Saving Year Three: A Reverse Harem Bully Romance (Grim Reaper Academy Book 3)

by Cara Wylde

  “You’re his best friend.”

  “And as his best friend, I’m telling you: he’ll live.” Before GC and Paz caught up with us, he managed to whisper: “Your boyfriends need your attention more than Sariel or me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He bit his lower lip but remained silent. When GC and Pazuzu fell in step with me, he walked faster, pretending he was suddenly very interested in Professor Maat’s presentation.

  What’s wrong with him? His comment about my boyfriends made no sense. Even with Morningstar doing everything in his power to separate us, I still made sure they got plenty of attention. Is Francis… jealous? I silently laughed at the silly thought and focused on something else.

  The Seelie world was small, cozy, and quaint. It was mostly rural, with one-story houses and cottages huddled together at the foot of a hill upon which more modern houses rose in steps toward the top. At the very top, the castle of the Seelie queen presided over the landscape, with its tall, marble turrets reflecting the sunlight and the deep blue of the sky. The road to the castle was long and winding, so we hired a couple of carts to take us, and we sat back, enjoying the beauty of the countryside, the song of the birds, the chirpy voices of fay children playing in the dirt, and the mouth-watering smell of food and baked bread wafting through the open windows.

  “Your childhood would’ve been similar if you’d stayed in Bulgaria,” Paz pointed out as we went past a group of noisy children.

  “Maybe, maybe not.”

  The carts left us before the mighty gates of the castle, which were open. Fays were going in and out, carrying fruit, vegetables, and bags of grain, supplying the castle with goods and workforce. A woman and a man were waiting to escort us to the throne room. They were both breathtakingly beautiful, and so alike that I thought they were siblings. As it turned out later, they weren’t even related.

  “The Seelie almost never marry outside of their species,” Professor Maat explained in a hushed tone when our escorts stepped away to introduce us to the queen. “That’s why they all look the same. Unfortunately, their numbers keep dwindling every year. Because of centuries of inbreeding, many babies don’t make it past nine or twelve months.”

  That kind of ruined our day.

  Queen Lilla received us with open arms and a bright smile. She and Professor Maat embraced for a brief second.

  “Nefertari, my dear, it’s been too long.”

  “Indeed, my friend. I’m glad to find you well.”

  I knew what “too long” meant. Two hundred years. The last time Nefertari Maat had visited her friend at the Seelie Court had been when she’d last brought a bunch of students on a field trip. The Violent Death Cabal was first to visit the Seelie, as usual, and in the next two weeks, Professor Maat would come here three more times, with the Righteous Death Cabal, the Neutral Death Cabal, and the Merciful Death Cabal. Sariel would see this place last. What a shame. I realized that I missed him today. I’d visited Heaven and Hell last year with all four boys, and now our group wasn’t the same without the archangel. Err… Fallen One.

  We visited the castle, had tea with the queen, then we were free to roam the gardens while she caught up with her old friend. As GC, Paz, Francis, and I made our way through labyrinthic alleys, we noticed there was something in the air here. It was fresh and sweet, but also warm and a bit dusty, the sort of warm and dusty that enticed one to sleep and laziness. It reminded me of long August days when I was a kid and things hadn’t yet gotten that bad with my adoptive father. I’d take my toys and play in our small, cramped backyard, on an old blanket that my mom didn’t need anymore and hadn’t washed in years.

  At the far back of the gardens, we found an enclosed space – a fence of stone and vines separating the roses from the rest. It was as if it was a garden within a garden.

  “A secret garden.”

  It took us a while to find the gate, as it was hidden behind a wall of vines, thorns, and wild roses, but when we did, we entered a world that was more beautiful than Heaven itself. Marble statues covered in roses, small fountains sprinkling water toward the sky, wooden benches strategically positioned under tall arches of roses.

  “I don’t think we’re supposed to be here,” said Francis. “It seems to me this must be the queen’s special place.”

