Page 8 of Dance of the Phoenix (Cloak of the Vampire #3)

Aileen

The moment Isora, Zoey, and I set foot inside the cafeteria the next morning, I felt an eerily familiar tingling sensation all over my skin.

I tried to shake it off, thinking it must be my imagination, and went about filling my plate with food and brewing my regular Americano with AB plus, but when the three of us settled at a table and murmurs broke out all around us, I knew it was not, in fact, just in my head.

Not when the gossiping vampires spoke just loud enough for me to hear.

“ I heard the Lord personally carried her, as if she’s someone important and not just a Common like us ... ”

“ They said Sulien was still in the infirmary after their battle ... ”

“ What is she even doing here? Isn’t she supposed to be in the Atalon League? ”

It threw me back to a couple of months ago, when I was still in the Atalon League, and Atalon himself was trying to make me his lover.

Back then the League members had talked about how I didn’t deserve to be with a vampire Lord, especially their Lord.

That hadn’t bothered me much, considering I had no interest in Atalon whatsoever—even before I knew he was the asshole to end all assholes.

But now, with the things they were saying about me, it was a different story.

“Wait until they learn you’re our Lord’s lover,” Zoey muttered softly enough to not be overheard. “Their heads are going to blow up.”

I snorted. “I’d rather their speculations remain just that.” I paused, glancing between Zoey and Isora, who both seemed nonchalant about the whispers around us, before I tentatively asked, “Is Sulien really in the infirmary still?”

The two exchanged looks briefly before Isora turned to me and said with a serious voice, “Your mock battle yesterday was quite ... intense.”

“That’s one way to put it.” Zoey smirked humorlessly. “Did you really have to pummel his face like that? It was terrifying. Everyone thought so.”

I hadn’t thought about how my actions yesterday might’ve been perceived by the onlookers, but when I thought about it now, I realized that perhaps the hesitant clapping of the audience after my fight hadn’t just been in my head.

When I executed the second Behest, I had been so focused on keeping the power flowing through my muscles so I could best Sulien that I didn’t realize I was going overboard with the punches to his face.

“Shit,” I murmured, staring down at the still-whole omelet on my plate.

“Yeah, it was ...” Isora said quietly, and when I raised my eyes to meet hers, she gave me an apologetic smile. “Terrifying, really.”

Great. “Let’s hope they’ll forget it by the time the Hecatomb comes around,” I said, slicing a bite of the omelet. “Though to be fair, Zoey, your performance was just as horrific.”

Zoey chuckled. “Not really,” she said with a voice full of pride and her shoulders squared. “I was commended on how swiftly I won my fight. In fact, I think people are going to vote for me.”

Isora and I stared at her, incredulous. “Are you sure you want to be chosen to participate in the Hecatomb?” Isora asked, eyes wide. “It’s not just about putting your life on the line—Renaldi is going to be there!”

“I know,” Zoey replied with a somewhat beastly grin, her brown eyes flashing with excitement. “I’ll be able to kill two birds with one stone.”

I didn’t like the way she said kill . “You know Renaldi is a Lord, right?”

“It doesn’t mean he’s invincible,” Zoey retorted, anticipation in her voice.

I felt as if I’d never truly seen her before. “Well, color me impressed.”

We didn’t stay long in the cafeteria after that.

The vampires around us kept on gossiping about me, some of them about Zoey too—though the tone of their voices about the latter was vastly different, more like awestruck, really—and neither of us could stand it.

So we cleared the table and headed to the voting, which took place in my former Comprehensive Newcomer Course classroom.

It was a quick process. There were two boxes—one for the Gifted candidates and one for the Common—and we needed to write ten names on ten different notes.

Once we were done, we headed to the infirmary to visit Tansy. As Zoey brushed Tansy’s hair, like she did every time we visited, we discussed who we’d voted for.

“All the Troop Commanders, obviously,” Zoey said, “along with Cassidy—her Gift is even more terrifying than what you pulled, Aileen.”

“Thanks,” I said dryly.

