by Eva Brandt
“Actually, once it hits the bone marrow, it’ll take less than a day for Mr. Lost to die an agonizing death,” Grim added.
Mikael didn’t even blink at this. He didn’t find the information surprising. I suspected he felt sicker than he was trying to appear. Wincing, he pulled his shirt back on. “There you go,” he said. “You might not believe us, but you have to believe Professor Grim knows what he’s talking about.”
I did, actually. Professor Grim was one of the few neutral parties at the school and he’d proven time and again that he had no interest or desire to hurt anyone. He had never cared Mikael was half-angel. I got the feeling that even that whole lesson on The Battle of the Watchers had been meant to support us.
Even so, at that moment, I hated him a little, because surely, such a powerful entity could find a solution that didn’t involve Mikael losing two limbs. “You all have so much power and magic! How can this be the only way?”
“There are some potions that slow down the effect, but they’re not doing much to help him,” Callum replied. “It’s too serious.”
“This is because of the spell we cast, right? So let’s just cast something else that’ll undo it!” I pleaded desperately.
“Magic doesn’t work that way, especially not after a complicated ritual like ours. If we did try, it’d probably kill you or at least…”
Mikael trailed off mid-sentence and clutched his chest, as if he couldn’t breathe. It was only for a moment, and then, he was upright again, displaying no sign of weakness whatsoever.
Everything inside me was screaming in anguish. Mephistopheles wasn’t doing much better. “Mikael…” he said, sounding more hesitant and uncertain than he’d ever been before.
“Let’s just stop this, Sir,” Mikael offered. “I know you want to help me, but you’ve already done more than I could’ve possibly asked for. You gave me a home here when I had nothing. It was stupid of me to try to cling to the past, even if only through my wings.”
“Stupidity has nothing to do with it, Mikael. You might be half-angel, but you’ve always been a demon at heart. Your wings are just as demonic as the rest of you.”
That wasn’t what Mephistopheles had told me. He’d said that Mikael had always been too kind for a demon. And maybe Mikael realized that too, because he laughed.
“You know as well as I do that’s not true. But that’s okay. I’m grateful I’m a… nephilim. I just… It’s not possible, not anymore.”
The bitter taste of defeat filled my mouth. There was nothing I could do and trying to change his mind was prolonging his pain.
This was similar to the time Shiro had been trying to hold onto life for me, despite the pain the dark magic had put him through. I was just being selfish. In the end, Mikael’s survival was far more important than his wings, and my own sensibilities and regrets were beside the point. If Professor Grim thought this was the only solution and even Mephistopheles seemed to have given up, it wasn’t my place to stand in Mikael’s way.
“Okay. Is there anything I can do to help? Anything at all.”
Professor Grim shook his head. “I’m not sure that’d be a good idea. As you’ve already realized, this illness is in part caused by the ritual of familiar transfer. There might still be some sensitivity. Your presence doesn’t hurt him, but your touch might. As such, the best thing you can do is to keep your distance.”
Mephistopheles took my hand and started to pull me away. “Come with me, Alyssa. We should go.”
The last thing I wanted was to go, but this wasn’t about what I wanted. Forcing myself not to cry, I nodded and numbly echoed Mephistopheles’s words. “Right. Yes, of course. We should… go.”
Despite my so-called determination, Mephistopheles had to tug me along to get me to move. He even shielded me with his wing to encourage me. Shiro urged me on as well, nudging me with his snout, and between the two of them, they managed to put some distance between me and the others.
I stopped being cooperative when I heard the sound of a dull thud and a muffled scream behind us. “Don’t look,” Mephistopheles warned me.
I ignored him, because I’d always been terrible at listening to people when they told me to do things ‘for my own good’. Freeing myself from his hold, I turned toward Mikael once again. From the distance, I watched Mikael lean against Callum, shaking, flickers of protesting magic crackling around him.
Blood spurted grotesquely from his back. On the ground, a disembodied wing writhed like a dying animal.
