30. Hale
Hale
Istand in front of her like a wall and try not to think about the fact that I’m being used as a shield against weapons that could potentially unmake a goddess. Not that it matters. I’d stand in front of my own mother to defend Asha.
Leith reaches up with both hands and lifts all three midnight spears from the suspension field. They don’t resist. They come free with a whoosh of air.
Everyone freezes.
I keep myself between Asha and the objects until I know they’re not going to suddenly recognise the goddess in the room and aim straight for her.
They look worse up close.
The black at the core doesn’t sit still. It churns, slow and deliberate, pulling everything around it slightly inward. The light in the room stops bothering to reach the spears, knowing it will get sucked up anyway.
“They’re cold,” Leith says, turning one over in his hands.
“Cold how?” Tobin asks, moving in from the side.
“Not temperature. Intent.”
I understand that in my bones, because my fire doesn’t like them. It goes very quiet. My fire has never done that for anything.
That is either significant or bad. With this academy, the difference is a coin flip.
“How do we carry them out of here without anyone noticing?” Asha asks from behind my shoulder.
“Carefully,” Leith says.
She makes a sound. “Yep, walked into that one.”
“In a nutshell, we simply walk out. Trying to hide them will be more of an alarm.”
“You expect us to walk across the academy grounds with those?” I ask.
Tobin frowns. “It’s not ideal, but also why we are here so early. We need to move.”
Leith gives Tobin one spear, then me one.
The moment my fingers close around it, my fire retreats so fast it feels like someone punched a hole through my chest.
I go still.
Asha notices. Of course she does. “Hale?”
“I’m fine,” I say.
“You are doing that lying thing where your voice gets too flat.”
“It doesn’t like me. My fire.”
Tobin’s eyes cut to the spear in my hand. “That’s useful information.”
I glare at him. “Define useful before I throw this at your head.”
“If it suppresses hellfire, then it’s strong enough to counter daylight frequency. We needed the inverse. This is the inverse.”
“Great. I’m holding a divine anti-Hale stick. Thrilled.”
Asha steps around me before I can stop her. The spear in my hand shifts.
I shove my arm behind my back and step in front of her again. “Nope.”
Her eyes flare. “Don’t nope me.”
“It reacted.”
“To me?”
“To you. So stay behind me and keep that charm where the spear can see it.”
She lifts it and holds it as high as the tether will let her.
“Good girl,” I murmur, and her eyes light up.
Even the goddess likes a bit of praise.
“Let’s go,” Tobin says, edging past us to the door.
He opens it with magic, but there is a very definitive ward shining over it in a crosshatch of pure magic.
“Wonderful,” I say. “Any ideas how we get around that?”
Tobin studies it, silver magic sparking low around his fingers. “It sealed when the spears left containment.”
“Anti-theft device,” I mutter. “Shocking from a weapon chamber. My mother has these. They are usually impossible to dismantle.”
Asha steps closer to my side. I shift again, placing myself between her and the ward. “Usually?”
I give her a look but step up to the plate. I’ve dismantled a few in my time as a Prince of Hell.
I pass my spear to Leith. He takes it without comment, which is good, because if he says anything about my fire flinching, I’ll set his coat alight on principle.
Without the midnight spear in my hand, my hellfire creeps back under my skin, cautious and pissed off. It doesn’t roar. It prowls. I flex my fingers, let the flame gather low in my palms, then step towards the ward.
I place my palm an inch from the crosshatch.
The ward reacts instantly. Lines of power brighten, crossing over each other in a pattern that looks decorative if you are stupid enough to ignore the part where it will probably remove your arm. The magic isn’t SilverGate’s usual smug architecture. This is Blackridge.
It examines my hellfire and decides it does not approve.
“Rude,” I mutter.
“What is it doing?” Asha asks.
“Judging me and finding me lacking.”
“Because you aren’t acting like a Hell Prince,” Asha mutters.
I shoot her a death stare. She scowls back at me, but she’s right. I’m not.
I’m acting like a student sneaking through corridors with stolen weapons and a goddess behind my back.
I straighten to my full height and let the mask drop.
Not the arrogant one I wear around the academy or the vicious one I use when someone looks at Asha too long.
