by Lan Chan
“Alessia Hasting has had a tremulous year with Bloodline Academy. But her association with the Soul Sisterhood might prove to be a blessing in disguise. The woman who was apprehended on Academy grounds is being detained in Seraphina and will face the full extent of our justice. We are taking steps to ensure this kind of thing never happens again. Tonight, the Council will make an official bulletin to the supernatural community about the return of the Soul Sisterhood to our world. I know some of you may fear the abilities of the Sisterhood. It is disturbing to think that they may be impervious to us. Your Council will do everything we can to keep the Academy safe.”
“While I am sure you have many questions, I would encourage that you hold off on voicing them until you have had a chance to digest the news after the bulletin airs. Thank you for your time and I wish you a productive school year.”
Why the hell was everyone clapping so loudly? It wasn’t like he’d said anything meaningful. All he’d done was tell us a bunch of things we already knew. Now he was leaving, and he’d shove the hard questions off onto the faculty who knew about as much as I did.
Sufficed to say Jacqueline wasn’t happy. She said something to Orin as he strode past her, but he just smirked and then exited the hall behind the protective circle of his Fae bodyguards. People were talking amongst each other again. There were so many stares I felt like I was under a microscope.
“Don’t listen to them,” Sophie said.
“It’s a bit hard not to,” I hissed.
“They’re just scared.”
“So am I. But I’m getting a bit tired of being the one they blame for everything.”
Jacqueline had reached the top of the stage by now. I was hoping she would just dismiss us so that I could get the heck out of there and away from public scrutiny. No such luck.
Jacqueline tapped her fingers on her thigh. Anyone who had spent more than two minutes with her knew that if she fidgeted, stuff was going down. Her back was ramrod straight. Normally she would thank a speaker if we had them, but she didn’t bother this time.
“I’m sure you’re all anxious to get back to your classes,” she said. “The Council have made a decision to inform the Academy first because we were directly affected. They wanted to prepare us for the news we are going to hear. Don’t sensationalise it. Many of you were here when the events occurred. Do not believe the things you hear over the things you experienced. Sometimes, you are the best judge of what is good for you.”
She stepped off the stage. I took the opportunity while everyone was still stunned by her curt response to squeeze myself past Sophie and dart out the door.
“Lex!” Sophie pleaded.
I left her and everyone else behind as I pushed the door open and ran. It really annoyed me that no matter how quick and stealthy I could be, the supernaturals would always be faster. I didn’t even class Kai in the same category as the other supernaturals. That’s why I neither heard nor felt him until he’d grabbed me. We teleported and landed inside the Grove. Nymphs scattered as they were startled. Then they returned and made their displeasure known. My mood was radiating from me like radio waves. Their shrill admonitions died as quickly as they had started.
A flick of Kai’s hand and they disappeared, leaving behind a trail of coloured dust. I shoved away from him. At least I tried to. He held me tight, refusing to allow distance between us.
“I didn’t know,” he said.
I thumped his chest. “I’m not angry at you.”
“Gran didn’t know either.”
Obviously I wasn’t as recuperated as I thought because struggling against him suddenly sapped all of my energy. “Yeah, I could tell.” I let my forehead bounce on his chest. “If I get my hands on him, I’m going to show him exactly why he should be afraid of me.”
“Blue –”
I angled my head up and looked him in the eye. “You think I shouldn’t be pissed?”
His brows drew together. “You have every right to be pissed. But blowing your stack right now it just going to prove his point.”
“Everything I do proves some point, though, doesn’t it? I could sit in a corner without moving and someone would complain about it.”
“I wouldn’t have any complaints.”
I skewered him with my gaze. “Okay, okay. Bad time to joke.”
“I’m surprised he didn’t say anything about me going to Terran Academy.”
Kai’s eyes darted.
“What?”
He clamped his hand around my arms, pressing them behind my back. “I can still kick you,” I bit out, recognizing that what he was about to say was unpleasant if he was already hedging his bets.
“Your legs are less of a concern than what your hands can do.”
I was going to knee him in the balls. He sensed as much and held me at arm’s length. “We’re not going to mention anything about you and Terran.”
I breathed through my mouth. Slowly. In and out. As I did so, I searched his face for any signs of duplicity. “Why wouldn’t you just tell people?”
“It’s not the right time.”
“Oh, but what just happened in there was good timing?” It occurred to me that I was meant to be at Terran today. So on top of the actual announcement, Orin had originally planned it so I wouldn’t be here. Nice.
“You have to understand they’re unsettled.”
“Understand? Some of those kids could kill me twice over before I even have a chance to take a breath. You’re acting like I’m some kind of monst-”
The word died in my throat. It was so close to what the Sisterhood had said about them that I didn’t need to finish. I grit my teeth and tried to still my thoughts.
“So what am I supposed to do? Just wait around for somebody to drop the bombshell? What do I do if people start noticing I’m only here half of the time?”
“Gran thinks that by the time most people realise, we will have reached some sort of treaty.”
“Yeah and until then, how many more places am I going to be locked out of?”
He finally let go of my arm to drag his hand through his short hair. “Try and see it from their perspective, Blue.”
