Page 35 of Angel Lost (Fates Academy #3)

Chapter Thirty-five: Lorelei

“Do not use your aether, Miss Bal.”

Scowling at the fire-retardant material in front of me, I picture all the ways I could set it ablaze with my aether and fire combined. Fingering the cloth, instead, I feel out the nature of the fabric, infusing it with magic, reminding it of what it was before it was chemically treated. Carefully, slowly, I coax a tiny corner into a pathetic, sputtering orange flame. Chano’s project beside me roars, flames licking toward the ceiling. Smug asshat.

“You’ve now caught up to where the class was two weeks ago, Miss Bal,” Professor Hannya snipes. The tiny lady stalks past, black hair in a curt bob glued to her jawline, with two small black horns poking out the top. She waves a hand and my flame sputters out.

“Channel the demonic,” she reminds me. “This is not fire class. I am not that oaf Maximillion.”

Beside me Chano grumbles. Prof. Max is his man; Professor Hannya is most definitely not. She narrows her eyes, and a spray of water engulfs Chano’s flames. His eyes widen in outrage, and I turn away to hide my smile.

The professor stands on tiptoe. “You’re getting there, Bal. More practice.”

I stick my tongue out at Chano and double down on my efforts.

“Miss Bal is summoned,” a voice calls from the front of class .

Professor Hannya spins around and walks in tiny fast strides toward the offender. The angel, a first-year student, wilts under her gaze.

“Miss Bal has far too much work to do to go gallivanting off. Denied.”

The student’s mouth opens, then closes. Finally, he squeaks out, “Dean’s orders.” He blinks for a moment. “Both of her deans.”

Professor Hannya draws herself up to her full three-foot height. “I shall send Miss Bal once she has mastered her current task.” The kid shuffles on the spot. “That will be all, angel.” She almost spits the last word.

My hands are clammy. Beside me, Chano sits straighter in his chair. Shit. I finger the knife on my belt and avoid his stare.

“What did you do now?” he asks.

“Nothing! That’s rude,” I bluster. “Mostly nothing?”

“Why is that a question?” He scowls down at me, but I clamp my mouth shut and wait for Hannya to dismiss me. She takes her time, clearly annoyed at being told what to do, but finally, five minutes before the end of class, she sends me to the dean’s office.

There’s no waiting outside this time; I’m ushered straight in. My footsteps echo on the tile, and I keep my gaze firmly on the ground in front of me. Give away nothing. Assume they don’t know anything. My heart hammers. What could they know? That I’ve been snooping? That I found those failed gifted kids? Or…I swallow the lump in my throat. Do they know what I am?

Both Dean Emrick and Davina are seated behind the desk, elbows vying for position on the glass.

“You took your time,” Davina snaps.

I shrug, focused on the ancient tomes behind their heads. “Professor Hannya—”

Beside her, Dean Emrick snorts. “Ah, yes, that would have caused delay. Hannya doesn’t like her students leaving.”

Davina stomps her foot. “You need better control of you staff, Soren. ”

Out the corner of my eye I see the vampire’s jaw tighten. I didn’t even know he had a first name. Of course he has a first name. I just never pictured…Hecate, my thoughts are scrambled.

Davina turns to me. “You were seen on our cameras in a restricted area, Aether Lorelei.”

The rapid pulse in my ear quietens. “Uh…yeah, I…”

“We also saw you speak with Aether Reye.”

I scrunch my nose. “You have cameras everywhere.” When did they see me with Reye? Did they see my stunt at the beach? Surely that was too far away.

“We have an obligation to look after the king’s Promised. Of course we have cameras! However, king’s fiancée or not, we will also hold her accountable if she is stirring up trouble.”

Fiancée. Shit, Reye. I lick my lip. “It’s not her fault. Whatever it is, it’s not Reye’s fault.” I pause. “Actually, what is the issue, Dean?”

Davina stands, pacing in agitation. “She will be dealt with. We can’t have her stirring trouble. Directing people to the failed gifted.”