The other one. The old one. The hereditary one carved into me by Hell’s throne room, by my mother’s lessons, by bloodlines that don’t ask permission because that is for creatures who can be refused.
Hellfire rises.
The ward flares harder.
“Careful,” Tobin murmurs, but I ignore him.
My focus narrows to the lattice in front of me. Blackridge’s magic presses at my skin, cold and ancient, layered with command. It isn’t a lock. It’s a question.
Who are you?
I smile slowly.
“Prince Hale of Hell,” I say, voice low, steady, carrying every ounce of authority I usually pretend I don’t have. “Son of the Devil. Heir to Master of Hellhounds and a realm that predates your academy’s sense of self-importance.”
The ward doesn’t open.
Asha makes a tiny sound behind me. “That was hot, but ineffective.”
The ward brightens, unimpressed.
I shrug and close my eyes, letting the shift to three-headed hellbeast take over.
My bones crack as fire detonates through my spine. The room drops lower around me when I get bigger, heavier, and a hell of a lot less reasonable.
Three heads. Six eyes. One body built for war.
Asha swears behind me, low and appreciative. “Now you’re talking.”
The ward reacts.
It stops questioning.
It recognises realm authority, not academic permission.
Hellfire rolls around me, licking up the stone walls without burning them.
The chamber’s objects rattle on their tables.
The black blade vibrates once, then falls still.
Blackridge’s ward brightens until the entire doorway becomes a burning grid of old command.
I step closer.
The centre head lowers toward the ward. The left watches the room. The right tracks Asha because every instinct I have says those spears still know exactly what she is beneath Tobin’s charm.
The ward hums.
It pushes against my heads, my chest, my fire, reading me down to the marrow. Blackridge’s power crawls over my hellhound form with clinical interest, and I let it. I don’t snarl. I don’t strike. I stand there and make it understand what it is considering refusing.
A door can deny a student.
It thinks twice before denying Hell.
The crosshatch contracts to a single point of black light in the centre of the doorway.
I touch it with the centre head’s nose.
The room goes white.
Then the ward opens.
It tears itself apart in four clean lines and retracts into the stone with a crack that makes every object in the chamber shiver.
“Everyone will have heard that,” Tobin remarks, but pats me on the flank as he brushes past. “Nicely done.”
I grunt at him and shift back, fully clothed, to grab the spear from Leith as he walks past.
Asha catches my wrist as I pass her. “See. I knew you had it in you. Why do you pretend to be less than who you are?”
It’s a damn good question, and she asks it seriously. She doesn’t understand it when she is fighting for her powers back.
“Because if I walk around here with my head up my arse, it just makes things more difficult. It’s easier to pretend.”
Her eyes narrow, but then she nods once, and I think she gets it. Then her expression hardens. “Don’t do it with me.”
I stare down at her fingers around my wrist. Small hand. Ridiculous body. Power crouched behind her eyes like a storm waiting for permission.
That lands where I don’t want it to, and I don’t give her an answer.
“Why?” she asks anyway.
“Because if I let the prince out too often, people remember I’m not just a hellhound with a temper.
They remember I’m heir to something ancient and monstrous.
They start calculating. They start bowing.
They start fearing the title more than the person wearing it.
I don’t want to be a throne room weapon.
I want to be the bastard who feeds you at midnight and burns portraits because you ask. ”
“I’ll accept it. For now. We’d better move out.”
Tobin and Leith are already moving across the grounds.
I tighten my grip on the midnight spear and pull Asha with me.
The corridor outside the chamber feels too narrow after the shift. My bones still remember being larger. My skin still carries the aftershock of Hell’s authority, and my fire keeps close to the centre of my chest, sulking because the spear exists in my hand.
Asha keeps pace beside me, the null-thread charm bouncing against her chest. Her eyes keep flicking to the spear, then up to the buildings, then back to me. She’s waiting for the academy to react.
So am I.
SilverGate doesn’t disappoint.
The bell tolls once.
No, not the bell but a bell. A single note from somewhere deep under the stones. The ground vibrates.
“Fight?” Asha asks hopefully.
“Not even close,” I say as we come to a dead stop, surrounded by an army of undead that Leith is currently trying to get control over. “I hate early mornings,” I add.