“Same,” Isora said, and then gave us both a smile. “As for the Commons, I voted for you two.”

“You did?” Zoey and I asked simultaneously.

“Obviously,” she said, shrugging. “You two were better than most of the Common Troop members who were on display yesterday. Especially you.” She nodded toward Zoey. “How come you’re so good at fighting?”

Preening at the compliment, Zoey smiled from ear to ear. “Well, I was always quite a good fighter,” she said proudly. “I had to be, to survive the kind of life I had when I was human. When I was given the Imprint, I finally felt like I could use my full potential, you know?”

Isora sighed. “Lucky you,” she said, leaning back against her chair. “I was never good at the physical stuff.”

“Don’t worry,” Zoey said easily, “I can teach you once the Hecatomb is over with.”

She was already talking as though she had been chosen. But to be fair, I could understand. Zoey was definitely one of the best fighters I’d ever seen. She would be an asset to the Hecatomb. Her pride was not misplaced.

But it chafed a bit, thinking everyone viewed Zoey as this surprisingly good, charismatic fighter, while they saw me as some sort of bully.

I mean, it was a fight—a mock battle, sure, but still a fight.

What did they expect me to do? Go easy on my opponent?

What would’ve been the point in the whole damn show, then?

I remembered something Logan had told me what felt like a lifetime ago, when we were still human.

I’d been struggling in my new middle school soon after moving in with my foster parents—Logan’s folks—and ending up in Logan’s class was the only solace.

With him being a good-looking, straight A, friendly soccer prodigy, he was the most popular boy in school, so having him as a friend, and soon after as a lover, had given me protection from others without me even noticing it.

But once in high school, Logan was in different classes than me. Being a smart, studious guy, he had already taken junior-year-level classes while a freshman, and I had to fend for myself in the regular classes. We were still a couple, but my safety net was now too far away.

I didn’t have friends other than Logan. Granted, I didn’t even try to make friends, but my classmates seemed to avoid me like the plague.

Everyone knew my father was in jail—though they didn’t know for what, and the rumors surrounding that were quite interesting—and they took me for a would-be criminal as well.

They weren’t wrong about that, though.

Logan realized what was going on and made sure to spend all his free time with me. He abandoned his friends to dote on me, eat lunch with me, and kiss me in public so everyone knew we were together. As if that would protect me.

Unfortunately, because he was the most popular kid in school, especially after he’d gone through a growth spurt between the last year of middle school and high school, half the girls in school liked him, and none of them could understand what he was doing with the likes of me.

When Olivia Garland, one of the popular girls, confronted me about my relationship with Logan, we got into a physical fight.

She was the one who started it—and she was also a tae kwon do practitioner—so of course I retaliated.

But when I used Iovan’s Imperium on her, easily beating her without even fully executing the second Behest, everyone looked at me as if I were a monster.

As if I’d beaten an innocent girl instead of defending myself.

I scared them so much, when anyone found themselves alone with me, they would burst out crying and run out in terror.

I’d been angry about it, especially since Olivia got a worse punishment than I did, which should’ve cleared my name to an extent or at least showcased her as an active part of this whole fight.

I told Logan that. And Logan, who’d been there during the fight, trying to get Olivia and I off each other, told me something I would be able to quote until my dying day.

“ Your face, Aileen. It was so disturbingly cold, as if you felt no emotion, while you beat her to a pulp. You didn’t look human. ”

Had I looked like that yesterday, during the mock battle, too? Had I looked like that when I’d used Iovan’s Imperium on Logan? Was this a piece of my father etched in my DNA that I would never be rid of?

The results came in the next morning, and they were printed on a plain sheet of paper and pinned to a board near the entrance of the cafeteria:

Hecatomb Participation Voting Results

Gifted

Oberon Grimes

Logan Kazar

Haneul Kang

Neisha Barnes

Cassidy Jones

Common

Yelene Yarnikova

Sulien Salvador

CJ Maron

Zoey Rittman

Aileen Henderson