The speaker in the empty classroom screeched before announcing, “All students to the main auditorium. Council President Oadess is to speak in the north auditorium in ten minutes. Thank you.”
Persius whistled. “Wow, the dean’s secretary still has no idea her boss is in Hell.”
“Maybe she does know, and that’s why her announcement sounded a little cheerier than normal,” Bael remarked.
“Let’s go.”
Nix breathed deeply, in and out, to calm her nerves as they merged with a crowd of students, all headed through the tall auditorium doors.
“So, this didn’t happen last time?” Thierry asked Nix about the Kellan Oadess scheduled announcement. “In the last timeline you were in?”
Nix chewed on her inner cheek and smoothed a hand down the newly borrowed girl’s uniform. “I wouldn’t know. Adar and Elle had me off-campus most of the day.”
She added, “I have no idea if this happened without me or if this mystery announcement is new to this timeline. I was warned that things could be…worse by coming back.”
Thierry frowned. “Warned?”
“Worse?” Ryker repeated.
“What do you mean?” Persius asked.
“I thought you just blacked out and woke up in the past?” Bael said.
“That’s what happened to me the first time, but this last time, I—well—this woman appeared to me. It was like a weird limbo state. She asked me if I’d rather live or die and have a redo.”
“She?”
“A woman? What did she look like?”
“Well, the whole scenery was orange-tinted, but I think she had red hair too. She floated in a long, fiery dress.”
Thierry choked and coughed several times into his fist as he struggled to recover from the shock.
“Floated?” Bael asked. “Sounds like you met a Goddess, Nixie.” Goddess. That had been Nix’s guess as well. “And if she had red hair…”
Thierry cut Bael off, “Maybe it was some kind of dream. Between death and waking.”
“But if she really saw—”
“Impossible,” Thierry hushed Bael.
“What? Tell me,” Nix demanded.
“The likelihood of it beingher—”
“Who?” Nix snapped.
Thierry fingered his black-framed glasses and hesitated before speaking. “She…There is a goddess who is known to pause time—not freeze it but hold everything still like a suspended breath. When she appears, it is rumored that the air warms and turns a molten amber-orange, as if the world slips into a candle’s flame at her presence.”
“That’s her,” Nix said adamantly.
“Red hair, and she wore red?”
“Yes.”
“The Goddess is known to be robed in layered shades of scarlet, ember, and garnet red—all making her dress appear to flicker like a living flame.”
“Yes, butwhois she?” Nix asked. “What’s her name?”