  “We’re not staying long…” I stretched and yawned. The first bench I found, I lay on it, with my head in GC’s lap, and my feet in Paz’s. Francis sighed and sat on the ground. He pulled out his phone and grunted in annoyance when he realized he didn’t have a signal here. The Seelie had their own phone providers. “Relax for a minute, will you? Let’s just enjoy the peace. Away from the Academy and away from my father… We deserve today.”

  GC must have said something, but I didn’t hear him. I was vaguely aware Francis had, eventually, agreed with me. Or, maybe I had imagined it? I drifted to sleep, my eyes closing and my breathing turning deep and even. I didn’t want to sleep, but sleep took me, nonetheless. When I opened my eyes… my mind’s eyes… I was someplace else.

  * * *

  A field of green and yellow stretching toward the horizon. A sky so blue and cloudless that at first, I thought it was the sea turned upside down. I looked at my feet, and they were bare, hovering a few inches above the ground. I was floating. Joy bloomed in my chest, I smiled, and willed my knees to propel me higher.

  “I’m awake,” I whispered to myself.

  Sleeping, but aware. I was having a lucid dream. The colors were so vibrant that my human eyes could barely take them in, could barely focus on one thing at a time. I floated for a while, until I came at the foot of a hill. I could sense there was something beyond it, so I floated higher and higher, until I was almost afraid I might become weightless and the wind would take me away.

  Ruins on the other side of the hill.

  I floated toward them, knowing someone was waiting for me there. My feet touched the ground, as if the air among the ruins was heavier and denser. I stepped between crumbled walls and patches of weeds and wildflowers. The girl had her back to me, her hair was long and blond, shining in the hot sun.

  “Where am I?”

  When I’d started lucid dreaming a long time ago, in my teenage years, I’d promised myself I’d ask two questions every time I met someone in one of these dreams: one, “Where am I?, and two, “What’s your name?” Later, I found out it didn’t mean much, because the names these people (people?) gave me were too complicated and unusual to remember. Still, it was as if I’d programmed myself to ask the two questions no matter what.

  The girl turned, and my heart stopped. She was me. No. She only looked like me, but a version of me who hadn’t covered her naturally blond hair with layers and layers of blue dye.

  She opened her mouth to answer me, and I could swear she said something, but the name of the place eluded me. It was as if the sounds she made went straight past my ears, without ever registering.

  “What’s your name?”

  The same. I was starting to think that maybe I was the problem, and this was one of those dreams where I’d lost one of my senses on the way while all the others worked fine. It had happened before to end up in a lucid dream half blind, and now it seemed that I was at least half deaf.

  “I can’t hear you,” I said. “But you’re me.”

  I stepped closer. She had my eyes, and even the soft wrinkles I’d collected at the corners after years of forgetting to wear my sunglasses. For a second, it was as if her features glazed over, then came back into focus.

  “I’m not you,” she said in a gentle voice that seemed to come from miles away. “I just look like you because I had to take a form you’d recognize.”

  I shook my head, confused.

  “There are many you’s, in many universes around us. If you want, you can travel there. But I’m not you.”

  “I don’t…” My head started buzzing. I touched my fingers to my temple and struggled to stay
aware, stay awake, stay connected.

  “Mila.”

  A voice that was even more distant than my double’s.

  “Mila, wake up. It’s time to go.”

  My blond doppelganger vanished before my eyes, and the dream started coming apart at the seams, until it came apart completely and there was nothing left of it.

  I jumped awake, and I was back in the secret rose garden.

  “Rise and shine, goddess,” GC chirped. “They’re waiting for us.”

  The sun was setting.

  “How long have I slept?”

  Francis stole a glance at his wristwatch, then shrugged.

  “Not sure. Time seems to flow differently here.”

  I sat up and rubbed my eyes and my face. I couldn’t have slept for more than an hour, but my body felt so stiff and my mind so foggy, that it felt like I’d slept for a day and a night.

  “I had the strangest dream…”

  “What was it about?” Paz asked me as he helped me up.

