Page 44 of Angel Lost (Fates Academy #3)

Chapter Forty-four: Lorelei

Slinking through the corridors, I descend the stairs, following the hallways toward where we last saw Reye. Regina. I knew Kai’s kid sister all along. Hecate. They’re so different. He’s unhinged…and her? I mean, off her meds she was climbing trees, but on them? She’s born royalty. All manners and etiquette.

I come across the rest of the rescue party completely by accident. I take a wrong turn somewhere and backtrack, confused. The sound of raised voices reaches me, and cautiously I follow the noise.

“The angel is taking the piss,” Kai screeches.

It’s the real Kai. There’s something about the way he tilts his head, the gleam in his eye, the frenetic pacing. Yup. Kai.

I give him a half wave and peer beyond him at myself, lying on the floor, my eyes glazed. This is trippy.

I nod at the supine figure. “Zephyr?”

Kai nods, kicking at Zephyr’s foot. I squeeze in beside him in the narrow corridor, placing a hand on Zephyr’s forehead. Hot. Like he’s overheating. Suddenly he stands bolt upright; from lying flat out to standing in one fluid movement. I jerk back, nearly falling on my ass.

His head swivels unnaturally. “She’s through. Davina’s through the ley lines.”

Shit. I thought it would hold her far longer. Kai licks his lips nervously.

“Keep moving,” Farrell instructs .

Just as we round the next corner, Kai leading, an angel appears, striding toward us. His glasses perched on the end of his nose, he’s peering at a clipboard. The angel looks up, catching sight of Kai and me, and several more copies of us. Without hesitating, Farrell lifts a hand and, almost lazily, blasts fire straight at the angel—a weird bright white, almost blue flame that consumes him instantly.

Zephyr shrinks into me. His arm, as it snakes around my shoulders, is trembling. And I’m not sure who’s comforting who.

Kai steps around the pile of smoking ash. “Shame, I quite liked him. He had more compassion than most. Still.” He scuffs his foot through the embers, stamping until they’re entirely extinguished.

Zephyr swallows. “Sometimes,” he mutters, “I wonder if I’m on the right fucking side.”

I squeeze his hand as we step around the angel’s ashes together. I watch Kai and Farrell as they move forward, neither of them remotely disturbed. That angel wasn’t even after us, dammit. We could have…I don’t know…tied him up and stuffed him in a cupboard?

But he saw us. He saw my face, he saw Kai’s face. This plan of ours relies on no one seeing us, or…on no one being left alive to rat us out.

No one being left alive…Nyx. Shit.

“She’s here,” Kai shouts. “Undergoing correction, but here.”

We slip into the room beside Reye’s inert figure, and he studies the machine. I check her pulse. It pounds against my fingers. We might actually do this. Both sisters. The Maverik runaways. We might pull this off.

Kai prods the machine. “Nearly finished. It’s about to go into standby. I can turn it off.”

Reye slowly comes around. Her body twitches erratically. Then her eyes open. Kai quickly undoes the straps holding her down, peering every few seconds into her face. Nothing. No recognition.

“Regina?” he asks cautiously. “Gina, talk to me. ”

He hauls her to her feet, and she sways back and forth like a tree in the wind. She shudders, a long, slow, painful looking thing. She looks from Kai to me.

“You interfering bitch,” she shouts, launching herself across the room.

Her nails scrape down my face, and I catch a punch in the gut before I can react. Within seconds the boys have her pinned between them.

I clutch my face. “What the flying fuck, Reye?”

She bares her teeth. Gone is the polite, well brought up girl. Right here, this is pure feral supe.

Kai catches her chin, forcing her to look at him. “Let’s get you out of here, sis.”

“Are you insane, brother mine? They’ll put you in jail.”

He raises an eyebrow. “What are you talking about, chipmunk?”

She scowls. “I agreed to all this. To the aether, to studying here, to marrying the king. I did it for you!”

He looks confused, but of course Davina played them off against each other. As soon as I realized Reye was his sister I knew it. Knew she’d used their love against them. I didn’t have the heart to tell him. Not when Reye was still in danger.

“Mom said…” Reye wrenches herself out of Kai’s grip. “Mom said she’d keep you out of jail so long as I agreed.”

“I’d rather be in jail than have you married off to that incestuous fuck.”

“Mom will have you killed, Kai. My way, we both got to live. Now you’ve screwed it all up.”

They stand nose to nose, both red in the face, screaming. Neither backing down.