I raised a brow at him. “I’ve tried. Any way I look at it, they’re still big, bad, and scary. I’m surprised they haven’t gone on the offensive and taken out the Sisterhood if they’re so afraid.”
“Don’t even joke about that.”
“Who’s joking? They’ve done it before!”
He scrubbed at his face with the heel of his palm. “Okay, let’s just sit on it for a while like Gran asked. You might be surprised that it’s not as bad as you think.”
What I wanted to say was that we had vastly differing views on what we considered bad or good. But I didn’t want to make too big a deal out of it given that nothing had actually happened as yet.
“Fine,” I said. “How’s Nanna?”
“The same for now.”
“Can I go see her? If I’m in Seraphina when the bulletin happens, I won’t have to deal with all the crap that’s going to fallout here.”
The pained expression he gave me had my hackles rising. He tried to reach out to me but I took a slow step backwards. “I’m not allowed in Seraphina either?”
“It’s not that you’re not allowed—”
“That’s exactly what it is.”
“They’re just being overly cautious at the moment. Can you blame them?” The long stretch of silence indicated that I did blame them. But what could I really do about it? I could kick up a stink, but it would end up making me look bad which would prove their point. There was nothing I could really do.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll stay here.”
“Blue –”
I held up my hand to forestall him. “It’s fine.” Using the word fine would convince him for sure. “I don’t need you hovering.”
His jaw twitched, but he didn’t say anything. It was a testament to how vulnerable he must have thought I was right now. Any other time and I
was sure he wouldn’t be holding in his temper. Was he upset because of the situation or was this directed at me? It was hard to tell and I didn’t have the bandwidth to think about it now.
A gaggle of voices swept through the Grove. I knew nobody was assigned to any lessons here so it meant that everybody had been dismissed from the assembly. “You’d better go and make sure Cassie is okay.”
We both knew it was an excuse but neither of us made a fuss about it. When he was gone with yet another brooding glare at me, I sat beside the Arcana tree and let my head sink into my hands.
Over the few weeks of Christmas break, no thanks to the Sisterhood, I had been learning to meditate properly with some of the human mates in the Reserve. It turned out being mated to shifters could be rage-inducing at times. Their tendency to dominate made it difficult for any form of independence. I knew the feeling.
When I closed my eyes, I allowed my mind to linger on everything that had happened. My thoughts often strayed to Nanna. I had tried everything to unbind the threads around her, but it was no good. Though some of the strands that held her memory captive were mine, there was another element in there I could neither break nor pick apart.
The thought tried to drag me under. My eyelids moistened. But soon enough it was overtaken by other thoughts. I was Sisterhood. Bloodline was locking me out of all the parts of them that mattered. It was a wonder I was even allowed inside the Grove. The nymphs and I had come to a tenuous stalemate about my heritage. As long as I continued to offer them protection, they hadn’t yet kicked me out. How much longer would that remain the case?
Gaia was missing. Somehow her disappearance coincided with my great-grandmother’s absconding from the Sisterhood. Who was this woman who had defied an order of slayers?
And then finally...nothing. Everything fell away and my universe funnelled into a labour of breathing in and out.
The first spark of light was a green speck that pushed against the darkness of my closed eyelids. It grew in strength and then flung tendrils out on all sides. Those tendrils became arteries that threaded all around me. Each thread spilled out into more threads. They joined together into a network of webbing that turned my mind into a tapestry of blazing colour.
Even as my eyes snapped open, I knew the Ley lines would remain where they were. Professor Mortimer called it contained astral projection. My physical body was where it had been inside the Grove, but my mind had slipped into the reserve of power beneath the Academy that allowed all of this to be possible.
As always, I catalogued all of the swirling connection points which formed the foundation of my relationships. Brushing my hand across the swirl of Kai’s green-and-blue light, I frowned. Ever since the Sisterhood had tried to steal Kai’s soul, I knew that I had somehow bound him to me. But this was a new and slightly disturbing event.
I turned my head, resolving not to dwell on it. The Ley lines mapped everything that was within the borders of the Academy. But that didn’t mean they stopped there. The lines made up the nervous system of every dimension in existence. When the other dimensions fell, the destruction of those lines were what had caused so much chaos. There was power in every Ley line, and power wasn’t supposed to be extinguished.
Biting my lip physically, I tried to extend the reach of my mental mapping. At first, the thought of pushing out so far met with resistance. I got about as far out as the edge of the wards and then met with a void. It wasn’t so much that the lines weren’t there but that they didn’t seem to be accessible. It was like trying to distinguish something spoken in another language. I strained and tried to tap into the hidden well of darker magic to amplify the signal, but it was swiftly rebuffed.
My eyes flicked open as the Ley lines receded. I blinked again. The Grove was saturated in a coating of amber and orange. Somehow dusk had settled around me. Rubbing at my eyes, I tried to get up and found that my legs had gone numb. Stretching them out, I leaned back until I lay on the grass and massaged my thighs.