  “I met a girl who looked like me but wasn’t me, and she told me that there are many me’s in the universes around us, and that I could travel there if I wanted to.”

  “You’re right. That is the strangest dream.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  On Wednesday night, it wasn’t easy to sneak out after curfew. Morningstar still hadn’t paid Crassus, so the Unseelie guard was very demotivated when it came to keeping an eye on me. I teleported outside the walls of the Academy, spent about ten minutes looking around and waiting to see if anyone was coming for me, then teleported again in Salem, right where Stepan had told me to meet him. I had to make sure that the Headmaster hadn’t found a way to track me down even if I wasn’t using my teleportation pin – which, by the way, was in a drawer in my room, lost in a pile of underwear.

  “You came.”

  “Of course I came,” I huffed and crossed the street to enter the first bar. He followed me grumpily. “You hoped I wouldn’t come, so you wouldn’t have to tell me the truth?” He didn’t answer, which meant I was spot on.

  We sat at a table, I ordered water, and he got a beer. I waited for him to get his thoughts in order, but after he’d drunk half of his beer in total silence, I started to lose my patience. Not that I had ever been very patient… Leo, Moon in Mercury, Aries Rising. What was the opposite of “patient” again? Oh, right! Mila. Mila Morningstar, or Angelov, or Lazarov, or whatever.

  “If you don’t want me to get in trouble, you better start talking,” I said harshly. “Nowadays, the new Headmaster has the Unseelie checking bedrooms to make sure the students are sleeping.” That was a terrible invasion of privacy, but since sleepovers were forbidden, what could we have to hide? At most, the guards could walk in on some VDC student jerking off.

  He smacked his lips. “Ask me and I’ll try to answer. Maybe it’ll be easier.”

  I cocked an eyebrow. Okay… Is it me, or has he lost weight? He got a second beer. If he has, it’s not going to stay off for long at this rate. Moving on. His health wasn’t my concern.

  “Let’s start with some simple ones.” I wanted to make sure he was ready to act like an adult and tell me the truth. “Did you know that Morningstar is my real father all along?”

  “What does ‘all along’ mean?” He took a swig of his beer.

  I rolled my eyes. “How long did you know Morningstar is my real Dad?” He wasn’t stupid, but he sure liked to play stupid when it suited him.

  “You were two years old, and we’d just moved to the US. Maybe two and a half.”

  My eyes grew as wide as saucers. “You’ve known since I was two?! What the hell?! Did you also know he is a Grim Reaper?” He nodded, lips pursed. “And what else did you know? About the Academy?”

  He shook his head. “No. I found out about Grim Reaper Academy the same day you did. You got that red invitation in the mail, read it out loud, and I knew. I knew he’d come for you again.”

  A chill ran up my spine. “He’d come for me again…”

  “Yeah.” He motioned for the waiter to bring him another beer. He’d practically gulped down the second in one go.

  “He’d come for me before?”

  “Aren’t you listening? When you were two. Maybe two and a half.”

  I released a sigh of frustration, placed my hands on the table, and leaned in. “We’re going in circles. Just tell me already.” The waiter brought his beer. “One for me, please.”

  “ID?”

  Right. In the human world, I couldn’t drink yet.

  “I meant… another water for me, please.” He happily went to get it.

  “Here, have a sip,” Stepan chuckled, pushing the bottle toward me.

  “Stop stalling. How did you two meet? And what do you mean when you say he came for me?”

  He dragged in a deep, long breath, held it at the top for a second longer than I thought he was capable of, then released it slowly.

  “Alright, but promise me you won’t freak out. Promise me that whatever I tell you now, and however it makes you feel, you won’t kill me on the spot and then rush out of here to kill him.”

  I crossed my arms over my cheek and let myself fall against the backrest. This is getting interesting.

  “So, you did something when I was two. Maybe two and a half. Something bad. Do you deserve to die for it?”

  He shook his head, sadness and regret written all over his face. “Yes. But not today. I might still be of use to you, you know? Plus, your poor mother…”

  “Spill it already!”

