Every silent moment, every tender touch, felt like a betrayal. I hid the rage simmering beneath the surface. To unleash wrath prematurely would be to unravel every thread of deception I was meticulously weaving. And sleeping beside him, feeling the heatof his body, knowing everything he was and everything that had been stolen from us, the beast in me pounded the cage.
Though he’d stepped down as a professor, Nero remained the Founder. Unremovable. While I could stay with him every night, I was required to attend school every day. I couldn’t afford a single misstep—no tardiness, no missing class.
The vultures circled, led by Kingsley. They watched, hungry for any slip, any chance to wound Nero through me.
Dante and Orren became my shadows, a vigilant escort. It offered little comfort, since Kingsley had commandeered the combat training. I was his prime target.
I was skilled with weapons, and my power was a restless tide rising within me, though I hid it from everyone.
In the sparring ring, Kingsley sent his minions at me in relentless waves. Dante and Orren could only watch from the sidelines, jaws clenched, eyes on fire. This was Reaper Academy’s law: you faced your challenges, or you perished.
I played my part like a pro and emerged from each bout with calculated imperfections, a bruise here, a shallow cut there, while my opponents left maimed. Let Kingsley underestimate me. Let him mistake restraint for weakness. Humiliation wouldn’t kill you. Arrogance would.
I hid the evidence from Nero. By the time I returned to his penthouse each evening, my skin was flawless, the minor wounds sealed without a trace. I was Persephone, after all. The spring could heal as swiftly as it could grow thorns.
Deception became a second skin. I knew how to wear many faces, layers of personas shifting beneath the surface. The return of the tragic memories clung to me: the echo of brutal deaths, life after life. I still couldn’t figure out the mechanics of the curse, its leaden weight in my blood, an old poison still coursing through it. At least now, I was no longer defenseless.
Nero’s fear for me was tangible. He pushed me through training even while his own body fought its silent war. Dante was just as relentless, driven by the grim certainty of the coming trial in Reaper Academy—a culling designed to take me out.
I dreaded it. Yet the vicious part of me that came from Persephone craved it. It hungered for bloodshed to temper the fury I kept leashed.
After a week, when Nero’s condition didn’t improve but deepened, cold panic crawled up my throat.
Morrigan came daily to tend to him. I wove my brand of healing threads over his skin. The wounds would seal, only to split open again by morning, fresh blood blooming through the bandages.
“Why isn’t he healing?” I demanded one evening. Morrigan was repacking her kit, her face shadowed with fatigue.
“Hera’s Whip carried a curse,” she said, her voice low. “It’s in his blood. I’d hoped it would burn itself out.”
“But it hasn’t. It’s been a week.” My jaw tightened.
“The curse is draining him. He won’t heal until it’s purged.”
“Then what have you been doing?”
“Do you think it’s that simple?” she snapped. “I’m the best healer here. I want him whole more than anything. But Hera’s curses… there aren’t exactly manuals.”
It dawned on me. “It requires deeper research. I’ll help.”
The next day, I began. I recruited Sindy. She was good at it, and we needed every pair of eyes we could get.
Umbra Grimoire, the academy library, was a labyrinth of knowledge. The first floor held the arcane fundamentals, spells, rituals, the standard grimoires. Sindy and I bypassed them, climbing to the second floor, where the air grew colder and the texts older. Here, the myths and histories slept.
“If any record of Hera’s Whip exists,” Sindy said, “it will be here.”
The sheer volume of material was dizzying. We pulled tome after tome, scouring for any mention of Hera’s weapons, her curses, her legendary vengeance.
Hours blurred. The librarian, Mabel, a witch with a hat that seemed to slice the air, brought us additional volumes from the deep archives.
“These are old,” she cautioned, setting them down with ritual care. “Handle them gently. The magic within can be temperamental.”
I opened one book, then another. Most offered only surface myths, the watered-down, human-friendly versions.
Just as I reached for a volume on a higher shelf in the restricted alcove, an ancient, leather-bound book tumbled from above and struck my head.
I yelped, catching it before it hit the floor. The binding warmed against my palms as if it had been waiting.
The cover bore no title, only intricate symbols tooled into the leather: a crown of thorns. Hera’s icons.
