Chapter 2
Olivia held a hand over her mouth to smother a laugh. Her entire body shook as she tried to compose herself.
“We’re in a library,” I reminded her, but even I had a goofy grin plastered on my face.
“You’re telling me that you kicked a god right in the family jewels?”
“Half-god,” I corrected as I opened up my textbook to the class I’d missed which was Supernatural Psychology, a curriculum with the premise that my memories were blocked by a past trauma.
I didn’t see why I needed a class to tell me that.
My first memory is being covered in someone else’s blood.
Uh, yeah. Something fucked up happened to me. Didn’t take a genius to see that.
“What did you do after?” my best friend asked with her eyes wide enough for me to see the streaks of grey through her irises.
She really was on the last leg of her magic and would need to jump into Hendrik’s collective of Dark Mages soon, which meant that I needed to hurry up and repay my debt to him.
“I got the hell out of there,” I answered, mindlessly flipping the page without reading it. “The rest of the Demis were so stunned that they just watched me haul ass. Wish I had a camera. Their faces were priceless.”
Olivia blew a low whistle, only to be shushed by the librarian for the third time. She winced and waved an apology.
I sighed and flipped another page as my free hand went to my necklace again.
It warmed under my touch, pleased with the suffering I’d extracted from Orion these past few weeks, yet it wasn’t nearly enough to fulfill its ravenous hunger.
Wearing it this long had made me more in tune with its needs, striking me with the disturbing thought that it was a sentient object.
“I think I’ve gotten all the power I’m going to get out of Orion,” I said, focusing on the objective. The sooner I did what Hendrik wanted, the sooner I could get rid of the thing. “It’s time to get to Logan, but I have no idea where to start.”
Hendrik’s debt required me to drain not only a Demigod of his power, but the Alpha of Fortune Academy’s wolf pack as well, which meant getting him kicked out of his role as Alpha.
Ever since he’d ended his courtship with me I hadn’t seen him again, which made any sort of agenda on my part a moot point.
Wolves did a good job of hiding when they didn’t want to be found.
“Have you tried talking with Miss Williams?”
I frowned. “Pretty sure I’m on her bad side because I gave her chocolates.”
Olivia made a face. “Why would she be mad at you over receiving chocolates?”
I shrugged. “Who knows, but I doubt she’s going to approve any requests from me to get placed into one of Logan’s classes.
I don’t have a good reason other than it’s for Hendrik, and she will want to stay out of clique politics.
” Unless it made my life miserable, of course, then she was happy to help the Demis trap me in a classroom to be interrogated and tormented.
Olivia placed an ice-cold hand over mine, forcing me to stop flipping through my textbook.
I glanced up at her and hated how sunken in her cheeks were starting to look.
“Just give it a try. It’s a start, and plus, you’re not making any headway with your Awakening.
You had that one breakthrough with Kaito and then it all came to a screeching halt.
She needs to approve your request to go off campus to try and trigger your blocked memories. ”
Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen.
I opened my mouth to protest, but one more look at Olivia’s hopeful face made me swallow hard. “Okay,” I said instead, “I’ll talk to Miss Williams.”
Olivia patted my hand before leaning back again. “There you go. Just don’t bring any chocolates and you’ll be fine!”
I really needed to figure out what Orion had done to those things.
I took my time walking the long street that ended when I reached the low golden buildings where I would find the counselors.
My heart tugged when I passed Kaito’s building, sensing that he was still up in his office just waiting for me to interrupt him.
I knew he’d be busy researching the prophecy that marked me as the champion of the world, along with the Virtues who would give me the strength to survive.
He was determined to find the key to unlocking my powers and he thought the answers would be buried in one of the testimonies from Fortune Academy’s graduates.
And I would need a lot of power. If anything, my classes had taught me that much.
The Third Echo of Calamity was on its way and all of Fortune Academy was going on lockdown.
Hence why the outside world had gone on an accelerated time table while Fortune Academy delved the pocket realm it existed in deeper into the folds of time and space.
Being in a pocket realm was a defense mechanism designed to protect the Academy from Calamity’s effects.
Renee, one of the founders and a Fate Witch, saw that it would be possible to protect small pocket realms from Calamity.
They weren’t going to count on a champion coming up to stop the threat.
There was no telling what destruction it had in mind this time. Each Echo manifested in its own way.
The First Echo had been thwarted by Sonya, the Queen of Hell herself.
