2. Kellen

Chapter 2

Kellen

Kellen settled into the swivel chair behind his desk, stacking his feet on top of the table, and announced, “You may begin the exam,” resting the back of his head against his clasped hands.

He watched with faint amusement as the fifteen Primordials in his class read the first question on the exam and collectively dropped their jaws when they realized he didn’t play around. He knew at least half the class hadn’t read a single chapter he’d assigned since the beginning of the year, apparent in their lack of participation and incorrect answers on their homework assignments. Kellen liked the sound of his own voice, but not when their unreadiness and absence of respect forced him to lecture for forty-five minutes about myths he’d read a thousand times before and truthfully couldn’t care less about. This provoked him to pull a fast one on the little miscreants—he gave them one day’s notice of an exam covering the first ten chapters in Chronicles of the Cavalian Gods .

Was that slightly callous of him? He had no fucks to give. That would teach them to slack off in his class.

Why did I agree to teach History of the Gods? he thought to himself at least twice a day. He hadn’t volunteered for it. His contract only obligated him to run the Varmin department, a title he relished where he got to reap the benefits of power over his colleagues and essentially meant he was responsible for discipline, which was his specialty. The parts of this job he enjoyed the most came from working individually with the Varmin, particularly the dragon-shifters, and teaching them how to shift between their various forms while controlling the unique features that came along with their breed. Teaching History of the Gods offered him nothing but a piercing headache.

Everyone had been shocked when Kellen Kilic—top of his class at Delmarth Academy, which meant he had his pick of the litter in terms of whatever job he wanted—chose teaching to be his vocation after graduation. He’d been offered a position within the King of the Gods’s personal cadre as a serjeant, fighting alongside the Cavalian army against the empire of Lantari in a war that had existed for thousands of years, one Kellen had spent the majority of his formative years dreaming of participating in. In the end, Kellen turned the offer down to attend Nosrerry University, majoring in education. He knew being trussed to a classroom, molding the minds of the youth, wasn’t in keeping with his personality and skill level. He’d chosen teaching for two vital reasons.

The first: it allowed him to be in close proximity to his twin younger siblings when he began teaching at twenty-one and they started Kindergarten at Delmarth the same year. The second?

It pissed his mother off to no fucking end, the Kilic name tarnished by Kellen refusing the King of the Gods’s offer of employment. That brought him more pleasure than being a legionnaire in Aros Cavalian’s brigade—even if sometimes he caught himself fantasizing about what could have been, had he prioritized his talent over petty revenge. This happened most frequently while he taught History of the Gods.

Kellen swept his eyes over the classroom, verifying that everyone’s focus was latched onto their own pages. He caught Anastasia Branwen pretending to yank her ginger ringlets into a ponytail, but was really stretching to the right of her to see over Elora Dagny’s shoulder to read off her paper.

“Branwen,” he barked, the entire class flinching at the vehemence of his growl. “To the front of the room, now.” Anastasia exchanged a panicked look with one of her friends, then reluctantly released the tendrils still gathered between her fingers and slid out of her chair to stand in front of Kellen’s desk.

“Yes, Mr. Kilic?”

“Grab your test and give it back to me.”

“G-Give it back to you?” she stuttered, her lashes smacking her eyebrows from the fast pace at which they fluttered.

“Don’t make me repeat myself.” Anastasia recoiled.

She sidled back to her desk, her shoulders caved in as she glided the test across her desk, then handed the paper to Kellen. He paused a moment for dramatic effect, feeding his own twisted pleasure, before he crushed the paper in his fist, right in her face. Anastasia stumbled back with a gasp.

“You will stand at my desk for the remainder of the forty-five minutes,” he ordered, giving her back the crumpled ball of paper. “As a warning for the rest of the class of what happens when you attempt to cheat in my class.”

“Sir—”

“You will receive a zero on this exam. Now stand against the wall, facing the room.” Tears slipped down her cheeks in unrestrained streams. Kellen schooled his face into a mask of disdain, even if there was a small part of his scarred heart that chipped off at her humiliation. There was no room for that sensitivity in Cavale. She’d be eaten alive if she cried like this in front of any other instructor, a fact she wouldn’t appreciate right now, but one day, looking back at this moment and how she got off with nothing but verbal condemnation, she’d understand. The sooner she learned that, the better off she’d be. “What did I say about making me repeat myself? Now, Branwen.”

Anastasia flattened herself against the wall, tucking her chin between her collarbones and dropping her eyes to the floor. Threads of tears dangled down from her eyelashes and splattered dark spots on her white sneakers. The entire class’s focus stayed fixed on her, over where she stood trembling.

“Did I say you could look away from your tests?” he snapped, thirteen pairs of eyes returning to their papers. His gaze arrested over Connor Paight, who had yet to take a look at the test, his eyes remaining pasted to the door.

He was waiting for her.

Noella Rose. Just her name polluting Kellen’s thoughts made the inside of his mouth taste disgusting.

He’d fought Headmistress Dyer tooth and nail when she announced to the faculty that she was hiring a human from the Earthly Plane to be their school counselor. Yes, Kellen agreed that what happened last year with Tifani Robinson was horrible. Yes, he agreed that the school needed to find some way to address the situation rather than just conciliate the parents with a memorial in her honor and then have everyone return to their regularly scheduled lives as usual immediately after. He could even concede that having someone at the school to defend the mental well-being of the students was a decent idea, though he didn’t entirely understand how practical that would be, given the extreme nature of Primordials and their devotion to triumph at any cost. Hiring someone from the Earthly Plane, however, was a disaster waiting to strike, and that’s exactly what Noella Rose had been—a disaster cunningly disguised in a beautiful package, designed to trick you into forgetting that it’s poisonous.

