by Eva Brandt
But on the other hand, could I really be sure Michael was telling the truth? There had to be a catch. I doubted Michael had come to get me at the academy just because my parents had asked him to.
And even if he had… Could I leave the school just like that? Without getting any answers? Without hearing my lovers’ side of the story?
I remembered the way I’d held Mikael when the other students had tossed that potion on him. I remembered the way they’d helped me when Shiro had been killed.
Yes, maybe they’d lied to me and had manipulated me, but I couldn’t just abandon them.
Besides, my inability to remember my parents properly might be unrelated to my lovers. There were plenty of people at the school who could’ve used their magic on me to affect me like that. Just because Mikael and Callum could’ve done it didn’t mean they had.
“I have to go back. I need to speak to them, to understand why they did this, if they truly are responsible. And Shiro is still on the island. I can’t leave him.”
Michael opened his mouth, as if intending to say something. At the last moment, he seemed to change his mind. He scrutinized me with deep, sad eyes.
“You are truly kind,” he told me. “Kindness isn’t always a good thing in our world, but perhaps, this time, it won’t be bad either. I wish you the best of luck, then, Ms. Michaelis. Find your answers. Speak to my son. But be advised that if you want to break the contract with Lucifer after that, it’ll be tougher. He’ll try to reinforce it.”
“That’s a risk I’m going to have to take.”
“So be it.” Michael replied. For some strange reason, I felt he approved of my choice. “In the end, it might be better this way. Some contracts are meant to be fulfilled and nothing in your original agreement with Lucifer actually forces you to be Satan. All you have to do is spend at least three years at the academy and learn to control your powers.”
Well, that was a load off my mind, since I had no desire to be the leader of hell. Learning how to control my powers would be tough, but at least I had a timeline for my future and a target.
With that out of the way, there was one more thing I needed to do before I could return to the academy. “My parents, Sir? Would it be possible to see them? Or to at least talk to them?”
“I might be able to arrange something. You’re not actually here in body. Your physical form still lingers on the island, and if you want to go back, I can’t extract you. But even so, right now, I might be able to send your mind to them.”
“I’d like that,” I replied. “I have to talk to them, to explain, to tell them that I do remember them and I love them.”
“And you will.”
Michael never got the chance to keep his promise. All of a sudden, two more winged silhouettes appeared in the room. “No!” one of the new arrivals shouted. “You don’t have the authority to do this!”
“Shit.” Michael said. The light around him grew brighter once again as he shielded me with his wings.
“Michael!” the second angel cried. “Stop! You don’t understand the consequences of your actions.”
The archangel ignored his fellow celestial being and pressed his forehead to my temple. “Take care of my son,” he whispered.
A cascade of divine magic enveloped my body, crystalline and pure. Somewhere to my right, the other angels tried to push past Michael’s power. They failed, and as the white tower faded away into darkness, I thought that maybe Mikael’s father wasn’t so bad.
* * *
When I opened my eyes for a second time, the first thing I became aware of was the sound of raised voices. “But we can’t just abandon her, Lady Morrigan! There has to be something we can do.”
It was Callum, and he sounded very upset. He wasn’t in the room with me, but the door was cracked open, and I could hear him and the others arguing outside.
“And I told you, Callum, this has nothing to do with healing,” Morrigan was saying. “Her body has received very little physical damage. It is her mind that was taken, and I can’t reach that, not in The Celestial Realm. Even I have my limits.”
“Couldn’t Professor Grim or Ammit help?” Stefan asked, his voice tinged with savage desperation.
“Rescue missions aren’t their area of expertise,” Mephistopheles replied. “And The Heavens have wards that repel most of us. Our only hope is that she’ll make her way back to us herself.”
“You can’t be serious!” Mikael snarled. “We can’t just leave her there, with those bastards.”
“You of all people should know that it’s not so easy to escape the angels,” Mephistopheles shot back. “I don’t like it any more than you do, but we have no other…”
He trailed off mid-sentence, as if confused. Mikael didn’t have the same problem. “Lyssa,” he said simply.
Within seconds, he and the others burst into the room, almost tripping over their own feet in their haste to return to my side. A part of me considered it cute and flattering, but I also had to wonder if the possessiveness I’d seen as natural was just a sign suggesting a dangerous obsession.
No, I couldn’t think that way. I had to give them the benefit of the doubt. I’d sworn that I would, and that I would accept them in every way. I would hear them out before I made a decision.
“Princess,” Callum whispered. “Thank Satan.”
Stefan dropped to his knees next to my bed and took my hand. The excruciatingly gentle touch made my heart clench. “Are you all right? How do you feel?”
“Fine, Stefan,” I said, extracting my palm from his hold. “I’m fine.”
Mikael reached for my cheek with shaking fingers, as if unable to believe I was really there. When I pulled away from him, he paled. “Lyssa? What’s wrong?”
Before I could address the brainwashed elephant in the room, Mephistopheles and Morrigan joined us. The dean seemed agitated as well, his wings twitching in a strange, erratic rhythm. When he saw I was awake, he shot me a wide smile. “Ms. Michaelis, welcome back. We were all very worried about you. Do you remember what happened?”
