30. Stella
30
Stella
I’m nearly late to class this morning after my encounter with Blue. At the last second, I slide into Michael’s class on Authentic history, and he squints suspiciously at me.
I do my best to ignore his glare and listen to the lecture on the Rift War. We’ve been on this segment for a while now, discussing all the ways the Authentics of our realm saved us by entering into a treaty with the Reighold realm.
But there are other realms out there, right?
A limitless amount.
I’ve heard it described as each realm being its own box, and all of the boxes are stored in a grid, side by side, continuing for eternity. When the rift between Vorista and Reighold was torn, we’re lucky none of the neighboring realms found their way in.
I’d kill to know what exists in that place between realms.
I can’t help but wonder if we could travel between realms if things wouldn’t work out better for all of us. Sharing technology and ideas couldn’t be a bad thing, could it?
Of course, Reighold didn’t have any supernaturals, no magic or powers, which is why they lost to us quickly.
What if a realm exists with even more magic than ours, and they come after us?
“Miss Mikers,” Michael says with such force it must not be the first time he’s said it. “Class is over.”
I blink, looking around the room. I had been so lost in my head that I missed all my classmates emptying out around me. I shove the paper I was doodling on into my bag. Every time I start to daydream, I draw the same geometric sequence. I have been doodling it for so long that I got it inked onto my skin.
The symbols don’t mean anything, but their familiarity has always brought me comfort. I can’t explain why, but they feel like home.
After packing my things up, I place my bag on the desk in front of me. “I’ve got some homework here you need to see, Professor,” I say sweetly, inclining my head towards the bag.
Luckily for me, Michael is not a moron, and he immediately recognizes that I’m speaking in code. I unzip the top of my bag and hold it open, showing him the leather-bound ledger sitting on top. His body deflates, the tension he’d been holding leaking out at the realization the item that could spell his doom has been returned.
In a quiet, rumbling voice, he asks, “Why don’t we go into my office and discuss?”
He doesn’t wait for me to follow him, and I stumble to catch up with him, my wings flexing outward to steady me. Once confined in his office, the rug haphazardly shoved under the door, he releases a sigh.
“It appears your leprechaun friend did bring it back after all,” he says, taking it from my outstretched bag.
“He also added his spirit rules,” I tell the professor. “Or rather, spirit rule.”
“Leprechauns only have one rule?” Confusion furrows his brow as he flips to the end of the book. When he sees the rule, the book falls out of his hands. “His coin? His rule is that he must turn his coin over to administration?”
“I don’t think he’s done it. He hasn’t explicitly shown me his coin, but I think I’ve seen it, and he isn’t unlucky.”
Michael runs his fingers through his white hair in distress. “But thats… it’s a…”
“A death sentence,” I finish for the professor. “They’re trying to take the leprechaun’s lach for themselves and leave him to die.”
The weight of this rule, which proves without a shred of doubt that Robert Sinclair’s Reformation Academy is not for reform but something more, hangs heavy between us.
“You have enough for your article,” Michael says quietly. “You could post this today and blow this place up.”
“They’ll wave it away as a disgruntled family member or a political opponent. Until we have something concrete, this means nothing. We need to know why. Why are they doing this? What do they have to gain?” I pace as best as I can in the office, eventually tucking my wings under the skin of my back to give me more room. It’s not that the room is small – it’s pretty large as far as offices go – but if I stretch my wings out, I going to knock something over eventually.
“Power, Stella,” he says quietly. “Authentics are not nearly as powerful as supernaturals, even if we’re severely outnumbered. This is a way to control us so they can continue to be the dominant species. With a leprechaun’s luck on their side, there isn’t much they couldn’t do.” He crosses the room and grabs me by the arms, and I have to throw my head back to look up at him.
He’s not as tall as Ryan, but he’s close.
“You need to get out of here. I don’t know how they’re doing it, but I will not let them break your spirit.”
His hands burn a brand of possession into me, and my stomach does a flip.
The more time I spend in his presence, the more I know I want this male something fierce. I want to feel his lips on mine, to trace my hands up his sides and feel the quiet strength of his body.
I shake my head, clearing the lust and stepping out of his grip. “No. I’m not going anywhere. They know who I am now. Do you think they’ll let me sneak out and not come for me?”
