Chapter 28
zuko
. . .
House of Torment’s classroom smelled like iron, incense, and blood. It smelled like home, and I was at peace every time I walked in.
Emberveil had gone to the academy with my dad, so she had a lot of the same mindset he did.
We were in the sub-basement’s torture chamber with the dummy tied to a chair when the only shifter in our class cracked.
Pierce was the hawk shifter with lean shoulders, a cocky grin, and the most annoying ego. He stood in front of the dummy, his suit-clad forearm looking normal as ever in what should’ve been feathers by now.
Emberveil’s flames licked up her arms as she roared at him, “Left talon! Just shift the left talon. You need to learn to use your natural-given power to give pain.”
Pierce’s jaw flexed as he stared at his hand like it had betrayed him. “It’s—give me a second.”
“You’ve had three minutes!” Emberveil exclaimed, the fire that radiated off her heating the entire chamber. “Left talon.”
He strained, but nothing came except a tremor and a sound like swallowed panic.
It was annoying as fuck, to be honest.
Raze and I traded a look. His pupils had narrowed into slits, and I was sure mine did the same.
Emberveil sighed, and she lifted a device I hadn’t seen before.
“I was really hoping I’d never have to break this out.
” It was a black bar the length of her palm, with a sliver of glass and two needle ports.
“New toy,” she told our class without turning.
“Courtesy of the House of Innovation and House of Arcane working together. It’s a blood-splitting array.
It can separate magical essence from blood not completely merged with it. ”
She moved closer, grabbed Pierce’s wrist, and pricked his finger, letting a ruby drop hit the glass.
Pierce went pale, his mouth dropping.
A glowing dot pulsed. “It’s green for supernaturals but a dull-white for humans,” she mused.
The bar flickered before glowing an uncompromising dull-white.
Pierce laughed, but it was forced. “It’s gotta be broken.”
Emberveil didn’t answer. She pricked her own thumb, touched the glass.
Green flared for being a supernatural. She wiped it clean, pricked me and then Raze. It was green. She then pricked and tested the other two students. Green again. The array did not lie.
She tested Pierce’s blood again: dull-white.
Emberveil lifted her head, and plumes of smoke escaping her nostrils. “Bind him.”
“Happily.” I winked as another student tossed the dummy from the chair. I grabbed his shoulders and sat his ass on the chair easily.
“Do we get to play, professor?” Raze slid the chain across his wrists and tightened it.
Pierce tried to jerk away on instinct.
She nodded. “I see this as a learning opportunity. Zuko, we want names, method of entry, numbers, and who he answers to. Raze, if he’s uncooperative, you get to dispose of him.”
Raze and I shared a bloodthirsty glance.
“Who are you?” I asked calmly.
The human swallowed and found his defiance. “Pierce,” he lied. “House of Torment. I’m a second-year. You can check the roster.”
I laughed, cracking up at his fucking lie. I didn’t even have to use my special power to know he was lying. “Oh, we’re playing, then? Fine. I like games. Let’s play.”
The defiance in his eyes shifted into terror. He looked past me, scanning the faces of everyone else.
Raze’s smile was not one a human would recognize as friendly. “You do play the most fun games.”
Emberveil’s gaze cut to the other two students. “Observe. Learn. Take notes. Zuko’s the son of one of our top torturers in the Supernatural Council.”
“Good thing there’s a drain in the floor,” Raze chuckled.
Pierce’s face went stark white.
“I’ve never liked the word torture. It makes what we do sound thoughtless.” I walked over to the human with a sadistic grin on my face. “Don’t you think? My mom taught me that we can crack a mind cleanly, but Dad showed me how to physically force that crack wide open.”
Raze set our table, and I moved over to toss my kit on it from my bag.
My kit was simple: two dice, an hourglass, a jar, two nails, cherries in an enchanted box to keep them fresh, a human gun with fae enchanted bullets, a dagger, a small round jar of acid, a syringe of liquid tourmalyke, a bone saw, an enchanted sword that grew when I activated the enchantment, and three small habitats, each housing a venomous spider, a scorpion, and a beetle.
Okay, maybe not simple, but it was necessary.
Raze took to the corner like a cat, his eyes bright. “Have fun, human.”
I grinned, showing off my kit. “The rules are simple. I roll my die. You pray, and hopefully with each roll, we all learn something. It’s a lot more intimidating when I can show you my sleeve, but the uniform won’t allow it,” I grumbled before sighing.
“Oh, and we play until the sand runs out. Then, you play with Raze.”
Pierce flinched. “What…what happens with the numbers on the dice?”
“What’s the fun in knowing?” I cackled, grabbing the dice and rolling them on the metal table, hearing them cling.
They read four and two.
Six.
“Oh, how appropriate!” I threw my head back and laughed. “You get a six! Shot with a human gun, loaded with enchanted bullets that ignite flesh on contact.” I picked up the gun and pointed it at his shoulder. “Ready?”
“You’re wasting your time. I won’t talk.”
“Mm,” I cocked the gun. “You might surprise yourself.”
I shot.
The bullet ripped through his shoulder, catching the flesh on fire until a large, scorched hole remained and sank into the concrete wall behind him.
His scream was loud, shriller than I’d expected.
“You shot me!” he wailed as blood spurted from the wound.
The metallic scent of his blood was wrong.
“How many undercover humans are there in the academy?” I asked between his screams.
“I won’t tell!” His entire body shook from the pain.
“That’s great,” I enthused, setting the gun down and grabbing the dice, rolling it again. “Aw, four! Hope you’re hungry.”
I grabbed the box and opened it, leaking my venom all over the two cherries. Then, I walked over and forced him to eat both, stem and all.