“I was bitten by a snake while at Battle Magic class,” I automatically replied. I still didn’t understand his role in all this, but it was clear to me that he must’ve known at least some of it. He’d told me once before that his hands were tied because of ‘vows’ he’d made, and Michael’s words confirmed that. Even so, he owed me an explanation just as much as my lovers did.
Oblivious to my restless thoughts, Lady Morrigan started to explain, “Yes. We managed to stabilize your physical condition, but we’ve determined that the snake was a special summon sent by The Celestial Realm. We could do nothing to reach you.”
“I know. They wanted me to leave the academy. I said I couldn’t, not yet, so I came back.” I bit my lower lip, not wanting to be rude, but at the same time, knowing I couldn’t delay the confrontation with my lovers. “Lady Morrigan, I have a small request. I need to speak with the rest of them. It’s a private matter. Would it be possible…?”
Morrigan understood what I needed without me having to finish the sentence. “Of course. Let me just look you over and see if you’re well enough for this and then I’ll leave you to it.”
I hated the delay, but understood her logic. When she produced another of her feathers and swept it over my body, I waited patiently for her decision. “It would appear that you are indeed, back to normal,” she said. “There are some lingering traces of divine energy, but not in alarming quantities. You’ll be just fine.”
“Thank you, Lady Morrigan.”
“Don’t mention it, little witch.” She snapped her fingers and the feather dissipated into dust. “I wish I could do more, but unfortunately, it’s not within my ability.”
I remembered the conversation she’d had with Lilith in the courtyard and realized she’d been lying to me too. But she was my teacher, not my lover, and I’d only spoken to her a couple of times. She didn’t owe me anything. With Mikael, Stefan, Callum, and even Dean Mephistopheles, it wa
s entirely different.
As Morrigan exited the room, I was left alone with the four men. My courage faltered and instead of approaching the topic I’d come here to discuss, I asked, “Where’s Shiro?”
“In the dorms. He was too agitated to stay here. He’s well cared for, though. Don’t worry. We’ll send a message to allow him to come here.”
“Thank you. I’d appreciate that.” I desperately needed to see my familiar, to reassure myself that one bond, at least, remained intact.
Silence fell over the infirmary as I struggled with finding a way to vocalize the emotions bubbling inside me. Callum must’ve sensed my anxiety, because he spoke out first. “Alyssa? What is it? Tell us what’s on your mind.”
“Did those self-righteous bastards do something to you?” Stefan fumed. “Just tell us who and we’ll hunt them down.”
The ferocious protectiveness in his voice strengthened me and reminded me why this was important and what I’d come here to do. “That won’t be necessary,” I said. “They didn’t hurt me, not after the snake, at least. I only spoke to one angel, and he revealed some truths to me that I should’ve never missed.
“Tell me something. When did you decide it was a good idea to wipe my mind of my past and make me forget my memories of my parents? And when were you going to tell me that you could control my seizures?”
The very air in the room seemed to freeze. “Shit,” Stefan said.
It was a simple word, just one syllable, but it said more than enough. Everything Michael had told me was the complete and utter truth.
I’d been prepared for it, but still, it hurt. I tried not to let that pain show. “You have five minutes,” I told them. “Explain. I’m waiting.”
“Okay, Lyssa,” Mikael replied, “but you probably won’t like what we have to say.”
“I already don’t like it. Just talk and stop stalling.”
“Very well. It all started at the beginning of last year, when we first heard you would be coming to the school.”
Betrayals
The conversation didn’t go well, not that I expected it too.
“Listen, Lyssa,” Callum said. “We’re demons. We’re not… We’re not good people. I know this will be hard to hear, but since you asked, we might as well put all the cards on the table.
“There’s a reason why you’re at this school, and I don’t believe for a second that it’s just because you’re related to some random Dominican Inquisitor. You might not know this, but Mephistopheles was always paying a lot of attention to you, before you even arrived.”
Mephistopheles twitched when he was mentioned, but he said nothing. Callum continued to speak. “As the princes of the school, we always had a little more information on what he was doing, so I knew there had to be something special about you, something dangerous. That’s why I came to meet with you on your first day, when you ran into Gemma. And I felt something then… Something dark and powerful.”
So they didn’t know about my contract with Lucifer, but they had suspected. The dean, on the other hand, had been aware. I could see it in the flickers in his crimson eyes.
Mephistopheles had the excuse of his promises to Lucifer, but Stefan, Callum, and Mikael didn’t. In fact, they didn’t provide any excuse at all. They just gave me the answers I’d been looking for.
“We considered you a threat,” Mikael explained. “You remember, don’t you? The purpose of this school is to pick the next Satan, and you’re powerful. No one here ever actually believed that you were a valid candidate, which was why they didn’t pay much attention to you until your seizures. But we knew better. We knew you had power that could be a threat to us.”
I swallowed around the sudden knot in my throat. Nothing he was saying came as a real surprise, and I’d already known their intentions for my fate hadn’t been the best, but still, it was hard to hear.
They’d treated me so strangely before the whole thing with Shiro. At first, they’d seemed to dislike me so much, but then, they’d suddenly decided they couldn’t be without me. They’d even fought over me, which was something I’d never completely understood.
