by Callie Rose
“Sure.” I drew in a breath and let it out through my nose, trying to tamp down the bitterness in my voice. “No worries here. All peaches and cream. Everything’s hunky-fucking-dory.”
Then my facade cracked, and I groaned, sliding my forearms over the table and dropping my head down on them. My voice was muffled when I spoke again.
“God, I just want it to be over.”
Chapter Eleven
You know how they tell you to be careful what you wish for?
Yeah. That.
Because the very next day—a month after our return from the underworld—we were all in the shunned corner of the cafeteria, minding our own damn business and eating real, earthly food when Toland walked in. He locked gazes with me and started to make his way over to us.
“Oh, shit. Heads up, guys,” I hissed. My pounding heart seemed to shake my entire rib cage.
Hannah and the guys stopped eating and followed my gaze. The lines on Toland’s face were deeper than usual, and he was just the tiniest bit gray around his eyes and mouth.
Uh oh. That can’t be good.
“You’re wanted in my office,” he told us when he reached our table.
“By you?” I asked hopefully.
He just shook his head and turned around. “Now, please.”
My stomach dropped. This is it.
Toland’s office had been reorganized to accommodate ten chairs—five against one wall and five in the center of the room facing those, with his desk bridging the gap on one side. He gestured for us to take the chairs against the wall. I sat in the center, flanked by my men, holding Xero and Kai’s hands.
“Who are those chairs for?” I asked.
The headmaster opened his mouth to answer when the door opened. Five men, all older, all with very stern expressions, filed in and took the seats. They wore Custodian uniforms embroidered with symbols I’d never seen before. One of them held a clipboard. The others had their hands tucked into their pockets. I would have bet my life that they had weapons stashed in there.
I had been half-hoping that Dru would be among the Custodians sent to deal with us, but he wasn’t.
Honestly, I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. On the one hand, he might have put in a good word for us. On the other hand, he might have spilled the beans about Kingston’s enchanted cell phone and how we had deliberately snuck off on an unsanctioned venture in the underworld last semester, using his knowledge and connections to successfully complete a rogue mission.
Which, let’s be honest, wouldn’t have helped us at all.
“Good afternoon,” the Custodian in the center of the intimidating group said. “As you know, we are here to determine the extent of your transgressions and decide on a fitting punishment. You are all on trial.”
I swallowed hard.
“We have several questions,” a soft-spoken Custodian to his right said. “Primarily about the timelines of certain events. Now—we are aware that you were given your first-year exams late. Could you tell us why?”
“We were trying to save the school from being sabotaged,” I said, keeping my voice as calm and emotionless as possible. “We almost managed it too.”
“Hm, I see. And last year’s exams? Where were you when those were taking place?”
I lifted my chin defiantly and jerked my head at Xero, my heart starting to beat harder. “He was kidnapped by Gavriel when we were—”
“Just answer the question you were asked,” the Custodian on the far left snapped. The look he gave me suggested he’d already decided we were all guilty as sin. “Where were you when your exams were being held?”
I ground my teeth. “In the underworld.”
“Were you given permission to be in the underworld?”
My throat was tightening, panic and anger coursing through me. I cleared it. “Not officially.”
“Unofficially?”
“No.”
“Then you left the Fallen University campus under your own volition, with full knowledge of the consequences, and skipped your exams. What do you think this is, middle school? You can’t skate by with an incomplete, you know. No child left behind doesn’t apply here. Did you really think you could get away with it?”
“I wasn’t trying to ‘get away’ with anything, I was trying to save Xero’s li—”
The Custodian in the center cut me off. “That’s irrelevant.”
“Excuse me, sir,” Xero said, his posture stiffening. “But I think—no, I know—that if they had waited until after the exams to rescue me, that I would have been—”
“Stuck there,” the man on the far left said with an ugly grin. “Yes. We’re quite aware.”
“No, dude.” Jayce leaned forward, his expression earnest. “You don’t understand. He would have died, he was almost—”
“Well, he should have thought about that before he left the safety and security of the school!”
Jayce snapped his mouth shut and glared. I had never seen him look so furious.
“You knew the exams would be held as soon as possible after you arrived back at earth,” the center Custodian said evenly. “And you were fully aware that missing those exams would lead to banishment.”
“Well, yes, but—”
“Then you are hereby banished.”
I blinked.
What the fuck? What the actual fuck?
Banished to the underworld. Why? We’d done the right goddamn thing! Every decision we’d made had been for the greater good. Didn’t they care? Wasn’t there any wiggle room at all?
Questions and arguments exploded in my brain along with a thick, sticky sort of panic. I didn’t want to go back there. I hated it there. Jayce couldn’t stay there, he would hate himself forever for the things he needed to do to survive. I calmed myself down enough to speak. They were reasonable people, right? I just needed to reason with them, that’s all.
“Excuse me, sir, but how the hell can you banish us to the underworld?”
Clipboard blinked at me. “I beg your pardon?”
“We’ve already been there and back several times. Hell, we spent a whole year there! We got the entire school back to earth after it was transported down there—oh, and you’re welcome for that, by the way. What makes you think we won’t just create another portal and pop back up?”