I release a breath. “No, she didn’t. I followed the ley lines to them. I was just practicing. Reye only spoke with me later. Check the time stamps.”

“You have to understand…”

“I think I do,” I interrupt.

She stops abruptly, her gaze fixed on the candelabra in front of her.

“Kai explained it.” She hisses a breath, but I press on. “I understand that those failed aethers accepted the risks. They gambled for more power, and they lost. That’s every day in the slums where I grew up. Every. Freaking. Day.”

Davina sits back in her seat, folding her hands neatly in her lap. “They…did.” There’s a hint too much hesitation in her voice, enough to set me on edge. “What’s your point, Aether Lorelei?”

“It’s not my business.” I keep my voice level. No need to show my hand too soon. “Kai has his reasons for wanting aether, and so did those people…And the king—your brother—made it very clear I should train, graduate, ascend.” I pause, weighing how much she’ll actually believe. “I’d rather be more than simply a wife, a mother to future aethers. If I don’t ascend, then that’s what will happen. I can be more for my husband, for Eltanin.”

A slow smile cracks across Davina’s face. “So, you are planning on returning to the Gifted Academy?”

I blink. She thought…

“Yes! If you’ll let me. I know I was already on a warning, but it was simple curiosity. I wanted the full picture. Look, I grew up in the slums of Venez. Knowledge is power, but I always look out for number one.”

Both of the deans relax, and the temperature in the room thaws by several degrees.

“You’re an adult, Lorelei, at least at the aether academy you are treated as such.” Dean Davina gives Emrick a pointed look.

Soren Emrick. Must remember that.

“However, give me the lanyard back, now.” She holds out her hand. Shit . They saw that too. Reluctantly, I hand back the pilfered pass. She nods. “No more trespassing. You disturbed the failed gifted. It’s why we looked at the cameras. Their behavior has been extremely erratic since you passed through. They are in a very delicate state. Anything out the ordinary can set them back.”

My chest loosens. “Oh! So they’ll recover?”

After a pause Davina says, “I like to think so.”

A blaring siren splits the air, shrill and unrelenting, and I’m on my feet. The professors too. The sound pulses in sharp, staccato bursts, each one driving a spike through my skull. A metallic vibration hums beneath it, closer—too close.

With a deafening clang, shutters slam down over the windows. I flinch, heart hammering. Another metallic groan, and the door disappears behind a solid wall of steel.

We’re locked in.

Dean Emrick strides for his back office and Dean Davina and I hurry behind him. I stop dead in the doorway. Hell, his security has had a massive upgrade. High-tech touch-screen monitors span an entire wall, each one displaying a different live feed from cameras positioned throughout the campus. They cover all angles: main buildings, pathways, entrances, parking lots, and secluded areas. The wall casts a bluish glow, illuminating the room.

“There.” Davina stabs a screen with a fingernail.

I squint, then use my fingers to zoom in. A human, a young woman. What the actual hell? She exudes an air of polished refinement, an unmistakable upper-class elegance that even I can recognize. She’s wearing a fitted tweed jacket and a matching skirt that flatters her round figure. Her red hair is busy escaping a messy plait, and despite her poise, she seems frantic. Her lips move, like she’s shouting something.

I twiddle a button. No audio. Damn.

Around her, the familiar cobbled paths of the academy stretch between towering turreted buildings, their ancient stone facades dark against the low, overcast sky. She stands near the archway to the training grounds, her polished shoes out of place on the worn, uneven ground.

“The alarms. A human…It’s a rip,” hisses Emrick beside me. “It has to be.”

“If the rip is big enough for a human, it won’t be long before the hellions find it,” Davina mutters.

Wait. The hellions don’t cause the rifts? They’re just taking advantage of them. Well, shit. Every day’s a school day. So what causes—

Dean Emrick elbows me aside and starts pressing buttons, flicking between screens. Students mill around outside, clearly confused.