Immediately after swallowing, his jaw clenched hard enough to show tendons. My venom now laced his blood, causing him seizures.
“How’d you pass for a shifter for so long?” I asked with an annoyed tone as he finally stopped seizing so hard.
His eyes blistered with tears, he tried, and failed, to hold back.
“Artificial sternum. It pumps supernatural blood through our veins along with our regular blood.” His breath hitched.
“But not all of us are the same. Some human blood merges with supernatural blood and creates a hybrid-type. Those humans don’t even need the device,” he croaked.
The sand kept falling in the hourglass. “Who’s behind this operation?”
He shook his head.
I groaned. “Your time’s almost up, Pierce.” I grabbed the dice and rolled again. “Damn. Three! Haven’t played with the spider in a while.”
“I don’t want the spider!” he cried.
“Nobody does,” I said, grabbing it and opening the habitat, letting it crawl on his face.
My lovely trained spider, Victor, bit him and kept exploring, slipping under his suit.
He screamed, and his head wobbled.
“Numbers,” I said. “How many humans are in the academy?”
“Eight others,” he sobbed. “One in each house.”
“Who are they?” I shouted in his face as Victor crawled back into his habitat.
“No more,” he cried as I picked up the dice again. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, but you might as well kill me after.”
Raze nodded. “Easy.”
“Talk,” I barked.
“I don’t have names. They didn’t let us meet each other, so that if one got caught, we couldn’t give the others up, but there’s one of us in each house.
We got in by training hard and passing as a supernatural.
I told you how we pass as one. We don’t know the name of our boss, but it’s a human facility that’s separate from our government. ”
I glanced at Emberveil, and she nodded.
“My turn.” Raze practically skipped over as I closed my toolkit up and put it back in my bag. He pulled his out and placed it on the table with his fae numeral ball. He looked at it, and the number five formed on it in a glowing numeral. “Ready to play enchanted death ball?”
“W-what’s that? I told you everything I know!” he sobbed.
“This is enchanted by the fae. It takes the blood of a living being, and once it hits the ground…” He grabbed a small bouncy ball the size of his fist and walked over, letting him bleed all over it from where the bullet went through. Then, he dropped the chains holding him and stepped back.
The human grabbed his wound, trembling as he stared up in horror at Raze. “What happens if it hits the ground?”
“The moment it hits the ground, it explodes in a shockwave that liquefies the internal organs of whoever’s blood is on it.” He tossed the ball in the air before catching it, barely.
The human dropped to the floor in front of Raze, terror in his eyes. “Please don’t.”
“Hey, if you keep it in the air, you’ll live,” Raze cooed, tossing the ball at me.
“Aw, so we hold his life in our hands?” I chuckled, volleying it back and forth with Raze.
We let it bounce between us, Pierce’s eyes following it with the hopeless focus of prey watching the predators close in.
Then, Raze hit it toward the human.
Pierce caught it with both hands before screaming, tossing it in the air. His hands were burned.
“Oh, did I mention that if you hold it longer than two seconds, it’ll sear through flesh?” Raze cackled.
Pierce screamed again, hurling the glowing ball upward with desperate strength. His breath sawed in and out as his eyes tracked it, terror hollowing every line in his face.
The ball arced higher, hung for a half-second too long, and slammed back into his palms.
He cried out, fumbling, blistering flesh searing beneath the glow of the ball. “I—I can’t—” His hands spasmed.
The ball slipped.
It hit the stone floor with a dull thunk.
There was no time for him to regret it.
The ball detonated with a low, sickly boom. A pulse of magic rippled out like a shockwave, washing through the walls, rattling the chains, cracking a few of the stone bricks, and blasting off his blood from it.
Pierce convulsed. His back bowed so violently his head split open on the concrete ground. His body collapsed like an empty sack. Blood poured from his eyes, his mouth, his ears, and the stench of ruptured organs filled the room.
He was dead.
Emberveil didn’t flinch. Her flames dimmed to a steady burn, but her eyes narrowed at the human. “Good kill,” she said, voice flat, but her nostrils smoked. “Creative.”
The two students in the back gagged, one covering her mouth, the other scribbling notes with a trembling hand.
“This,” she said sharply, “goes directly to the headmaster. The humans have infiltrated every house. That knowledge does not leave this room until it is contained.”
I inclined my head, still riding the buzz of the dice game, but I felt my pulse slow at her words. Eight others. One in each house.
Raze smirked. “Understood, Professor.”
“Dismissed,” she said, more harshly than usual. She stalked toward the stairwell, leaving us with the stench and the corpse and the lingering hum of magic in the walls.
The other two scrambled to pack their things and practically bolted up the stairs, avoiding looking at the ruined corpse.
The door slammed shut.
The silence stretched, broken only by the drip of blood into the floor drain.
Raze leaned back against the stone wall, arms folded across his chest, his grin lazy and sharp. “You know,” he drawled, “your dice have a charm all of their own, but nothing quite matches the look in their eyes when they realize my game has an inevitable end.”
I snorted, running a finger across the cooling metal of my kit. “Please. He was begging me to end it before you even stood up. I had him cracked wide open after my spider, and usually, my game ends with them dying.”
“True,” Raze admitted, his grin widening to something feral. “But admit it. You liked watching him toss that ball until he caused his own death.”
I shrugged, smirking despite myself. “It was a memorable finish.”
We both glanced at the empty chair, which Pierce’s corpse lay in front of.
Raze’s eyes slitted. “Seven more rats in our halls.”
My stomach curled with something between anticipation and unease. “Six. I already knew about the human who was pretending to be a gargoyle in Rune’s house. Taken out by a peanut allergy is hilariously ironic,” I muttered.