4. Asha
Asha
There’s a full-length mirror in the room, and I make myself look, because a goddess who won’t face her own circumstances is just a fool with better posture.
The woman in the glass is a stranger. That dirty blonde hair hangs limp to my shoulders.
Violet-blue eyes, wide, the sort that makes people trust you right up until they shouldn’t.
Small. Young. Soft in the cheeks, soft in the hands, soft everywhere, I spent five hundred years being the exact opposite.
I look like I should be selling flowers, or being rescued, or whatever it is creatures this breakable do with their afternoons.
“We’re going to come to an understanding, you and I,” I tell the bitch in the glass.
“You’re going to hold together long enough for me to get home.
Whatever meatsuit I’ve been transformed into is not to my liking.
This body is fragile and breakable, but if I so much as break a nail before I find my way out of this dump, I will find a way to bring you back and hang you from your rosy pink nipples while I burn you alive. ”
I already fucking hate this body, but I’ve got to live with it until I can get my glorious goddess body back.
This pep talk does absolutely nothing for me as I head to Defensive Combat Training in the Obsidian Arena.
That Ryla creature brought me a bunch of clothes and stationery and left them outside my door this morning.
Although morning is relative. It’s still dark.
Slightly greyer than it was when I landed, but still fucking dark.
I turn and check out my arse in these tight black leggings.
“Cute enough,” I mutter. “Better not get it kicked.”
I turn again and cup my breasts through the tight black vest top, giving them a squeeze.
A handful, nothing more, and they match the rest of this small, lithe frame that is now me.
My feet are clad in white trainers, a shoe choice that I never contemplated before but find remarkably comfortable.
Better than those hideous scraps of faux leather I was banished into wearing.
It’s like Zether wanted me to be as humiliated as possible.
“Well, you got your wish, you old cunt. You will be the first to end up on a pike when I return.” I dismiss my reflection and pick up my bookbag, also courtesy of Ryla and pull out the handy-dandy map she included.
“Obsidian Arena, where are you?” I locate it on the other side of the grounds, near the gates.
For a moment, I consider crawling back into bed and not complying with this ridiculousness, but Eldris Blackridge is a creature that doesn’t fuck about.
I’m not stupid enough to test him on my first day.
When I leave my room, the hallway is already busy.
Students stream past, all of them too polished, too certain, too at home in this place, too happy to be here.
Why is no one trying to leave? I don’t understand how this works.
Someone in this place has to know a way out.
That Hale creature was useless. Hot, with dark auburn hair, greeny-gold eyes and a body I’d love to climb like a fucking tree and destroy while riding him until his cock breaks, but still a useless male with a made-up designation that he somehow thinks is real and powerful.
Hellhound. I’ve never heard of anything so absurd.
The tower tries to rearrange itself on the way down. A staircase shifts left. A landing stretches, then snaps back. I stop in the middle of it and glare at the stone.
“Try me.”
The bannister rattles once but stays in place.
That’s right, bitches.
By the time I reach the main hall, I’ve managed to memorise the route on the map Ryla shoved in with the clothes.
I shove it back into my book bag and grip the strap tighter as I make my way outside onto the main courtyard, where I had my fall from goddesshood.
I look up, but I can’t see a tear in the fabric.
I have absolutely no idea how I got here, and that pisses me off almost as much as the banishment itself.
A pulse of power brushes over the stones under my feet, low and steady, built into the place itself.
Wards. Layers of them. I can’t read the pattern yet, but I feel the pressure of it against my skin.
SilverGate is caged from the inside and the outside.
That explains why nobody looks remotely concerned about being trapped here.
It does not explain why they all look so fucking pleased about it.
I cross the courtyard with my chin up and my temper close to the surface.
Black spires cut into the grey above. Students flood around me in clusters, talking, laughing, bickering.
Wings flash. Horns gleam. A female with silver markings down her throat brushes past me without apology.
A male with pointed ears gives me a long once-over and keeps walking after I bare my teeth at him.
The arena sits at the far edge of the grounds, all black stone and brutal angles.
It rises out of the earth like something built for sacrifice first and training second.
Massive arches cut around the outer wall, each one etched with wards that glimmer faintly when students pass through.
The gates beyond it tower over the boundary of the academy, silver bars set into dark stone, and every instinct in me turns toward them.
I stop.
The gates are shut. Beyond them, the world is wrong.
Dark ground stretches past the bars into a plain of black grass and pale standing stones, all of it under that same dead grey sky.
No sun. No road. No city in the distance.
No sign that anything exists beyond this place except more of the same bleak, endless realm.
The silver bars hum with enough power to make the fine hairs on my arms rise.
I step closer.
One more pace and the wards bite.
Blue-white sparks snap over my skin and drive me back hard enough that my trainers skid on the stone. Pain flares up my legs and into my spine.
I hiss at the gates. “Touchy, are we?”
A few students glance over. Nobody stops. Nobody offers help. Good. If one of them had, I might’ve tested whether this body can still bite through a throat.
The bells above the arena boom once. Then again.
