19. Dexter

My footsteps left faint imprints in the sand, but nobody could see me in the darkness. The desert sun dipped slightly below the horizon, casting long, stretched-out shadows that crept over the sands and stone walls of the academy. I moved among them, and the dark cradled me like I’d never been held before. The tattoos that ran down my arms absorbed the shadows around me, swirling with a life of their own. Darkness used to be the one thing that I craved.

I’d tied my white blond hair back loosely, but the strands brushed against my neck as I moved through the shadows, scanning the campus for dark magic remnants.

Each step I took was measured so that I stayed hidden until I slipped out of the shadows and into Skel’s and my room. I let out a breath of relief that the fucker was passed out with his purple pipe on his chest.

Skel and I had similar tastes in decor. The room was sparse, just like I wanted it, with minimal dark furnishings and dark curtains drawn across the small window to block out the remaining stubborn rays of sunlight. We both had matching black comforters, and that was pretty much it.

Badass, I know.

I moved to my desk, where the academy’s assigned sleek tablet lay dormant until my fingers brushed its surface, and the screen lit up. The device hummed to life, projecting an incoming call almost as if they knew exactly where I was.

My blood turned to ice as the name popped up on my screen.

Rod Shadowheart.

My father. Which also meant my mother. For a demon couple that weren’t fated, they were always together. Not necessarily because they liked each other, though.

My lips twisted into a sarcastic smirk as I tapped the screen to accept the call.

“Mommy, Daddy,” I greeted with feigned enthusiasm.

But as both of my parents’ images flickered into view, my mind wandered.

I couldn”t help but think of her—Pandora Gravesend, the soul eater who kept monopolizing every thought I had. She was nobility, sure, but there was something about her that set her apart from the spoiled and self-absorbed shitheads that were dubbed nobility in this territory.

Her beautiful bright red eyes had turned dark and deep as the void itself when she approached the dark magic circle this morning, and they held a depth of understanding that no other demon I knew possessed.

Bram and Skel couldn’t see shit, but I could. There was so much more to her than the old money clothes and her daddy’s status. There was a tortured agony within her soul, and it drew me in like a moth to a flame.

“We told you not to call us that,” Poppy, my mother, remarked, bringing my attention back to the tablet.

My birth-giver happened to be a shadow demon like me, with white blonde hair cascading down her shoulders. As always, she exuded an air of apathy that was palpable even through a digital screen. This bitch was vicious, and she never cared for me. Our interactions were strained, filled with a tension that was caused by her and my father killing my big sister—the one fucking being in this world that I knew without a doubt I loved.

I wasn’t capable of that emotion anymore, though.

And like most demons, I was still under my parents’ thumbs. I didn’t dare try to separate myself from them because last time I tried to say no…

My fingertips traced the thick, jagged scar around my neck.

“You also told me to refer to you as my parents while I was at the academy, Poppy,” I quipped, sneaking over to Skel’s side and snatching the pipe off his chest before making my way back to the tablet.

She regarded me with the same cold gray eyes so similar to mine, but unlike me, her expression stayed unreadable. There was nothing in her gaze, no flicker of maternal instinct that I used to desperately crave. Not an ounce of the mom instinct that my sister had even when she was a child. No. A toddler, even.

But no, this bitch saw right through me. She knew I was nothing more than a disappointment, a shadow of what she had expected me to be.

“Stop being a smart ass,” Father barked, his voice like gravel, rough and abrasive.

A pang of discomfort twisted in my chest as I flicked my gaze at him and took a hit of the pipe, filling my veins with fae magic. “What do you want, Rod?”

My father was a dark, imposing chaos demon with piercing black eyes and a sneer permanently etched on his dirty face. Unlike my birth-giver, my sperm-donor radiated malice through the screen.

“What I want is for my son to be competent for once.” His sneer deepened. “But we might as well make use of you while you’re at the academy. We’ve been…promoted, as it turns out, and we’ve been tasked with something big.”

I snorted, blowing out the fae magic. “Wow, what a great fucking job to be promoted for the dark marriage or whatever. Congrats.”

“Focus, Dexter,” Father snapped. “What the Veil is wrong with you?”

I blinked lazily back at him. Madness sought to take hold at the back of my mind. “You made me this way, father of mine.”

“Would you like to see what would happen if you were headless a fifth time?” Mother’s features were impassive, her gaze distant, as if she were merely going through the motions of being here to discipline me as a parent. She wasn’t a Fates-damned parent, though. Neither was the piece of shit next to her. The both of them grated on my nerves.

I chuckled, hitting the pipe again. Damn, that’s good shit. No wonder Skel’s always smoking on it. “I doubt my head would reattach this time, honestly. But ya know, do what you will and all that.”

My grip on reality was…tenuous at best, and the allure of the soul eater here was a guilty pleasure I wanted to fall into. She was a siren”s call that threatened to pull me under, and I’d gladly let her.