He runs his fingers through his white hair in frustration. “No, of course not, they’d hunt you down. Something about your spirit has caught their attention. You, your Cyclops, the Reaper… hell, even the leprechaun. I only wish we knew what was causing the change in the simplynaturals. And is it reversible?”
“And what do we do once we have the answers?”
We stare at each other, and the tension hums between us. He steps towards me, reaching for my face, when I catch sight of the clock on the wall behind his desk.“Fuck, I’m late to my next class. We’ll meet tonight to go over our escort stuff, right?”
He blinks a few times, then rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah, absolutely. Come on, I’ll walk you and take the blame. Say I held you back to scold you for not paying attention.” His eyes sparkle with humor, and I shoulder-check him as he walks by me.
“You couldn’t say you held me back to congratulate me on having the highest grade on the last exam?”
“I prefer not to lie more than I have to.”
The shy Cyclops is sitting on the edge of a corner table in the dining hall, looking uncomfortable and out of place. I delicately set my lunch tray beside him so as not to startle the gentle giant.
He visibly relaxes when he lays eye on me, a handsome smile stretching across his face. “Stella,” he says softly. “I was beginning to think you were avoiding me.”
His hand dwarfs mine as it wraps around it, and he pulls it to his mouth and kisses the back.
“I wasn’t avoiding you,” I say softly. “There have been some developments. I’m sorry.”
He chuckles, a handsome, throaty sound I want to hear more of. “It’s fine, Stella. You do not have to explain yourself to me.” He drops my hand and returns to his plate, eating the pasta delicately.
For such a big guy, he’s very graceful.
I pick up my wrap and bite into it, speaking around the food in my mouth. “After this, can we get Clay, and I’ll tell you everything that’s happened?”
Before Ryan can answer me, Clay drops his tray on the table in front of us, slinging his body into his seat. “My two favorite people!”
It’s hard to feel anything but intense joy around him. His bright smile, boyish good looks, and sweet soul call to me. “Clay,” I say with a smile. “Speak of the Reaper, and he shall appear!”
“Oooh, talking about me?” He rips a massive bite out of a piece of fried chicken.
“Just have some things to tell you both about. How are you today?”
“Well, now that I’m looking at you, my winged warrior, I am better than I deserve to be!” He snags another piece of chicken, practically inhaling it in record time.
We finish our meals and move outside, lying on the grass and soaking up the afternoon sun. I relax onto Clay’s shoulder, and Ryan covers one of my hands with his.
This close, I can feel the chain stretching between Ryan and me and how Clay and I are woven together. I don’t know what happened when we kissed but there was a change, and I’m unsure if I should bring it up to the guys.
But I do need to tell them about Yuri.
“Yuri is dead,” I whisper after looking around to ensure no one can overhear us. “Car wreck.”
Clay stiffens beside me. “I know.”
“You know?” My voice is tight as I turn to face him fully. “What do you mean, you know?”
“I reaped him, Stella.” He squeezes his eyes shut and looks away. “I wasn’t sure how to tell you. I feel like I invaded your privacy.”
“Why would reaping him invade her privacy?” Ryan asks, momentarily startling me. He’d been so quiet and still.
Clay pulls up the bottom of his shirt, revealing the lithe plains of his torso. In the center of his chest, where his sternum should be, is a jagged black space. It’s not quite a hole, but rather a chasm with bottomless depths. It seems to move, to pulse, with shadows. From it, hundreds of lines explode across his body. Black ones that twist and curve around his back, and gold ones that swirl down to his stomach and back up to his pecs.
And then there are the blue ones.
More than the other two colors, lines of pale blue travel around his torso towards his hips. Some stop barely outside the chasm, while others do a few curls near his belly button or across his ribs.
“These are my threads.” His voice is resigned and sad in a way I haven’t heard from him before. “When I reap a soul, I untangle it from the mortal vessel so it can pass on peacefully. But every time I do, it leaves a piece of itself behind in me.” He traces a blue line that stops at his waist. “This was Ruby Carter, Authentic, seven years old. She was killed by her uncle. Her favorite food was popcorn.”
Another blue line, this one curling around his hips, gets traced. “Bobby Daughtry Junior. Fifteen, wolf shifter. His shift went wrong, and he was stuck between bodies. His father had to be the one to put him down. He wanted to be an architect.”
