by Cara Wylde
“I’m not hurting,” he murmured. He was obviously lying. “He didn’t expel me, and I am in the MDC.”
“Then… what happened? When did it all go so wrong? What happened to your wings?”
He sighed. “Francis didn’t tell you… I’m shocked, really. He’s so infatuated with you. I thought he tells you everything now.”
“He doesn’t tell me shit. Also, he’s not infatuated with me. We’re just friends.”
“Right.”
“Well?”
“You really want to know what happened…”
“Yes! I know this might come as a surprise to you, but I do care about you, Sariel.”
He bit the inside of his cheek. We looked into each other’s eyes for a long minute, and even though I was dying to find out who’d ripped his wings, – so I’d know who to go after, – I stood there patiently, knowing this moment was crucial. He was trying to decide whether he could trust me or not, and whatever conclusion he reached, it would be impossible to make him reconsider it later. So, it had to be a positive conclusion.
“Fine, whatever. You and the people you’ve trapped in your bubble are the only ones who don’t know, anyway. The whole school knows.”
Bubble? It was true that since we’d started dating, GC and Paz had grown less and less interested in the outside world. But I had no idea we were in a bubble.
“My wings were the price I had to pay if I wanted to stay at the Academy. My family disowned me, and Morningstar wanted to expel me. I begged. I actually begged my parents and Morningstar. I told them that if I’m not a Grim Reaper, then I’m nothing. It’s the only thing I’ve got in this world, the only thing I’ve ever wanted. I was ready to do anything to be allowed to continue my studies. So, they told me the price. And I accepted.”
“Why?”
“They wanted to punish me, so I let them. I’d deceived them since day one. My family had disowned me anyway. Wings or no wings, I knew I’d never see them again. And to tell you the truth, since it was so easy for them to shun me, I didn’t want to be an archangel anymore. When you’re born one, though, you usually die one. The only way out is…”
“... to lose your wings.”
“Yeah. I’m a Fallen One now. Hell adopted me. It was painful, but it was worth it. I don’t need my family’s fortune to make a living. I have my own money, you know. It’s not much, but I can afford a place in Limbo.” Limbo was the First Circle of Hell. “And Morningstar took my sacrifice as a sign that I’m truly dedicated to becoming a Grim Reaper. So, here I am.” He smiled weakly. “I miss flying, but I’ll survive.”
I closed my eyes and took everything in for a moment. I wanted to say so much. Raging against his parents and my father wouldn’t do him any good. What was done was done, and he just wanted to move forward.
“Why were they bullying you? Merrit, Raziel, the others…?”
He laughed out loud, and it was a genuine laugh. “Come on, Mila! You know why. Because I’m different now. I’m not one of them anymore. You should know better than anyone that’s what happens when you’re different.”
“It’s bullshit.”
He sighed. “Aren’t you at least a little bit happy, though? Now I know how it feels, and all that.”
I pursed my lips. Double standards… I’d just had Corri seize Lorna with a tight rope and a ball gag, taken pictures of her, and asked her the classic four words every bullied kid-turned bully asks when the tables turn: “How. Does. It. Feel.” And I couldn’t do it to Sariel. I could never do it to Sariel. But then again… Lorna was just tied up a bit. The ropes didn’t even leave bruises. Sariel had had his wings ripped out of his back. There were limits, right? There was bullying, and then there was… extreme bullying. What the hell is wrong with me? It’s the same stinky, putrid crap. Next time I saw Lorna, I was going to delete the pictures and tell her I was sorry.
“No, I’m not happy.” I placed my other hand on his cheek, too. “I don’t want you to know how it feels.” I lifted myself on my toes. “Because it feels awful, and no one should go through it. Not you, not even Lorna… not my worst enemies.” We were so close now that I could feel his breath on my lips, and he could feel mine. Our eyes were locked. “I am so, so sorry this happened to you. I want to make it right. I don’t know how, though, so you tell me… Tell me how to make it right.”
