Chapter 4
Chapter
Four
Bloom
Puzzle and Myth
Dante, Orren, and Morrigan led me through the Obsidian Wilds, a tight formation with me sheltered in their midst.
I walked with my head down, defeated. Each step was an effort, my legs heavy with dread. Though Nero’s cloak was wrapped tightly around me, I couldn’t stop shivering, a deep, inward tremor born not of cold but of consequence.
The anguish in Nero’s eyes as we were torn apart burned in my mind. He’d be tortured because of me. Because I hadn’t been strong enough to leave.
A small, broken sound escaped my throat—part sob, part surrender—lost in the muffling fog.
“It’ll be all right,” Orren said, his voice a soft murmur meant to comfort.
I wanted to ask them about Hera’s Whip, but the leaden dread sitting in my stomach was answer enough—it was nothing good. I lacked the strength to chase the answer at the moment.
The forest began to relent, the twisted trees giving way to the manicured edge of the academy grounds.
Ahead, the imposing silhouette of Ravencrux Tower speared the gloom, a blade of dark stone cutting into the sky.
Even from this distance, I could feel its resonance, a familiar thrum of power woven into the very rock. Nero’s signature.
Before we crossed the final stretch to the tower, Morrigan stopped. Her gaze turned back the way we had come. “She’s safe now,” she said. “I need to go back. Nero will need tending.”
Dante gave a single, grim nod. “Go.”
My eyes slid to Morrigan, and the memory surfaced unbidden—her hands moving over the sculpted planes of Nero’s back in his study.
His healer, he’d called her. A siren. A sharp, hot needle of jealousy pressed beneath my ribs.
She was returning to him. To touch him. To offer a comfort I was now forbidden to give.
Would he, in his pain, lower his guard for her?
Would her siren’s pull become a solace I had ripped away?
The rules of this place tightened around me like a noose.
There was no win for me. Only varying shades of loss.
If Nero turned to another, I would have to witness it.
And I was still not safe, as the hunters seeking redheads still prowled the shadows.
Had my choice to stay been a catastrophic mistake?
And because of my decision, they were going to whip him.
Another broken sound escaped me before I could stop it. Dante’s hand closed around my elbow, his grip firm and warm.
“Do not let the doubt in, Carrot,” he said, his deep voice cutting through my spiraling. He had seen my look of devastation. “Trust your gut. You can always trust him.”
“And you can trust us, Bloom,” Orren added. He’d showed me his fierce loyalty from day one. I clung to it in the absence of Nero.
As we crossed the warded threshold into the tower’s grand hall, silence descended over the gathered students, followed by a surge of unkind whispers. It was a walk of shame through a gallery of judgment, their eyes sharp with envy and curiosity, lips twisted in disgust.
Then Sindy was there. My roommate shoved through the onlookers, a flash of defiance in the gloom.
“Shut the fuck up and mind your own business!” she snapped at the nearest cluster of faces.
Dante barked, “Move. Or I’ll fucking move you.”
A visible ripple of fear passed through the crowd. The whispers died, and a path cleared before us, wide and wary.
We made for the stairs, Orren staying so close that his shoulder brushed mine, as if he expected my legs to give way at any moment. They nearly did. A deep, trembling exhaustion had settled into my bones. Each step upward was an effort.
On the sixth-floor landing, Sindy had the key in the lock in a heartbeat. I all but fell through the door into our room.
“Shut the door for now,” Dante commanded from the hallway. “I’m going hunting, but the hellhound will come to guard the room.”
The door clicked shut, and my legs gave out. I slid down to the floor, my back against the solid wood, utterly spent. The cold of the stone burned my skin, but I lacked the will to move.
Sindy sank down beside me. For once, she didn’t pry, didn’t ask for the story. She simply offered her presence in the quiet. After a moment, she rose, pulling me up with her, and guided me to my bed.
“Do you want a bath?” she asked gently.
I shook my head, the memory of Nero’s bath flooding back. I didn’t want to wash away his scent.
“Clean clothes?” she tried again.
Another shake of my head. I pulled his cloak tighter around me, burying my face in the collar where his scent lingered, faint sandalwood and the dark, distinctive essence that was his alone.
“I’ll make tea, then,” she said, and retreated.
I wanted to curl into a ball and sleep, to fall into oblivion and wake to a world put right.
Sindy returned with a steaming cup of sunflower tea, placed it on the bedside table, and gave my shoulder a light squeeze. I managed a nod of thanks, the gesture all I could muster. The warmth of the cup seeped into my hands, a small anchor in the stillness.
“You don’t have to tell me anything until you’re ready,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere. But you should know, Sebastian and I searched everywhere after you vanished. We finally thought you’d just left on the bus with the others.”
“A group of bounty hunters took me,” I whispered.
“They tortured me. Threw me into an old well. They meant to kill me, but they didn’t succeed.
Nero—Professor Ravencrux—and his men found me.
They brought me back. I… I stayed with him.
” I took a shaky breath. “I slept with him. And long before today, there was already something between us.” Sindy simply listened, her expression free of judgment.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. You warned me about the consequences of sleeping with a professor, but in the end, I just couldn’t help it. ”
“No one could help it,” she said. “No one could resist Professor Nero Ravencrux. If he came to me? Hell yeah, I’d jump on him. Any time. Anywhere.”
A weak laugh escaped from my throat.
“And he chose you,” she added. “I thought his gorgeous assistant was his lover, but I was wrong.”
Sindy’s casual comment implying a link between Nero and Morrigan sent a fresh wave of corrosive jealousy through me.
A low growl vibrated in my throat before I could stop it.
I blinked at my fierce possessiveness. This wasn’t the meek, accommodating girl I’d been.
What had he done to me? What had I become?
It wasn’t just the mind-blowing sex that transformed me.