“Why aren’t they in lockdown, Soren?” Davina snaps. “Why are they going outside? ”

A blush creeps up the back of Dean Emrick’s neck. “We were going to run the simulation this weekend. We’ve not told them what the alarm means yet.”

He flips helplessly from one screen to the next.

Suddenly, the screen I’m watching blacks out. I reach over, flick to another, catching a scurrying motion. The camera won’t pan enough to follow so I move to the next screen. A small furball with giant eyes peers straight back at us from the monitor.

“Aw, cute.”

“That?” Davina says. “Cute? Not cute—evil!”

As we watch, the cute-eyed creature pulls its lips back to reveal three rows of extremely sharp teeth. I flinch. The picture vanishes inside the creature’s mouth, and we lose the feed. Holy shit. Okay, so that was a hellion. Not one I’ve met before.

In the corner of another screen, four large humanoids appear, almost twice the size of a normal demon. What are they? A flap of familiar white wings draws my attention. Zephyr! I lunge for the monitor, zooming in. He’s outside the observatory, a glazed look on his face. The camera screen cracks, a large dark shard splitting the monitor. My view of him vanishes.

Shit. He’s not okay. In a vision or tripping or something. I glance at the bickering deans, then back to the rapidly failing monitors.

I tug on Dean Emrick’s gown. “There is help, right? Help is coming?”

“I hit the panic button. The Council will come,” Davina says.

“Eventually,” mutters Dean Emrick.

Fuck. If the rip on Maverik territory is anything to go by…I glance between the two professors. Are they genuinely just going to sit here? Hell no. Zephyr is out there. My allegiance is out there.

I won’t sit in the dean’s private panic room. I slam the button at the side of the shutter. The mechanism groans, and the professors startle.

“Lorelei, stop!” Davina snaps, but I duck out her reach, hand firmly over the control .

Painstakingly slowly, the shutter creaks open. Emrick swears under his breath. By the time it’s waist height, I duck under it and bolt for the observatory.

My feet hit the cobbles outside and I careen around the corner, nearly flattening a bunch of hada as they take turns poking kitchen knives into one of the small, very not-cute hellions. The hada. Of course.

I stumble to a stop. “I need your help!”

The hada pause.

“Can you get all the hada to the kitchens, inside the ley line loop, and get ready for students to arrive?”

They glance at one another.

“You might need to guide them through the ley lines.” They mutter among themselves, so high-pitched I can’t hear. “Please.” I grind my teeth. “I’ll owe you a whole day in the gardens.”

The hada who caught me rolling in the strawberries folds her arms. After what feels like an eternity, she holds up five fingers.

“Five? Oh, come on…Fine. Fine. Five days.”

She waggles a finger at me, raising an eyebrow.

“Five days plus the afternoon I owe,” I bargain.

She grins and quickly sends the hada with her off to different sectors of the college, presumably to pass the message on.

I pause, glancing over my shoulder at her. “Stay safe.”

I get as far as the next fork in the path before my phone vibrates. Screeching to a halt, I yank it out of my pocket. Chano.

“Chano? Are you okay?” I pant into the mic.

“Fine, you?”

“Yes. The others? Are you with them?” I push down my panic. They’re probably all together. I’ve missed multiple calls being stuck in the metal box that was the dean’s office.

“Only Farrell.”

“Shit. Zephyr was near the observatory. He looked out of it. ”

“Again?” He growls, and I hold the phone away from my ear. “We’ll head there now.”

“Wait, listen. Send any students you meet toward the kitchens. The hada will guide them between the ley lines. The spell I did should keep the hellions out.”

“Got it. Meet at the observatory?”

“Heading there now.”

Zephyr, you idiot. I push my legs into a sprint, the muscles burning. If only he’d keep a phone on him.

I bolt along the paths, shouting at students as I go. Some of them are too dazed to take in what I’m saying, but those that understand start to herd everyone else toward the kitchens.

Thank the goddesses for ley lines, for my aether.