“You’re already making it much better,” he breathed.
He leaned in, and our lips touched. Tentatively, at first. It wasn’t even a kiss. We were just standing there, my hands on his burning cheeks, his hands on my waist, eyes still wide open, lips unmoving. It was as if neither of us understood what was happening, what we’d gotten ourselves into. Was I cheating on GC and Pazuzu? Why Sariel? Why was I kissing Sariel, the guy who’d tried to kill me twice in one year?! Was it out of pity? Was it out of…
His lips moved against mine. I sighed, closed my eyes, and allowed my body to melt and mold against his wide chest and into his possessive arms. His hands touched the small of my back, and my skin burned under the cotton dress. When I parted my lips for him, his tongue slipped inside, and I tasted him for the first time. My core throbbed with need, and I squeezed my legs together. I could feel him hard and ready, and I knew the more I allowed this to happen, the more we were inching into dangerous territory. We had to stop. I have to stop. What the hell am I doing? I traced his jaw and neck with my trembling fingers, then finally placed my hands firmly on his chest. His heart beat steadily under my palm, and that made it even harder to push him away. I willed my heated, stupid brain to start producing rational, coherent thoughts again, and broke the kiss. We looked into each other’s eyes like we were just meeting now for the first time.
“Mila…”
“Is this real?”
He nodded.
“Because your parents…” They’d wanted us to be together since they’d found out I was Morningstar’s daughter.
“They’re not my parents anymore. They have no say in what I do with my life.”
“You’re free…”
He smiled a sad, yet oddly grateful smile. “No wings… Can’t fly anymore… But yes, I suppose I’m free for the first time in my life.”
I stepped away and touched my lips. “I don’t…”
“Don’t say it,” he interrupted me quickly, although he had no idea what I was going to say. “Just don’t say it. I’ve liked you for a long time, Mila.”
“How long?”
“Year one? I… I can’t remember…”
I frowned. “You’re confused. Year one is when you tried to kill me twice.”
“Because it was easier to devise plans to get rid of you than accept that... that this whole time, I was thinking about you for entirely different reasons. I was obsessed with you, damn it! You were on my mind day and night. I couldn’t think straight anymore, I could barely focus on school. Every single thing I was supposed to do since early morning till late at night was ten times harder to do because of you. Simply because you existed, and I wanted you.”
I shook my head. “This doesn’t make any sense. When you like someone, you don’t try to kill them.” My head was starting to clear. I walked past him, heading back to the party. I needed space to figure out what I’d just done.
“Haven’t you ever heard… You sometimes love someone so fucking much that you could kill them?”
“Shit, Sariel!” I yelled over my shoulder. “That’s messed up.”
“Mila!” Now he was the one trying to catch up with me.
“No.” I turned to him, a determined look in my eyes. “What we did back there… We’re not doing it again. It was one kiss, nothing more. We’re friends. I want to help you. I don’t want you to go through what I went through. What you and Lorna put me through. But this…” I motioned between the two of us. “This isn’t happening. I’m sorry.”
His shoulders sagged. I walked away, knowing he wasn’t going to follow me this time. My thought
s were a jumbled mess. I didn’t even notice Lorna walking up to me, hands squeezed into fists at her sides. When she was close enough, she raised them and hit me in shoulders.
“What the fuck, dumpster princess? You’re going after him, too? GC and Pazuzu are not enough for you? You have Francis Saint-Germain wrapped around your little finger, and you’re still not satisfied! You want Sariel now!”
“What? How… Lorna, no. You got it all wrong.”
“Really? Because I was just coming over there to make sure you weren’t on the rocks, since my cloaking spell doesn’t cover them, and I saw you two kissing. You were kissing him!” Tears pooled in her eyes. “Sariel never kissed me!”
“Lorna, I’m sorry… I-I know what you saw, but it doesn’t mean anything, I promise.”
