by Ember Hollis
We both collapse onto each other in giggles as music starts up and couples take their place on the dance floor. On cue, Noah grabs me by the waist and then we’re off, twirling amid the other dancers along the magic circles that someone has laid out using the gold veins in the marble floor. Though the dance is similar to our practice session in class, the music is more festive with a strong rhythm and primal beats that make my heart race. Each step kicks up tiny gold magical sparks beneath our feet, and as we dance, I start to become incredibly aware of Noah’s body beside me. Every breath, every look, every touch seems designed to arouse, and by the time the dance ends, both of us are panting heavily, chests heaving and fingers trembling.
“Wow,” Noah breathes as he holds me close. “That’s… that’s really…”
“It was something,” I nod in agreement. The dance is a lot more potent today, and it’s obvious that its meant to be a prelude to something more. We bend closer to each other, our lips on the verge of touching, as we stare into each other’s eyes. Noah’s are brighter than they’ve ever been, and the warmth in them as they focus on me to the exclusion of everything else, makes me feel like the most precious thing in the world. I tilt my head up, waiting for him to kiss me.
“Maybe… maybe I should get us some drinks,” Noah says raggedly, pulling back just as his lips are about to brush mine.
I blink, confused, then lower my chin reluctantly. “Oh, okay. If… if you’d like.”
Noah blinks, as if immediately aware that he’d just interrupted a ‘moment’. “Sorry I just… I don’t want to rush things,” he says quickly. “I mean, this is the first time… because… after all, you were just our Unicorn Whisperer, and… you know… I just think we should take things slowly.”
I nod enthusiastically, though I can’t help but feel disappointed. “Sure, sure, of course, it’s… it’s what I want to.”
It’s what I should want at least.
I try to bring myself under control, wondering when I’d become so horny. It must be all those make out sessions that Christian inflicted on me, plus what Knox and I had gotten up to recently. Those Horsemen just spoil everything, don’t they, I muse, with a touch of longing… for more of what I’d done with them, or for Noah… I’m not entirely sure.
Noah on the other hand, seems to have no such conflict within him. His face brightens and a tension leaves his expression as he hears my words. “Great! I’ll be back soon then, just give me a minute.”
“Sure, but uh… Noah?”
I want to stop him and let him know that I might come across the other boys on my dance card at any time, but before I can, Noah’s disappeared into the crowd.
I look after him helplessly for a moment, then sigh and move to get away from the spell circle.
Someone takes my arm.
“So… that’s the kind you like, little lamb? Clumsy, floundering, and mediocre, with absolutely no taste and finesse? No wonder you keep resisting me.”
My temper rises predictably, and I turn to find Christian standing beside me in a red suit and black silken cravat with a horned devil’s mask on his face. He looks crisp and sharp, so well put together that my throat immediately dries out as he picks up my hands and pulls me into the throng of dancers.
“Noah isn’t all that bad,” I tell him, as we start moving to the music. It’s a new song, but no less potent in energy. “He’s sweet and nice, and I like him, so please don’t talk about him like that.”
Christian scoffs and neatly turns me in a twirl. It’s like we’re performing completely different steps, even though it’s the exact same dance. I find myself gliding smoothly alongside him, skimming across the floor like we’re floating on a cloud. Christian guides me through each step and twirl, effortlessly foreseeing the ones I’m not sure off, and making me do them anyway without a hitch. Despite my dislike for his manipulating ways, I find myself relaxing and trusting him to guide me, until I don’t even worry about where to go and just start… enjoying it.