It made so much sense now. “You wanted to seduce me, break my heart, and chase me away from the school that way. But after my seizures started, you thought it wasn’t necessary anymore, so you stopped. Except I still refused to leave.”
They didn’t deny it, and I was grateful for it, because that would’ve just been an insult to my intelligence and to the bond I’d felt we shared. It was just as well that our conversation wasn’t over, and my grievances hadn’t come close to being addressed. “What about the rest of it? What about Shiro and my parents?”
“I don’t know what happened, Lyssa. At one point…” Stefan took a deep breath, obviously struggling with expressing himself. “At one point, we started to care about you. But by the time we realized it, it was too late. And we knew that after what had happened with your familiar, you’d want to leave. So we… encouraged you to cling to us, to disregard everything that was on the outside.”
Something didn’t quite fit in their story. If they were telling the truth, they hadn’t intervened in my life using magic until after we’d started dating. “If that’s the case, why didn’t I remember my parents before? Why didn’t I call them?”
“That might have been the effect of The House of Sloth Dorms, Lyssa,” Callum replied. “As you know, it does damage to the cerebral cortex, to the point of being able to induce coma. You were right to avoid sleeping there. If you’d done it more than once, you’d have probably never recovered.”
“The effects still lingered on your mind months after the beginning of the year. It’s what made it so easy for us to keep you here, without putting additional strain on your brain and triggering a seizure,” Mikael finished.
I clenched my hands around the material of the quilt, half-wishing that I’d never returned to the academy. “Do you regret it? What you did to me?”
“Maybe? I don’t know. I wish we’d done things differently, it’s true. But it seemed like the only option we had at the time, to make sure you gave us a real chance.” Callum smiled bitterly. “Let’s face it. Someone like you would’ve never accepted creatures like us.”
That wasn’t true. I had liked them before the whole thing with Shiro. The sexual chemistry had been there from the beginning, even at a time when they’d been utter dicks to me. And at the end of the day, it didn’t count, did it? They had never given me the benefit of the doubt, nor had they tried to see if I could come to care for them.
The furniture in the room started to rattle. “Get out! Get the fuck out before I do something you’ll regret more than I will!”
They flinched, but didn’t question me. No matter what they’d said, they clearly understood that they’d made a huge mistake. It was cold comfort and didn’t help me in any way.
Without another word, my lovers left the room. Stefan was the last one. He stole one last look at me, but quickly joined the others when the nightstand flew toward him, apparently of its own accord.
He closed the door before I could hit him, and the item of furniture splintered against the wood. In the wake of their departure, I was left drained, shaking in anguish, and still not knowing what to do.
Mephistopheles had stayed, not seeming very frightened by my display. “So… Now you know. Any plans?”
“Plans?” I snorted. I wanted to throw something at his head too, but I managed to refrain. “I have to stay to complete my contract with Lucifer. I don’t want to see them, but until I finish one more year here and learn how to control my powers, I can’t leave.”
“So you found out about that too. I thought you might’ve.” Mephistopheles sighed. “Listen, Alyssa, I know an ‘I’m sorry’ won’t do a thing right now. Unfortunately, there’s not much else I can do. This is just the kind of place The Academy of the Devil is. And honestly, you can’t say it’s that surprising to you. You knew what they were. Incubi feed on induced sexual desire. They ar
e predators. This shouldn’t shock you at all.”
“I just thought… I thought they’d never do it to me.”
It sounded horrible and callous, as if I didn’t care about what had happened to other people, as long as nothing happened to me. But that was just it. I hadn’t cared, had I? I’d never chastised Mikael and Callum for using their skills against my teachers, because it had been convenient for me. I’d used a form of mental manipulation myself, when I’d hurt those upperclassmen.
What did that make me?
I must’ve said at least some of that out loud, because Mephistopheles answered, “It makes you human and flawed. But don’t overthink it too much right now, okay? Give yourself some time to rest and recover. I can’t imagine being almost killed by angels and brought to heaven was stress-free.”
He walked up to my bed and sat down on the edge, being very careful to not touch me. “I won’t ask for your forgiveness either. But I can tell you this. You need to think about what comes next for you, beyond the contract with Lucifer.
“Before you found out about this, you told yourself that you were willing to accept their demonic nature, no matter what it meant. You understand now that it’s not so simple. Nothing at The Academy of the Devil ever is.
“I personally believe they care for you. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have gone as far as they did. Self-sacrifice isn’t in our nature, and for good or ill, Mikael did risk himself to save your Shiro.
“But the truth of the matter is that demonic love is not like the love of a human being. It’s dangerous, obsessive, poisonous, and sometimes even lethal. You likely wouldn’t consider it love at all. It is the only thing we understand and are capable of.
“Take some time to think about that, and then speak with them again. Regardless of how you feel about them, your familiar bond with Mikael is still in place. If you choose to discard it, you’ll need to start preparing for what that’ll mean. Meanwhile, I’ll try to speak to Lucifer, to see if I can make other arrangements for you. It’s a bad idea for you to stay here if you hate them so much.”