Humans didn’t belong in Cavale. They were too fragile, too weak-minded, too riddled with useless, pathetic emotions. Kellen possessed no tolerance for anyone who couldn’t match his wit…but that’s what bothered him most about Noella. She did match him. Every interaction they’d had thus far, he tried to push her to the point of eruption, just to prove to himself that she didn’t have the stomach to survive here, to shatter the illusion of what she worked tirelessly to present to the world.

Every single time, against all odds, she equaled that challenge and never rewarded him with the submission he craved. Instead of pushing her, it just pushed him —deeper into the spiral he’d plummeted into since the day she arrived in Cavale.

The classroom door cracked open before Noella Rose’s head slipped through the unoccupied space. A golden halo of long blonde hair dripped down the wall behind her like a torrent of spilled honey. Her eyes, a fusion derived from the sea and sky, rims of cerulean surrounding the pupil before bleeding into a storm cloud of grey, drifted over the room in search of Connor, eventually locating him. She passed him what looked like a red ball, mouthing something to him that Kellen couldn’t place, but prompted a blush to bloom across the young boy’s cheeks as he thanked her quietly and turned to begin his test. She was about to pull her head from the room before her eyes cinched with Kellen’s.

The dragon within him stirred, scraping against the interior of his flesh, beseeching to rip through the human casing and be released from confinement. His teeth ached with the desire to lengthen into fangs. Fire singed the walls of his throat. He almost lunged across the desk to grab his leather briefcase and stuff the strap down his throat to keep the fire from leaking out onto the table.

Her gaze flickered between Kellen and the silent puddle Anastasia had turned into.

“What’s going on in here?” Noella asked, the entire class shifting their heads to look back at her.

“Eyes on your papers,” Kellen growled, the children dipping their gazes. He leaned back in his chair and jerked his head in Anastasia’s direction. “I caught her attempting to cheat on the test, so I’m making an example of her.”

“An example?” Noella repeated with quiet horror. “By making her stand in front of the class?”

“For the next forty minutes, yes.” Try and fight me, little earthborn. Let me prove you don’t belong here.

Her freckles danced like constellations across the bridge of her nose as it wrinkled at Kellen.

“What’s your name, love?” Noella entreated Anastasia, completely disregarding Kellen’s existence. Rageful heat barraged his cheeks and rushed up to the tips of his ears, plumes of steam fanning from his flared nostrils, the dragon in him clawing at his ribcage in desperation to be unfettered.

“A-A-Anastasia,” Anastasia spluttered, hiccupping on a sob.

“Anastasia, come with me so we can talk,” Noella offered her as a lifeline, beckoning to the young Primordial.

Noella Rose could call him the nastiest names and Kellen wouldn’t bat an eye, but pretend as though he wasn’t there, as if he hadn’t given a directive, and address the students in that sickeningly sweet, soothing voice of hers to try to embarrass him, in his classroom, in his school?

No way. Not going to happen.

Kellen threw his leg out to block Anastasia from stepping forward, should she feel tempted to do so.

“She stays right here,” he hissed, narrowing a glower drenched in hatred over Noella. “Your presence isn’t needed here, Ms. Rose. You may leave now.”

“I’m inclined to disagree,” she fired back, sticking her chin out mulishly, “since you appear to think it’s acceptable to use humiliation as a tactic in teaching students the difference between right and wrong.”

“You have a problem with the way we teach at Delmarth? Go run home to the Earthly Plane. I’m sure they’d welcome you back there with open arms, none of which you will receive here.”

Come on. Back down, Ms. Rose. You can’t beat me.

“You have a problem with me being here, Kilic?” Her lips wilted in a scornful frown, running her index finger down her cheek like she was tracing a tear track. “Go cry a river to someone who cares.”

Should they have been arguing like this in front of the students? No.

But decorum was so far from Kellen’s mind, lost to the screen of red blearing his vision, the shackles around his dragon growing feebler and looser by the minute. He hadn’t struggled to contain his Varmin form like this since he was in middle school, when his dragon first emerged. He could taste the flames threatening to shoot up his throat and gush out his mouth. She needed to leave, not just because she was a pain in his fucking ass, but because if she didn’t, he was afraid he would devour this room in wildfire and burn the whole building, possibly the entire Varmin sector, to the ground.

Noella seemed to come to her senses, realizing that their back and forth wasn’t an appropriate exhibition for the students to bear witness to. She finally backed off, though Kellen would have preferred her to keep driving the quarrel forward until she forfeited a genuine surrender to him.

“Anastasia?” Noella called, the thirteen-year-old lifting her chin to look at Noella. “Come find me after class.”

Noella’s grey eyes veered to Kellen, and in her thoughts, with the Cerebri abilities he’d inherited from his father—frankly the only gift he’d ever given Kellen that was worth keeping—Kellen heard her tell herself, let the pissing contest go, Ella, and leave. He’s not worth your time or energy.

I’m going to make you wish you were dead, Noella Rose, he thought to himself as she spitefully half-closed the door, leaving it part-way open to force him to get out of his chair and shut it himself. And I’m going to enjoy every second of it.