The next line he touches barely sticks out from the chasm at all. It’s hardly more than a dot. “William Jones. Authentic. Fifteen days old. SIDS.”
My heart aches, and tears flow down my face. I had no idea my Reaper was carrying this much with him. His flesh is a map of the trauma his spirit causes him, and he has to see it every day.
“They’re not all that bad. Blue is for the children. They’ve got their own afterlife. Gold,” he strokes a particularly curvy gold line, “those are for the ones who get to go to their version of the afterlife. Heaven, Valhalla, Elysium, the Field of Reeds… I don’t know where they go once they leave the void. I do know they get to go somewhere good. This one was Trina Cobb, a vampire, six hundred and thirty-three years old. She had fifteen children, and those children each had ten, and those ten had ten, and eventually, she could fill a city block with her family. She died surrounded by love and happiness, and they cheered when I entered the room.”
A fat tear rolls out of his left eye, and I long to pull him into my arms. But when I reach for him, he steps back.
“And then there are the black souls. I can’t tell you exactly where they go, but I know it is not a good place. This one is Samuel Franklin, Authentic. Seventy-two years old.” He taps a black thread that winds his ribs. “He raped fifteen females in his life, and I had to live every single one of those memories.”
Another black thread falls under his fingers. “Veronica Xander, thirty-three, succubus. She was killed by the spouse of an Authentic male that she drained. He was not the first or the tenth. I lived them all.”
Clay’s hands drift across his chest until a finger settles on a medium-length black thread that creeps up toward his collarbone. “Yuri Rodgers. Twenty-nine. Authentic. Single car accident.” Clay’s eyes bore into mine for the first time since he started speaking. Even though they are rimmed with silvery tears, they’re not sad. It’s more like resignation. “He was not a good male, as you’ve learned. I’ll spare you the worst of it. But I have felt like a monster because I lived his life with you. I…”
I can’t stand the tone of his voice, the sadness that permeates every inch of him. I snag him around the waist, pulling him into my lap and holding him tightly.
“I lived in his memories as he slept with you, Stella. I saw you in ways I haven’t earned. I would not have done it if I had known who he was.”
“Clay,” I say softly, pressing my forehead to his. “You did nothing wrong. I don’t know how you’ve managed to stay so sweet and kind with all you experience.”
Ryan has been quiet throughout Clay’s stories, but now he moves to my other side, sandwiching Clay between us. He places a broad hand between the Reaper’s shoulder blades and rubs in a circle. “You don’t have to carry this burden alone. You can come to me and tell me their stories. Perhaps, if you speak them aloud, the weight can be lifted from you.”
Clay’s lips find mine, salty with tears, and desperately press into me. My fingers feed through his hair, pulling him closer to me, swallowing the gasp he releases. He pulls away, panting, and I notice Ryan watching us with a curious expression before Clay’s mouth is back on mine.
“Please, Stella,” he whispers against my lips. “I need you.”
I can see the sincerity in his eyes. This male really does need me. And it’s clear he needs something to get him out of his head right now.
I can be that for him.
“Then let’s go back to my room,” I respond, climbing to my feet and bringing him with me. “You coming, big guy?” I extend my other hand to Ryan, who hesitantly takes it.
“You guys don’t want me around for this…” Insecurity bleeds into his stance, scrawled across his face. “I can catch up with you later.”
“It’s fine, I don’t mind an audience.” I attempt to shoot him a saucy wink as Clay chokes and coughs with my words. “Clay? You okay?”
“I… fuck, Stella, I have to tell you something.” We stop in the courtyard in front of the Mythology tower. Clay grabs my shoulders with both hands, and I can see the indecision on his face. His skin flushes red, and he looks everywhere but in my eyes.
“Spit it out, Clay.”
“I traveled through the void and watched you shower.”
I’m not sure what I expected him to say, but it certainly wasn’t that. I don’t think I could’ve guessed that, no matter how many times I tried.
Ryan drops my hand and shoves Clay. “You did what?”
“I’m sorry! We had just met, and I didn’t seek you out, but I ended up there and didn’t leave…”
I take a few steps backward away from the Reaper. I feel slimy. Clay is not a bad male, and I am certain he didn’t have any ill intent, but I can’t be around him right now. I need to figure out how I feel about this without his big, sad eyes in front of me.
I need a moment to process this.
“I’m sorry, I need to go.”
And I tuck wing and flee.