The alpha turned, and shock flitted across her face. In her grief, she must not have heard the vampire approach.
“Go ahead,” she said.
I stood and gestured for Francis to walk a ways away.
When we were far enough from Dasha and Howley that we would not intrude on their mourning, I turned to him. “I’m sorry. I know you and Simone were an item during the Games. I’m not sure if you were recently, but—”
“No.” Francis cut me off. “That ended a few weeks after London, but we were still friends. And we still cared for each other. She was one of the few people who really knew me.”
I swallowed down a lump rising in my throat. “I owe my life to her. Actually, we all do. If Simone hadn’t sacrificed herself, Ishtar would have won.”
Francis sniffled, a strange sound coming from a vampire who didn’t even need to breathe. “Maybe.”
“I retrieved some of her ashes before I left. Would you like them?” I had been intending to keep them for myself, a memory of a life-debt cycle that now could never be repaid. But Francis, Simone’s once love and true friend, needed her ashes more.
His gaze lifted to latch onto mine. Only then did I realize that he was impossibly paler than normal. His albino skin seemed to have lost all the blood that had run through it. “It would honor me to take her ashes. I’ll create a necklace, and wear it at all times.”
“Once I find a suitable container to put them in, they’re yours,” I promised. I gestured toward the academy. “We need to get back to the school. We should see what damage has been done, and I’ll need to find people strong enough to carry the wolves, if Dasha will let them. Would you help?”
Francis nodded as he shot a glance to the mourning alpha. “Give her time. Wolves’ emotions run deep. I don’t know how she had that bond with three shifters. Something about her is special.” He pinned me with his gaze. “Like you. This whole godling business is something I want to hear about another time.”
“You will. I promise you will.”
The walk through the woods back to the academy nearly ripped my heart out.
Bodies littered the school grounds. I felt sure that, although we did our best to find everyone we could and bring them inside, we would be discovering corpses for days.
The destruction to the school’s property was also great. Craters the size of kiddie pools littered the lawn. Portions of the building had collapsed, and the rubble was strewn across the drive and into the grasses. One tower had been hit, and the top had fallen off. The front doors were broken down, leaving the school wide open.
No one had assessed the outbuildings yet, but we expected to find them similarly damaged.
When we entered the academy, I finally found my parents. They were standing on the third level, overlooking the entryway, searching for me.
“Mom! Dad!”
They sprinted down the stairs, and I ran up. We met in the middle, and they crushed me between them.
“Where were you?” Mom asked, her face streaked with tears. “We looked for youeverywhere.”
There was no way I would tell them that Ishtar had lured me into Hell by using their likenesses. Not now, probably not ever.
They’d only feel undeserved guilt over it.
“I fought Ishtar.” I paused, and my gaze went from Mom’s brown eyes to Dad’s hazel ones. “I have so many things to tell you, incredible things, but first, we have work to do.”
Dad nodded. “Are your friends safe?”
I gestured down to the entryway, where my friends streamed inside, some with bodies in their hands, some without.
“Eva, Alex, and Hunter are all good. Eva was the one to kill Lucifer,” I reported what my friend had told me on the walk through the woods. “Only Diana got injured. The rest are fine—mostly.”
My throat closed up thinking about Dasha, still in the woods, and Ayla, worrying over Luvon. And poor Francis, who was with his headmaster, getting business done, even though I was sure he couldn’t stop thinking about Simone. I certainly couldn’t. She’d made the ultimate sacrifice, so that I had a chance to kill Ishtar.
“They will be okay, one day,” I murmured.
My dad studied me as if he were trying to see into my soul, until finally, he nodded. “I think that’ll be the case for most people.”
A shuddering sigh left me. “Where are the students?”
