Chapter 37
“So…” the guys muttered while looking at Nix’s ash-turned clothing.
“I need a new uniform from the nurse’s office,” she said, out of breath from the several orgasms the guys had milked from her. “Again.”
The men looked ready to high-five each other for a job well done. She rolled her eyes.
The speaker in the empty classroom screeched before announcing, “All students to the main auditorium. Council President Oadess is to speak in the north auditorium in ten minutes. Thank you.”
Persius whistled. “Wow, the dean’s secretary still has no idea her boss is in Hell.”
“Maybe she does know, and that’s why her announcement sounded a little cheerier than normal,” Bael remarked.
“Let’s go.”
Nix breathed deeply, in and out, to calm her nerves as they merged with a crowd of students, all headed through the tall auditorium doors.
“So, this didn’t happen last time?” Thierry asked Nix about the Kellan Oadess scheduled announcement. “In the last timeline you were in?”
Nix chewed on her inner cheek and smoothed a hand down the newly borrowed girl’s uniform. “I wouldn’t know. Adar and Elle had me off-campus most of the day.”
She added, “I have no idea if this happened without me or if this mystery announcement is new to this timeline. I was warned that things could be…worse by coming back.”
Thierry frowned. “Warned?”
“Worse?” Ryker repeated.
“What do you mean?” Persius asked.
“I thought you just blacked out and woke up in the past?” Bael said.
“That’s what happened to me the first time, but this last time, I—well—this woman appeared to me. It was like a weird limbo state. She asked me if I’d rather live or die and have a redo.”
“She?”
“A woman? What did she look like?”
“Well, the whole scenery was orange-tinted, but I think she had red hair too. She floated in a long, fiery dress.”
Thierry choked and coughed several times into his fist as he struggled to recover from the shock.
“Floated?” Bael asked. “Sounds like you met a Goddess, Nixie.” Goddess. That had been Nix’s guess as well. “And if she had red hair…”
Thierry cut Bael off, “Maybe it was some kind of dream. Between death and waking.”
“But if she really saw—”
“Impossible,” Thierry hushed Bael.
“What? Tell me,” Nix demanded.
“The likelihood of it being her—”
“Who?” Nix snapped.
Thierry fingered his black-framed glasses and hesitated before speaking.
“She…There is a goddess who is known to pause time—not freeze it but hold everything still like a suspended breath. When she appears, it is rumored that the air warms and turns a molten amber-orange, as if the world slips into a candle’s flame at her presence. ”
“That’s her,” Nix said adamantly.
“Red hair, and she wore red?”
“Yes.”
“The Goddess is known to be robed in layered shades of scarlet, ember, and garnet red—all making her dress appear to flicker like a living flame.”
“Yes, but who is she?” Nix asked. “What’s her name?”
“She goes by many names—none of them her real one. No one knows her real name.”
“She is known as the First Flame,” Persius added.
Thierry nodded. “And the Keeper of Rebirth.”
“As far as I know, she appears to very few people,” Bael said. “Like one person each century. The last rumored sighting was with the phoenix shifter. One of the most powerful females to exist.”
“Who was that?”
“The council forbade talking about her,” Bael said and grinned. “So, let me tell you all about her. Some say her fire was so potent, her rebirth cycles shook the spirit world—”
Persius stepped in, wanting to impress Nix with his knowledge, too. “She had more than the normally-feared phoenix powers. She could slow time by superheating the air around her. She could see echoes of possible futures in her own flames.”
“All of this to say, the Goddess only appears to the most powerful of shifters. And those she does choose to visit…”
“If you ever see the Goddess again, you must be very careful, Nix,” Thierry warned. “The Goddess of the First Flame is known for her temper. She has burned civilizations to dust so something new can rise.”
“Did this Goddess say anything special to you?” Persius asked her.
“She told me that other phoenix shifters went mad from choosing to go back in time too many times. Dying and choosing redos. She said that time can get angry when you try to change it with a special advantage. She said things might get worse if I chose to go back in time by a day, like she offered.”
“She said things would get worse, and you chose…to do it?” Thierry mumbled, blinking.
“We needed the advantage,” Nix replied.
“A Goddess warned you not to do something, and you still did it.” Bael sighed dreamily while he gazed adoringly at her. “You really are my mate.”
After hearing that the impulsive and crazed demon from Hell approved of Nix’s choice, she second-guessed herself.
“No turning back now,” Persius said, trying to comfort her.
“If things do get worse, and I die again—”
“Won’t happen,” Ryker growled.
“Won’t let it,” Thierry confirmed stonily.
As soon as the large crowd of students thinned into a line while entering the main auditorium, Nix saw Kellan Oadess patiently waiting on the stage for everyone to take a seat.
A tall man, appearing in his mid-thirties, stood beside Kellan. Even though the two men stood on the same stage and the spotlight focused on Kellan, the other man, inexplicably, seemed cased in shadows.
“Who is that?” Thierry voiced Nix’s internal question. “Standing with Oadess.”
“Oh…fuck,” Bael whispered to himself.
At hearing the incubus sound scared for the first time, a chill scraped down Nix’s spine, leaving a stinging sensation.
“We need to get Nix out of here. Now,” Bael warned softly, but to turn around in such a sizable crowd entering the auditorium would be like screaming “We’re over here!” and carrying neon pointing signs.
“Leaving would attract too much attention,” Nix told him. “I’m not supposed to be here. Elle and Adar were supposed to have whisked me away this morning.”
“Nix, Oadess has a fucking basilisk shifter standing beside him. The one kind of shifter who can kill an immortal with just goddamn eye contact. We would literally have to protect you with our eyes closed.”
Ryker cursed and grabbed at Nix’s waist, coiling a protective arm around her.
“He’s right. We need to get you out of here,” Persius urged.
The more Nix stared at the mystery man on stage, the more she swore he looked familiar to her. She was fairly certain she knew most of Kellan’s work acquaintances from seeing them visit the family estate every once in a while.
“Stop looking over at him, Nix,” Bael snapped quietly at her. “He can hypnotize or kill just by meeting your gaze.”
“He looks familiar to me.”
“I don’t fucking care. Stop looking at him.”
“How do you propose we get her out of here without attracting attention?” Thierry whispered, “To move against the flow of the crowd will be difficult.”
Squeaky wheels sounded from the front of the auditorium, and Nix’s gaze flicked from the basilisk shifter in his human form to the cart being pushed onstage.
Nix stopped breathing.
A limp, lithe body laid over the cart. Familiar blonde hair, speckled with blood.
Sarasa.
Dead.
Wheeled onto the stage.