“No, that won’t do,” I said. “If you fight me, you fight in the open. I won’t get into that cage.”
“The circle is for everyone’s protection, Cass,” Noah chided.
“When we go fight the gods, there’ll be no shield and no protection,” I said. “And no circle will stop them. So get used to it.”
I raised a hand, pushing my power toward the wards of the circle. At this point, I was certain that the Earth magic would always aid me. It was my kin. No magic or spells from the Earth elements could confine me, just
as the ward in Misery Twist club couldn’t stop me after I declared ownership of the land.
And my blue fire mixing with the Earth’s elemental magic could break any earthly wards and spells.
“Bring it down,” I commanded, and Earth wind and my blue fire smashed into the wards of the circle and shattered any spell in place.
I heard gasps in the crowd, and Noah’s look of interest only increased.
Boone applauded. He’d come out of the house to be a cheerleader for me along with many of my mates’ warriors, who stood on the sidelines.
Even Celeb, the half-demon who hated people, had come.
Everyone wanted to see the circus show that featured me.
“Hello, Mellissa, come here,” I said with a smirk, tilting my head to inspect the swanky hat that covered her bald head. “I’ve been looking forward to seeing you again. Nice hat, by the way.”
How do you treat a bully? You bully them first.
She hissed, “I wasn’t prepared last time, and you took advantage of me.”
That meant someone had mentored her after our last fight, and she’d come geared up with vengeance.
“My bad,” I said. “I’ll make it up to you, cupcake. I’ll let your pen pals join you and teach me a lesson as a gang of ten. Sound awesome?”
“They aren’t my pen pals!” she hissed again. “I’m going to make your life hell, misborn,”
Pyrder snarled. Mellissa flinched.
I waved a hand at my mates. I didn’t need them to fight my battles, especially when it was a lowbrow catfight.
I looked at Mellissa through my lashes after batting them a few times. Everyone was taller than me, which was absolutely not cool.
“I came from Hell, cupcake, in case you didn’t know,” I said.
Maybe I was telling the truth. If I was Hades’ daughter, then I was from the Underground originally. Underground wasn’t far from Hell, was it?
Without a warning, Mellissa flicked both of her wrists. Something unseen slammed me in the chest, knocking the breath out of my lungs and the smirk off my face.
“What the fuck?” I cried, pressing my hand against my hurting chest.
Mellissa smiled smugly and cruelly.
My mates stirred, and Amber shifted foot to foot nervously.
Not wanting to give me a break, Mellissa pushed her hands forward, and an invisible whip swept me off my feet. I fell on my ass on the ground, wet with morning dew.
I heard a few laughs from the mage crowd since my fall was anything but graceful. Then an unseen force dragged me up, and somehow my feet shot toward the air, and my eyes gazed down at the crowd.
Mellissa was using her air magic against me. It must be her second power. Most magical users had only one kind of magic. That was one reason she had clout in the Academy. Her air magic was different from mine as hers still came from Earth elemental.
Mine wasn’t from Earth. I didn’t know where mine originated from, but now wasn’t the time to ponder it.
She started whipping at me harshly with her magic, but the air whooshed by me. As I said, Earth magic wouldn’t harm me. It’d strung me up because it thought I’d like to have a bit of fun.
I pushed my own air power out, meeting hers before striking because I was curious to know what she’d do next.
She commanded the air element to spin me around, to humiliate me further. My power even detected her intent and next move—she would send her fire to burn away my hair and permanently scar my face, after she spun me dizzy and defenseless.
She’d even picked where she would leave the disfigurement. The fae chick had been rehearsing.
My air power grabbed hers and bound it.
Mellissa pushed with all she had to break free of my iron grip. Her beautiful eyes bulged, and her pretty nose bled.
Since her air power could no longer hold me, I plunged headfirst toward the ground, but my own current rose just in time.
I flipped, turned myself around, and stood in the air.
“She can levitate like the gods!” someone called.
I gazed down at Mellissa. “Cupcake—”
A blast of fire hurtled toward me.
I had allowed her to keep her fire, because I wanted a taste of it. I’d been feeling low ever since Phobos left me.
I opened my mouth, sucking in her fire in a stream, and smacked my lips.
The crowd gasped in awe and terror, and instantly I felt better with the feed.
“I need more, fae doll,” I said. At least I didn’t call her cunt.
She screamed, and a sheet of fire rushed at me. I took it all in greedily. My tri-colored hair turned more reddish because of the fire. Yet it still wasn’t enough for me. Once I started feeding, my appetite was abyssal.
Mellissa nearly collapsed to the ground, but two of her pals hoisted her up on each side. And the three of them trembled together.