“Don’t fool yourself, little lamb,” Christian steps forward, brushing his hips against mine in an undulating, swaying move that sends my mind straight to the gutter. It’s an extra flourish that he’s just created on the fly, and I immediately respond to it, moving along with him, like we’re two halves of a whole. “He’s not going to give you what you need. No one can give you want you need, except—”
“Except you?” I smile mockingly at him. “Again, you’re presuming to know just what I want. But it’s all in your head isn’t it, it’s all just words with no substan—”
Christian’s smile turns positively vicious as he jerks me forward in a rough move, then spins me before dipping me so low, my hair sweeps the floor. I gasp in surprise as he runs his hands up my leg to my waist, then buries his nose in the top of my cleavage. Where Noah had respectfully placed a single kiss, Christian trails a line of butterfly kisses right up my throat to a tender spot beneath my jaw. Gold sparks fly before my eyes as my nerves tingle like fire at how light and yet tantalizing his lips feel. My desire, already stoked by my first dance, rears and rages in me like a beast let loose from its cage. And when Christian sets me up right again, I cling to him wordlessly, completely forgetting what I meant to say.
By the time the dance ends, I’m shaking on my feet, barely able to stand without his support. My underwear is soaked through, yet, despite all his flourishes, Christian hasn’t really touched me anywhere he wasn’t supposed to.
“In case you’re wondering,” he says quietly, his eyes dark and filled with a savage hunger that’s the equal of mine, “What you felt the last time I touched you in Priya’s room, that was all you. I haven’t used an ounce of my powers on you since you got out of that pit, nor did I just now. So whatever you’ve been feeling around me… well, that’s nothing but the truth.”
I gulp and stand there, speechless, as he hands me off to Bane, who’s quietly stepped up from the side. The two Horsemen glare at each other for a long second, before Bane pulls me once more into the dance, leaving Christian watching us intently from within the shadows.
Chapter 19: Heaven
Though Bane is less showy and dances more by the book, he’s just as intense and hot as Christian, if not more so, in his own way. When the music stops, I don’t even say a word, I just dart away before I can lose my control and beg him to take me right then and there on the dance floor.
It must be the ritual magic of the dance that’s heightening all my sensations, I decide, as I hide behind thick, lush, berry laden leaves in a secluded bower. There’s no other explanation for it. Ritual magic or…
Just plain teenage horniness?
I sink to my seat in despair as I run over what Christian had told me. How could that be true? He had to be lying. Because otherwise, there’s no explanation for why I can’t stop craving his touch and wanting to be with him.
But if he’s not lying… wouldn’t it just be easier to sleep with him and just… get it out of my system?
I chase the thought away before it takes root, and get to my feet. I need to find someone. Sybil, or Meg, or anyone else who will help take my mind off of such things.
I step out of the bower and try to spot Amelie’s crimson dress, which should be quite easy to find in the crowd. But before I can take a good look at the dancing couples, a man dressed in a fanciful forest outfit with stag’s horns on his head steps in front of me.
“Ah, Heaven,” he says with a smile. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Shall we dance now?”
He sweeps me off in a flurry of leaves and flowers, and by the time I’ve gathered my wits, we’re already too closely wedged between the other dancers for me to leave.
“Uh, do I know you?” I ask, completely puzzled at how this had happened.
“Why yes,” the stag boy says. “We met in the gardens a day or two ago, don’t you remember? I was so happy you asked me to dance, I’ve heard so many… let’s just say, intriguing things about you.” He edges closer and licks the
shell of my ear, making me jump.
“Ah!” I exclaim, trying to pull back. “I—you… are you sure you’re not mistaken that we met?” I stare at him, wracking my mind. Had I ever seen him before?
“Of course not,” he says. “You look exactly the same.”
“But when exactly did we meet?” Perhaps I’d been sleepwalking.
“Oh, you know, sometime after dinner… but enough talk, let’s just… enjoy the dance, shall we?” he says with an eager prance to his step as he dips me down low and buries his face in my breasts, licking me again.
Oh my God!
I want nothing more than to shove him away, but that would only create a scene, so I endure his attentions and focus on the steps of the dance until we’re done and I can take my leave.
But no sooner have I done so, when another boy, this time with tentacles, sidles up to me and wraps me in his… tentacles.