A streak of purple shot across my field of vision. It was followed by one of pink and yellow. The wood nymphs danced in a circle about me. They were chattering to each other. “How long was I out?” I asked, knowing by now that even if they weren’t present, they knew everything that happened around these parts.
I braced myself for the spitfire response. Even with practice I couldn’t quite get my ears to parse out what they were saying. “Slower, please.”
That earned me a swift kick to the cheek from the purple nymph. I sighed. When she spoke next, I latched on to her voice and threw some of my power at it. “five hours,” I heard in the slow groan of unnatural speed for her voice.
She made a gesture of haste and pointed to the pond that I used to water the Arcana tree. I was at a loss. Dozens of multicoloured lights were swarming around the edge of the water. I balked. The last time the wood nymphs had a gathering, it almost blew out my eardrums. The smart thing would be to get up and leave. When I tried to do just that, the three nymphs formed a line in front of me.
Purple Nymph shook her head. They herded me toward the pond where a gap was made and I was forced to sit down around the rim with them. “What’s going on?”
Purple Nymph skimmed the surface of the water. She appeared like one of those elegant figure skaters who were more at home on the ice than I was on two feet. The reflection in the pond rippled the same way the mirrors did. I groaned.
A moment later, Victoria Amos’s shrivelled face appeared in the water. “Oh hell no.”
The collective shriek when I tried to get up was deafening. So much so that I didn’t catch most of what Victoria was saying for the next two minutes. The frowns etched on the tiny faces all around me were enough to enlighten me.
Victoria didn’t say anything new. She rehashed what Orin had said in an equally annoying monotone. I could tell she was reading from a script. Three thousand years of life and a stint of being chair of the Council, and she hadn’t bothered to learn to be personable. Or maybe she had and this was what long life did to people. I was almost tuning out when the word “delegation,” pricked my interest.
“…while our relationship has been treacherous in the past, we hope to forge a new understanding that will be mutually beneficial. To that end, a treaty negotiation has been arranged. Rest assured that your Council are doing everything we can. Your lives need not be affected by this.”
She cut out abruptly at the end of that statement. Easy for her to say. My life had already been affected. In more ways than one. They’d chosen the day of my birthday to have these idiotic negotiations. I bet Orin and Victoria did it on purpose. I wasn’t going to bother with a big party or anything. With everything else going on, celebrating turning a year older, even if it was my eighteenth, seemed trivial. For sure Kai and Sophie were going to be at this shindig. Then I remembered Samantha was making me go too.
Something small and blunt nudged me on my shoulder. The wood nymphs were in a slight frenzy. Their voices were reaching an undetectable decibel again. I covered my ears.
“Stop!” I yelled.
There was silence for a millisecond and then it started up again. I couldn’t get a word in nor hear the words that were being thrown at me. What I could discern was the way the light around them appeared to shudder. Nymph dust scattered in all directions. Dozens of faces peered at me.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m about as enthusiastic about going to their school as I am about peeling the skin off my fingers.”
The purple nymph screeched. She pointed to the demon blade on my back. Out of habit I reached back and touched the hilt. It warmed in my hand. I would bet if I pulled the blade out, the runes painted onto the blade would be glowing blue.
“Yes,” I said, guessing at her question. “The deal still stands.”
If the Sisterhood ever came for the Grove, I would defend it with my life. With my current level of fighting skill, it would be a very short life. That was why they spent the next three hours kicking my butt. My shirt
was thoroughly soaked through with sweat when I had to call it quits because I was so hungry. Before I left, I turned to the purple nymph.
“The Ley lines,” I asked. “I can’t seem to feel them past the aura of the Academy.”
To my surprise, instead of chortling at me in her high-pitched voice, she butted her hand against my cheek. An image of decimated forests and polluted streams and rivers filled my mind. As I ventured back to the dorm to change for dinner, my thoughts were filled with her warning. The Ley lines around most of the world were weakening. Without Gaia and with the increased pollution, magic was having a hard time breaking through.
I was so busy ruminating on this that I almost missed the flap of wings above me. When I glanced up, the Nephilim coasted farther and landed just in front of the dining hall. He blended into the shadows, but not before I saw his face. I’d seen that same guard when I’d raced out of the assembly. He’d been positioned just above the rampart of the junior campus dorms. No matter how Kai tried to soften it, I was under surveillance. How long before surveillance became imprisonment?
19
A week later, Kai dropped me off at Terran like before. This time, it was only Rachel who had come to pick me up. Kai didn’t say a word to her. He latched on to my hand and wouldn’t let go until I kicked him.
Rachel was unreservedly quiet on the drive. She had a cross stud in her ear that caught the sunlight and threw it in my face. I wondered if she’d bought it to spite the supernaturals. “Were you a part of it?” I asked when the quiet stretched for too long.
The lines on her face grew sharp. “If I had wanted to go after you, it would have been with fair warning.”
When she parked the car in the lot behind Terran, Samantha and Jessica were waiting for me. Standing in a line behind them were the three girls, Harlow, Winnie, and Alison. They were looking at the ground, but I noticed when Harlow’s head turned towards Alison, her cheeks were pressed tight like she was trying to suppress laughter.