The asshole on the far left grinned again. I wanted to punch his snaggle tooth down his saggy throat. “You won’t, if you know what’s good for you. You think we’ve never thought of that? There’s a database. Your name will be on it the second this is over.”
“And you guys, what, check a database every time you catch one of the fallen in the wild?”
“We don’t have to,” he sneered. “You’ll be magically branded. Marked as banned. Any Custodian who sees you topside will shoot to kill.”
My jaw dropped. “And just how do you ‘good guys’ justify that bullshit?”
His eyes flashed, and he tightened his jaw. “Every fallen gets one chance. One chance to swear fealty to the human race. One chance to avoid death or banishment. One. Uno.” He shrugged. “We gave you a fair shot to redeem yourselves. Provided a school, education, room and board—what more could you ask for?”
“Leniency,” Kingston said shortly, his voice hard.
The Custodian blinked at him and barked a harsh laugh. “Listen here. Some of us don’t even think you should be given any chances. Once you blow your shot, Custodians have a single goal—to be rid of you. Banished or killed, we don’t really care. As long as you’re gone from this plane of existence.”
Oh. Shit.
“Let’s get this over with,” the Custodian on the far right said. “That is, if you’re ready.”
He wasn’t asking us. He was asking Clipboard.
“Yes. The sooner it’s done, the sooner we can address—that other problem.”
I didn’t have to guess what the other problem was. The only reason it’d take the Custodians this long to deal with us was because they
were busy fighting off Gavriel’s minions all over earth.
In that moment, something black and vicious passed over my soul, sending my thoughts to the darkest place they’d ever gone before. For the briefest of seconds, I hoped Gavriel would storm every Custodian meeting hall and outpost and wipe them off the face of the planet. Only the worst kinds of people functioned in absolutes.
I wanted them to suffer.
I wanted them gone.
Then I remembered what Xero looked like when we’d found him, and the thought dissolved. Nobody deserved what Gavriel was dishing out, not even the Custodians. Certainly not the humans who would fall under Gavriel’s metaphorical sword in the process.
So, okay. Maybe I didn’t want the Custodians wiped out. But I would happily deliver a massive ass-kicking to these five assholes if I could.
I couldn’t risk starting a fight right now though. They’d made it perfectly clear they were fine with either banishing or killing us, and if I made option number one too difficult, they’d take option number two.
Live to fight another day, Pipes.
They marched us out into the hallway, each of the Custodians apparently assigned to one of us. They guided us with firm grips on our arms, which was irritating, but I recognized that they could have had us shackled instead. That would have attracted all kinds of unwanted attention and would definitely have been an issue once we got back to the underworld.
My escort was the stoic, silent one who’d been sitting on Clipboard’s near-left. He remained silent as he took my arm.
“Make way for the banished!” Far-left called down the hall.
Classes had just been let out for the day. The hall was full of students. As soon as he said that, every single one of them stopped and stared.
“Make way for the banished!” he called again as we walked.
He was fucking enjoying this. The bastard wanted us to be the center of attention. They all did, I realized. There was no reason they had to banish us from somewhere special. Shit, Dru had nearly banished me and Hannah in a goddamn parking lot. They were putting on a show on purpose. They wanted to prove that they were doing something, even though the guys and I had done more to save the school than any of them had.
Or were they trying to turn the students against us because of that very thing? What were they more pissed about—that we’d missed our exams, or that a bunch of untried students had succeeded where they had failed?
I watched the faces we passed, keeping my own features as expressionless as possible.
This was clearly overkill. The students here already didn’t like us. Somehow, everybody around us had gotten it twisted, like we were to blame for all the shit that’d gone down just because we happened to be around to clean up the mess. We had no friends here.
Well… except one.
“Wait! Stop! You can’t do this!” Hannah pushed through the crowd and stood in front of us, forcing the Custodians to stop. Her eyes were flashing and her face was flushed. She stood tall and looked Clipboard right in the eye. “They didn’t just skip their finals to go get ice cream, you know it. They had a damn good reason for leaving. They’re the heroes here, don’t you see that? They saved the school, and they saved one of our own.”
“Get out of the way, please. This is official business.” The lead Custodian took a step forward, but Hannah didn’t budge. Her chin trembled for a moment like she was about to cry, but she recovered quickly.
“Really?” Her voice grew quieter in disbelief, which echoed through every empathic being around. “You’re really going to punish them for putting the safety of their fellow students and the life of their friend ahead of their own?”
The Custodian said nothing, but his stony expression spoke volumes.
Hannah blinked, looking heartbroken and horrified. Then she nodded. “I see. The rules are more important than people’s lives. Well, let me tell you something, sir. If you banish Piper and her men, you better damn well banish me too. Because I will never adhere to that code. Never.”
I shook my head at her, silently willing her to shut her mouth. She ignored me.
“She doesn’t mean that,” I said quickly. “Hannah, you don’t mean that. You love ethics class, you always get the high scores. You know how to follow rules. You’re a veritable Eagle Scout. Now shut up.”
She turned those liquid amber eyes at me, and her stubborn mouth softened into a gentle smile.