  “We’d just moved to the US when he knocked on my door. Your mother doesn’t know. She wasn’t there that night. She’d gone to some neighbor to help her with the baby, a spoiled brat who cried all the time and hit his stupid mom in the face. Anyway, she wasn’t there, and to this day, I thank God he protected her.”

  “What happened?”

  “Well, as I said, he knocked on my door. I asked him who he was and what he wanted, he told me he was your real father, and I let him inside. I mean, if he was your real father, then maybe I got lucky and he wanted you, because I sure as hell didn’t.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “I knew there was something weird about him. He was wearing this black cloak and these old-fashioned clothes… His eyes were strange. Like there was a fire inside them, a fire that had been burning non-stop for too long and was so close to driving him insane. He asked to see you, so I woke you up and brought you into the living room. You had no idea what was happening. He said he knew I didn’t want you. That I didn’t want any children, ever. He said he could see it in my eyes. And even though he knew so many things about me and my family, he was right. I didn’t want children, and you were a burden. Lena had made a mistake when she came up with the idea to adopt you, but I made an even bigger mistake when I let her convince me. ‘She’s Katia’s daughter,’ she’d say. ‘Remember Katia and how much you cared about her. She’d want us to have her.’ Bla bla bla. Bla bla. Whatever. And here was this guy now, claiming that he was your father and offering to take you off my hands.”

  “And you believed him?”

  “That he was your father? Oh, yes. He gave me a bunch of details about Katia that no one else could have possibly known.”

  “What did you do?”

  He was silent for a long moment. He drank his beer, and I let him. Eventually, he shrugged and continued in a much lower voice.

  “I told him yes. He could have you. After all, you were better off with him, right? Better than with a family that didn’t want you.”

  “Mom wanted me…”

  “Lena is a martyr. Always has been. She felt it was her duty to save Katia’s only child. Good Christian and whatnot.”

  “Okay. If you gave me to him that night, how did I end up back home?”

  “I had this feeling…” He placed his elbows on the table and looked me in the eye. “There was something shady about him, and I couldn’
t place it. I followed him. I don’t know why. Maybe I wanted to make sure you were safe with the guy, or maybe I wanted to make sure you went with him and stayed with him. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that I followed him, saw him taking you to his car, but just when I thought he was going to get you inside and drive off, he took out something that looked like a scythe. It literally looked like the ones my father used back home, in Bulgaria, to cut the grass for the sheep and goats. Only fancier. Then, I saw him slam the car door closed and drag you down the street.” He shook his head and ran his hand through his dirty blond hair. “He didn’t even bother to take you far. The first hidden alley he could find, he pushed you in there, and you took a couple of steps among piles of garbage, used syringes, and broken glass with your plump, tiny feet. Your chin had started trembling, but you weren’t crying. You were holding back the tears, because that was what I’d taught you to do. If you cried, you made me angry, and I’d only make you cry harder. So, you learned not to cry. You opened your little mouth to ask him something, or to tell him you wanted to go home. He didn’t give you the chance. He swung his scythe at you, aiming for your little throat. I yelled and ran to you, although I knew it was too late.”

  “But it wasn’t.”

  “It wasn’t.” He chuckled. “The second it touched your skin, the blade broke into a million shards. By the time I reached you, he was frozen in place, staring at the empty handle of his scythe. Scythe…” He huffed. “It was a stick. He couldn’t understand what had happened, and I couldn’t either, but I didn’t care. I grabbed you and ran out of there. Now I knew what he was. Grim Reaper. He was dressed like one, looked like one, hell! He even smelled like one. And he had a goddamn scythe. I thought he’d stop me, but he didn’t. I thought he’d show up again, but he didn’t do that either. For the next couple of years, I watched over you like a madman. I couldn’t forgive myself for handing you over to a murderer, even if that murderer was your real father. I couldn’t sleep at night, couldn’t have a life… I had to watch you every minute of every day. He never came, though.”