Page 6 of Messenger of Death (Ouroboros Academy #2)

M aybe I should have asked for a single, like Lucian. Headmaster Mykene seemed to have a plan for everything, even if she didn’t share. She probably put Sage with Morgana for a reason, but she put Liam and me with Morgana’s boyfriends and they were a lot.

I thought I was misplacing things, but it turned out Petros just stole it. He’d give it back when I gave up looking in frustration. Elliot kept trying to give Liam a list of people to stab because he said he’d gone full trickster on them and they still hadn’t learned their lesson.

Elliot lit up, and I didn’t even want to know what he had planned when Liam told him Thor had been reincarnated and was in our class. Elliot hadn’t even met the man yet and was already sure Ivar wasn’t the one who hurt Lola.

I was starving and ready for breakfast, but Liam hadn’t messed up his hair right.

He wanted it to be perfect for Sage and she didn’t really strike me as being superficial.

It seemed like she cared more about who someone was than if their hair looked like he just rolled out of bed looking that perfect.

There was a knock on the door, but it came in a certain rhythm like it was some kind of code. Elliot and Petros immediately perked up.

“That’s our woman. She probably has your woman with her.”

Yeah, Sage wasn’t ours. There was some kind of cosmic bond that connected us, but she didn’t really know us yet.

We barely knew her as well. I liked what I knew, and I liked holding her when she was upset.

It was probably stupid. She didn’t push me away, but she probably just needed the food Lucian gave her.

If anything, we would be hers. I was okay with that at everyone’s pace. I didn’t want to rush it now and ruin things later. We all just found out we were going to live a very long time. We should do this properly.

Sage was at the door with Lucian and Morgana.

Lucian looked a little more rumpled than I would have expected now that he had access to proper facilities.

Liam gave him a hard time, but I could tell Lucian was miserable roughing it in the tent.

I loved camping with my baba, but it wasn’t for everyone.

My sister went with us a few times and decided she hated it.

My baba didn’t force her to go and found something else for them to do together.

Liam was in the bathroom furiously running his fingers through his hair like whatever look he was going for could be accomplished before everyone’s stomach won out and someone dragged him out.

I took one look at Sage standing there looking beautiful and regretted not spending more time on my hair, too.

Morgana explained the dining hall options as we walked there.

I could, apparently, shift into a jackal once I’d learned, but my dietary needs didn’t feel like they’d changed.

I usually had Fuul Medames or Taameya for breakfast, but I already knew that wasn’t going to be an option here.

I had a flat lined up when I was going to Oxford where I could cook my own food, but I’d never been a picky eater, so I wasn’t going to complain about the food here.

The dining hall looked completely different from when they were feeding us after we got kidnapped. I mean, it was a proper castle with long wooden tables, but several modern amenities were out.

Morgana pointed out the different stations. You got in one line if you turned into a predator animal, the fairies had a line, there was someone handing out bagged blood, and there was a fourth option for general magic users. There was a smoothie bar and a coffee bar.

While I was standing there with my thumb up my arse trying to figure out which line to get into, Sage and Morgana made a beeline for the coffee cart. Elliot leaned in.

“Headmaster Mykene probably put them together because they both went for the coffee like that. Morgana has trouble sleeping and likes to stay up late studying, so she gets a little homicidal without caffeine. If they are coffee buddies, they can get each other caffeine and we only have to worry about the current murderous psychopath on campus.”

“She seemed fine without it during the trials,” I said.

“So did Morgana. Pretty sure it was adrenaline, and they didn’t want to complain about something they couldn’t get. They knew it was temporary.”

Sounded about right. Even Lucian didn’t really complain that much and I could tell he was miserable the whole time. Petros took off and left us, so it was just Liam and I with Elliot.

“So, one of you turns into a jackal and the other turns into a goat man. I’m a shapeshifter. It probably won’t hit you until you’ve shifted for the first time, but you’re going to need a lot of food.”

Liam just cracked his neck.

“The shifter line has the closest thing to a proper fry up and I’m growing horns. Gotta keep up my strength.”

One thing I learned about Liam was that he really enjoyed food.

