11. The Academy
THE ACADEMY
Seraphina
The library is the first place on the Iron Isle where my shoulders loosen without permission.
No weapons line the walls. No training circles mark the floors. No Overlords breathe down our necks.
Just books. Thousands of them.
Recruits from all three units are scattered among the tables, pretending to make the most of our allocated Recovery and Research period as though the first Triad isn't imminent.
All except Az, that is.
He's sprawled over an open book, far more committed to recovering than researching, and looking entirely unashamed about it.
Khali and Reiva are deep in conversation with someone from Stannum Company, so I cross the room to where Diana sits alone near one of the tall windows.
She has three books open in front of her and, for the first time, appears oblivious to the fact that she's surrounded by the very creatures who were the subject of her studies.
I slide into the chair opposite. "Planning to read the entire library?"
She scoffs, then glances up. "I doubt I'll live long enough to make it to the third circle."
When I frown, Diana taps the small text at the top of the page where the chapter title reads:
The Second Circle of Hell.
For a moment neither of us speak, but the quiet here feels different from the rest of Vulcaris. Less dangerous.
Maybe that's why, when she turns the page and it’s a new chapter, The Third Circle of Hell, I decide to skip any more small talk and just come right out and say it. "Khali wants to make an alliance."
That gets her attention.
She closes the book and sits slightly straighter. "An alliance?"
Nodding, I lean over the table and drop my voice to a whisper. “With her, Az and Reiva.”
One pale eyebrow rises.
When she says nothing, I go on. “We exchange information about Virtus for extra training sessions. Nothing that could cause any danger to our people, just insight into the virtues they lack.”
She glances toward them and shivers.
“We don't need to trust them," I quickly add. "We just need to pretend we don't despise them long enough to get something useful out of it."
Diana studies me for a moment.
“They actually asked for me to join this alliance?”
"You're a demonologist's apprentice.”
“Was. And don’t think I missed how you avoided giving a straight answer to my question.”
My cheeks heat with guilt.
Diana's gaze drops briefly to the books spread across the table. "They won’t want me."
I blink. "Diana, you're currently studying from three books simultaneously. I hardly know a thing about you and I can already tell you’re probably the most qualified person in Ferrum when it comes to virtues, demons, hells circles,” I nod to the book.
“All of it. They would be foolish not to say yes. And well, no offence but extra training could help you a lot in the games.”
Silence stretches between us.
Then she gives a small nod. "Okay. Ask them."
Relief loosens something in my chest. It’ll be nice to have another nephilim with me. Feel less traitorous. Plus, she really could use the extra training. "I will."
She reopens her book. Conversation over.
Or it should be.
Instead, I glance around the library. No one is paying us any attention.
Good.
I lower my voice. "Yesterday at check-in..." Her eyes lift from the page as though just noticing I’m still here. "You said you were an inmate at the Repentance Academy."
A flicker of something passes across her face. "Yes. So?"
I hesitate. "Did you mean student? Or patient perhaps?”
Diana scoffs and the question hangs between us. She closes her book again slowly, then folds her hands on top of it. "No." Something about the way she says it makes my stomach tighten. "I meant inmate. And that was the nice way of putting it."
I frown. "I’m sorry, but what does that mean?"
She leans forward and looks me in the eyes to make sure she has my attention, like she intends to say what she has to say once and never talk about it again.
She clears her throat. "They say it’s a place that helps people," she mutters quietly.
"Yes. Like a school."
A hollow laugh escapes her. "That's what they tell everyone."
The words, or perhaps the laugh itself, send a chill through me.
She stares past me toward the endless rows of books. "I said inmate because it’s more like an asylum. It isn't designed to help us." Her jaw tightens. "It's designed to break us."
I swallow my gasp and don’t say anything as the words settle heavy between us.
“What did they do to you?” I eventually ask, memories of Lorelei’s words in the alley rising up.
‘…taken all their classes, suffered all their reconditioning. I’ve taken vows of chastity sealed with blood. I didn’t even fight back when they chained my wings.’
Diana’s eyes meet mine. She doesn’t answer right away, her fingers stay on the book, not tapping or turning back to her page, not moving at all. It’s like motion might loosen something inside her that she’s spent a long time keeping contained.
“They called it repenting for our sins.” Her throat works as she swallows. “In truth, it was torturing them out of us until we became scared of our own shadows. Shells of the people we were when we were dragged from our beds and taken to that marble slab of supposed salvation.”
