But I can’t. Her mind isn’t at rest, and I can’t break into her thoughts no matter how hard I try.
My eyes close once more, and my thoughts steal away from me. They carry my consciousness, scurrying around above the headmistress’s monument. Over the slashing chaos of clawing demons and screaming students. And it soars right to a host who seems to be searching me out as much as I’m searching him out.
“Phoenix,” a smooth, laid-back voice says before I ever see him.
My feet touch down somewhere in the back of his mind. I slip right inside like I’m searching for a warm fire on a cold winter’s night.
Big black boots are planted wide where he sits, spreading his legs open like he’s been comfortable here, waiting for me for a long while. His arms are settled against the sides of the devil’s chair, the throne. But the white, smoking wings that are spread wide against the back aren’t demonic at all.
“How’s it goin’ down there? Must suck to be locked up so tightly while we have all the fun, huh?” the stranger asks, quirking his eyebrow at me as if we’re simply discussing the fine weather rather than a fucking all-out war.
I don’t like that he knows things about me that I have no idea how he could possibly know.
“It’s pretty fucking shitty.” I keep the distance between us. His thoughts, his dream are arranged like the devil did indeed land three thrones on the campus of Academy of Six, but the fire and the chaos, it’s been cleared away from his mind.
It’s almost like… this isn’t a dream at all, but a peaceful meeting that this man has arranged between us.
Maybe he isn’t dreaming at all. It’s possible that he’s strong enough to summon me to his thoughts.
Which is fucking terrifying to imagine.
Everything in the scenery he’s created is pristine, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say that this is what the academy would have looked like before… well, before. Lush, bright grass, trees bursting with green blooms of life. Color is splattered everywhere, in perfect contrast to those three dark thrones.
“Your friends seem to be in a bit of a bind. Especially Izara. She’s a firecracker, that one.”
At that, every fucking muscle in my body tenses.
How does he know her?
“Who the fuck are you?” I finally ask.
The man’s smile is a slow-spreading, infectious thing. He’s hauntingly attractive, and when he smiles, it just makes him look like the devil himself. Leather-wearing bastard.
“My name’s Azazel.Supergood friend of Izara’s.” He winks at me, and that one little gesture, that single insinuating flutter of his lashes, is what makes me lunge at him.
My palms clamp down on either side of his neck with so much force, I’m shaking.
But I grip nothing.
His translucent image flickers beneath my hands, and his arrogant smile only widens.
“It’s my dream, asshole. If I wanted to be choked out by an incubus, I would have just stayed in bed.” He stands, striding right through me in such a way that his creepy energy pulses right into my heart before exiting.
His flashing happiness is on full display, but it’s fake. I can tell it’s fake. It’s just like Saint’s. It wavers at the corners of his lips when he’s not paying attention. He forces it back in full effect. But then… it falls away entirely.
“She’s strong,” he says in the softest whisper. “But I’m afraid she’s not strong enough yet.”
My mind reels, and as much as he’s taunted me, I don’t think he’s an intimate part of her life. He cares. I can see he cares.
I just have no fucking idea why.
“Is she okay?” I ask, but my scattered thoughts panic because… I don’t really know if she’s okay.
I’d heard Syko’s screams, the sound tearing across the skies. And then her agonized screams that followed me down this shit hole.
I shouldn’t have come here.
A small smile tugs at the corner of Azazel’s mouth. “She will be fine. Can’t say the same for Syko, though.”
