Chapter 45 Izzy
IZZY
What a day.
After Vyns had left, I’d headed down to get some essentials from the lesser residence shop. I’d bought a few sets of clothes and some school supplies including a new notebook. I could get a basic computer, but I thought I’d save up for a nicer one next week.
I’d had dinner, then a quick shower and change before heading out to my evening class, which had been a bit mindboggling.
Transmutation was not something my “human” brain could quite comprehend.
As much as the idea of turning one thing into another was simple enough, the process and magic involved wasn’t.
This had been an intro class, and I’d still felt completely lost.
What was worse, as a nymph, with an affinity to water magic, transmutation was supposed to be easier for me. Water magic was all about the transience of things, changing from one thing to another, but I couldn’t even control how I looked yet.
So yeah, I was completely exhausted by the time I got back to Rook’s room. And when I entered to find Rook and Myel waiting for me… both looking upset… I didn’t have the energy to deal with whatever had gotten them worked up.
“Can whatever this is—” I waved my hand at the two of them, “—wait? I’m beat.” I took a step toward Myel, seeking the numbing comfort of his embrace.
But he stepped back, jaw tight, eyes lit with a fire that spoke nothing of affection.
What the…?
“Did you think we wouldn’t notice?” he hissed.
Apparently, we were doing this, whatever this was. I sighed heavily and leaned on the closed door behind me.
“Notice what?” I asked, confused and frustrated and tired.
Behind Myel, Rook sighed. He didn’t seem as upset, more… disappointed, disenchanted. And with his position, on the far side of the room… it felt even more like he was pulling away from me.
“This room,” Myel spat. “It smells like sex, like another man. Like a seraph!”
Oh…
Fuck.
He could smell that? Of course he could. Because that’s how my life went these days.
“I—”
“You fucked Saldrea’s seraph, right here!” Myel’s tone was just a little too loud. “How could you? You can’t trust him! One word from him, and I’ll be put to death, but you fucked him? Here? Was he blackmailing you?”
It wasn’t like that!
“An angel? Really?” Rook reproached. “I don’t really care who you fuck, but an angel? That’s just wrong.” Right, because angels and demons didn’t get along and apparently me fucking an angel was a line I shouldn’t have crossed.
I’d had enough of this.
What I needed was comfort, not accusations.
“So what?” I snapped, suddenly defensive. “He was there when I needed him and he’d nearly died for me, so yeah… we had a moment. Live with it!”
Myel stepped back at the vehemence of my words.
“Is this how it’s going to be?” I felt the pain in Myel’s voice, the bond sent his agony lancing through my heart. “A new man every day?”
It wasn’t like that!
Okay… yes, I had had a new man every day for the last two days… but still… it wasn’t like that!
“No, you’re not… it’s not… we just… Ugh!
” I slammed my head back against the door — a bit too hard, ouch!
— and balled my fists. I’d had a long day, and my body still ached a little after healing Vyns.
His orgasms had done wonders but hadn’t been quite enough to cure me of the pain.
And with the anguish at seeing him nearly dead, the exhaustion of healing him, the frustration of this last class and the general fucked-upness of my life, my emotions boiled over into a righteous anger.
“This! This is why I never got involved with anyone. You’re all too clinging and needy and jealous. Gah! And men say women are the emotional ones!”
I stared down Myel. “You said you were okay with me being with other men, so fucking be okay with it!” I remembered my vow to give him some slack when he was jealous, but my anger overruled it.
My glare turned to Rook. “You’re a fucking sex demon; how many partners have you had? And you’re getting angry at me for one more?”
“It’s the fact that it was an angel—” he tried, but I cut him off.
“So what! angel, demon, shifter, does it really matter?”
“In this world it does,” Myel whispered as I spoke over him,
“You’re all men!”
Myel flinched back from my fury, but I was at the end of my rope and only the start of this rant.
“Even before I came to this world, you men have been screwing me over!” I pinned Rook down with my stare.
“You just had to report me and up end my entire life. And being all contrite now doesn’t make up for the fact that since I’ve been here, I’ve been bullied and beaten and treated like shit.
Hell, look at my room. That bitch destroyed my room, and no one has done anything! ”
“And you,” I shouted, turning to Myel. A part of me knew he didn’t deserve the vitriol I was about to spew at him, but my righteousness wouldn’t let me stop.
“I didn’t ask to be bonded to you. You have no right to dictate what I do with my life.
We’re together and that apparently means something to you, but not for me. I’m just trying to survive!”
Myel’s heart shattered. I felt it. It felt horrible… and that only made me angrier.
“And neither of you was there this afternoon when I needed you. You’re both all: we’ll be there for you, whatever you need, but are you, really? Maybe if you’d been there when I nearly died saving Vyns, I could have been with you not him.”
Okay, nearly dying was a bit of an exaggeration, but I didn’t regret saying it, since both men suddenly perked up with concern and interest.
Now they were listening.
Now they were worried.
“I did feel something,” Myel admitted. “You were worried and exhausted, but… I couldn’t get away. I had training. I… I…”
Fuck, those big dark eyes of his, so filled with regret and anguish. His ashamed agony sucker-punched me in the gut, blowing the fight out of me.
I sighed again.
“I just… I need a bit of time,” I said. I couldn’t be near either of these men right now. “I’m going to study in the library.”
I turned and left.
Neither followed.
Good.
But as I walked across campus, I felt worse and worse about my little explosion.
Those two really were doing their best and I’d just ripped them a new one.
They might have had a tiny bit of justification for being mildly put out by me fucking an angel in Rook’s room…
but it was too late to take back what I’d said now.
I couldn’t go back, not right away, and I did need to study. I was a week behind in all my classes. Maybe the library had a transmutation for beginners book.
Yet, when I got there and tried to concentrate, I couldn’t.
My thoughts whirled, piling even more regrets and frustrations on the heap that had become my life.
Eventually, I faceplanted in one of my textbooks and gave up.
Maybe tomorrow would be better?
With my luck, that didn’t seem likely.