“What sort of sins?”
“Most of us were there due to some minor lapse in judgment, but soon enough they would find more to add to repent for.”
“Why?” I ask. “How?” I don’t mean to interrogate her, but what she’s saying… it’s so far from what I know to be true.
“Because they can. And well, within a week of being at the hands of an Educator, anyone can be convinced they are guilty. No better than a truly evil person who might deserve whatever horror is happening to them.”
I swallow, suddenly feeling too hot and very claustrophobic. “Like what?”
“They make you repent.” Her fingers tighten slightly. “All day. Every day.”
I frown. “What does that…involve?”
She hesitates, and when she speaks again, her voice is barely audible.
“It starts with confession,” she says. “You stand in a circle and list what you’ve done wrong.
If you run out of things, they tell you you’re a liar and not trying hard enough.
” A faint, humorless breath leaves her. “So… you start inventing things. Or they do it for you.”
My chest tightens. “Like?”
She shrugs. “Lying. Taking or touching something that isn’t yours. Looking lustfully at someone. Speaking out of turn. Wanting too much. Wanting anything at all.”
“Then?” I whisper.
“Then repetition,” she says. “You write it until your hands shake. You pray for forgiveness until your voice goes raw. You repeat it until the words stop feeling like language and start feeling like something inside you being scraped out.”
“The Educators oversee all of this?” The name I’ve always had great respect for suddenly makes something cold settle in my chest.
She nods.
I shake my head, then lean forward, glancing around the room again to make sure everyone is still paying us no attention. “Do you think that maybe the Eductators have been infiltrated by…” I nod my head to the cambion male with thick black horns just across from us. “Demons?”
“No. They are Seraphim,” she says flatly.
“That’s the worst part. White robes, calm faces, voices like they’re doing something kind and gentle.
” She swallows. “But they don’t touch you like angels.
They touch you like you're broken, need fixing and they’re enjoying discovering how to take you apart most thoroughly. ”
My throat tightens. “What exactly do they do to you?” I ask again, quieter.
“You want specifics.”
I don’t deny it.
Diana’s hands curl slightly against the book. “I-I don’t think I’m ready to talk about it. Not yet. Not here.”
Not with a stranger I don’t trust, I finish for her inside my head.
“Of course, I’m sorry.”
Her gaze lifts to mine. “Don’t be sorry for something that you are in no way responsible for. If you were ever really there, you’d have had as much control of what happens as me, Lorelei and the others did.”
Guilt tightens my chest, if only she knew the role me and my family played in opening up the academy.
Those who would ordinarily have died in prison die at my hand now, and much sooner. If not for that, we would never have been able to close the prisons and open an academy for those who are repentable instead.
“I’ll ask them about the alliance,” I promise, nodding toward Khali, Reiva and Az. “And I swear, I won’t let anything happen to you here like what happened there.”
She huffs a laugh and glances around the Library. “I doubt they’d be capable of it.”
“D-Demons,” I stutter. “With actual evil blood running in their veins. Not capable of something awful as you say seraphim are?”
She nods, like what she’s claiming isn’t completely unbelievable. “Truly. I don’t believe that the cambion in this room are capable of such evil in its purest form like the Educators are.”
“That’s what you think the academy Educators are? Evil in its purest form?”
She nods. “It’s like…”
“Like what?”
“You won’t believe me.”
“Try me.”
“It’s like they were so good for so long to get to where they are, something eventually switched in them.” She shrugs and I frown, struggling to imagine any seraphim the way she is describing them. They are naturally light and pure and…. “It’s like being good all the time just isn’t sustainable.”
I’d laugh in incredulity if she didn’t sound so earnest, and if what she’s claiming about the academy and those running it wasn't so terrifying.
“How can you possibly believe that?” I ask, desperately not wanting to believe it myself yet having a hard time finding any deception in her voice. “To even suggest that these demons aren’t capable of something you claim seraphim have done to you…”
“They don’t have a lifetime of trying to be pure building up inside them, ready to ignite.
” she says. “That’s the only explanation I have been able to come up with for the seraphim at the academy’s cruelty.
It’s like one day the burning build up of raw good and pure energy eventually dies out and turns into something different,” she shudders. “Something dark.”
Silence stretches between us, and I’m shaking my head despite something churning inside my gut, like it’s waking up and wants me to do the same.
“I’ll let you know what they say about the alliance," is all I can manage before reaching for a random book off the closest shelf to me and distracting myself with it for the rest of R&R.