Izara
Warmth and safety surround me like a nirvana nest that I never want to leave.
A loud banging shakes through the room and before my eyes fling open, Malek is leaping from his bunk and prowling across the small room. Phoenix hovers over me, his big body shadowing mine like he might hide me beneath him. Saint and Syko are both standing between our beds, waiting for the wolf in front of them. Another three knocks rattle the wooden frame. Malek’s knuckles are white as he grips the knob and flings open the door to glare down on the demanding pounding coming from the other side.
“Morning,” Sasha chirps with a brown bag in one hand and a wide smile on her face. She looks as perky as ever, her long blonde hair twisted in coils around her perfectly sharp face.
The vampire at her side by contrast looks gloomy in her goth chic, but completely fabulous and of course, rich. She doesn’t smile. Her soft red lips are in a straight line as her blue eyes glare from head to toe at the man looming in front of her.
“You smell like dog. It’s assaulting. Sainky Wanky, I think your pooch wants to go for a walk, he keeps staring out the door.” She pushes past Malek and Sasha sways inside right behind her.
“Don’t you have your own room?” Malek asks as he closes the door and folds his big arms across his bronze bare chest.
Heaven slices her gaze to the wolf but slowly pans her attention down to me as I try to wrap Phoenix’s soft blanket around my chest. I can see the burning questions, demanding and violent in her eyes, but she doesn’t ask a single one of them. I’m grateful for it.
“We do have our own room. And we have our own roommate. So enjoy the ones you have and stop stealing ours.” Heaven bends and takes a seat right next to me on the small bed that’s feeling smaller by the second.
Sasha bounces down and Phoenix has to fling his legs back swiftly so as not to be crushed by our sudden new bedmates.
Syko shifts in front of her but honestly there’s not much space left in the room now. His black eyes look from the fae in front of him to me and I can tell he wants to say something but there’s too many people here now.
A long breath carries on for so long I start to wonder if Sasha is trying to steal the air away from everyone else before she flicks her attention up to Syko. “You smell nice,” she says with a big smile. “Like... cotton candy and... innocence.”
Syko’s thick brows pinch together and he just stares blankly at the strange girl.
Okay. Maybe I should lead the conversations from now on…
My lips part but Heaven beats me to it, “If you don’t get dressed you’ll be late for Sky Soaring and you’ve already missed so much. I hear the professor’s a real jackass.”
“He’s a centaur not a jackass, Love,” Sasha corrects. Then she looks back to me. “Your schedule was tacked onto our closet, just waiting for you. Sky Soaring, Illusions 101, Supernatural Law and Order, Travels through History, Hybrid Biology…” She ticks off the list of my classes from her fingers.
Oh no!
I leap from the bed and cool air sweeps over my bare skin. Too many eyes are pressing against me before I tear the sheet off of Phoenix and throw it around myself like a crazed old witch looking to poison a princess.
“Sorry,” I whisper to Sasha and Heaven.
“Nothing to apologize for,” Sasha hums, her eyes leisurely taking my body in like she’s pressing the image of me into her memory.
“You have a great body, don’t apologize darling,” Heaven adds, flicking her dark hair off her shoulder. Coming from her, it doesn’t really sound like a compliment at all. More like cold, hard fact.
I glance around and Malek is actually smirking. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him smirk. “Finally. Something we agree on,” he whispers.
“I’m going to go find my room.” I look from Saint to Syko and then Malek and Phoenix. I’m reminded of that first day I saw them all in our old room of Dormitory J. They all stared at me just like they are now.
But so, so much has changed.
Malek’s fingers skim down my wrist and he nods but there are just too many people hovering for any of us to say anything.
And honestly, after everything that’s happened, I don’t want to talk.
“I’ll meet you downstairs,” Syko nods to me and I’m relieved my first class will be with him. He doesn’t press. He’s great. They all are. I just don’t know how to tell them I’m the direct daughter of the Messenger of Chaos and…
I like it.
* * *
“If you are not courteous in the skies, you will fail. Kindness is not optional in my class,” Professor Ravenstorm says with a booming voice.