I throw one last murderous look at the gates and stalk towards the nearest archway.
The ward there brushes over me, cooler than the one at the perimeter, and lets me pass.
Inside, the Obsidian Arena opens in a wide circular pit.
The floor is scored with both old and newer strike marks.
Weapon racks line one wall, and in the middle, there are black mats where presumably, creatures get their arses kicked.
“Well, well,” an annoying voice breaks through my focus. “Low-level witch.”
I turn my head to see the arsehole from the stairs. Hale called him Tobin. I give him a slow look from head to black trainers. “And you’re still talking. You do love hearing yourself.”
He’s dressed for training in black as well, only somehow, he makes it look deliberate instead of mandatory. Tall, lean, dark hair, silver eyes that are too calm for someone I’d quite like to set on fire. There’s a kind of control to him that irritates me on sight.
His gaze moves over me, taking in the leggings, the vest, the fact I’m not dead yet. “You found the arena. Congratulations.”
“Was that difficult for you?” I ask. “Stringing that many words together?”
A few students nearby go quiet. A couple snicker.
Tobin’s expression barely shifts. “You’re going to have a rough time here if this is how you start every conversation.”
“I’m going to have a rough time here because this place is a cursed hole full of smug idiots.”
He steps closer, not enough to crowd me, enough to make the point that he doesn’t mind my temper. “I’ll buddy up with the new girl,” he calls out as the professor walks in and claps his hands.
The professor is a broad-shouldered male with steel-grey hair and eyes that seem to change colour depending on how the light hits them.
“Like fuck,” I grit out and step back.
“New girl,” the professor says, those eyes fixing on me and giving me the creeps. “You will partner up with Tobin. I understand you are a witch who needs to catch up. Tobin is the perfect partner for you.”
“Oh?” I ask, raising an eyebrow. “And that would be because?”
“Tobe fancies himself as a bit of a prodigy,” another male says, who is again too hot for his own good. Blue eyes, dark hair, the aura of death all around him.
I stumble back and splutter out a cough to hide my surprise. How did I sense his aura? It’s the first real magic I’ve done since I got here.
Tobin gives me a curious stare. “You all right?”
“Fine,” I snap. “Prodigy, huh?”
“Prodigy enough to keep you alive for the next hour,” the professor says. “I’m Professor Vey. If I need to repeat myself, someone will bleed.”
That gets everyone moving.
Students break into pairs across the mats. Tobin jerks his head towards an open space like I’m meant to trot after him. I do, because I’m not in the mood to make a scene before I’ve worked out how many of these idiots I could actually kill in this body.
Professor Vey claps once as we take our places. “Today is defensive redirection. No offensive casting above level three. No blades. No summons. If I see blood, I expect a good reason. Begin.”
Silver fire erupts from Tobin’s hand and streaks across the space between us, landing solidly in my chest, and knocking me on my arse.
“Hey!” I snap. “What the fuck was that?” I look down and see that my vest top is smoking.
“That was a level two spell you were meant to block. Are you inept?”
“Inept?” I roar and get to my feet. “How fucking dare you? Do you know who you are talking to?”
I’m causing that scene I wasn’t meant to, and everyone, including Vey, has stopped to stare at me.
“A low-level witch with a smart mouth,” Tobin replies, almost bored.
“Keep saying that, and I’ll make you swallow your own spine.”
Professor Vey strolls closer, unbothered by my temper. “If you’re done performing, block the next one.”
“I wasn’t given a chance to block the first one.”
“That sounds like a personal failing.”
My chest still stings. I look down at the singed mark on the black fabric and decide, with complete certainty, that if I ever recover my full power, this entire academy is getting razed to the ground with everyone still inside.
Tobin lifts one hand. Silver light gathers over his palm, clean and controlled. “Watch the weave.”
“I’m watching you be insufferable.”
“Try harder.”
He sends the spell at me again.
My temper flashes so hard the stupid little spark under my skin answers it.
Blue light flickers out of my hands in a wild crackle that snaps between us and slams into Tobin’s silver fire. For one glorious second, it holds. The impact shudders up my arms, brutal and wrong, too much power forced through too little flesh. Then the whole thing detonates.
My arm snaps in half, and I gasp in shock and pain, gripping my broken arm by the wrist to stop it from flopping around. “Fuck!” I roar. “What the fucking hell?”
Vey rushes over and takes my arm in his solid hands, running a healing spell over it, which fixes it instantly. The pain fades, but my anger is still out in full force.
I breathe through my teeth and stare at my newly repaired arm in disgust. I’ve been in this body less than a full day, and it’s already disgraced itself by snapping under pressure.
Un-ac-ceptable.
Vey releases me and looks from my arm to my face. “Again, and try not to break this time. The paperwork is a bitch.”
I blink at him. “Are you deranged?”
“Again,” he repeats.
Tobin is still standing where the blast hit him. His shirt is scorched across one side. His silver eyes bore into mine. I can see the question in his eyes, but he can get fucked if he thinks I’m saying anything to him.
“Again, then,” I say to Tobin with more challenge in my tone than I think this body is prepared to handle.