Chapter 1
Fortune Academy was most definitely not how I remembered it. Gothic towers spanned a blood-moon horizon and set the tone for my future, one where I had come back from the dead.
All I wanted to do was to see my Virtues, but there was one Virtue in particular who I definitely needed to see first.
Cole.
His name rolled through my mind over and over again, a mantra of my untamed Virtue, the one who had abandoned me in Purgatory…
but now he was here. I was sure of it. The thrum of his rage through my Virtue bonds burned hot, a tangible flame that had been left untethered and unchecked during my absence.
When I was dead.
A minor technicality.
Clenching my fists, I followed Yuri past the gates into my new home.
Fortune Academy Underworld.
A place where Fortune Academy and Monster Academy merged and supernaturals banded together from both sides of the coin.
My mother had created Monster Academy, and she was also one of Fortune Academy’s founders.
Maybe she knew this day would come where the two would merge and each had a place in the spiraling web of my life.
When did things get so complicated?
I took careful steps as I followed Yuri down the broken streets. Destruction ran its course through the seams along the burgundy cobblestones, searing hot with hellfire that the peppy vampire ahead of me seemed oblivious of, other than her skipping steps evading the worst of the cracks.
Her skirt bounced as she walked. She glanced back at me and smiled, her blood-dipped lollipop sticking out between her lips as she winked. “This place is so cool, right?”
The campus stretched out like a bad omen. “Cool” wasn’t exactly the word I’d use to describe it. Black, monstrous towers that gleamed as if tempered in flame, only to be forged as a glistening, impenetrable fortress made for an army, a kingdom, rather than an Academy.
Perhaps this place was both.
My Kingdom.
My home.
The undeniable claim my heart settled on this place rolled through me. “Yeah, it’s cool,” I finally agreed as Yuri led me into the crowded streets where students gave us a wide berth.
The weight at my back made it painfully obvious that I wasn’t like them. I wasn’t a simple supernatural creature with a single bloodline or a finite source of power.
No, I was a tribrid, reborn with my angel-third unlocked, crowned as a Princess of Hell and the Champion of the Third Echo of Calamity.
No pressure.
Well, I didn’t technically have a crown. Not yet, anyway. That would be super dope, though.
“Where are the guys?” I asked, referring to my Virtues. They would be my anchors, and considering the amount of burning rage that seeped through my chest, I knew they weren’t doing well. I needed to be their anchor, too. Did they really think I was dead? Gods, I hoped not.
“You’ll have to ask Olivia,” she said, plucking her candy out of her mouth with a pop. “She keeps tabs on them. They’re a handful, I’ll have you know. Far more trouble than they’re worth.”
“Noted,” I mumbled as I kept pace with her, my back already aching as I used new muscles to keep the massive weights on my shoulder blades off the streets.
I paused when a shadow swept across my feet. My heart jumped into my throat as a mixture of anticipation and fear streaked through me. Glancing up, I found a peculiar barrier that surrounded the campus. It rolled with multi-color waves as if the sky had been splashed with oil.
Before I could ask Yuri about the barrier, the shadow came again, this time with an unmistakable silhouette of wings tipped with deadly talons.
Cole.
There you are.
My rage demon thought that he could stalk me, instill fear in my heart and make me cower at his feet.
The old Lily might have been bullied into submission.
I’m not that girl anymore, I thought, setting my jaw as my wings lifted with the challenge.
You better hide, my demon mate, because when I find you, you’re going to be the one bowing to me.
“Are you paying attention?” Yuri asked. She’d been going on about some sort of alarm system for the growing Demonspawn attacks. I’d dealt with my fair share of Demonspawn—I was one of them. At least a third of me was, but Yuri didn’t have to know that.
“Huh? Yeah. Sorry,” I told her as I mentally remembered to lift my wings again. Just keeping them out of the dirt was proving to be exhausting. “I’m a little out of it,” I admitted.
“Understandable,” she said, her playful attitude slipping into a sweet smile. “You’ve been through a lot. Give yourself a break, yeah?”
“I wish it was that simple.” I had a sinking feeling that I wasn’t going to have a lot of time to adjust before things went crazy. If my history was any indicator, I had about thirty minutes before shit hit the fan.
We passed one of the larger buildings that seemed to be formed straight out of the ground with a slab of onyx. I resisted the urge to run my fingers across it. “This place has a whole goth-noir vibe going on,” I said.
