17. The Wake
THE WAKE
Seraphina
Ididn’t eat the cake, but I somehow agreed to go with Khali and Az to ‘Get the round in.’
Beyond the crowd of demons, is a bar carved from onyx stone and bottles are suspended on floating platforms, slowly rotating thanks to the same magic that makes orblights glow and toilets flush.
“I shouldn’t be in here,” I murmur, regretting it already.
Khali grins. “That’s the best reason to stay. Let us get you one drink, it’s the least we can do after you saved our lives in the game today.”
“Yeah. Sharing the food was the last thing I was thinking about,” Az agrees. “I don’t do that at the best of times.”
“You share with me,” Khali argues.
“Yes, but… you're you, it’s different,” he admits, shaking his head. “I don’t share food with just anyone.”
We squeeze past a group of rowdy demons arm-wrestling on a tall table, then Khali grabs my hand and weaves us through where Lilliana and her ever growing group of followers congregate.
Eventually we reach the bar, and Az slaps his palm on the counter. “Four pints of ember, and one holy water for the Virtuous One.”
I elbow him. “Not funny.”
“The holy water’s for Diana. I got you an ember like us more hardy bastards.”
“But—”
The bartender turns.
And the world tilts.
He’s older now, less baby faced.
Broader shoulders beneath rolled shirt sleeves, jaw shadowed, eyes darker than I remember, but still blue.
My pulse stutters.
For a heartbeat, he doesn’t seem to recognize me.
Then his expression freezes, and something cold and sharp fills his eyes.
The rag in his hand stills.
My mouth goes dry.
Elias.
The name hits me like a knife to the ribs.
“Well,” he says quietly, yet his voice still cuts through the noise. “Didn’t expect to see you here.”
I blink at him, convinced this is a bad dream or that I’ve woken up in another game.
Several blinks later and the farmer's son still stands behind the bar, different but unmistakable. The same crooked smile that once made me believe breaking the rules would be worth it in the end.
Only now it doesn’t reach his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly.
Khali looks between us. “You two know each other?”
He smiles, but it’s not kind. “Once upon a broken virtue.”
“Something like that,” I mumble, my cheeks filling with heat.
Az whistles low. “Now this sounds scandalous.”
Elias ignores the hulking cambion, his gaze staying locked on me. There’s no warmth, no trace of the boy I used to know.
Elias pours the first drink, sets it on the counter, and slides it toward me without breaking eye contact.
Was it the academy or Vulcaris that erased the stars that used to sparkle in them?
His voice drops as he leans closer, almost too soft to hear. “Guess your father finally decided the academy wasn’t beneath you after all.”
My breath catches.
Khali glances between us. “Wait. You two like know each other, know each other?”
I try to come up with some twisted half-truth of how we might know one another, but the more I think back on the times spent in my turret with him after he bought me meals, or that final time in the barn, the more panic hits me, hard and fast.
He knows my name.
My real name.
He knows me as Seraphina Helvane.
He knows who my father is.
And here, surrounded by the enemy, knowledge is a weapon.
And I’m not sure who’s side he’s on.
One word from him and I’m dead.
A traitor. A spy. Executable.
My heartbeat becomes violent. “I-I didn’t expect…” The words die, strangled in my throat. “The academy sold you, too?”
He nods.
“I truly am sorry, Elias.”
His mouth twists, not quite a smile. “Don’t be. Don’t get me wrong, for a long time, I hated you. Like really fucking hated you.”
I flinch.
Hate is such a strong word.
A feeling that lets evil thoughts in so they can fester and grow.
In Virtus, we don’t use it. But we are in Vulcaris now, and Elias has a few years here under his belt for his hatred toward me to bubble away.
He scoffs, throwing the cloth over his shoulder and reaching for a small metal measuring cup.
“Coming here is the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” he admits, then his gaze drops to the bar top.
“But for a long time, they had me convinced you were the worst thing that had ever happened to me.” His eyes flicker to mine, almost like they don’t want to but he’s forcing them to.
“After three years in the academy, I believed it.”
