Page 15 of Angel Lost (Fates Academy #3)

Chapter Fifteen: Lorelei

I drag my ratty bag from the corner and throw everything I own on the bed. Do I need course books? No. The Gifted Academy’s subjects will be different. I stare at the heap of ragtag clothes. A few pairs of leggings, some jeans, and the odd top from lost and found that no one claimed. Fuck. I wish I could wear my Fates uniform. I chew my lip, walking backward toward my desk, and promptly trip over Val’s guitar stand.

My back hits the ground, opening up my wounds again. “Shit!” I let my head flop and stare up at the ceiling. I have to tell the guys. But how much do I tell them? I bought myself some time, came straight here, didn’t tell anyone. Glancing up, Val’s stupid black clock, hands shaped like guitar picks, ticks away the time. Time I don’t have before the boys realize I’m back.

A beep vibrates under my butt. My phone. Digging it out, the screen flashes— Chano . Yeah, nope. Not ready for that conversation. It buzzes again. And again. Farrell. Zephyr .

Stop. I need time to think. Kai . I clench the phone so hard the plastic cracks. Hell.

Kai. I chose to let Kai die. Then killed him, killed them all.

The dorm room door bangs open, and I sit bolt upright, my head cracking against the desk. “Ow.”

Val halts, half in, half out of our room, staring down at me.

“You’re back! That asshole didn’t keep you.” She jiggles her butt in a weird happy dance. “But what in all hells are you doing? ”

I peer up at her, then down to the tangled mess of cables and microphones at my feet.

“Singing.”

“Sure, Mary Poppins,” she says, reaching down to help me sit up. She looks over at my bag. “Going somewhere?”

It all comes tumbling out. The trial. The Angel King inside my head. My panic. And Gifted Academy. The aether’s academy.

Val’s face is a thunderous scowl. “You’re running away.”

“I’m learning how to look after myself. How not to be the liability,” I correct her.

Val throws herself into her chair, reaches for a guitar, and begins restlessly moving her fingers across the strings. “This is about Naeve, isn’t it?”

“How can it be about Naeve?”

“You started to trust her, depend on her. Then you lost her, and those idiot boys pushed you away. None of you grieved properly. And now you’re back to being all independent.”

“Being independent isn’t a bad thing,” I mutter. “Anyway, it’s not that. Not at all.”

Mostly not.

Val pauses her strumming and raises one eyebrow.

“No, really. Sure, I still have trust issues, but losing Naeve made me realize I can’t do it again. Can’t lose them.” I sit down on my bed with a plop , shoving my half-packed bag aside. “I need them. And…and he threatened them if I don’t comply.”

The child’s crumpled body.

The boys standing in front of the king. His demand.

The boys kneeling. Helplessness.

My choice. Kai.

Me, killing them all.

The bed dips beside me, and I blink the film of tears away.

“Lorelei ?

“You can not tell them. They’d try to protect me.”

Val clears her throat. “And so they should,” she says, sounding genuinely confused.

“Not against the Angel King. I need to be stronger, ascended. The boys would go off half-cocked and put themselves in his sights. I’ll find a way around it.”

Val grips my arm and gives me a shake. “What? What will you find a way around?”

“Arranged marriage,” I whisper. The words taste like dust.

“He wants to marry you off? By what right?” Val slaps my shoulder. “And you don’t think your allegiance should know? Your Aeternum?”

Rubbing my shoulder, I scowl. After all the Angel King’s stupid trial put me through, every part of me is bruised. “They’ll know. Just not yet.”

Unascended supes against the king’s finest? They’d have no chance.

“Promise me, Val.” I pick at the blanket under us. “Promise me you won’t say a word. Not until I’m ready. Not until I can protect them too.”

The boys on their knees.

My choice. Kai.

Them all dead in the dirt.

Val slaps my hands away from the strand of wool I’ve started to unravel.

“Naeve would never forgive you for fucking up her blanket,” she says. “Look, Lorelei, I’m pretty far from a counselor, but even I think they deserve to know.”

“They do. Just not now . They’d go and get themselves hurt, or killed. And it would be my fault. No, I’m going to the Gifted Academy. I’ll do the fast-track, graduate at the end of the year. I can ascend.”

Val stands up, snatching her guitar back up and strutting away. “Then what? Leave them behind. Leave me behind? Go marry a colonel or a diplomat?”

“No! I’ll find a way out of the stupid marriage, Val. If I’m ascended I’ll have the power to kill whichever asshole I’m meant to marry if I need to. Shit, I’ll run if I have to. But I can’t even move around Eltanin without permission until I ascend. And there’s no point in any of it if the boys are dead because they attacked our stupid sovereign.”