Professor Grim didn’t give Mikael any time to recover. He lifted his scythe once again and let it fall over Mikael. The second wing was severed as well, and this time, Mikael outright screamed.
The horrifying scene should’ve been enough to induce a seizure, but I kept looking anyway, because I couldn’t afford to ignore it.
“This is my fault, isn’t it?” I asked Mephistopheles. “All this pain.”
“Of course it isn’t,” Mephistopheles replied. “Alyssa, everything in life is a consequence of someone’s choice. You chose the best thing for you, and you were perfectly entitled to do that. What’s happening now is regrettable, yes, but it doesn’t change your right to choose, to protect yourself. In fact, you don’t have to care about this. You don’t have to care about them at all.”
He had a point. I didn’t have to care. This was The Academy of the Devil, and if there was anything my stay here had taught me, it was that caring too much made you vulnerable.
Caring meant weakness. You had to be cruel to be kind.
Here at the academy, whenever a person displayed affection, he or she always had a secret agenda. If that wasn’t the case, there were always consequences, a price to be paid, usually in blood.
But did things really have to be that way? Was I as helpless as I felt?
“May I ask you a question, Sir?” I whispered.
“Yes, of course. What is it?”
“Why did you say you wanted to protect me, even from Lucifer? What are you truly after?”
Mephistopheles’s mouth opened and closed. He clearly hadn’t expected that, now of all times. “To be honest, the only thing I want is you,” he replied after a long pause. “Demons… We might not feel emotion exactly like humans, but we do… Err… We do…”
“Love,” I said, finishing the sentence in his stead. “Thank you.”
I brushed a kiss over his cheek. “Help me. Please. We can’t just give up on them. You have so much magic at your disposal. You can find a better answer.”
Mephistopheles took my hand and threaded our fingers together. “There’s not much I can do for Mikael,” he replied, “not right now, at least. I’d like to, believe me, I would. But I’m a demon, not an angel. My healing abilities are limited.”
“That doesn’t mean we’re powerless. And even if it did… Stefan needs our help too.”
“Stefan?” Mephistopheles repeated, sounding alarmed. “Something happened to Mr. Schwarz?”
Clearly, he was unaware of that part. “He turned into his hell hound form and seemed unable to shift back. Shiro thinks Stefan is now a mutated hell hound. A group of students were hunting him because of it.”
Mephistopheles cursed viciously. “We have to find him, before he loses control of his beast and does permanent damage to himself or to someone else. Would you—”
“I’m not going back to the dorms,” I cut him off before he could finish the sentence. “I want to help too.”
Mephistopheles clenched his jaw, displeased. Even so, he ultimately decided we didn’t have time to argue about this. “All right. We’ll do things your way. But I expect you to listen to me, no matter what. Is that understood, Ms. Michaelis?”
“Yes, of course.” I might be stubborn, but I wasn’t an idiot. I knew I wasn’t prepared to handle this on my own. That was why I’d come to get him in the first place. We needed to turn Stefan back into his regular form, and I had no idea where to begin.
Shadows appeared around us, shielding us from v
iew. In the distance, I caught another glimpse of the bleeding Mikael struggling to stand up properly. And then, Mephistopheles pulled me into his arms and surrounded me with his wings and I didn’t see anything anymore.
His hold, which had once helped me so much, no longer brought me the same comfort.
* * *
Since Mephistopheles was the dean of the academy, it was pretty easy for him to track down missing persons. Stefan was no different. We found him in a cave, a couple of miles away from Polyphemus’s lighthouse. For a human being, it was practically inaccessible by foot due to the furious waters swirling around the entrance. Mephistopheles carried us there with ease.
“Be on your guard and stay behind me at all times,” he told me as we landed at the entrance of the cave. “Hell hounds are very protective of their lairs and it’s likely that he’ll be hostile.”
“Lair?” I asked. “So this isn’t a one time, casual shelter?”
