Chapter 21
Lying in bed after the day I’d had felt like a luxury.
My Virtues were all occupied and settled, so I couldn’t justify running myself ragged.
I’d mentally checked in with them before going to bed.
Hendrik was busy dealing with Dante—violently, from what I gathered through our connection.
I didn’t even want to ask. When I was in the mood for their brand of passion, I’d join them one day; for now, I was glad that they could find comfort in one another, no matter what form that took.
Dante wouldn’t talk to me either, but our bond was stronger than it had been since my return. He would be okay, and after what my mother had said about him, I wondered if the long path of his healing had finally begun.
Strangely, because of Cole.
Because of me.
Kaito worked with Sonya’s mates to pick the five students who would accompany us on the journey into Luc’s territory. He seemed to enjoy the task as he evaluated the students who hadn’t sustained major injuries from the latest attack.
Logan worked with his wolves, and eagerly asked me if I was okay the moment I initiated our psychic connection. We hadn’t parted on the best of terms, but I told him I was just going through something. As always, he said he understood, and he didn’t press me for answers I wasn’t ready to give.
Always my loyal wolf.
Sighing, I turned over in bed, only to jolt when Yuri burst into the room and slammed the door.
“Ugh!” she groaned and flopped onto the bed beside me, making Olivia look up from her quiet studies at the table.
“What’s up, bloody cup?” Olivia asked, smirking.
“The most horrible thing ever!” the vampire exclaimed, flipping over.
“Did you run into any Demonspawn?” I asked, worried that we hadn’t gotten rid of all of them.
She waved my concerns away. “No. What I had to deal with was way, way worse. I had gym.”
“Sounds devastating,” I solemnly agreed.
“You have no idea!” she cried. “Uweka is a monster. He works us like dogs. I hate him. I hate him and I hate my life. He made us fight Hellhounds, Lily.” She flopped onto her side. “They bite, you know.”
“Uweka probably thought it was ironic,” Olivia offered, licking her finger before she turned the page in her oversized book, or grimoire, as she’d liked to correct me. She glanced up and smirked. “You tend to bite too, sometimes.”
Yuri frowned and propped herself up on her elbows. “Yeah but, I’m cute. Hellhounds? Not so cute.”
Olivia shrugged, going back to her studies. “Tell that to my finger.”
“Hey!” Yuri squealed. “That only happened one time, and you had already cut yourself on a broken cup! Not my fault your blood is tasty.”
I chuckled. “You’re both crazy.”
Yuri narrowed her eyes at me. “You know who’s crazy? Professor Uweka. He’s like some sort of ancient shaman and the Dean put him in charge of Immortal Gym Class.” She rubbed her shoulder then winced, although I couldn’t see a bruise. “He’s intense. Like seriously, I think I have TFSD.”
Olivia raised a brow. “I think you mean PTSD.”
Yuri shook her head. “No, I mean TFSD; Totally fucked and seriously done.”
Olivia rolled her eyes.
“Is it worse than shifter gym?” I asked, then my heart twisted remembering my uni-hare familiar had ventured into the Enchanted Forest and still hadn’t come back.
It was probably for the best.
Yuri nodded, oblivious of my distress. “Worse than all the smelly shifters you could put in this room combined. Only the Demis and vamps can even take Immortal Gym. It’s so intense, it could kill the mortal species. Like mages, for one.”
Gaping, I stared at her. “Wow. That is intense.”
“Yeah.” She hitched up a shoulder. “I was appalled when I saw some of the shit they go through. But the Dean pointed out that no vampire or Demi is going to be able to really learn all their abilities if they aren’t pushed to the limit. And now’s not the time for any of us to take it easy.”
That logic sounded a little too close to home, and supported Sonya’s argument that Cole had actually strengthened my Virtues, even if it hadn’t been pleasant.
“I’m going to learn Shaman voodoo and stick a needle up his ass,” Yuri vowed as she pulled a blanket over her upper body. She shifted over the side of the mattress as her upper body hung toward the floor. “Or I’ll just kill him. I haven’t decided yet.”
Olivia snorted. “Uh-huh.”