Yuri laughed. “I think you’re the first person to call an Academy forged in Hell ‘goth-noir.’ ” She nudged me along. “This way.”
Following the vampire, I couldn’t help but notice the students keeping their eye on me. Maybe I was the first student with wings, but we were in Hell. It’s not like I was the weirdest thing around here.
“People are staring,” I complained as a tingling sensation curled up my neck. I knew if I turned around I’d find half of the students we passed stopped in their tracks.
“Ignore them,” Yuri said, then took a sharp right onto a new path, skipping over one of the molten lava trails. I made sure to keep my wings lifted. I wasn’t sure if burning any feathers would hurt, but I didn’t want to find out.
“We’re going to see Olivia, right?”
“Mhmm,” she confirmed. “She couldn’t meet us at the gate, but after she had a vision of you alive, she sent me right over. I mean, I went willingly. Er, that came out wrong. I wanted to see you.”
“I get it,” I said, holding up my hands in surrender.
“Let’s just hurry up.” I couldn’t explain the sinking sense of dread that weighed me down, and it wasn’t just my new wings making me feel a hundred pounds heavier.
My mates had thought I was dead, or maybe they still thought I was dead.
That realization made me feel sick. “I’ve been gone for three months, right?
That’s a long time. I need to see my mates. ”
Yuri bopped me on the nose with her lollipop, making me jolt. “Not three months, silly! You’ve been gone much longer than that. Twelve months, to be exact.”
My jaw fell open. “What? I’ve been gone an entire year?”
Yuri shrugs. “That’s what I said, a few months.” She rolls her eyes. “When you’re immortal a few months could easily mean a couple of years. Anyway, it’s not a big deal. Olivia will help you get it all sorted, right?”
I feel sick.
A shadow passed over my feet again and I glanced up, wondering if Cole was messing with me or if something else wanted me dead.
Whoever you are, get in line.
Yuri continued onward, ignoring the plethora of students still staring at us.
“Ignore him,” Yuri suggested as she jabbed a finger upward.
“He’s just trying to scare us. We’ve had a few minor Demonspawn attacks because of the whole Lucifer versus Sonya war going on, but the barrier does a good job of keeping the riffraff out. Most of the time, anyway.”
So, it was Cole. The barrier, or whatever it was, also did a good job of diluting my connection to him, but he knew I was here.
While I wanted to find a way to speak to him, I needed my loyal Virtues to know I was still alive.
Yuri took me into the dorms and we scaled the stairs. When we reached her room, the door yanked open and Olivia beamed at me. I almost didn’t recognize her at first with her bleached white hair.
“Lily!” she cried as she threw her arms around me.
“Saw us coming, did you?” Yuri asked as her lips lifted on the side. “You’re using your spooky voodoo powers too much, girl. You’re going to burn right through your magic at this rate.”
“Don’t be such a worry-wort,” Olivia said as she dragged me into the room. “Oh, Lily. I knew you were alive. I just felt it, even before I ‘saw’ it, you know?”
Tears crested Olivia’s eyes and she quickly brushed them away, but I’d seen her pain. She’d been here for an entire year while the world had passed me by in a blink.
“I’m so sorry, Olivia,” I said as I hugged her. “I didn’t mean to leave you like that.”
She held both of my hands and gave me a stern look, her golden eyes fierce. “Never apologize for what happened to you, you hear me?”
Startled, I nodded in agreement.
She squeezed my hands again for good measure. “Good. Now, we have a lot of catching up to do. You should sit down.”
I followed Olivia to a set of couches in a much more luxurious room than what we’d had at the old Fortune Academy. She sat next to me and I couldn’t help but run my fingers through her snow-white hair. “This is different. I like it. It’s a more mature look.”
She snorted. “Are you calling me old?”
“Distinguished,” I corrected, although I suspected why her hair had turned white while I’d been gone. “You haven’t been abusing that fancy new soul of yours I helped you get, right?”
Yuri barked a laugh while she rummaged through a small refrigerator, poking her head up while she chewed on something. “Olivia, careful with her magic? That’s cute.”
As if to emphasize the effect, Olivia’s golden eyes flashed for a brief moment and she grinned. “Three… two…” She lifted a finger just as a knock sounded at the door.
“Come in!” Yuri yelled as she shoved her head into the fridge again.
My heart skipped a beat when I felt who was on the other side of that door. My connection to my mates hummed to life, eager to be reunited again. While my mind felt like I had only been gone for a few hours, my connection to my Virtues felt worn and frayed, and in desperate need of attention.