Mephistopheles shook his head. “A lot of shifters have their own little nests on the island. Usually, they’re next to the dorms, inland, since it’s dangerous for someone to have a lair so close to Redrum’s. But Redrum and Stefan get along and hell hounds always tend to do better when they feel like they’re guarding something.”
I’d have liked to ask more questions, especially to find out if Mephistopheles thought Stefan could be cured. I never got the chance. As we entered the cave and made our way into its depths, a loud, pained roar echoed from the darkness. The next thing I knew, a hulking figure lunged at Mephistopheles, so fast he couldn’t hope to avoid the attack.
The duo fell to the ground with a thud, with Mephistopheles on the bottom and his attacker on top of him. In the barely-there light of the cavern, I couldn’t distinguish much, but I caught flashes of Mephistopheles’s familiar wings.
And then I heard the growl, just as familiar, if not more so. “You touched her. You shouldn’t have touched her. I’ll tear you apart.”
The words were barely comprehensible, but even so, I easily identified the speaker. It was Stefan. Stefan was the being that had attacked Mephistopheles.
On the bright side, he was no longer a quadruped, and he’d obviously regained the ability to shift. But he wasn’t humanoid either, and beneath the obvious anger in his voice, I could hear pain. Something was still very wrong.
“You’re not thinking clearly,” Mephistopheles said. “Stefan, you need to take a step back and breathe.”
The words sounded calm enough, but his actions were anything but. His magic blazed around him, lighting up the cave and allowing me to see them better. It brought me very little relief.
The strength behind the blast shoved Stefan back and he snarled, obviously infuriated. He looked very little like the man I’d fallen in love with. His body had grown, his spine curving and his limbs twisting into a different, more lupine shape. He was still walking on two feet, but his legs were a lot like paws, regardless. His body was covered in thick black fur and a wolfish tail had sprung out from the small of his back.
In some ways, he reminded me of the classical image of a werewolf. Or he would have, at least, if he hadn’t been twitching and spasming so badly.
For a few seconds, I thought he was having a seizure of his own, but it soon became obvious that this wasn’t the case. “You need help,” Mephistopheles said. “Your shift isn’t stable. You’ll die if this keeps happening.”
Stefan growled at him, digging his sharp claws in his palms. Blood dripped onto the ground and it left a scorch mark on the rocky terrain, as if it was acid. “Why do you care?” he asked. “You’ve taken everything from me. My mates. My family. My body. What does it matter if I die?”
I couldn’t take it anymore. The simple fact that Stefan doubted the worth of his existence broke my heart. I stepped between him and Mephistopheles, ignoring Mephistopheles’s angry hiss. “Alyssa!”
Meanwhile, Stefan took a couple of steps back, as if my presence horrified him. “You… You shouldn’t be here. It’s too dangerous.”
“Maybe, but I’m not leaving,” I told him. “I’m not afraid of you. I never have been. Don’t you remember?”
“Things have changed,” Stefan answered. “I’ve already hurt you.”
“That might be true, but it hurts me even more to see something like this happen to you and to hear you talking that way. Of course your life matters. How could it not?”
It was shamelessly manipulative to say such things. I meant them, of course, but I was also using them in the hope of convincing him to cooperate. So far, he was listening, but I didn’t know how long that would last.
“You and I might have our differences, but you’re still important to me. I know it’s unreasonable of me to ask, but please listen to him. We are genuinely trying to help right now. This was the last thing we wanted. Come with us.”
Much to my dismay, Stefan shook his head. “I don’t belong at the school. I’m an animal.”
“You’re not! You’re a person. And even if you were an animal, you’d still deserve care. You’re unwell right now. You can’t abandon hope like this. I’m begging you.”
Stefan’s eyes—the only thing about him that looked identical to what I remembered—flickered with emotion. “Okay,” he said after a long pause. “But… We need to hurry. I’m not sure how long I can control it.”
As Stefan relaxed his stance, Mephistopheles approached him and took his hand. “Come on. I’ll take us to the infirmary. We’ll discuss things more there.”