He doesn’t look at me again after that as he pours liquor from a bottle with a stem until the metal cup is overflowing, then picks it up between two fingers and knocks it back.
He shudders as it goes down his throat, then immediately starts to pour a second.
I reach out, covering the metal cup with two fingers so he can’t fill it anymore.
His eyes meet mine.
“I really am sorry,” I repeat, not knowing what to say that won’t involve an explanation that will give away too much information about a version of me that Khali, Az and the rest of the island can never find out. “I know it’s not fair—”
“Fair?” he scoffs, batting my hand out of the way and throwing back another shot of liquor.
“I was a farmer. You were…” My eyes go wide with panic, silently pleading with him not to say it.
“You were… you, Sera. Nothing was ever going to end fair between us. I knew the risks of sneaking around with someone like you.”
“And still, you did it anyway,” Az finishes for him. “The classic tale of a man and his cock.”
Khali elbows him. “Az.”
“What’s with all the elbowing, ladies? He’s looking at Scarvo like she owes him a lifetime of therapy.”
Elias’s jaw tightens.
“Careful,” Khali warns. “Don’t want to piss off the best tattoo artist on The Iron Isle.”
Elias is the tattoo artist she spoke about?
How things have changed.
I wrap my fingers around the frothy pint of ember and bring it to my mouth.
Glug, glug, glug.
“Easy there,” Khali whispers. “Let’s not have a repeat of Diana, yeah?”
I glance over to where we left the demonologist’s apprentice. Despite telling her otherwise to make her eat the bread earlier, I don’t think I’ve really forgiven her for getting drunk and leading Lilliana right to my journal.
So how can I ever expect Elias to accept my apology.
Glug, glug, glug.
I pull the glass from my lips and set it back down. “It’s okay,” I tell Khali. “I’m not staying.” Then I look at Elias. “I really am sorry, Eli. Hopefully one day I can prove it, and you’ll be able to bring yourself to not hate me. You never used to hate me...”
“I don’t hate you, Sera. Not really. Not anymore.” He shrugs and reaches up for the towel on his shoulder, revealing tattoos on his forearms.
They look like the sigils in the room we first met Makina in. I lean over the bar a little and squint, just to be certain.
Yes, like before, some I recognize. They are the sigils for each of the seven kingdoms of Scelus. A rose of flame for Luxuria, a hand clutching a mirror for Superbia, two serpents entwined around a hollow circle, biting at each other’s tails for Invidia, the land of envy.
He catches me looking and tugs at his shirt sleeve to cover them.
“Sure, I blamed you for the academy,” he continues.
“The worst three years of my life… But then, I guess you know first-hand now, don’t you?
” His blond eyebrows pinch together, curiosity taking over some of the hatred in his blue eyes.
“What did change your fathers mind about sending you there, by the way? Get sick of blindly doing his dirty work?”
The room tilts again.
I can’t breathe.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Khali asks.
I quickly cut in before Elias can answer and dig me an even deeper hole to get myself out of. “It means he’s had too much to drink.”
“Or not enough,” Elias quips. “At least you know what it’s like now. The academy, I mean. For years I resented that you never would.”
I swallow, but don’t say anything, I don’t even nod, because if I’m ever going to lower myself to lie here, it can’t be about that.
I can’t pretend I have been through what he and Diana and the others went through.
The experiments Diana told me about, the torture tales they’d shared. From water boarding to some kind of magic currents and shock therapy to fry the sins out of their ‘patients.’
Az’s grin vanishes. “Careful, bartender,” he says lightly, though his tone has an edge to it. “You almost sound like you are glad she endured that sick Repulsion academy.”
“Az,” I mutter.
“Az what, Angel girl?” he says. “I wouldn’t wish that place on my worst enemy, and I’ve only heard about it. He’s lived it.”
The Rec feels too small all of a sudden, too hot, the walls too close.
I step back, ready to get away from Elias and this entire conversation. Wanting nothing more than to run back to the dorm and never visit The Rec or see Elias again.
Another step and I knock into someone.
“Watch where you're treading, Halo-Rat!” Lilliana snaps from behind me, slamming her palms into my back and shoving me toward the bar.
