52. WEN

Before another thought fires in my frazzled brain, my heart stops, before it bursts out clanging like tympani. At the sight of the dark winged figure towering at the back of the procession.

Godric. In his full formal threads.

He must have fast-forwarded here. There’s no way I wouldn’t have seen him before. Or felt him looking at me. Because he is, as usual. In that way that makes me want to climb him and lose my mind all over him—and yank his Life Essence, before kicking the Hell out of his unconscious ass.

The contradictory needs bubble up inside me as he approaches our table, holding my gaze. Then he passes us, and I slump in my seat like a deflated balloon.

After Astaroth and the others ascend to the stage, Godric turns to face the Hall. Though he remains at ground level, it feels as if he’s the one looming over us all.

My mind burns rubber wondering why he’s playing guard and enforcer for the professors and not the Pax Vis. Whom I now notice are not around, when there’s always a host of them during meals, or any other gatherings of the cadets.

This only proves that Azazel is the mastermind of my latest predicament. By withdrawing them, he’s basically giving the cadets the green light to act on the hostility he ignited. I don’t know how his Concordia with Godric works after yielding to him, but I bet he has his ass covered. In case the situation escalates, and I end up mangled beyond healing, I bet he would suffer no repercussions with such roundabout responsibility.

One thing’s for sure, though. Godric’s solo presence is a far stronger deterrent than all of Azazel’s goons put together …

Something yanks my attention back to Astaroth. Something terrifying, and it’s expanding from him. As if the King of Hell within is a hairsbreadth from being unleashed.

He sounds and looks his usual tranquil self as he begins speaking, if without his accustomed introductions and cordialities. “Earlier this morning, it came to our attention that a malignant rumor has overtaken every online forum of the Academy. As all hearsay goes, it was composed of vague facts and inflammatory misinformation. We are here to put a firm and final end to the unfortunate reactions it has solicited.”

My heart kicks me so hard I cough.

Astaroth’s latest bomb is about me.

Sarah squeezes my hand with a triumphant smile, and Matt gives me two-thumbs up from the seat she resumed at the adjacent table.

My frozen-in-dismay face can’t even manage a grimace in response. They think Astaroth’s intervention is a win for me. I think he’s only pinning an archdemon-sized bullseye right under the Academy insignia over my heart.

The urge to bolt out of here returns with a vengeance. Hell, I want to fall into the void and disappear. Preferably forever.

To make it even worse, from the deepening silence and stillness, I can tell Astaroth is keeping everyone pinned to their seats. Great. He’s adding mass archdemonic coercion to my tab.

He carries on in the same eloquent, if currently expressionless, manner. “We are sorely disappointed that none of you probed the origin or objective of the rumor. Yes, your responses have been perused and documented, and almost all demonstrated a deplorable level of vile ignorance. So until you manage another perspective than what you adopted so thoughtlessly, we demand that you shirk all petty herd mentality, and conduct yourselves as the elevated beings you’re supposed to be. You will extend the tenets of integration we’re here to foster, to whom and what you do not yet know or understand.”

Every eye in the Hall turns back to me, and if anything, being chastised on my account seems to be only intensifying everyone’s “unfortunate reactions.”

Ugh. Kill me now. Really. Just get it over with.

I look back at Godric, to tell him to stop this trainwreck on our private channel. But it feels smothered in static. Since he’s no longer staring at me but spreading his scariness wide, he must have agreed to this announcement. And the Angelhole didn’t even warn me.

Any other time, I would have thrown a wrench in the whole thing myself. But I can’t seem to find my voice.

“Yes, a First-Year cadet has been discovered to be a Null,” Astaroth continues in the same deceptive calmness, clearly far from done. “And no, this fact hasn’t been hidden ‘while we tried to contain the disastrous situation’ as the rumor suggested. We don’t announce cadets’ potential, no matter how rare, and Null powers are no different from other unusual ones bestowed by Graces or Blights or other Supernatural Magicks. And like all powers, they’re not ‘in perpetual manifestation.’ So the suggestion that ‘the mere proximity to the Null-powered cadet can prove irreversibly damaging or even fatal’ is not only malignant, but preposterous.”

Okay. Apart from the weirdness of him quoting said “rumor” verbatim, complete with air quotes, that’s the first thing he said that doesn’t make me want to hurl up my massive breakfast.

“Since their Activation during the Trials, and being further unlocked by the Amulet Ceremony, that cadet’s ‘very existence’ harmed no one. They have been receiving the same training and disciplines you all are, to learn the boundaries and applications of your powers, and to gain absolute control over them.”

Astaroth pauses before I sense him intensifying whatever influence he’s exerting on the others, even when I don’t feel it myself. Then his voice does this trick of coming from everywhere. “The cadet in question is not ‘a deadly hazard by virtue of their nature alone.’ That’s not to say they aren’t potentially lethal. All of us are, some more than others. That’s why our coexistence hinges on adherence to the rules that govern us all. They remain our only hope to minimize accidents—and curb retaliations. But since said cadet’s powers are unique, and their limits aren’t yet explored, for the sake of your wellbeing, and possibly survival, I strongly suggest that you do not furnish them with the circumstances to cause the former, or to force them into the latter.”

With that, and without any of his usual conclusions, he descends from the stage. I gape after him as he strides out of the Hall with his posse in tow, my jaw on the floor, probably like everyone else’s.

Okay. I take it back. He’s not an oblivious idiot where student dynamics and mass hysteria situations are concerned. He’s a devious devil who might have managed to put a “firm and final” end to this mess.

He started with reprimand-mixed appeals to rationality and higher inclinations. He followed by debunking misconceptions. Just as I felt both strategies inflaming everyone’s prejudices rather than defusing them, he did a one-eighty, and solidified them into fact.

He closed by basically saying I am uniquely deadly, and they better not make me prove it. Instead of alleviating everyone’s dread, he made sure they feared me properly.

I can see his method’s merit. Most scary beings establish their overwhelming threat, then remain untouchable by the force of a fearsome reputation alone.

Whether this will work in my situation or only make it worse, remains to be seen. I’m not in a hurry to find out which result he has achieved. Right now, I only want out of here.

As if they heard me, both the Unitas at our table and Matt’s stand up as one. I rise to my feet, too, looking back at Godric, wondering if he’ll approach me now—and stumble.

He’s gone!

But—how? He didn’t precede Astaroth’s procession out of here. Did he engage his cloak while he left? Why?

The others don’t give me the chance to wonder—or fume—over his disappearance, sweeping me along toward the exit before we find ourselves engulfed by a horde of cadets.

The same burning focus surrounds us as they keep me in their middle all the way out. But I feel a change in its texture. There’s uncertainty tingeing the conviction, maybe even awe coloring the aversion.

Is Astaroth’s strategy working after all?

If it is, and if it prevents any future stupidities, I might just owe him another life debt. When I still haven’t figured out how to repay him for the first one.

Jinny’s right. It’s not fun being so deeply indebted to anyone.

As if to underline the weight of my burden, here come two more of the all-powerful monsters I owe another probably non-repayable debt.