Chapter Three #3
Her forehead crumpled. “Sister? What are you talking about?” She laughed again as my heart ground to dust.
“I don’t have a sister.”
IT WAS ME AND A VERY confused Dora who sat down in the new The Great Invasion lecture hall. The room itself was similar to Professor Radu’s classroom, except in this one, there were posters all over the wall—and they were disgusting.
All of them decried the Great Invasion, and all of them said nasty, bigoted things about the mutts, leeches, and fae insert-homophobic-slur-here who led the supposed invasion.
Did the fallen angels get this much hate when they actually forced their way into hell and took over, because it was ridiculous how much bile and vitriol was spewed toward people who didn’t want to be here, and certainly didn’t come here willingly.
“What is with this place?” I whispered, lips twisting at a particularly gruesome poster of a group of demons holding down a faeman and ripping his wings off. “Are they stirring up all this hatred and animosity on purpose? Is it because demons can use hatred to boost their magic?”
Dora dropped her head, peering into my face. “Pardon?”
“Hmm? No, nothing,” I said, focusing on her.
“I was just saying that you need to stay close to me, okay? Go where I go. Do what I do. After classes let out, we’ll find a dorm room that’s big enough for both of us, and then move our stuff in there.
” I patted the bag she gave me filled with the research.
“Don’t worry, all of this won’t be for long. We’ll get out of here soon.”
She shrugged, smiling away. “If you say so.”
I could only stare at her, while silently cursing Lucifer, Lord of Piss.
How did he do it? How did he turn my sister into this empty-headed doll?
Don’t get me wrong, the real Dora was also a happy, sweet kid by default, but with the people she was comfortable with, she wasn’t afraid to show off her sarcastic, tough, smart-ass side.
But that side had completely been erased... along with her memory of me.
“Dora?” I asked softly as the doors opened and the lecture hall started to fill up. “What do you remember? What’s your last name?”
“Lightbringer,” she replied without hesitation. “Adora Lightbringer.”
Wrong.
“What’s your mother’s name?”
“I don’t have a mother.” Again. No hesitation. “It’s just me and Daddy.”
I gritted my teeth hearing her call him that. The news that we had different fathers didn’t bother me. Dora was my sister—end of. But what did bother me was hearing the man who used Dora as a pawn, then callously watched her die, being called a name he did not earn in any way.
“Where do you live?”
“Pomarium.”
I frowned. “Where’s that?”
“Daddy’s kingdom.”
Hmm. That must be the House Lucifer that everyone’s talking about. “How long have you lived there?” I asked.
“I...” Dora cocked her head, blinking up at the ceiling. “I don’t know.”
“How old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
“And what did you do for your eighteenth birthday?”
Another vacant look. “Birthday?”
“We had a dog when we were kids. Do you remember her name?”
“What’s a dog?”
I knew it. Lucifer filled her head with answers to all the standard questions, but when you dug around for details, Dora couldn’t offer any.
Lucifer said he was only giving me half my present.
He said before that, in my dream, that he was sending an incentive for me to work quickly.
But what was the incentive? I was already doing all of this to get my sister back.
Did he think I’d work harder to get her memories back than I would to get back her soul?
I tossed my head, wondering at devious fallen angels and their pointless power plays. I didn’t know why this jerk insisted on going above and beyond to reach new levels of assholery, but instead of despairing, he gave me hope.
Dora was back by my side—safe and whole. Now, I’d finally stop stressing night and day about where she was and what was happening to her. We were together now, and I’d do whatever it took to protect her from Lucifer and my mother.
“Okay, here.” Reaching into my bag, I pulled out my notebook and pencil. “Write down everything you do remember about yourself and where you’re from. I’m going to do some reading while you do.”
“All right,” she said brightly, taking to her task with gusto.
I left her to it while I focused on the journals Dora brought me. Flipping to the first page, I found the first line of the spell scrawled across the top.
The hallow of the air, gives an aigrette light and fair.
Aigrette is an old word for feather. So this means you’ll need a feather from the Air Hallow, which narrows down our options. There are many supernatural creatures with wings, but not as many with feathered wings. Pegasi, harpies, sirens, angels, and so on.
Fae we can eliminate from the list because it is impossible for them to give a witch their feathers. Once separated from their bodies, their feathers crumble into dust the moment they’re touched by non-fae hands.