“What kind of freak are you?” she whispered weakly, her face gray as a corpse.
“You asked the question before.” I then asked politely, “Do you want some of my fire?”
“No! Please,” she whimpered. “I’m so tired.”
“Don’t you get it, Mellissa?” I said. “Don’t you all get it? We’re here, not to fight each other, but to fight the gods and their army. That’s what the Academy is for.” But it had diverged from that purpose as if some dark hand was at work, trying to make the Academy rot at the core and collapse from the center. “We have a common cause, a common goal, which brings us together. If we’re divided, we don’t need to wait for the gods to come finish us off. We can do the job ourselves.”
Wow, I’d just made my first speech. I didn’t know how. It just flowed out. My eyes flickered to my mates, and they watched me with sexy smiles of approval.
Something clicked in me. I’d always wanted them to be proud of me, and when they gave me that, it warmed me like nothing else possibly could.
I also saw some nods in the mage crowd.
Maybe I could be a superhero, as Amber had said.
Nay. I shook my head the next moment. Not that boring shit and burden.
His green eyes flashing darkly, Noah gestured at the mages.
Ice, wind, spells, and storm swirled toward me at once. Did the Noah dude want to tear me apart with all the elemental forces?
The mages had seen that I could counter fire, so they made an educated guess that I wouldn’t like the opposite of fire.
Ice hail hauled me to its center and a storm whirled around me.
But I was contradictory. My being contained both fire and ice. My being had all the Earth elements and more. I spread my arms, taking whatever the mages threw at me and absorbing their magic as my nutrition.
I must have been really hungry. I hadn’t realized how starved I was after Phobos’ departure.
“That’s enough!” I heard my mates roar. They’d also wanted to push me and test my limits, but in the end their protective instincts always won over reason and pragmatism.
The ice hail and storm vanished, all sucked in by me, and the mages looked pale and exhausted.
I threw a hand to stop my mates from coming to me, from picking me up from the air.
The bombardments of the mages’ collective magic had awoken something in me.
Darkness streamed out of my every pore, gathering into a mass of monster, and it needed to tear the world apart to sate its bloodthirstiness.
It twirled around me, seeking its prey.
I looked down at the crowd on the ground. Except for my mates, they were all my prey. I wanted to squash them, to destroy them, to see a flowing river of their blood.
That would be their sacrifice to me, and I would be even stronger and more glorious.
All creatures were created to worship me.
I was death incarnate.
My eyes glowed and my entire being radiated.
Who should I start with? Who should I devour?
The crowd recoiled. They stank of terror.
My mates
called my name urgently, “Cass baby, we won’t let them hurt you again. It’s over.”
“Sweetheart, I’m coming to get you.”
“Dulcis, I’m coming.”
“No!” I said, denying them.
A raspy laugh left my throat.
Rage beat in my heart.
I needed to kill. I needed to set an example and let all fear and worship me.
Amber picked this time to fall backwards, her eyes glassy and pure white. A string of prophecy poured out of her mouth, and Ambrosia caught her just in time.
I watched her with a predatory smile. Perhaps I should start with her. She was annoying. She was spoiling my fun and stealing my spotlight. But then another part of me told me she was tied to me, and she was my friend.
“Cassandra Saélihn, the worthy One,” a voice that wasn’t hers shouted with great power. “It’s time to step into your role and defend Earth and all earthlings. Defend those who can’t defend themselves.”
At the mighty call, another part of me, the nurturing part, also awoke.
I was death, but I was also life.
Two desires and two forces warred in me, until Reysalor reached me, plucking me out of the air and into his arms. “Baby, I got you. Calm now.”
The darkness receded.
My mates surrounded me, their strong, comforting arms around me.
They were the Earth’s defenders, and because of them, the mortals and immortals were preserved.
I wouldn’t hurt them. I wouldn’t hurt what they protected.
Those below me weren’t my enemies, either.
All that was on Earth was mine. They were mine to protect.
But the magic from all the mages still coursed in me. I couldn’t absorb it all. I needed to channel them out.
“Clear out!” I shouted.
“Clear!” Lorcan snarled at the crowd.
The crowd obeyed, parting a path in no time and getting behind me.
I threw my hands up, and energy poured out of me.
The ground trembled. Some parts rifted. Trees rooted out and flew into the air. Dust and dirt rained down. My power kept surging forward, razing the concrete walls the students used for blocking, until no bricks were left.
Still, my power drove on, destroying everything in its path, ending with leveling the guards’ tower at the edge of the Academy.
Fortunately, no one was killed. My magic hadn’t detected any living thing inside.