“Fine.” Val plugs her guitar into the amp and strikes a deafening riff.

I yank the lead from the wall, silencing the damn thing. “Fine?”

“You convinced me.”

Relief floods me. I didn’t mean to tell her. Didn’t mean to tell anyone.

“Thanks.” I toss the plug back to her. “Anyway, you’ll have the room to yourself and your boo half the time. I’ll only be back three days out of the week.”

She flashes me a wicked smile.

“Val…I swear if I walk in on hanky-panky…”

Her gaze drifts over my shoulder and she pales.

“So, it’s true?”

Zephyr.

I turn to the door, and the look of betrayal on his face nearly kills me. The others all push in behind him, a wall of bristling anger. Anger directed at me.

Farrell folds his arms across his crisp shirt and scowls down. “You are back. And Kai wasn’t lying—you’re leaving.”

Kai shuffles uncomfortably.

“I didn’t know where you were, chica,” Chano says, his eyes glowing dangerously purple. “That you were safe. Kai had to tell us.”

I lick my lips. I want to run my hands over them. They’re real. Alive. Not dead. I didn’t…

Chano leans into my face, a furrow between his eyebrows. “What did he do to you, Lorelei? What did the Angel King do? I knew we should have gone with you.”

He grips my chin between forefinger and thumb, forcing me to look at him.

I can’t tell them .

He wraps his arms around me, pulling me close, rubbing soothing circles on my back.

“He…the Angel King…made me choose between staying with him and attending the aether academy,” I say, muffled by Chano’s hoody.

“You’re going then? To the Gifted Academy?” Kai’s voice is hard. “You’re just leaving everyone. Off to ascend.”

“It’s part-time there, part-time here,” I snap. “And yes. I get to graduate a year early. Ascend, hopefully.”

Zephyr hisses in a breath somewhere behind Chano and I stretch out my fingers, taking his hand.

“We’ll find a way to get you out of it, Lorelei,” Zephyr says, a slight tremor in his voice.

No. No. No. They can’t interfere. The Angel King will destroy our allegiance. Destroy them.

“It’s my choice,” I say. “Not much of a choice, since the alternative was living away from you guys full-time, but I want this.”

“It’s a bad idea,” Kai says, and Farrell grunts his agreement. “Just refuse to go, Lorelei.”

I pull out of Chano’s grasp and round on Kai, poking a finger into his chest. “Why exactly? You think you’re the only one who should get to learn proper aether?”

The others exchange puzzled glances.

“Oh, yeah, I heard. You attend the aether academy too, wank stain.”

Kai. On the ground. Dead. My choice.

My fingers ache to touch him more, smooth his hair.

“Are you worried I’ll be stronger than you, Kai?” I demand, guilt riding me. He glares. “I am stronger.”

Kai’s fingers trace the tattoos on his exposed arms, faster and faster until he reaches up, runs his hands through his purple hair, and gives it a tug.

“I’m worried,” he finally says, “because my stepmom runs that school. And she’s a nutjob.”

Breakfast boot camp. What a fucking awful idea. I don’t care how many rips there are, this is inhuman. Wiping sleep out of my eyes, I force a smile as Jess bounces past, already on her second lap. The asphalt stretches out in front of me, and I force my legs to start pumping. My muscles, my joints, my everything hurts. After the aether trials I swear even my hair hurts. Slowly, with each lap, my muscles loosen. We did this all summer. Trained to exhaustion. It’s cathartic to fall back into it now. It gives me time to think. Space.

I lap Zephyr again and slow up beside him. He shoots me a wan smile.

“No coffee. No likey,” he says, shooing me on.

It is an ungodly hour in the morning. And I’ve had caffeine. I glance back at Zephyr. He needs this. He’s breathing out his ass, sickly pale with the effort.

Farrell shoulders past me, sweat glistening on his biceps. Asshole’s still pissed with me. And I haven’t even told him about his father yet. I force my tired body to keep up. One last lap, then the obstacle course, and we’re done.

I fling myself onto the dewy grass, chest heaving, breath whistling in and out. I did it. I stayed with him. And now…I’m wrecked. Farrell throws a water bottle directly at my face and I fumble, barely stopping it landing on my nose.

“Dick.”

Swilling the blessedly cool liquid around my mouth, I watch as one of the new professors strides across the grass. His academy gown flaps behind him like a demented magpie. I close my eyes, lying back in the grass.