Below I will list every feathered, flying supernatural creature, their strengths, their weaknesses, and how to subdue them, but it is my ultimate fear that the Air Hallow is an angel.
The feather of an angel is a truly powerful and rare item—incomparable to any other.
And before you think an angel’s feather would be the easiest to come by, you must understand that Lucifer is not an angel.
He is a fallen angel. He is cut off from heaven and its divine power.
The feather of a fallen angel is still quite powerful, but it can never be a substitute to a true angel feather, and this is not the kind of spell that will stand for substitutes.
I flipped to a page halfway through and landed on the section about harpies. Dozens of pages in, and she was still describing the possible options for only the first hallow.
Still, in this situation, more information was infinitely better than less.
“Although, what am I supposed to do if I need the feather of a real angel?” I muttered. “Would he return us topside so that I could get it? Does pretty please work on angels?”
I rubbed my temples, sighing as I glanced down at the five other journals resting in the bag. I’d just gotten started on my study, and I was already getting a headache.
Bang!
Ronin came into the room surrounded by his entourage. No, was parade a better word? Or maybe his court?
Either way, he had five women hanging off his arms and shoulders.
Trailing the ladies were their lackeys—all gorgeous and all hostile as they argued and shoved the women from the other gangs.
And yes, I was calling them gangs until I was given a better word for them.
And on the tail of the pretty girl gangs were a horde of drooling, eager guys hitting on them like it’d save the world.
“That’s Kama Asmodeus,” Dora said, snapping my head up. “Princess of lust.”
I flicked to where she was looking, landing on a gorgeous pink-haired woman with plump, pouty lips and a matching, sheer pink dress that left nothing to the imagination.
“That’s Eris Leviathan,” she continued, writing that down too. She tipped her head toward a short woman with bright green, short spiky hair and a punk-style outfit with metal rings punched through her jacket to match the metal rings through her lips, nose, and eyebrows. “She’s the princess of envy.
“She’s Sauda Mammon, princess of greed.” Again I followed Dora’s gaze to an ebony-skinned beauty with her hair cut close to the scalp.
She wore a deadly fierce asymmetrical black dress that was a mini in the front, and a long-train gown in the back.
I assumed she chose the dress to show off her spiked boots. They stabbed the floor with every step.
“That’s Raven Zuriel, princess of wrath.” Dora wrote down the name of the copper beauty. “Daddy says she’s first in line to marry Ronin Belphe because House Zuriel and House Belphe have the least contentious history of conflict.”
I tipped my head. “Makes sense. It’s hard to provoke someone’s wrath when you never do anything.”
“Last is Ursula Beelzebub,” she finished, nodding to the woman wearing a preppy cable-knit, purple sweater and pleated skirt.
“Princess of gluttony. Daddy says House Beelzebub is the only House in hell that has no treaties or trade with any other House in hell. It’s because Lord Beelzebub is incapable of compromise.
He must have all, all, all for himself.”
I hummed, fascinated beside myself. “Interesting. You’d think it’d be the lord of greed who’d have trouble playing fair with others.”
“No, just the opposite,” Dora said softly. “Greed is smart, sly, calculating. It plots. It plans. While gluttony is uncontrollable. It cannot stop not even for its own good.”
I found myself nodding along. “You have a point.”
Their weird little clutch packed into the room, all of them clearly following Belphe’s every twitch and move.
The full-of-himself prince of sloth claimed a seat at the back, and then immediately dropped his head back and went to sleep.
A quick, but violent, battle broke out among the princesses for who was going to sit on either side of him.
Raven and Sauda were the winners, leaving Ursula with her busted lip to sit in front of him.
Eris took her bloodied nose and grabbed the seat behind him, while—bold as you pleased—Kama plopped down on Ronin’s lap and laid her head on his chest, smirking away as her hair regrew out of the bloody patch of scalp Raven left behind when she ripped her pink locks out.
Raven and Sauda both grabbed Kama’s arms, ready and willing to rip her in half, when Ronin’s arms came up in his sleep and draped around her—pulling his new body pillow in close.
“Fuck!” Raven bellowed, kicking a dent in the tabletop.
I swore, right then, Kama wasn’t the princess of lust. She was the princess of smug.
My gaze drifted down to the fingers curled around Kama’s soft, supple, and practically bare ass, and my own curled too.
“You okay, Barley?” Dora’s face blotted everything out. “You’re not happy anymore.”