“You see? That. She’s doing it again, putting herself in harm’s way to help someone else. Trying to keep people she cares about safe. And you all think it’s a bad thing.” She swallowed hard, her eyes shining. “I know where I stand.”
“Come on, Hannah, don’t do this,” I said between my teeth. My heart was hammering so hard I thought it might crash right through my ribs. “You don’t know what it’s like there.”
“Full of people like you who wouldn’t toe the line at the expense of their friends, I imagine,” she said with a cheeky little grin. She tossed her head and looked back at the Custodian. “Well?”
“You’ve convinced me,” Clipboard said dryly. “Let’s go.”
He grabbed her arm and pulled her along with us.
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.
My mind scrambled for a way to get her out of this, but I couldn’t come up with anything. It was too late now. She’d thrown down the challenge to the Custodians, and they’d made their move.
Damn it, Hannah, why did you have to go and be noble out loud? Keep that shit in your diary like the rest of us, for God’s sake.
I shot a look at Toland, but the headmaster refused to meet my gaze. He looked miserable, the spineless coward. He knew we were on the right side of this whole mess. If he had any character at all he’d stand up for us, but I guessed that was too much to hope for. I knew his hands were tied by his oath, and I knew he did care about his students. But I wished he was willing to stick his neck out for us. How he felt about this didn’t matter if he didn’t stand up and say shit.
“Make way for the banished!”
The Custodian’s stupid voice echoed in the stupid chamber and all of the stupid students followed us like a bunch of stupid sheep.
I assumed we’d be led to the auditorium or the cafeteria, but no. These dramatic-ass bitches had to take us down to a sub-basement dungeon that I hadn’t even known existed until that very moment. It was like the interrogation room I’d been brought to a few times, but way worse. Dark curtains covered the walls, hiding God-knew-what, and various torture devices and shackles sat theatrically around. I didn’t imagine that they had been used recently, but holy shit. Why were they in the school in the first place?
The floor was a boring gray slab—all except the very center, which was a purple circle with an artistic flame in the middle.
Oh, gee, wonder what that’s for?
A bunch of curious students had followed us inside, and no one made a move to stop them as they gawped at us. Hannah and the guys and I were placed around the circle, our backs to the crowd, facing one another. Clipboard called for silence—unnecessary, since no one was talking—and started to read from his clipboard.
“Piper Lawless, Xero Ashwood, Kingston Reed, Kai Sumida, Jayce Carter, and—what was your name?”
“Hannah Osmond.”
“And Hannah Osmond. You have been found guilty by the Committee of Custodians of crimes against humanity and the Custodian oath. Those crimes are as follows.” He swept his gaze over all of us, his voice ringing out through the room as he listed off our supposed crimes. “Conspiring with inhabitants of the underworld. Communicating with inhabitants of the underworld. Disregarding school rules and regulations. Compromising the safety and security of Fallen University and its residents. Willfully, and with full awareness of the consequences, skipping final examinations. Conspiring with rule-breakers. Speaking out against the Custodians before your peers. You are hereby deemed security risks, as you have proved to be uncontrollable.”
Near-right, who still hadn’t
said anything, stepped forward with a glowing bowl in one hand and something that looked like a miniature branding iron in the other. He came into the center of the circle and stopped.
“You will each bear the mark of permanent evil,” the man who’d read our sentence continued. “Should you return to earth at any time, you shall be killed on sight. Fredrick, if you please.”
Fredrick—Near-right—stuck the iron in the bowl. It sizzled and popped, and foul-smelling magic bubbled and sparked. My stomach churned with fear and disgust.
God, this is so fucked up.
He took Kai’s left arm and pressed the iron to the inside of his wrist. Kai paled and ground his teeth, but he didn’t make any noise. It didn’t matter. I could still smell his flesh burning and bonding with the magic. Xero was next. More than stoic, he looked almost bored. I guess after all the torture he’d gone through, a little brand was nothing.
My heart nearly stopped when Fredrick got to Hannah. She’d come a long way from the timid, fearful girl I’d first met, but she was still so soft and gentle. She was the pure goodness I’d come to anchor myself to. She didn’t deserve this, and I didn’t know if she could withstand it. Even Fredrick faltered for a moment as he gazed at her.
But only for a moment.
He recovered himself and applied the mark to her wrist. Her eyes widened and she turned a sickly shade of gray. Trembling like a leaf, she bit her lip against a scream I could feel in my own body. A single tear slid down her pale cheek, and I wanted to beat the ever-loving fuck out of Fredrick.
The man moved on to Kingston next. As he pressed the brand to Kingston’s wrist, my bond-mate exploded.
“Ow! Fuck! What the hell is the matter with you guys? This is magic! You could make it painless if you wanted to, but no, it’s got to smell like rotten eggs and burn like a motherfucker. You’re an asshole, you know that? Yeah, you can go on with your silent but deadly act, but I see right through you. Fuck!”
A flicker of pride rose up in me. We couldn’t fight back against this, but Kingston wasn’t the type to take shit stoically. And even if his tirade didn’t change anything, maybe it would make some of the students who were watching our banishment see this whole thing a little differently.