That was a good thing. I liked people who took joy in little things.

Lucian got pulled away by some fawning vampires who wanted to teach him how to fully access the blood bar while simpering that they’d never assume he didn’t have someone willing to give him their blood.

“It’s not complicated, and it’s not a test,” Elliot said.

“No one is going to judge you by what you eat for breakfast. Okay, I judge the shit out of Blaize because he sent Morgana a dick pic, and he puts ketchup on literally everything. It’s okay to judge people who send unsolicited dick pics and dip their bacon in ketchup.

Just go see what every line has and pick what sounds good. ”

Yeah, I guess I was worried this was some kind of test. Everything had been a test so far. I guess breakfast wasn’t. There were only a few fellow Egyptian students here, but the rest of the student body was pretty diverse since they kidnapped us from all over the world.

A lot of those students were working in the kitchen to pay their tuition, so the food seemed pretty diverse, too. We were somewhere in England, but they weren’t serving what I would consider a standard British breakfast.

There were several options in all the lines I looked at. It looked like Liam could put together whatever a fry up was. It wasn’t completely like home, but I could put something together that was close that I’d enjoy.

We joined each other at a table Petros grabbed.

Our meals couldn’t have been more different.

I managed to find shakshuka and fried plantains and immediately served myself some.

Lucian had some kind of smoothie and I was pretty sure there was blood in it.

Sage had a massive cup of coffee and what had to be fairy food.

I recognized the bread from the trials and I didn’t recognize most of the fruit or vegetables in the eggs at all.

Then, there were Liam and Elliot. How were they going to eat all that?

Was I going to eat all that when I figured out how to turn into a jackal?

I didn’t think I’d ever been that hungry before, even in the trials when Lucian ate our food and we had to live off what I could forage and Sage’s familiars could steal.

I wasn’t judging because that could be me soon.

Sage’s fairy friend Saffron joined us and smiled.

“I see you found the line for fairy food.”

“It’s very good, but I don’t know what any of this is. It’s weird eating anything new without knowing the nutritional information.”

“The purple one is bearberry. The bears in Fairy, apparently, really liked it and they do in this realm, too. If the bear shifters get drunk and shift, they usually end up in our garden and make themselves sick on bearberry. The small, red ones are thimbleberries. Those are going to be the ones you want to keep near you. They are really good for insulin. The veggies in the eggs are ethrelos, blue lotus, and abrosie. They are also good in salad or cold soup.”

“I think there are thimbleberries in my smoothie. The vampires gave me a recipe, and I humored them so they’d go away. It’s actually pretty good.”

My food was also really good. I couldn’t remember where we were camping, but we always got food from at least one local business no matter what country we were in.

I don’t even remember why we were at that particular restaurant instead of one that served local fare, but I ordered the shakshuka.

Someone definitely threw two fried eggs on top of some kind of jarred tomato sauce and it wasn’t good.

What they were serving in the dining hall tasted authentic.

“I don’t have any fairy classes. Is that weird?” Sage asked.

“Headmaster Mykene chooses your schedule the first year,” Morgana said.

“It’s all geared towards awakening you. Some of you already know who you are and need assistance and plenty of people have no clue so they have a bunch of classes you don’t to help them figure it out.

You’ll have more options as a sophomore and you’ll get electives as a junior.

You just don’t have any fairy classes yet. ”

“Yeah, but I have fairy classes,” Liam pointed out. “I don’t think I’m a fairy, am I?”

“You’re older than fairies,” Saffron said. “We’re connected to nature and you are nature. You’d be learning from us, but we’d be learning from you, too. There might be things we could be doing better with the plants our ancestors brought from Fairy.”

“Yeah, well, my Da said I couldn’t have a puppy because I probably couldn’t keep a houseplant alive.”

“Sorry, but your dad’s a bastard,” Sage said. “I know you want to gut mine, but I want to do violent things to yours, too.”

Liam was looking at her with moon eyes like that was the most romantic thing anyone had ever said to him. If Liam was telling the truth about his father, then the man was dangerous.

Thing was, if we managed to live through graduation, we were probably deadlier.