“It doesn’t mean anything?” she huffed. “I hope you’re lying to me, bitch, because if he’s genuinely in love with you and that kiss didn’t mean anything to you, then I’m going to fuck you up. I won’t let you break his heart!”
I was dumbfounded. “I don’t… understand anymore. You want me to be with him? You don’t want me to be with him? Make up your mind.”
“I made up my mind a long time ago. I just never followed through…” She drew her right arm back, fist at the ready.
She was going to punch me. My eyes widened, and for a second, I didn’t know what to do. Step aside? Duck? Hit her before she hit me?
It all happened in a fraction of a second. The music stopped, and everyone on the beach started running in all directions. Or trying to. We were surrounded by Unseelie guards, and there was nowhere to go. Lorna let her arm fall to her side.
“Shit.”
“Lorna, the cloaking spell…”
“You greedy bitch distracted me from it! This is all your fault!”
I saw Crassus stepping away from the crowd, looking for me.
“Fuck. Okay, so the spell broke for a minute or two… How did they find us so fast?!”
“That, greedy bitch, I have no idea.”
“Stop calling me that!”
She cocked an eyebrow, shook her head as if to say I wasn’t worth a reaction, then teleported away. I should have done the same. We were probably the only ones at the party who could teleport on their own, without the help of teleportation pins, which I could see now the Unseelie were confiscating from the inebriated students. I should have followed Lorna’s example and gotten out of there. But Crassus was just up ahead, and he’d seen me, anyway. Besides, I wasn’t going to leave my lovers and friends behind. What kind of person would that have made me?
I just hoped Corri was okay and she’d zapped out of there before anyone saw her.
CHAPTER NINE
Crassus and two other Unseelie guards were ordered to take me, GC, Paz, Francis, and Sariel to the Headmaster’s office. Naturally, my father knew we were to blame. Or, more like, I was to blame, and the guys had just followed me to my doom like puppies. I could understand why GC and Paz were there with me, but why bring Francis and Sariel into this, too? Did he have a sixth sense, or was he paying some of the guards to tell him who I hung out with?
“Rule two,” Morningstar started in a low, serious tone. “All parties and celebrations are forbidden. Which word is unclear to you, Mila? Should I translate this for you in Bulgarian?”
“So funny,” I mumbled under my breath.
He looked at GC, then at Pazuzu. Disdain was written all over his face.
“And you’re still dating the false god and the demon, I see.” It wasn’t a question, so no one said anything. He changed the subject. “Where is the pixie?”
“In my room,” I said between gritted teeth. “She had nothing to do with this. She didn’t help me.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Yes.”
“If you’re lying to me…”
“I’m not lying to you! She didn’t break any rules, so you have no right to send her to the Blank.”
“Mila, I told you many times, and I’m telling you again. The Blank is not some sort of punishment or torture. It’s natural for pixies to dwell there when they’re not needed.”
I shook my head. There was no point in arguing with him. I wasn’t going to convince him about shit in this life. Maybe in the next.
“If the pixie didn’t cloak your dreadful party, then who did?”
I pursed my lips. Crap. He knows a mage helped me. I shrugged.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Mila…” He stood up from his desk, his fingers wrapping around his scythe menacingly. “I know there was a cloaking spell, and if the pixie is innocent like you say, then a mage was involved. Who was it? That friend of yours? Klaus… what’s his name? Hamelin? By the way, did you know some ancestor of his had this unnatural obsession with children?” He grinned, knowing that talking shit about Klaus and his family would piss me off. “I hear your mage friend has a thing for boys, which I guess isn’t that condemnable nowadays. Strange family, don’t you think?”
I did my very best to keep my mouth shut. His impatience was stronger than the pleasure of annoying me, so he turned to my guys.
“Mr. Apis, care to share the name of the mage with me? Your worth points aren’t looking good this semester. We can start fixing that today, what do you say?”