Something is thrust into my face, and I open my eyes. “Miss Bal, you need to sign this, now. ”

An envelope. Embossed. Thick, good quality paper. I weigh it in my hands, only vaguely aware of people crowding around. Not until Zephyr weakly shoves his way through the bodies and flops beside me do I register the attention.

Slipping my finger under seal, I break it open. Zephyr’s breaths are erratic, his wheeze worthy of a set of bagpipes. Eyeing him, I tip the paperwork out into my lap. A basic school contract for the aether academy, and the start date is tomorrow. Shit. Zephyr starts a hacking cough again, and this time it doesn’t stop. I pass him my water.

Kai sits cross-legged beside us. “Not going to die on us, angel?”

Zephyr shakes head but only coughs more. He sits forward, wheezing, propped on his hands, struggling to breathe in and out. Slowly, he gets it under control.

Kai pores over my forgotten contract. He rocks forward like he’s about to say something then sways back. He purses his lips and pulls a pen out of his man bun. I take it cautiously. The pen is a work of art, made from wood so dark it’s almost black. The nib and carved inlay are an ornate copper.

“My uncle wasn’t wrong,” Kai says, glaring up at Farrell and Chano as they loom over us. “She’s untrained in aether. I watched the replay. It was like a baby with a revolver. Didn’t know if she’d get through the trials without killing herself or someone else. Spoiler alert: she didn’t.”

A strangled squeak escapes me. I didn’t mean for the kid to die.

Chano rumbles a warning. “She did what she had to to get back to us, fae. Back off.”

The lines on Kai’s face are hard. “Just saying, if she wants to learn, she’ll have to go.”

Does he know I chose him to die? Could he see the king’s trial too ? My palms are sweating. Chano shuffles until he’s directly behind me and I lean back onto his legs, glad of the support. Physically, mentally.

He folds his arms across his chest. “We managed fine till now.”

“It’s not your choice,” I snap .

Zephyr drops back onto the ground. “You’re not going.”

“What the—”

He drags himself upright, grass sticking out of his hair, and takes my hand. “The trials nearly killed me. And you’re choosing this? You’re as mad as the fae.” He plucks the pen from my mouth.

I frown. “Nearly killed you?”

Kai grabs for the pen, easily prying it from Zephyr. He strokes the thing like he’s comforting a pet and places it reverently back in my hands. “The angel is exaggerating. Mostly. I mean…for sure angels and aether don’t go.”

“My aether hurt him?”

Kai shrugs, Chano stills at my back, and I’m vaguely aware of Farrell shuffling awkwardly.

“We knew it might,” Kai says. “The books say that in an allegiance it should be okay.”

I tap the pen on Kai’s forehead, and he bares his teeth.

“Inside the allegiance, your energy should protect him from your aether. But there’s a caveat. Your bond has to be strong.”

“It isn’t strong enough?” I snatch up Zephyr’s hand again and look at him. Really look. He’s worn out. His eyes lack their usual sparkle. And…is that a gray streak in his hair?

“He didn’t die,” Farrell says, and Zephyr pulls his lips into what passes for a smile.

I haul myself up and smack Farrell on the chest. “Die?” It comes out a squeak.

Farrell stares me down. “Zephyr spent a day in the hospital. He was still there when you got back. Not that you checked on him, or any of us.”

I close my eyes, but all I can see behind my eyelids is Zephyr on the ground.

Dead.

Kai drags Zephyr up by his shirt collar .

“Angel-face didn’t die though,” he says. “No one died. Why are you all so melodramatic?”

I drape Zephyr’s arm over my shoulders and get a waft of his vanilla-y scent as he leans gingerly on me. His weight catches me by surprise, and I brace, my ribs aching. Holy hags. I really took a beating. Have to be better. Stronger.

Chano heaves a sigh before yanking Zephyr out of my grip. He loops an arm around Zephyr’s back. It looks for all the world like a friendly hug, but his biceps bulge, giving away just how much weight he’s taking. More than Zephyr leaned on me.

“So…our bond is weak?”

Zephyr levels me with a glance. “We lost Naeve, you won’t accept Kai, and we made you our slave. So yes. Yes it is. And you want to weaken it further by going away,” he grits out.

“It’s for half the week only.” I glance at the others. “I’ll still see more of you in school than I saw of you over the summer.”

I can’t keep the hurt or anger out of my voice, and to a man they take an involuntary step back. All but Kai. But then Kai was here. With me. And I still chose…

Quickly, I scoop Kai’s pen up, signing the admission paperwork with a flourish. The document vanishes in a whoosh of magic.

Chano drops Zephyr with a snarl, turning on Kai. “This is your fault, fae.”