Chapter 18

“I’m done letting you drag me around like a lamb to the slaughter.”

I glare up at Godric, welcome packet clutched to my chest, refusing to budge.

He’s towed me out of the Academy’s central buildings—or Raziel Complex as I’ve found out—in front of everyone. It took me a long while of regulating my breathing while keeping up with his pace before I could afford acting on my fury. The moment I stopped around one of its buildings’ corners, I expected him to drag me on the ground and choke me, in a repeat of our first encounter.

For some reason, that doesn’t come to pass.

He only turns, dissolves the leash and exhales. “It’s more to pasture. I don’t intend to kill you. Yet. Now move your scrawny arse, White.”

“Oh, shut up, Godawful. You can do zip. Not for four more years, remember?”

His eyes sweep me in a swathe of lazy malice before resting on my neck. “I can spend those years dragging you on your belly for all your fellow cadets to see. Up to you.”

“You don’t have to be such a jerk all the time, y’know,” I grit out.

“I don’t see refraining from being one bearing any fruit. I removed the leash, yet I don’t see you walking.”

I almost blurt something snide, but manage to swallow it. I really need to pick my battles with this bastard. Right now, I need him to give me some leeway.

“Look, I just want to find this Jeremiel Domus Feminae on my own. You know they gave me this cool interactive magic map, so I won’t get lost. And it really doesn’t become Godric the Great to be reduced to the role of my escort—or shepherd.”

He says nothing to that, keeps his gaze locked with mine. The moment lengthens, warps, and I almost moan under the brunt of his sheer charisma and gorgeousness.

Something expands in the depths of his incredible eyes. I vaguely think it should scare me out of my mind. It only intrigues me, exhilarates me. And is that hesitation, too?

Before I can make sure, another wave of students gallop closer, raucously yelling and laughing, fracturing the moment. Then they turn the corner and see Godric.

They all fall silent as if someone hit a mute button. All but scraping and bowing, they pick up speed as soon as they pass him, almost running away.

His eyes remains fixed on me all through. But anything I thought I saw there is now gone as he drawls, deliciously posh and haughty, “The moment I leave you to your own devices, you’ll cause or get into trouble. You’ll either try to run, probably tripping the Palladium Wards and getting barbecued. Or you’ll find some other monster to piss off, like you inexplicably found that demoness, but without me around, they won’t hesitate to turn you into human shish kebab.”

It doesn’t make me hate him any less that I want to close my eyes and listen to him forever. Or that he’s right. About most of the above.

Suddenly, his eyes blaze with a fire I haven’t seen before, black and consuming, and it’s—terrifying. “She could have maimed or killed you.”

Heart pounding like it would outrace itself, I wave him off. “She wouldn’t have done anything with all these people around.”

“You underestimate her viciousness. And your provocation.” He says this last word as if it stymies him.

Yeah, sure.

Yet, he’s right again. I’m probably in one piece only because he showed up. I hate owing him anything.

But then he wasn’t protecting me. He was preserving the test subject he has to keep alive until they get whatever they want from me. As for seeming to negotiate his treatment of me now, he must have gotten further orders not to rough me up—too much. Also for his bosses’ purposes.

I finally exhale. “Okay, fine. Lead the way. Just no leash.”

“No leash, if you keep up. You’re already late as it is.”

“Late for what? My afternoon nap?”

His gaze rests on me for one last knee and panty-melting moment before he turns and continues walking. He doesn’t say anything again.

As I walk behind him, I wonder what it would take not to feel my every nerve discharging every time I look at him. Intensifying loathing or impending doom are doing nothing to lessen my appreciation of his assets. This guy is something else. In the most literal sense.

What was the universe thinking when it made him?

I mean, really? No mercy at all for XX chromosome carriers?

For the rest of the trek to the dorms as he walks at my pace, I ponder those weighty questions, and ogle his splendiferous behind.

All too soon, we reach our destination, and the building housing the girls’ dorm looms above us. The boys’, or Jeremiel Domus Hominae, is in the far distance, its towers barely apparent over dense woods, and a massive complex of buildings called Regulus Host. They sure take segregation of the sexes seriously.

From the welcome packet Godric let me explore for a while before dragging me behind him, one of the strict rules around here is separation in living quarters. Males are not allowed in the female dorm at any time, and vice versa.

Suits me fine. If the dorms have shared rooms and showers, I’d rather not see morning wood or stumble on dangling bits.

Taking a deep breath, I cross the threshold after Godric, feeling I’m entering a different kind of unknown.

I actually feel more anxious now than when I faced the archangels, the Tribunal, or that demoness. Or even when I first faced Godric. I haven’t been among that many girls my age since I left school at thirteen. School life was hell then, when they were just stupid human kids.

