It was a start. I didn’t use emojis, and I knew nothing about code breaking. But Icouldsee if they were planning to kill again and, apparently, wecouldprevent it with enough foresight.
Iabhorred violence, but if I needed any motivation to give into my baser instincts with Radames and Lola, I got it every time I checked Sage’s glucose monitor and then looked at how pale she was.
I looked it up. Stress could affect diabetes. Her insulin pump and the fairy food were the only reasons it wasn’t a lot more serious. She was nineteen and was raised by a controlling megalomaniac. Sage should just be enjoying finding out she was magical, not dealing with any of this.
I got it. She was a banshee and she could foretell death. She was the only one here with that ability and it was definitely needed. Sage wasn’t acting like it was too much pressure and sheknew her body way more than I did, so I hadn’t said anything, but I could tell she wasn’t feeling one hundred percent.
I wasn’t used to giving enough of a shit about someone to take care of them, but I felt that way about Sage. How did this even work? Was saying I was concerned straight out of those smutty books Liam had her reading or did it sound controlling and that I thought I understood a disease she’d lived with since she was a child better than she did?
I wasn’t used to not being good at things I wanted to be good at.
Headmaster Mykene asked us to give her a day and she could put together the same kind of dossier on the victims as she had on the rest of us. Which was actually frightening because I’d personally need more time than that and I wouldn’t be able to figure out some Irish psychopath was murdering rapists in Amsterdam unless there was some kind of electronic paper trail and something told me Liam was way too careful for that.
I didn’t particularlywanta job here, but I wouldloveto learn more about computers from a God of Wisdom since she managed to figure out I’d hacked her program. Liam didn’t leave evidence when he murdered people and I didn’t leave a trace when I hacked them.
We were going to classes like everything was normal. Sage scanned the dining hall and hallways between classes for red auras and wasn’t finding any. We were in the dining hall finishing up breakfast when Alexios went totally stiff and his eyes went white again.
It was about time he had another fucking prophecy. As the other person here with foretelling abilities, he was slacking. Sage was having to pick up the slack, and I didn’t like what it was doing to her. He’d better be having ausefulprophecy instead of announcing it was going to rain again.
“It shall be then, on the shortest day and on the longest night, the window will open for the sun bird, the grim, the flying fox, and the crow to permanently exorcise the abominations.”
What the fuck? Why couldn’t Alexios’s prophecies be more direct like Sage’s were? I mostly got the first one. If we didn’t stop Lola and Radames by spring, they were going to take over the world like some supernatural Bond villain. We were all looking at each other because no one knew what that meant, not even Khalid.
“Oh, shit. This is me,” Morgana said. “Your big window is going to be Winter Solstice, which is coming up. There’s a big party on campus and then everyone can leave for Winter Break if they want to. The sun bird is going to be Adrian. A grim is an omen and a black dog, so I’m guessing it’s Mazen since he’s immune. A flying fox is another name for a bat, so that’s Lucian. Do Ireallyneed to spell out who the crow is?”
I’d made my peace with being part of ending this. I was willing to commit violence if it meant no one else died and Sage was safe.
I wanted Sage as far away as possible when all of that went down.
Everyone was completely overreacting about the prophecy, so I was having girl time with Morgana, Iman, and Saffron. By everyone, I meant Khalid, Liam, and Lucian. I wasn’t immune to Radames, and I didn’t have super speed or strength.
But everything I’d read about the Morrigan was that she was in the middle of battles and she could influence them. I wassupposedto be there.
“They know I’m not going to be brawling with a giant snake, right?” I huffed. “Not only can I turn the tide of a battle, but I canseethe red aura of anyone who is going to die. I wouldn’tbe completely incompetent if I could just figure outhowto manipulate a battle.”
“Listen, Elliot and Petros learned nearly everything they know about magic fromme.Professor Adamstus would be the first to admit I’m better than both of them at magical combat. If I was in that prophecy, they’d all be pitching a fit.”
“Well, Ivar is pitching a fit that it’s Adrian and not him because people were terrible to Ari after Lola accused them. Thing is Bastet was a god of many things—fertility, women’s secrets, childbirth, but she was also a God of Cats. I can turn into any type of cat, even if they are extinct.
“Cat beats snake and Bastet defeated Apep more than once. He just never stayed dead. I get why Ivar wants to kill them, but it feels like I ended up Bastet when Apep and his mate got reincarnated to settle an old score. If anything,Ishould be in the prophecy. Anyway, I know why he didn’t stay dead the first time after meeting Adrian.”
I liked Iman now that she wasn’t a cat. She was still kind of a cat, though. She hissed at people who talked to her when she didn’t want to be talked to and she shifted her nails to claws if she didn’t want to be touched. Iman was also brilliant, so whatever theory she had was probably the right one.
“Explain,” Morgana said.
“So, Khalid and Professor Gefn know who dies before anyone else because Sage screams and then they get pulled to the veil to help them. But no one knew Adrian died until I told them, which had me curious, so I talked to Professor Gefn. It takes alotto pull a shade from the veil and the dead can’t do it themselves. I asked Adrian, and he doesn’t go to the veil when he does stupid things like dying by cracking his head open doing a strip tease to Cher.”
“What the fuck?” Saffron laughed.
Adrian had, apparently, died a lot since he found out he was a phoenix and it wasn’t always Lola trying to kill him. He seemed to have gotten really clumsy considering how obsessed he was with rugby. That was the second time I’d heard of he died trying to lure Iman to bed.
“You still haven’t bedded those boys?” Morgana asked. “What are you waiting for?”
“We barely know each other. We aren’t discussing my sex life. I don’t think Apep went to the veil when he died. He went to the Void and there are different rules there. They would behead and dismember enemies as a sign of disrespect because they thought if the body wasn’t whole, it couldn’t go to the afterlife.
“I haven’t figured out exactly how it works. and it wouldn’t be the same for Radames, but Adrian’s body is completely destroyed when he dies and then the ashes somehow help him regenerate a new one. IthinkApep went to the void when he died, so he was just able to come right back to his body and mend it with shadows, no matter how damaged it was. We just have to destroy his body in a way that he can’t repair it.”
“Pretty sure my boyfriend is the only one here who knows how to dispose of a corpse and I’m not sure what that says about me.”