She’d stopped a male Muse from mind-controlling the entire world.
Apollo might have always been a bit crazy, but it was Calamity itself that had pushed him over the edge.
Trying to figure out who had been affected and how to stop it would have taken too long.
Plus, no one at the time even knew that Calamity was in full force—except for Renee.
But even she wasn’t strong enough to predict what would happen.
Luckily, the universe always has a loophole. That’s why Sonya was given the choice to find her Sins, bond with them, resolve them, and stop Calamity from taking hold. She didn’t fully succeed, because the realms still crashed in on each other, but at least we didn’t all die.
The Second Echo had taken the form of a crazed Royal Covens witch named Sarina in pursuit of immortality at the detriment of the rest of the world.
The witch who had stopped her, Evelyn, was also one of Fortune Academy’s founders.
She’d done some pretty amazing things to overcome her foe.
Time travel, spells, and general badassery.
Putting myself next to those champions made the whole idea feel ridiculous.
The Queen of Hell. The leader of the Royal Covens.
Then… me? It didn’t sound like I really fit in that grouping, but that’s what Kaito insisted was the case.
I wouldn’t have believed him had I not felt the Virtue bond myself.
One I wanted to explore with him—but no, there wasn’t a good excuse for me to go up to his office outside of our weekly schedule.
We had managed to keep our romantic involvement a secret, for now, but I would blow our cover if we were caught together on school hours just because I couldn’t keep it in my pants.
I forced myself to look away from the building and turned my back on the idea of releasing all my pent-up frustrations on my counselor, preferably on his desk while he kept his tie on.
Head out of the gutter, Lils, you can do it.
I replaced my fantasies with images of Miss Williams scowling down at me. She wasn’t unattractive, but she always wore too much makeup and mascara goop liked to form in the corner of her eye. It was enough to get me to stop thinking about all the dirty things I wanted to do to Kaito.
I found the administration building where Duds wandered hopelessly lost on the first floor while clutching Merlin’s scribbled notes to their chests.
I usually told them where to find Miss Williams, but today I needed her undivided attention.
They’d survive a day or two longer, and would probably thank me for it.
The Awakening Trial was no picnic for newbies.
Jogging up two flights of stairs, I found Miss Williams’s door closed. I drew in a deep breath and knocked before letting myself in.
“What is it?” she asked without looking up, her shoulders hunched as she worked with a red pen. She jotted out X’s on some poor soul’s exam until the paper looked like it was bleeding.
“Hi, Miss Williams, I’m sorry to bother you,” I began.
She snapped her gaze up at me, then glared. “You are bothering me. Go away.”
Well, this was off to a great start.
I cleared my throat and tried again. “Orion told me about the chocolates. I’m sorry I gave them to you. I didn’t know he’d done something to them.”
She froze, then started lightly tapping her pen against the desk. “Those chocolates were from Orion and were meant for you?”
I nodded.
Her pen’s tapping increased in tempo. “Did he say what they would do?”
Gods. I really wanted to know now. I’d never heard Miss Williams quite so flustered. “No.”
She relaxed. “Well, I suppose I can’t fault you, then. I’ll be sure to discipline the Demis for the prank.” She cleared her throat. “Was there anything else you needed, or did you just come here to apologize? Because I would like to get back to grading papers.”
By grading, pretty sure she meant massacring.
“Aren’t you going to tell me what the chocolates did? Was it bad?”
Her pencil stopped tapping. “Just tell me what you want, Lily.”
Okay. Here goes nothing.
“I would like to be transferred into a wolf shifter class, preferably one with the Alpha.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “Why?”
I fidgeted under her scrutiny. “Because I owe Hendrik a debt and it involves the shifters,” I answered honestly. Hendrik had some sway when it came to the counselors. He got into shit sometimes, but I saw how they preferred to stay out of his way.
“You know I can’t approve that without you showing any shifter traits,” she said, making my chest fall before she quickly added, “however if you’d like to spend more time with the shifters, I suggest signing up for extracurriculars.
” She returned her attention to her papers and began long swiping motions as she struck out answers—I suspected regardless if they were correct or not.
“The wolves and panthers have a game this evening. If you think you can handle it, then signups are in Central Hall for anyone who wants to join in spite of what the shifters want everyone to think.” She made another mark with an aggressive scratch across the paper. “Now get out of my office.”
Mumbling my thanks, I shuffled out and closed the door behind me.
Looks like I was joining a sports team.