“I don’t know who it was, Headmaster.”
“Fine.” He moved on to Paz and tried the same method, and when it didn’t work, he tried it on Francis, too. When Sariel’s turn came, Morningstar just looked at him disgustedly. “Why are you hanging out with your old cabal, Mr. Gracewing? You’re MDC, you’ve always wanted to be MDC, and now that you have this incredible opportunity to finally be yourself and do what you were destined to do, you’d rather get stuck in the past? You’re the first, and hopefully the last, Fallen One to attend Grim Reaper Academy. Instead of taking advantage of this unique blessing that you’ve been given, you go around looking for trouble? Do you really want me to expel you?”
“No one is getting expelled,” I stepped forward. “It was just a harmless party, and it was all my idea. They came because I invited them.”
He sighed. “And why would you invite a Fallen One to your party, Mila? Isn’t it enough that you’re breaking my heart by dating two boys who don’t deserve you?”
I swallowed my pride and pretended I didn’t hear that last part.
“I didn’t know he’d lost his wings. I just found out tonight.”
Valentine looked at me for a long moment, then finally nodded. He believed me.
“He lost his wings because of you,” I added pointedly.
His brows furrowed. “He lost his wings because he betrayed his family and ruined the reputation of this Academy. He is the reason why the new rules had to be instituted, and the reason why everyone had to take the entry test all over again at the end of last year.”
Yeah, that had sucked. If until then I’d thought Mason Colin’s test to enter the Academy had been hard, Morningstar had sure changed my mind. Fortunately, it turned out all students were in the right cabals already. This time, Sariel included.
“No,” I insisted. Why did I insist? Why?! “He lost his wings because of you, because that was the only way you could be convinced that he is a future Grim Reaper and he must follow his destiny.”
His expression darkened. He was losing his patience. Fine. Let him lose it. What will he do?
“You keep defying me, daughter! Throwing a party when the rules clearly state parties are forbidden, corrupting other students, and now questioning my methods…”
I could feel his rage. We were facing each other. He had his scythe in hand, I didn’t have mine. I stared right into his eyes – as blue as mine, as fierce as mine. Just when I thought he’d yell at me again, or maybe come up with some twisted method of punishment, Valentine took a step back, and turned to my guys.
“Tell me. Have you ever felt the bite of a scythe?”
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Wait, what? What the fuck’s this about? It didn’t sound good.
“Sure we have,” GC said, a lazy smirk in his voice. “We cut ourselves all the time in PE. I, for one, heal super fast, but others aren’t that lucky.”
The Headmaster nodded. “But have you ever felt the bite of a scythe that was once broken and now is whole?”
My guys looked confused, and for good reason. I was the only one who knew my father had managed to break his blade somehow, and then replace it with a new once. Or, maybe he hadn’t replaced it, just fixed it. I couldn’t remember the whole story. It didn’t matter. What mattered now was that he’d just taken a step toward GC. Before I could react, he lifted his scythe, swung it at my boyfriend, and left a gushing wound on his cheek.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I yelled. “What the fuck? You’re attacking students now?”
Valentine ignored me. “Mr. Apis, maybe next time you’ll think twice before speaking to me so disrespectfully.”
GC was holding his cheek. He smiled at me. “Don’t worry, it will heal in a second.”
But it wasn’t healing! Sariel and Francis had stepped away from Morningstar, one out of fear and the other out of common sense, but Paz was frozen in place. He stared at GC until his mind finally wrapped around what was happening, then turned to Morningstar with a hateful, determined look in his green eyes. I knew that if I didn’t step in, things would end up even bloodier.
“Father, what have you done?” That got his attention, alright. “You just hurt a student. Do you realize how serious this is?” Pazuzu was boiling with anger behind me. I held my ground, refusing to move out of his way.
“And what will you do? You’ll go to the Council? Do you think they’ll listen? Do you think they’ll care?”