I can’t get away from him either, so I dance with him too, and then another boy and another and another and another, until I can barely feel my feet. When the next boy approaches, I hold a palm up before he can get a word out and run off the dance floor into the nearest washroom.
I slam the door behind me and close my eyes in relief only to nearly jump out of my skin when someone latches onto my arm. “Heaven!”
“Oh my God, Sybil,” I groan, “Where have you been? This night is getting to be so crazy, I swear half the boys out there are drunk and imagining things! Do you know I had to dance with at least ten of them in the last hour?”
“Wow,” Sybil gives me the same look she had previously, like she doesn’t recognize me. “Looks like you’re getting really popular.”
I frown as she looks away awkwardly.
“Hey, Sybil,” I say insistently. “I’m not sure you understand what I’m saying.” I dig into my dance card case, intending to show her it’s all been a big mistake, and that there’s no way I’ve suddenly become so popular. “I don’t even know any of those bo—”
Blood drains from my face when I get a proper glimpse at the contents of the little golden box.
“Sybil,” I whisper after a long moment. “I think someone’s cursed me.”
She scoffs, “Yeah, sure.”
“No, I’m serious, look at this!”
I empty the box in her lap and dozens of cards, each written all over with cursive names, cascades out of it to flutter onto her skirt and on the floor.
“I don’t even know that these guys exist! How is it possible that they or I have asked either of us to this dance?” I cry out. “Something has gone really, really wrong!”
“I’ll bet it has,” a contemptuous voice says. “It’s probably the reason why a whore like you got into this school in the first place!”
Chapter 20: Heaven
I close my eyes slowly at the familiar, yet still painful, insult, then turn slowly to face a girl that I vaguely recognize, who’s stepped into the bathroom behind me. With her are three more girls, all of whom are wearing angry, hateful expressions that make them look ugly, despite the heavy makeup on their faces. “Look, I don’t know what you think I’ve done now, but if you’ll just give me a min—”
‘Oh, I’ll give you something,” the girl continues. “I’ll give you exactly what you deserve!”
As one, the girls descend upon me, shoving Sybil aside so that she falls into a cubicle. One of them kicks a flower stand against the cubicle door, wedging it so it won’t open, while the rest hound me to the other end of the room.
“Now, wait just a minute,” I say, trying to summon up my Soothing powers. But nothing happens. Not a wink of pink.
How can my powers be so damn fickle!
I forgo the Soothing to bring up my wings instead. They burst out, unraveling between my shoulder blades above my backless gown, and I try to focus my thoughts into making my feathers sharp.
One of the girls narrows her eyes, and all of a sudden, I feel searing pain along the edges of my wings. A horrible, acrid smell fills the air of the bathroom, and I look up to see that fire is devouring the tips of my wings.
“NO!” I scream. But it’s too late. Charred feathers drift down to speckle my beautiful dress, and mind-numbing pain is already making me sink to my knees. My wings disappear as I make them return into my body before more damage can be done.
“Think you’re so special just because you’re an angel-blood, do you?” the front-most girl says. “Think you can steal our boyfriends—”
“—seduce the Horsemen!”
“—lord it over us, just because you were the Whisperer!”
“—parade around like you’re so special—”
They shriek at me like banshees as they rush forward and take me by the arms, hustling me sideways into a tiny cubicle. One of them grabs me by the hair as another flips the toilet bowl cover up, and a third kicks me in the back of the knees so I fall.
I have barely enough time to suck in a breath to scream, when savage hands shove me hard into the depths of the ceramic toilet, forcing my face below the water level so that my nose and mouth are fully submerged. Someone flushes the toilet, again and again, until I choke on the water and feel as if I’m drowning.
I’m at the brink of passing out when the pressure on the back of my head lets up and I’m allowed to fall back away from the bowl and onto the floor. There’s a rushing sound in my ears that saves me from the abuse they keep hurling at me, but nothing stands between me and the toilet cleaner that they pour over my hair and dress. That they rub into my face.