I better be careful how I set the tone of my presence here. Best thing is to shut up and keep my head down, attract no one’s attention.

This resolution comforts me, for the seconds before I remember it’s already too late for that. And that every decision I’ve taken in recent memory has backfired. Case in point is that beautiful monster three paces ahead.

Thankfully, the interior soon takes my mind off worst-case-scenarios.

Like every inch of this fantasyland, everything is exquisite, if far less prodigious than the Court section of the domain, or even the central complex of the Academy. Which makes me prefer it. Instead of some celestial mausoleum, this place feels lived in. As if it has accommodated cadets for decades or centuries—or more. I sense the emotions and experiences permeating these halls. There’s also solid evidence all around. Banners hanging from arches, vitrines full of trophies, and portraits of smiling young women in uniforms on the walls.

Maybe that’s why, more than ever, those sentient vibes assail me. The ground seems to breathe, and the walls to whisper. I swear the friezes and paintings watch me, meet my eyes, and when they’re in the periphery of my vision, beckon.

I would have given anything to stop and examine each detail, to see if what I glimpse of movement, what I feel of awareness, is real.

If only Godawful left me to find my own way.

I need to get the lay of the land. It’s the first thing I do at a new place. I always did that when Kondar regularly sent me on thieving errands. It was vital to concoct an escape plan in advance, scoping possible exits, places to hide, things to destroy as a diversion…and so on.

Promising myself I’ll make that reconnaissance tour the moment I get rid of him, I brace myself for the four-story climb.

This time he waits for me to catch my breath at every landing. Though I guess I’m lucky they have stairs at all in a place built for winged residents, I grumble about the lack of elevators all the way to the door marked on that magical floor plan as my dorm room.

It’s at the end of an endless corridor with twelve more before it. The far-apart doors indicate the massive sizes of the rooms inside. The archangels are generous with their cadets, huh? No wonder the students were fluttering at being here. Me, give me my dump with Sarah any day.

As I fumble with one hand for the spelled key that can be wielded by only me, to open only my dorm room, Godric flicks the door open. I’m in time to see how he did it, with a rune that flamed for seconds in his palm.

“How is this allowed?” He scowls at my blurted question. I elaborate. “For you to be here, when you’re a male?” The male. “And what was that? Some kind of angelic master key? How come you’re allowed to open my dorm room?”

The massive pain quirks a mocking grimace. Mean and vicious, but still so hot it singes me down to my core. “What do you think I’ll do? Slip in and watch you sleep? Or bathe? I assure you, unlike you, I like food to stay in my stomach.”

As in he’d barf if he saw me naked. I have to admit he’s probably right about that, too.

Before I can lob something insulting back, somberness descends over him, causing my heart to hiccup in my chest.

He sounds even bleaker as he says, “I can be here, and can open your door, because you’re my charge. My responsibility. When I’d rather demons harvest my organs alive.”

Just what I thought earlier. He’s as trapped as I am, and hating it as I do.

And it makes me feel infinitely better about this new form of Indenture. About even my upcoming demise.

I smile brightly up at him. “Thanks for seeing me to my door, Godawful.” I stand on tiptoes, raising my face with a duck-lipped pout. When his frown only deepens, I quip, “Aren’t you standing there expecting a kiss for your trouble?”

The very air starts to vibrate as he gazes down at me. Every hair on my body stands on end with the charge of his frustration.

Man, I can really get addicted to pulling his strings.

Suddenly, he severs our visual duel, turns to the towering window at the blind end of the corridor. He reaches it in two strides, then as if by levitation, he’s on the sill.

Before another thought fires in my mind, he drops.

My heart almost kicks me flat on my face as I bolt with a strangled cry to the window—in time to see him coming up in a steep climb.

I forgot for a moment there that he can fly.

Heart still in my ash-dry mouth, I watch as his masterpiece wings blaze with those runes, and beat the air in a symphony of ferocity and grace. It’s no longer than a minute before his soaring ascent takes him to the clouds.

Such absolute, overpowering, cruel beauty really shouldn’t exist.

Once he pierces the billowing cumulus overhead and disappears, it takes a while for my heartbeats to calm down.

The thought that I aggravated him into trying to fling himself off the planet to avoid me helps. A lot.

As I turn to my prison cell for maybe the next four years, I wonder how many inmates I’ll share it with. And if I’ll ever see his wings unfold.

I really, really want to see that.

I push the door he left ajar, only to drop the cluttered items in my aching arms over the threshold. A cry breaks over me as I swoop down for them.

Going numb all over, I raise my eyes from my crouch.

For moments, I can’t credit what I see.

This—this can’t be happening. I have to be hallucinating.

She can’t really be here. Not her. Not…

Sarah!