What else was I living for, anyway?

“We’ll test that theory if you don’t succeed in placing this painting within Reform Hall.” Father snapped his fingers at Mother.

She sighed and uncurled her fingers. A painting entered the shadows behind her before being extended in front of me from her shadow tendril.

I grabbed the ominous painting with clammy palms and set it down next to my desk. I could feel the fucking dark magic swirling within it, and something deep in my soul squirmed in a feeble attempt to reach it. “That’s it?”

“This is for the greater good of the demon species, you classless ingrate,” Father snapped.

Mother’s shadow tendril struck, slicing me across my face, cutting into my cornea, and busting my lip open before disappearing and slinking back to my mother.

He’d ended the call before I could gripe at him.

My head dropped down, and I watched the red blood drip like raindrops from my face onto the floor. “Oh, shit. What the fuck?”

The pain from the hit sent my brain spiraling, and I glanced up and tossed the pipe back onto Skel’s chest with a maniacal laugh. The warmth of my magic healing the wound took effect.

Skel didn’t even fucking budge. The asshole was so high, I bet I could slice into him, and he wouldn’t wake.

A volatile mix of anger, hurt, and a growing madness fueled by the same dark magic that now plagued the academy taunted me. My shadows writhed and twisted around me, whispering dark secrets and tempting me with thoughts of the pretty soul eater that caused so much trouble with her mere presence here.

Maybe I was driven by a reckless impulse, or maybe it was just curiosity, but I didn’t give a fuck about the reason. I found myself skulking within the shadows of the dormitory Pandora and Dreadful shared.

I could immediately gauge the difference between the two of them from their room alone.

Pandora’s side didn’t strike me as a typical noble’s room. Shades of gray, black, and ivory filled Pandora’s space, and it reminded me of a girly version of Skel’s and my taste. How quaint.

A four-poster bed loomed in the middle of the room with black curtains. Black candlesticks set on her gray desk, casting flickering shadows against the walls I peered out of. She had black shelves with a collection of books on them, and there was a black rising stand on the end table next to an enchanted water bottle.

Dreadful’s side reeked of nobility. Creams and whites were on her side, with lace decorated throughout. Pale-colored cushions were piled in a chair on the corner of her room with fae orbs floating above it. And Dreadful, that fucking bitch, was asleep on her bed that had flowing drapes opened up, with her back facing Pandora’s side of the room.

Pandora was sitting with her legs tucked under her cute ass, and she cupped a small skull in her palms and held it up to her face.

I felt a strange pull toward the skull, a connection that I would never be able to explain, but it resonated deep within my soul. I moved to the shadow above her bed to get a better look, and my gaze widened.

What the actual fucking Fates?

Dark black goo oozed out of the eye holes of the skull.

“She made me read them from cover to cover for a reason, Nebula,” she whispered, her red lips plump as she spoke with vulnerability to it. “I think she was involved in dark magic.”

I covered my mouth to stop the laugh from belting from my chest. She thinks dark magic is involved, but she’s talking to a Fates-forsaken kitten skull full of dark magic?

Oh, my fucking Fates, she’s fucking adorable.

I humbly took back all of the shit I thought about her being an evil genius of a noble. Bram and Skel would eat their words if they knew, but I couldn’t talk to anyone about dark magic. Not without…

I flinched at the memory of the pain around my neck.

“Penny was scum, Pandora,” his disembodied voice hissed as more dark magic flooded from the skull and pooled in her hands. “There’s no doubt in my mind that she was.”

The dark magic didn’t try to infect her at all, and my head tilted as I watched on in complete fucking awe.

A surge of something primal and more powerful than any dark magic or shadow magic coursed through me. Magic that had been lurking at the edges of my mind roared to life. I teetered on the edge of madness, and my heart raced with a dangerous dose of exhilaration.

She really was trouble, but not in the way I had first expected.

My magic reserves gobbled up all of her worry, sadness, and pain. But I hungered for more. I wanted all of her negative feelings and pain—not just scraps.

I wanted it all.

“How do you know, though?” A frown settled on her face as she pulled the skull closer. “You seem sure. I know firsthand how evil Mother was, but dark magic seems a bit far-fetched. Right?”

“With what she did to you every day and on her last day, she was a type of evil that exceeded demonkind. Dark magic makes more sense than anything.”

“You’re right,” she rasped, wincing. “Do you think that means she was infected or that she wielded it?”

“Both,” he said.

She nodded solemnly. “I wonder how she ended up that way.”

I was sure that I had just found a soul as lost and as broken as mine. I wondered how good she would taste if I brought all of the pain of her past out once and for all.

With a final, lingering glance at Pandora and the kitten skull, I turned away, my mind ablaze with possibilities and an odd feeling within my chest. The shadows clung to me like a second skin, whispering promises of her pain.