Chapter Fourteen #2
Then he burst into demon confetti.
Just like that. Before I could think to duck, Connard exploded and his magic ball disappeared along with him, leaving us all blinking and shocked in his wake.
After which, it was decided that we would not be getting another professor for The Great Invasion. The headmistress didn’t come out and tell us this herself, of course. Instead, she delivered the message through Erlik.
“All of hell wants in this place and closer to you,” Erlik said, looking me straight in the eye that day.
“Also thanks to you, girl, we know how lacking our security is when it comes to advanced glamour magic, so we’re not taking the chance of hiring another assassin, or giving another Hallow Hunter an edge by gaining access to you. ”
He clomped off the platform. “And speaking of the Hallow Hunt,” Erlik breezed on. “The headmistress wants the identity of all four hallows by the end of the month, or she’ll lock you in a dungeon so dark and deep, you’ll wish Connard killed you.”
It was that day I learned I was wrong. Erlik was the one with the best exit lines, not Lucifer.
Ever since, classes had pretty much been on hold, and the academy shut down even tighter from outsiders, and through it all, Ronin was nowhere to be found.
I rose to my feet. “Would you mind taking your notes to Erlik for me? So he can deliver them to the headmistress?” I asked Nik. “I’ve never met the woman, but I’ve got a feeling her threats are promises.”
“They are.” Nik shuddered like everyone did at the mere mention of her. “They very much are.”
“I’m heading out.”
Nik waved me out the door.
Stepping out into the hallway, I went left instead of right—heading deeper into the demon wing.
I didn’t want it to, but my thoughts returned to Ronin... just as they did at least ten times every day.
He really was gone. On the day he confessed his love for me, I told him I wanted him to disappear from my life. I wanted him to die.
I don’t know if he did the latter, but he most certainly did the former. Ever since that day, no one in the academy had seen or heard from Ronin Belphe.
With Abaddon devolving into a bed of chaos, the rule confining the different species to different wings was relaxed—so much so, that I was reunited with Tristan.
That first night, we holed up in my room together with half-eaten plates of dinner on the coffee table while we had a long talk.
To be honest, I braced myself to hear him rant and rave and curse Ronin Belphe to earth, just so he could curse him back to hell.
But instead, the mention of him brought a sad, wry smile to his lips.
“That dead fucker,” he gruffed, shaking his head. “He really... loves you.”
My muscles locked up, leaving my mouth hanging there.
“It’s because of him,” Tristan whispered, “that I now know what love is.”
It took me a full ten minutes to recover enough to speak, and when I did, I slapped that statement out of the room.
I went off on him—shouting that Ronin’s sick, twisted obsession wasn’t love!
He forced me to kill my own sister. He put the blade in my hand and ordered me through a slave bond to take the last of my family out of this world.
That wasn’t love by anyone’s definition, and it never would be.
Tristan didn’t argue with me after that, and he didn’t bring Ronin up again.
I wound through the hallways—twisting and turning corners until I reached the staircase to the tower.
“Nik will have found Erlik and delivered the message by now,” I murmured to myself as I climbed the steps.
“Which means the headmistress can’t claim I didn’t honor her demand that I give her and the demons a head-start on the Hallow Hunt.
” Glancing down, I typed the last word on my DeadDrop message and hit send.
Me: The dragon is the hallow of the flame. The siren is the hallow of the sea. The elf is the hallow of the wood. The angel is the hallow of the air.
Although it may have seemed like I put a target on the backs of all those creatures, all of those creatures already had targets on their backs. For hundreds of years, they’ve been hiding from the persecution of demons, and now they’ll go further underground... and out of Lucifer’s reach.
His element of surprise was lost. His advantage of being the only one in the race was gone.
His army of devoted pledges and followers were gone too, because if the last few weeks had shown me anything, it was that the Hallow Hunt was every man and woman for himself.
Anyone he sent to retrieve the hallows could easily betray him and keep it for themselves.
Lucifer was going to spend another thousand years chasing down his prizes—
“And let’s hope he’s got his hands on another living Avos witch by the time he does, because now that he’s got everything he wants in his reach...”
I stepped out into the blistering, scorching wind whipping across the tower. Gazing across the barren plains, everything looked the same as it did the day Iarla chased me out here, tricking me with the imp’s illusions.
“Now that you’re so close to everything you want,” I whispered as I climbed onto the ledge. “I’m ripping it from you.” I dropped a grim smile on the deadly plunge below. “How’s that for feeling my wrath?”
Lifting my foot, I jumped.