I clench my fists and hiss at the pain.
Elias leans forward, lowering his voice. “After all this time?” The anger in his eyes gives way to pity. “It’s still not healed?”
He was there. He bought clean bandages and was ordered to rub salve into the wounds that would break back open too easily.
My eyes go wide, my heart somehow beating even further out of my chest as I try to communicate with him without words.
I want to speak, to explain, to deflect, but I have no idea what will make anything about this better, and everything I say has potential to make it so much worse.
“What’s not healed?” Khali asks, eyeing me up and down, suspicion etched into her features.
“It’s nothing,” I insist, turning my back away from her. “I’m fine, I just didn’t realize Lilliana was there. She surprised me.”
Lilliana huffs but another bartender becomes free and she shoulders her way to the front, ordering a round of her special cocktails.
Elias arches an eyebrow, then barks a laugh. “You, taken by surprise? So what, you’re a cadet for the seven Sisters and a liar now, Sera?”
Khali’s frown deepens further still.
Time to change the subject or get out of there.
“Really?” I say, trying to feign lightheartedness when I don’t feel any at all. “I’d say I was pretty surprised when your mother walked in on us in the barn.”
I can’t believe the words are leaving my mouth even as I say them, but what choice do I have? Better Khali, Az and whoever else is listening, talk about this than talk about my father, and what I did or didn’t do for him. Or the scars on my back.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Az rushes out. “My innocent little Angel girl caught in a barn? Nope. Never! I refuse to believe it.”
Elias lets out a breath, not quite a laugh. “Innocent,” he repeats, eyes not struggling at all to meet mine now. “That’s not a word I’d use to describe her naked in the hay.”
Az hears it.
Khali hears it.
Half the damned room hears it.
Heat crawls up my neck. Apparently a few years spent in Vulcaris has made him much blunter, less prudish.
“Tell us. Everything.” Az says, leaning an elbow on the bar. “And don’t you dare leave out the harp music, fainting, or soft brushes of feathery wings.”
“Mmhmm, we need all the unholy details,” Khali adds, actually encouraging Az for once.
“You’re insane if you think I’m going to tell you anything.”
“Clear up the story for us… before it becomes legend,” Az says. “Or worse, before someone else decides to fill in the blanks for you.” Raising an eyebrow at Elias he says, “Care to be the one to fill those blanks?”
Elias shakes his head and goes back to pouring the remaining pints of ember that Az ordered.
Khali, Az and several others around us, including a few of Lilliana’s followers, look at me like they are waiting to hear some shocking tale of how two nephilim wound up in the Repentance Academy after a night in the hay.
I give them nothing, not a word, lifting the glass of frothy ember to my lips.
I glance around the room, checking on Diana, the buffet table, Ravi who’s back at her owner’s side.
Silver…
He’s looking this way. How much of this has he heard?
Our eyes meet and he pulls a face, then points toward his top lip.
I frown at him, confused.
He traces a finger along it next.
Then his tongue…
I copy, tracing my tongue along my top lip, mortified to find a line of frothy foam from the pint.
Silver nods, a smirk tugging at his lips.
Another reason to get out of here.
I set the glass down, wiping at my mouth with my free hand, and Az leans closer. “If you don’t tell me, Angel girl, I will have no choice but to fill in the gaps myself. And I have an imagination that would make the Overlords and the Seven Sisters blush.”
“In that case, surely you can put it together for yourself. Two bored nephilim, a barn, a sentence in the Repentance Academy…”
“Shh, shh, shhh, listen…” Az holds up a finger. “Murmurs are already spreading, and people rely on me for their information. Are you sure you don’t want to give me the gory details?”
“You’re enjoying this far too much.” I glance at the door, ready to make a swift exit.
He shrugs. “Well?”
I shake my head. “Positive.”
Az’s face lights up, like he’d rather fill in the gaps himself.
“Leave the poor girl alone, Az,” Khali cuts in. “Not everyone wants their sex life known by anyone who will listen.”
“Fine,” Az submits. “I guess I have enough to give the people mostly accurate information.”