“Okay, well. I’ll kill him if I can catch the old bastard. He’s fast.” She dropped the blanket over her face. “Just you wait,” she mumbled from underneath the fabric.
Olivia and I exchanged a look and snickered.
“What about you?” Olivia asked. “How was—”
A faint but unmistakable sound came from under Yuri’s blanket.
“Is she… snoring?” I asked.
“Sounds like it.” Olivia closed her grimoire. “She’s now sound asleep—upside down. She’s a walking, talking cliché.” She shook her head and then stood. “Hey, since you’re not sleeping, are you hungry?”
“Starving. Do you think we can still get room service?” The Demonspawn attacks had been pretty intense. I didn’t want to strain the Academy’s reserves.
“Maybe not, but I have something else we can eat. Wait right here.”
She disappeared into the small kitchenette each of the tower suites boasted and popped out seconds later. “How about this?”
She put the bounty down on the bed and beamed at me.
“That’s…” I grabbed one of the two bright orange bags, gasping in delight. “Cheetos! How did you get Cheetos here?”
“Not only that… but soda.” She put a canned soft drink in front of me and flopped down next to me, her own junk food clutched to her chest.
“How?” I tore the bag open and grabbed a couple of the orange twists, then shoved them into my mouth, groaning with delight.
“Well, there are some benefits to all of this realm merging stuff. It’s easy to get to Earth now and nab some goodies. Let’s hear it for too much sugar and artificial ingredients.”
Mouth full, I tipped my can at her in agreement.
A few minutes later, I made myself slow down and gave a happy sigh as I selected a fat, cheesy twist from the bag. “This makes this shitty day a little better.”
“Want to talk about it?”
I glanced toward Yuri, then at my best friend. “Yeah.”
The bags of Cheetos lay empty and two more snacks from Olivia’s hoard of Earth junk food had also been devoured—Twinkies, along with two more soft drinks. Now, amped up on sugar and having vented about the craptastic day, I looked at Olivia.
“The whole day sucked.”
“Sounds like it.” She nudged her knee against mine. “What are you going to do? Cole isn’t giving up.” With a heavy sigh, she looked toward the window. “And if he gets any worse, I’m almost afraid to see what happens.”
So was I, but after my talk with my mother, I felt a little better about it.
I was ready to give him up, if I had to.
What was harder was to accept that I could be ready to forgive him, too, if he passed my test.
“He’s still my Virtue,” I said. “That means we need him. I need him.” Forcing a smile, I said, “And hey, it’s not like my other mates weren’t dicks at first, either.
Dante kidnapped me. Kaito has manipulated me.
Orion tried to kill me through orgasmic chocolates.
Hendrik used you to make me his pet. Even Logan played the asshole, although he did that for me—I know that now, but it still hurt at the time. ”
“Yeah, okay. I see where you’re going with this…
okay, no.” She poked me in the side. “Why did you forgive these guys again? Why have I? I should turn them all into toads just on the friend principle alone. And Hendrik? Well, just on the Hendrik principle alone. Really, Lils… the only one I can honestly understand is Logan.”
“Logan.” I heaved out a sigh. “He’s a conundrum, isn’t he?”
“That’s one way to put it.”
My heart hurt when I thought about him, but it wasn’t a bad kind of hurt.
I explained to her everything my mother had said about my Virtues, and she hummed in agreement.
“I guess that does make a fucked-up kind of sense,” she marveled. “The universe is whacked.”
I laughed. “Yeah. It is.”
She curled her legs under herself. “But, Hendrik, though. It bothers me how he just pretended as if nothing happened. Your Virtues weren’t the only ones who missed you, you know.”
I swallowed hard. “I know. He told me as much, that he’d let me go, accepted my death because Dark Mages don’t mourn like most species.
Since they sacrifice their souls, once that final bell rings for them, that’s it.
The end. But… even knowing that, he didn’t pull you back into his clan during the past year.
He could have done that, made you use your soul and the magical energy that soul can offer for him and the clan. ”
“He could have tried,” Olivia said, golden eyes blazing. Suppressed power emanated from her like a brewing thunderstorm, electric and full of deadly potential.
“Agreed,” I said softly. “He could have tried, but he didn’t. And I think part of that, at least, is because he knew what you meant to me.”