The pure hate that’s pummeling me from all sides is unbearable. I curl up into a ball on the floor and just hope and pray that it will end soon.
And then it does.
The bathroom door smashes open and someone barges in, surprising us all. One of the girls is still in mid-strike, and the toilet cleaning brush that she’s chosen as a weapon thwacks against someone’s outstretched hand.
I look up, expecting to see Noah, or, dare I even imagine it, Christian or Bane.
But it’s Malek, standing over all of us like an angel of death, his eyes blazing so brightly that they look like molten gold.
“Get out!” he growls, snapping the brush in two with one hand.
Like mice, the girls run from the bathroom, silently and so quickly, it’s as if they’d never been there. The room is suddenly quiet with the exception of Sybil, who’s stopped pounding on her door to sob silently in the cubicle a few doors down.
I stare at Malek, wondering if he’s come to finish what they started. The tip of the brush in his hand looks deadly sharp. But all he does is stare at me like he’s seeing me for the first time and realizing that I am indeed, not just another tile that’s part of the floor.
“Why did this happen?” he asks. “Can’t you fight for yourself?”
I shake my head silently. If I could, wouldn’t I have done it? It’s pathetic that a bunch of girls can do this to me when I’d fought off a Fallen angel all by myself. But no matter how I look at it, I don’t know what I could have done differently. I’d had no idea this was going to happen. I’d been utterly unprepared for this sort of attack at a ball attended by so many people.
And… if I had to be completely honest with myself, what had happened with Mikael was a fluke fueled by contaminated unicorn blood and incredibly good luck. I myself hardly deserve the label ‘part-angel’. I’m just too weak. I’m nothing but a girl born of a defective angel and a woman with a complete lack of morals and willpower.
“I’d like to know how this happened myself.”
All of us turn to the door where Pandora and another one of her secretaries is standing. They walk into the room, smoothly avoiding the debris from the fight. The secretary shoves away the stand from Sybil’s cubicle door, releasing her, and she immediately falls out of it, a dozen words a second pouring from her lips as she describes what happened.
Pandora listens intently, then reaches down for the cards from my box to look at them. She holds a hand over
the pack, and a soft silver glow envelops them, dying down a moment later when she looks up at me.
“The magic tells me that these invitations to dance were indeed issued by you,” she says. I shake my head wordlessly, unable to speak. What can I say anyway, when no one will believe me? When no one even tries to think about what it might feel like to be me?
“I can’t take any sides,” Pandora says quietly anyway. “That’s the best way to make things escalate beyond control. If I say you can’t have done this, the girls will punish you ever harder, and in ways that I may not be able to stop or even detect. If I take their side…” she looks at me. “Well. I don’t think that’s even necessary, after what they did to you.”
“But how can you do nothing?” Sybil demands. “She’s been tortured endlessly since she arrived!”
“To be an angel-born is not easy,” Pandora replies, ignoring Sybil and speaking to me. “And to be an angel-born studying here in Pandorax…” she exchanges glances with her secretary before addressing me again. “Sometimes, no matter how you dodge fate, it still finds a way to hunt you down, doesn’t it? You are here now, Heaven, and I’m afraid that here is where you’ll have to stay, at least for now. For your own good.”
“But she just got her wings burned,” Sybil says, not giving up. I look at her gratefully, a rush of affection bringing fresh tears to my eyes. “She’s part-angel… how can you let them do this to her?”
“It is precisely because she comes from angels that I can’t help her!” Pandora says, her voice harsher than any other time I’ve heard it. She turns to Sybil. “Think, girl. What will happen if I take her side in a situation that’s as opaque as this? Against a fire demon’s granddaughter?” She turns back to me. “I’ve gone down that road before, and I can tell you, it never ends well. Pandorax has to remain neutral, no matter what. It’s for the good of all.”
