“Which ones actually work?” Lucian asked.
“None of them, actually. Most of them were invoking a god to bless them with fertility, but not all gods can do that and even they have their limits. And back then, the gods were mostly being invoked for sons.”
“What would sleeping with a fertility god do?” Sage asked.
“Oh, hon, if you’ve managed the birth control spell, you don’t have to worry about getting pregnant with this one. The reincarnation of Artemis is teaching here and the reincarnation of Aphrodite is a man in this life.”
“I smashed an onion in his face because he’s a ponce.”
“Anyway, the reincarnation of Parvati was here a few years ago. Fertility gods aren’t more potent than other kids or some of them would end up with millions of kids. It’s some kind of magic, not fucking them that does it, though there was probably a lot of confusion about that in the past because some of the male ones didn’t want to clarify that to get their dicks wet.”
Yeah, I didn’t take Radames for having deep conversations with the librarian about fertility gods. He had several contemporaries in his first life associated with fertility and birth, but Apep didn’t exactly make a lot of friends.
For some reason, Lola really wanted to be pregnant, but with anyone but Radames and Radames was researching how.I thought they were just trying to trap Mazen because he was the type of man who would stay with someone who made him miserable if his child was involved.
But she flunked our first lesson in Arcane magic because she never did master the birth control spell. She never admitted to Professor Gefn it was intentional, which would have saved her grade. Iman said she was sneaking around with half the school intentionally not using any birth control.
They must have not done their research on fertility gods. They didn’t approach Professor Theron because she was a woman and they left Liam’s new nemesis alone because he was openly only into men. Liam was pretty much into everyone until he met Sage and then he only saw her.
So, Lola just decided to drug and rape him because if she’d asked, he would have laughed in her face.
I didn’t know why they were so dead set on Lola getting pregnant or what all the murders and disappearances meant. And we couldn’t exactlyaskthem because we’d never be friends and for now, Sage wasn’t seeing any red auras.
We were all livid and Liam had his switchblade out. Lola targeted him because she had a complete misunderstanding of how fertility gods worked. Or how the birth control spell Professor Gefn taught on the first day worked. Saffron said the other side of the school got taught the exact same spell the first day oftheirArcane Magic class and the spell wasn’t just for the women.
Just because Lola didn’t do the spell didn’t mean the men she was going after weren’t protected.
“Hey, Lola was the only one who didn’t manage. Radames did the spell. It doesn’t make sense,” Khalid said.
“You can break the spell by digging up your jar and burning it,” Morgana said. “You kind of have to because people want to start families and it’s the only way. Professor Gefn wouldn’t check everyone was protected after everyone mastered the spell and she probably gave up on Lola when it was clear she just wasn’t going to do the lesson. Liam should be able to check if he’s broken the spell jar just as easily as Professor Gefn can.”
“I can see connections. I can see Lola and Radames are connected but I can’t really tell if either of them are fertile or not.”
“Weird because Lola has a black aura to me and Radames is golden like everyone else’s.”
“I also see a black aura around Lola, but that could just mean she’s sick or her energy is blocked. Radames’s is gray to the witches, but he acts like his aura is gray,” Morgana said.
Whatever that meant. Sometimes, Morgana explained and sometimes, she said things like we were all supposed to know.
“Can you tell the difference between the different connections? You’re connected to Khalid and me, but in a different way than you are to Sage. I’m sure there are groups where more than two people are together, but noteveryoneis together,” Lucian said, side-eyeing Iman and her men.
Because yeah, Iman was probably going to end up with all of them if she wanted, but Ari and Ivar were together before they got here, Alexios was bi, and then Adrian, who was pansexual like Liam. And then there was Mazen, who had no problem with any of that, but clearly only had eyes for Iman. Mazen was learning sign language to communicate with Ari, but Ivar still hadn’t forgiven him, even though Ari had. Adrian had adopted Mazen, and Mazen and Ari were trying to help Adrian shift into his phoenix bird.
So, Lucian was correct to ask Liam to use them to figure out if he could sense different kinds of connections. I didn’t know if it would help him sense if Radames broke his spell jar, but it was definitely a skill he needed. Professor Gefn was scary, but I still liked her and she was on our side. I had no doubt if Liam asked, she’d help him the same way she was helping Khalid and me with traversing the veil.
Luckily, Iman seemed overwhelmed with the attention because she hissed at people if she didn’t like what they were doing and I was pretty sure Liam staring that hard would bother her. Iman could also half shift just her claws and I watched her take a swipe at someone who got in her personal space in the food line. She’d have absolutely no problem mauling Liam.
“So, yeah, if I stare really hard, I can see a difference in the threads that connect them. It’s different if the feelings are romantic or just friendly. I basically don’t know why anyone wouldn’t be bi, but we can thank Mazen for being completely hetero because he was how I figured it out.”
“Some of us aren’t attracted to men,” Lucian said.
“You should at least let Sage put a pinky up your butt.”
“Liam,” I said, trying to corral him. “What about Lola and Radames? What kind of connection do they have in this life?”
Because that was the big question. Scorpia told us Apep turned Hemlock into an original because they were lovers, but we didn’t know what kind of connection they had in this life. They were never together and Lola was trying to get with half the campus.
“Well, I can only sense the connections when people are together. It’s like a string that connects them and, apparently, they glow differently depending on if it’s a romantic or platonic connection. And the connection has to be nurtured. See Lena, that girl who is always half asleep? I think she’s a sloth shifter, but anyway, now that she’s been hanging out with those twoblokes and that lass, I can see their strings glowing much brighter than when I first started seeing them.”