She looked away, the power fading, like a great bird drawing in its wings.
“Don’t you think so?”
“No.” She blew out a breath and met my gaze levelly. “I know so. He told me.”
I blinked.
Olivia lifted a brow. “Are you surprised?”
“Um… yeah? Are you saying that Hendrik told you he left you alone because of me?”
“Pretty much.” She sighed and picked up a discarded Twinkie wrapper, capturing a bit of filling left behind.
After licking it off, she met my eyes once more.
“You’d been gone for several weeks. We were barely holding it together here and if it wasn’t for Kaito and Hendrik, I don’t think your Virtues would have held it together.
And I was still scrambling and trying to figure out what was going on. I was having visions.”
“Yuri told me about that,” I said, glancing at the vampire still lightly snoring as she hung off the side of the bed. “What were they like?”
She blew out a breath. “It took me off guard at first.” She shoved the remnants of our junk food feast from her lap and clambered out of bed to pace.
“I mean, it was so crazy. All of a sudden I had all this power and I didn’t know what to do with it, how to make sense of it or even how to wield it.
The visions were hitting me hard, showing me impossible things where you were alive.
So when Dark Mage Badass himself shows up at my door, I was ready to freak the fuck out. ”
I wasn’t about to tell Olivia that she was kind of doing that now, but… okay.
Finally, tearing her gaze from mine, Olivia looked away. “Hendrik is terrifying, if you hadn’t noticed. Like, worse than Lucifer. He showed up at the door and I’m certain he’s going to tell me he’s come to collect me. But… he doesn’t.”
I tilted my head. “So what did he want?”
She throws her hands down at her sides. “He tells me that I’m absolved of any responsibility to the clan. Just like that.”
“He absolved your duty to the clan? Why?” I asked, my eyebrows shooting up. It was one thing to leave Olivia alone, but she was still one of his mages. He should have been chomping at the bit for her power.
She took my hand and squeezed, staring into my eyes.
“I’ve never seen him show emotion before, but he broke right there on my doorstep, Lily.
He looked me in the eyes and said he was doing it for you, even if you never came back, even if it didn’t change anything, you had changed him.
” She shook her head. “He did the right thing. I couldn’t believe it. ”
Tears burned my eyes and I dashed my free hand across my cheek.
I’d cracked Hendrik’s shell, even if he wouldn’t admit it.
“So,” Olivia said on a sigh. “If you want the truth, I still think he’s a colossal dick, but… he has changed, and it’s because he cares about you.”
“And that’s it,” I said. “That’s why I’m able to forgive them, no matter what they’ve done. They gave up pieces of themselves, sacrificed for me, in ways they’d do for no other. I need them, but they need me, too.”
Olivia looked away, gaze drifting to the window. “You think Cole will come around, too?”
“Yes.” Please don’t let me be imagining things. Please don’t let this be just wishful thinking. “He’s a monster, Olivia. I know that.”
She took my hand, the quiet strength of her reaching out to calm me in a way I hadn’t known I needed.
“He's a monster… just like me.” I looked at her and made myself continue. “It's why I'm going to reach him, because he and I are the same.”
“You’re not a monster, Lily. Why would you say that?” Distress glittered in her eyes.
In the back of my mind, something lingered. Something awful and dark, something that might shatter the trust and faith my best friend had in me. “Maybe one day, I’ll tell you. But not today, Olivia. I can’t.”
“You never have to tell me if you don’t want to,” Olivia said softly, wiggling closer, then she wrapped her arms around me.
“None of us are who we used to be. We’re not who we were a year ago, especially you.
And we’re not who we were before everything started to go crazy because of Calamity, either. ”
I started to shake my head but she stopped me, laying a hand on my cheek.
“Listen,” she said, staring into my eyes. “Whatever it is… I’m here for you. Okay? Whatever you need.”
Overcome with gratitude, I dropped my forehead onto her shoulder. “Okay.”
Olivia stroked a hand up and down my back. “You’re exhausted. No wonder. You’ve been through so much lately.”
Guilt pricked me but I pushed it aside. It was the truth. But we’d all been through a lot.
And now it was time to put Cole to the test.