74. Aurelia

Chapter 74

Aurelia

I f I thought my week couldn't get any worse, the next morning, Lyle informs me it's parent visitation day. I'd forgotten all about it, of course, because I'd ticked ‘no' on the consent forms and had been so focused on how angry I was with everything else.

Minnie is excited to introduce me, Marduk and Yeti to her parents, and there is an excited buzz in the air as we walk out of the animus dorm.

"Fair thee well, Lady Boneweaver!" Bastien, the animus door gargoyle, shouts, adjusting his monocle with his spindly fingers. "Enemies are afoot!"

Someone throws a tennis ball right at his bulbous, cast iron nose and it bounces right off, making him shriek and cuss in the most imaginative way.

I don't actually realise Bastien was genuinely trying to warn me until we get to the dining hall and Damien points at me with a long, pale finger. I raise my brows and look over my shoulder as if to say, "You can't possibly be pointing at me ." But then Savage steps between us and barks at Damien. The people around us snicker.

"Wolves don't bark," the phoenix says drolly. "Unless you actually are a dog and are revealing this information to us now."

"Don't point at my regina, you dodo," Savage says.

"Detention," Damien says smoothly. "You can join your regina in cleaning toilets for the next week. And you have no visitors, so get out."

The toilets all around the school must be sparkling clean at this rate. I put a hand on Savage's shoulder, go up on my tiptoes, and plant a kiss on his lips. Grumbling, he stalks back to the dorm, leaving me with Stacey, Connor, and Raquel. Minnie had already been called inside with her mates.

They'd all wanted me to meet their loved ones, and it warmed my heart immensely.

Damien looks up from his clipboard. "You too have a visitor, Miss Boneweaver."

I cross my arms. "I didn't consent to that."

Damien looks down his nose at me. "A council member does not need permission to see one of their subjects."

"Which council member is it?" I ask suspiciously. When I'd first outed myself as a Boneweaver, all the council members had been present. The Queen of Wolf Court had said we should meet at some stage and the feline king had also shown a great interest. It could be either of them. On the other hand, I'd been masquerading as a member of the Avian Court for years. Possibly the high-nosed queen wanted to have a meeting.

But Damien shrugs in response to my question. "Go in and see."

I doubt Xander's father is going to come here to see us, and Scythe is the representative of Marine Court, so that only leaves…

The dining hall tables have been split up from Damien's order groupings into pairs, allowing for two to four people to sit around each.

He sits by one of the stained-glass windows, his hands clasped on the table before him like it's any other day. Like he is any other father visiting his daughter.

My father. The King of Serpent Court is here to see me after I burned his house down.

His heavy obsidian duster is draped around his body like a king's cape, and his dark power sits like regal fur on top of that. He'd never been handsome. Striking, perhaps, with sharp, dark features. His posture is perfectly straight, his black shoes perfectly polished by some servant, and his hair has been freshly cut, swinging just above his collar. He shows no sign of any rage or anger that might have come from me destroying his estate.

"Go on then," Damien's voice comes from behind me. "Don't keep His Majesty waiting."

I realise I've frozen three steps into the hall. I whirl around to give the phoenix lord the filthiest look imaginable. "I didn't consent to this."

"What you want, Miss Boneweaver," Damien says matter-of-factly, "stopped mattering when you entered this institution. You are here under legal order and under my jurisdiction."

A growl sticks to the back of my throat. Suddenly, every fucking man thinks they can tell me what to do. Thinks they can dictate how my life works. Fire burns through my veins, aching to be released. Aching to lash out.

But Mace Naga is here now. I can't change that no matter how much I want him to explode into flesh and liquid just like Brutus Clawson.

I refuse to let my father see me rattled. I refuse to look weak. I'd vowed to take this creature's life and I would not be led by anything other than rage.

So I square my shoulders, cloak my power around me like my own protective cape and stalk towards the man who'd sunk his fangs into my mother for fifteen years.

My stare is cold, dominant, and unfaltering as I come to stand before him.

In a voice that is dull and so devoid of warmth that it burns, he says, "Good morning, Aurelia."

"How dare you come here."

"Sit down, you impertinent child." Something ten years old in me rears its ugly head at the utter contempt in his voice. On old reflex, I pull out the chair and sit in it.

I hate myself right away.

Darkness drips off my father. A cloak of oil and dark fire. Once I sit down, it's like it's being draped over me too. I fight the nausea of it. Of the sight of him, sitting so tall and proud, with a slight curve to his thin lips as he regards me with cold calculation.

I thought Scythe once looked at me in the same way, but I immediately know I was wrong. They are so different. My father's gaze is penetrating and violating. It's cutting and serrated. It's the gaze of a man who violated my mother every month for the last fifteen years.

He has to be rattled by our intervention. By the loss of her. By the loss of control and power. Remarkably, he shows none of it.

That's the most fury-inducing thing of all. With all the hatred and agony in my heart, I hiss, "I will see you slaughtered. If it is the last thing that I do."

He smiles as if I am a child whispering silly things. "You took Athena away from me. Now, I will need a replacement. Which of your friends here would you recommend? Some are reginas, I hear." He waves a hand to indicate the families around us. Minnie in the far corner, chatting away with her parents. Connor hugging his grandfather; Stacey with her mum.

"I would die before I see them in your hands," I hiss.

"If you were dead, you wouldn't be seeing them at all."

"You really have lost all humanity, haven't you?" I say with disgust. "Maybe you had none to begin with.

What he says next is completely without emotion. "You forget, child, that I know you better than anyone else in this room. Better than your so-called mates. Better than your little anima friends. I know who you really are. I know you would sacrifice yourself to save them all. A noble quality if it were serpents you were martyred for. But these creatures?" He casts his gaze about the room, his mouth twisted in distaste. "They were never worth it, Aurelia. You will see that in time."

One fact would never change. He had been a loving father once. Once, when it had served him. And a knife wielded by your parents cut deeper and faster than any other weapon possibly could. He always had a way of speaking that incited silence in others. And I hate that a stunned silence strikes me now.

"Your mate, Scythe Kharkouros," he continues, "thinks he is untouchable. I am here to tell you that if you do not comply, he and the rest will all be dead before the year is done. Their deaths are signed. You have not seen the terror I can cause, Aurelia. You have not seen the extent to which I will execute those you love to get what I want. Their lives mean nothing to me. Your life means nothing to me. You are new to this world where I have been playing master for decades."

A chill wracks my bones. Cold and absolute, his words are. And I believe each syllable.

He leans forward and lowers his voice. "I will make what we did to Sabrina look like child's play. Do you understand me?"

I am struck into a state of utter shock. In this level of evil, I am outmatched. Outsmarted. Outwitted. How can I compete with this level of abhorrent calculation?

"I can see my words have hit home."

There is no reply that will save me. Not from him.

"I am done playing, Aurelia. No more chances. Only funerals await you."

I speak from between clenched teeth. "What would you have me do?"

"What I wanted from the start. If you want this to cease, surrender to me. Lay your allegiance to me." The sound of his chair scraping back barely registers. A shadow passes over me before he is gone, leaving an utterly cold scream in my ears in his wake.