Stefan bared his fangs and said nothing. He was obviously still very unhappy with Mephistopheles, and he was agreeing to this just because I’d asked.
I wanted to do something more than offer useless words, but I still remembered Professor Grim’s words. If Stefan’s situation was similar to Mikael’s, my presence didn’t actively hurt him, but touching him might. The ritual magic that had led us here still affected him. I had to do my best to keep my distance, but help him at the same time.
That was a little hard to do, since Stefan was so very jealous and Mephistopheles had to touch me to bring me along. The problem immediately became obvious when we left the cave and Mephistopheles levitated us up the cliff. The moment his shadowy magic enveloped me, Stefan started to flail in protest. “No! Don’t touch her!”
“I’ll be fine,” I tried to reassure him. “It’s not far, and it’s just magic.”
“That’s exactly the problem!” he roared.
Mephistopheles didn’t react well to Stefan’s outburst. The shadows tightened their hold on us, and while it didn’t feel uncomfortable for me, I suspected Stefan wasn’t so lucky. “Enough!” Mephistopheles bellowed. “Control yourself or I will knock you out. I don’t care how sick you feel. I will not allow you to be rude to Alyssa.”
“He’s not being rude,” I protested. “He’s just being honest.”
Although I was trying to defend him, Stefan flinched. Had I said something wrong again? God, no matter what I did, I kept fucking things up more. I was a colossal, walking disaster today.
I tried to shake off my feelings of self-disgust and focus on Stefan, but that became impossible when Mephistopheles finally used his magic to transport us back to the academy. We arrived in front of the infirmary and inside, I found something that stole what little composure I had left.
At one point while we’d been away, Callum had brought Mikael here and Morrigan was tending to his back injuries. There was no room divider or anything like that, so the moment I walked in, I got a clear look of the mess of gore that was his back.
I must’ve made some kind of noise, because Morrigan turned toward us. If she had any opinion about my presence, she didn’t show it. Instead, she zeroed in on Stefan and let out a vicious string of words I suspected were curses. “This is what you get when you jump into rituals without being fully prepared for them. Sit down on the bed, Mr. Schwarz. I’ll be with you in a minute.”
He complied, and although he gave Mikael a concerned look, he didn’t
seem surprised at the wing stumps now visible on his back. Perhaps he’d expected this too. If he had—if they’d all known this would happen—why had they gone through with this insanity?
Over the following minutes, I watched Morrigan go from Mikael to Stefan, doing her best to heal their injuries. Today, her magic had an entirely different feel, more motherly than it had been in the past. I appreciated her help more than I could ever say, but at the same time, it made me feel superfluous and stupid.
What could I do that Morrigan couldn’t? I was just a human, barely in control of my own magic. It was the ritual centered on me that had led to this. I was powerless to stop it, just like I’d been powerless to rescue Shiro.
In the end, no one had to tell me to go. I left myself, because I could tell I wasn’t wanted there.
Mephistopheles had told me I’d done the right thing by rejecting my bond with Mikael. But even if I had, even if our relationship had been as dishonest and toxic as I’d believed, I couldn’t discard it.
My head and my heart hurt.
What the fuck was I supposed to do now?
Adjustment
For the next couple of days, things at the academy drifted into a tense normality. We received no explanation on the reasons behind the weather anomaly, but the student body decided it had likely been caused by some kind of experiment gone wrong. Apparently, Professor Jones liked to play with volatile mixtures and it wasn’t the first time weird things happened on the island.
In the overall agitation and excitement, the absence of the three former princes of the school went unnoticed. The students of The House of Wrath hadn’t mentioned anything about Stefan and if anyone in Envy realized Mikael’s absence was an anomaly, they didn’t show it.
It was Samuel Byte who changed that.
Apparently, he’d received medical assistance for his wounded genitals and had run into my ex-lovers in the infirmary. He didn’t seem to realize what was wrong with Mikael, but Stefan’s affliction had been very visible.