His smile is a little sad. “I think you do, you just don’t want to accept it.”
“He called me groemmel.” The excuse sounds pathetic in my ears, weak.
“Groemmel means sister.Graemmolmeans daughter.”
Fucking Ifrit and their fucking bullshit translations.
“But that would mean that…”
Those lips widen and in a second, wings appear on his back, spanning out. Black with curved talon tips, smoking like they’d long since burnt out. And they… they look like mine without the rivers of white and orange fire coursing through them. And for a moment I wonder if that is somehow a gift from my birth mother.
An angel.
A fucking angel.
The founder of this school, and leader of the Dark Genocide.
“But… she killed your son.”
“I know. And she tried to kill you too, but… I got to her first. For you. To protect you. I cut you out of the womb myself.”
My head spins. The information is overwhelming and I feel like I just might faint again. “But that means you’re…”
Lucian Morningstar, the King of Hell.
A small crown suddenly appears perched over his brow by magic. It glows and shimmers with smoke and hellfire.
“Come.” He stands, pulling me with him. “You’ve done what we set out to do and this time should be celebrated.”
He turns, and over the ridge of his wing, I see the rip in the fabric of this dimension, like a curtain has been pulled back right from the trees and the sky to reveal the image through a foggy window, overlapping the angel’s statue of the Academy. My mother’s statue.
Through the rip in the fabric, I see hell.
And it’s pouring into this world. It smokes through the rip, spreading like ink on a page, consuming the ground, the sky. Until everything is black and red and gray.
His arms spread out at his sides and for the first time, it’s like a veil is ripped away and I can see the full force of Professor Shade’s power. His whole body pulses with whisking smoke, sliding off of him like water off of stone. As if answering his call, from the corner of my visions, shadows appear.
They slither against the ground, some emerging from the portal and flock to him like faithful soldiers.
Demons.
My Prod delights at the sight of them. Because she is their leader, she is their queen, their commander and the power inside me slowly builds, ready for an eruption.
“MISS CASTILLO!” I flinch at the voice of Headmaster Willms. Professor Shade turns as the stout man comes running towards us with security flanking his sides, holding pathetic buzzing clubs. They stop short of the line of demons and the Headmaster glares from Shade to me. “What the hell is going on here?”
Funny choice of words.
Can he not see the rip in dimensions and hell pouring through or is he literally that stupid? Hysteria threatens to choke laughter out of me.
“This isillegal.Your constant inability to follow rules has left me no choice. Izara Castillo, you are placed under permanent arrest for the use of illegal magic. Professor Shade, if you’ll please grab her so she does not escape.”
Professor Shade—no, Lucian Morningstar—laughs. The sound is like the crackling of wood in a bonfire, like the haunted echoes of tortured screams. It’s like nothing I’ve ever heard before and it makes the guards around the headmaster shift uneasily.
“Consider this my two seconds’ notice, Headmaster Willms.” Lucian lifts his arm and magic assaults around us blindingly. The force of his power lifts the headmaster in the sulfur scented air.
Willms screams but the sound is immediately cut off with a gurgle. His body arches and his arms are thrown at their sides like a grotesque religious parody.
“You have helped corrupt this Academy; you’ve poisoned it with your tyrant, murderous ideals and your reign isover.”