It was a claim, woven into my very bones.
But Morrigan was stunning, capable, and at his side constantly. She had access to him at any hour. Had I imagined the heat in her gaze when she looked at Nero when she thought I was unconscious?
I forced myself to stop. This jealousy was a poison in my gut. This obsession with Nero wasn’t good for either of us, yet I couldn’t stop.
“Professor Ravencrux never taught a single class before you arrived,” Sindy went on. “Then Sebastian and the powerful players all zeroed in on you. It’s like you’re the pivot point, the center of something. I haven’t figured out what it is yet. But I will.”
“I’m not a puzzle for you to solve,” I said, sharper than I intended. “I’m your friend.”
“Of course, Bloom,” she said unwaveringly.
“That’s why I need to figure it out, so I can help you.
You warned me about the redhead murders, and I think they’re connected to you.
Angelina wasn’t the target. You are. They used her as a message.
I think the whole festival was designed to draw you outside the academy’s wards.
In here, you have a hellhound guarding your door every night.
One side wants to protect you; the other wants you destroyed.
It’s a game, and you’re the centerpiece. ”
I swallowed hard. In this viper’s nest of a school, the people I trusted could be counted on one hand. Sindy was among them.
“Kingsley and his small army came for us,” I confessed. “They breached Nero’s ward while we were in bed.” I left out the golden net—some details were too raw, too strange to voice.
A strange, longing light flickered in her eyes, as if she was momentarily picturing the scene of Nero and me entangled between the sheets, before she refocused. “Describe them, please.”
I told her about the beings who had stood with Kingsley, some in humanoid forms, others half-beastly.
“I could sense their powers,” I said. “They’re more than immortals.”
Sindy’s eyes widened. “I think they might be minor gods. I can’t believe they all came here.
Remember when I said you were special? Things were set into motion, like a wheel starting to turn, the moment you arrived.
Just think about it—you were homeschooled in a small French town in the middle of nowhere.
And yet they found you.” She leaned closer, her voice lowering.
“Bloom, are you sure your mother was your real mom?”
A sharp, cold doubt lanced through me before I hardened against it. “I’m sure,” I said, my voice taut. “Mom loved me. She sacrificed everything for me.”
But she’d locked me away, isolated at the edge of the forest. Then she left me completely alone. Whatever her reasons, no matter what she’d done, I loved her. The grief of losing my mother was a permanent hollow in my chest.
Sindy threw her hands up in a gesture of surrender. “All right. Touchy subject. I’m sorry for your loss.”
I drew a sharp breath and realized, with a start, that I hadn’t reached for my inhaler, not even once. Not when fear had clawed at my throat. It was lost, anyway, left behind in that well or taken during the torture.
“You and all your conspiracy theories,” I said, a weak attempt at deflection. My friend lived for untangling secrets.
“Here’s another one,” she said. “It would take their combined power to break Professor Ravencrux’s ward, or else they had help from the inside.”
Insider help?
But Dante, Orren, and Morrigan were loyal to a fault.
They had nothing to gain from betraying Nero—unless one of them wanted me gone.
Morrigan? Yet she had always been decent to me.
Nero swore there was nothing between them.
Still, the memory of her sensual laughter in his study haunted me. I bit my lip to expel that image.
I chose to trust Nero. They’d had years, probably a decade, together, yet he chose me. He was even taking my severe punishment. The way he looked at me, touched me, as if I were his entire world. No one could fake that. And the connection I felt with him was undeniable.
“By the way, Sindy,” I started, shifting the subject, “do you know—”
The door flew open, even though Sindy had locked it. Cerberus padded in, and the heavy oak swung shut of its own accord behind him. It seemed no barrier could ever hope to contain a hellhound.
I opened my arms, and he launched onto the bed, the frame groaning under his weight. All three sets of eyes fixed on me, blazing with adoration and protection. A long, rough tongue swiped over my chin. He smelled of hellfire and warm ash.
“You smell like Orren,” I murmured, fingers digging into the dense fur of his neck.
Cerberus made a huffing sound through all three noses, a definite, gravelly chuckle.
Sindy watched us, her earlier fear of him having softened into wary acceptance. He still wouldn’t let her pat him, his demeanor making it clear: I am not a pet.
“What were you going to say,” Sindy asked, “before you were rudely interrupted?”
The hellhound’s middle head turned to give her an unamused look.
“I meant to ask if you’ve ever heard of Hera’s Whip.”
Sindy squinted, thinking hard, then shook her head. But beside me, Cerberus went rigid. A low, rolling growl vibrated through the bed, and plumes of smoke, dotted with tiny embers, puffed from each of his snouts.
“You know what it is, don’t you?” I whispered to him. “But you can’t speak.”
He whined, a sound of deep agitation, and shoved his central head against my chest. I sank my fingers into his ebony fur to calm him, though I didn’t feel calm myself.
Frantically, I scrambled for Sindy’s smuggled books, scattering them across the quilt.
My fingers trembled as I clawed through indexes, flipped past chronicles of the Tale of Hera—searching for any mention of a whip, or anything even remotely connected.
Nothing. The Queen of the Gods wielded a different kind of power.
Her arsenal was politics and the careful venom of persuasion.
She had bound Zeus once with Aphrodite’s girdle. Her warfare was psychological.
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to block out the grim picture, fear coiling in my gut. Kingsley would show no mercy.
I might have dozed for a minute, caught in an anxious twilight, and I startled when the door burst open again.
Morrigan filled the frame, her face carved from winter, her eyes accusing as they landed on me.
“It’s time,” she announced, her voice devoid of all warmth. “All students are required to attend. You will witness Professor Ravencrux’s discipline.” Her gaze held mine. “You have been given a front-row seat, a special request from Professor Kingsley. I am here to collect you.”