There’s a tap on the viewing glass and I freeze, unable to see through the one-way pane. Seconds later footsteps march down the corridor outside and an angel bursts into the room, Nyx in tow. The angel I attacked. The one I flirted with .

He looks at me, then the emergency button beside him, then at his weapon. I see his decision milliseconds before he acts. His finger tightens on the trigger, and he swings his gun up, straight at me.

Point blank range.

Without warning, a thin electrode wire wraps around the angel’s neck, pulled with such force it bites in, slicing flesh. Garroting him. A spray of blood erupts inches from me, gushes into my hair, my face, my eyes.

The angel topples forward infinitesimally slowly. He crumples to his knees then falls forward to his face at my feet. Behind him, Zephyr stands, wire in his grip, staring at his own bloody hands.

“I killed,” Zephyr says, the wire dropping to the floor beside the angel. “I killed another angel.”

I step forward, trying to take his hand, but he recoils from the blood, from me. His eyes are wide, watery, full of self-loathing.

Shit.

I try again, and he backs away until he hits the wall. This is going to hell. Swinging around, I grab for Nyx. “What is wrong with you?”

She shakes her head, pressing her lips together.

“Davina has you so wrapped around her finger, huh? You? Even you?”

She flinches at that.

“There are kidnapped kids here. There are rooms upon rooms of failed gifted. Open your eyes.” I drop her wrist, pushing her away in disgust. “I guess I should have known. All the red threads. You have them too.”

Zephyr’s head snaps up, although he avoids looking directly at me. “Say that again?”

I sigh, trying to step into his line of sight, but he twists away, like seeing me might make him kill again. “A lot of the students are very loyal to Dean Davina,” I say. “They’re tied to her with threads. I can see it, when I’m in the ley lines.”

“ Red threads? ”

“Yeah. Even Kai. I mean, you have one to Farrell. I trace the air…you to Farrell to…well, it loops away.”

Zephyr looks directly at me. “That, Lorelei, is my slave bond. It loops away to his fucking father. Which means…”

My jaw drops. “The bitch!”

The collective gasp in the room tells me they all got there half a second after me. “The students are slave bonded?” Holy shit.

“We have to get out of here,” Farrell, ever practical, says, taking charge. “Even more so now that we know that. We can’t rely on anyone. Not if they’re directly under her control.”

“What do we do with Nyx?” I ask.

Farrell barely glances at her. “Kill her.”

Nyx looks like she might faint.

“Farrell! You’re scaring her.”

“I’ll do more than that,” he says. I edge between him and Nyx and Zephyr steps up beside me.

“Always with the violence, Farrell,” he says.

Farrell growls in Zephyr’s face before reaching around us and yanking Nyx nose to nose with him. “Okay, you little shit. We know you’re bonded to Davina, to the dean. The only way out is to kill Davina. Are you in?”

A slow grin breaks out across Nyx’s face, and Farrell lets her go. “You were right, Lorelei, there’s no need to kill Nyx. We kill the source,” he says.

Zephyr stills, and when he speaks his voice is a whisper. “So, we’re killing slave masters now, are we? Just not mine?”

Carefully, I touch his arm. Then slowly, interlace our fingers, blood sticking our hands together.

“It’s a fair point, Farrell,” I say. Zephyr rewards me with a tiny squeeze.

“For Hades’ sake, can we timetable this shit for later?” snaps Kai, and finally everyone starts moving.

It’s not so far from our original plan. Bloodier. Deadlier. And I will kill Davina when I get a chance. And…we have to kidnap Nyx .

The rebel soldier ties her hands, tapes her mouth, and flings her over his shoulder in a matter of seconds. Probably helped by the fact she doesn’t fight it. I can see it in her eyes: She has a chance. A way out.

Farrell clears his throat. “Let’s move quietly, carefully. Straight to the portal—”

He’s interrupted by his own phone. He flicks it to speaker. It’s Raff, out of breath and talking so quietly he must be worried about being overheard.

“Portal’s activated, expecting company at any moment. Once the dean is out of her office and the escape route is clear I’ll let you know.”

He hangs up.

Shit.

“Might get a chance to kill the bitch after all,” I mutter.

But one look at the ragtag company and I know. Not now. We need these kids out. We need to be in control before we come for her.

“You’re crazy!” Reye mutters. “You’re all crazy.”

She edges for the door, and I eye her uncertainly. She hikes her robe up above her knees and bolts, footsteps slapping away down the hallway.

Kai takes off after her, and I sprint to keep up. Behind, I hear Farrell organize the rest into following. He’ll keep them right. We have to stop Reye. She’s delusional.

She thinks we’re the crazy ones…