Root Rot Academy: Term 2

by Watson, Rhea

Maybe.

  Probably.

  I stabbed a pair of fries into the ketchup. “You fancy me—or we would have been a one-and-done situation and you know it.”

  Gavriel flipped me off from across the desk, and I hoisted a middle finger right back.

  “Stop trying to distract me from the matter at hand,” the fae growled, regaining some composure by straightening up and setting his half-eaten burger aside. I motioned to his container of glorious curly fries with a scowl.

  “Oh my gods, just eat your fries.” Seriously. I would have demolished the whole thing by now. “If you let them get cold and then just throw them out, I’m going to be pissed.”

  As if to prove a point, Gavriel shoved a massive handful of curly fries into his mouth and chewed with it open while I stared. Honestly, this guy. Why this guy? Shaking my head, I went back to my meal, plowing through most of it in the silence that followed, both of us eating and drinking to avoid the landmine we had almost walked right over.

  Until—

  “You know, if we play show-and-tell,” Gavriel mused, crumpling his tinfoil and tossing it onto the desk, narrowly missing one of the ripped-open brown takeout bags, “it could be under the promise of mutually assured destruction.”

  I gulped down the last of my drink with a grimace. “Sure. I mean, those would be my terms.”

  “Good.” The fae leaned forward and offered his greasy hand for a shake. Clearly he needed to unload something, maybe even just talk without fear of judgment or scrutiny.

  And how nice would it be to hash out the Benedict situation with someone sworn to secrecy after spilling his own guts, someone who had just freely offered me leverage.

  Like it had a mind of its own, my hand went for his, and when I tried to retreat, horrified, Gavriel just gripped tighter and held me in place. We shook on it in silence, neither willing to let go first, until finally the grease let me wriggle away and wilt into his high-backed leather chair.

  Gods, what had I done?

  “So, you first,” Gavriel urged, motioning for me to start with a dramatic flourish. My eyebrows shot up, and I crossed my arms with a snort.

  “Nope.”

  “Fucking really?”

  “Fucking really. This was your idea.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Then I rescind my handshake—”

  “For fuck’s sake, fine.” Gavriel grabbed two napkins and hunkered down to clean his fingers, every last bit of fryer grease gone, looking oddly serious—and a bit deranged—as he focused on the task. When he finally finished, tossing the used napkins aside with a scowl, he swept both hands through his hair, back and forth, wasting time.

  Fidgeting.

  Scared, maybe. Bundled up in his jacket, I leaned forward, about to tell him he didn’t need to do this—that we could each take a rain check and try again another day.

  But then he sighed, lifting heavy grey eyes to mine, teetering on the brink. My little nudge, the poke that sent him over the edge, came as I settled back into his chair and zipped my lips, a wordless promise not to interrupt.

  “My father was a low-born fae,” he admitted hoarsely. “And his father before him, his father before him, all the way up the fucking family tree.”

  Shocking, given the air of royalty he always carried himself with, but I kept that to myself as promised. When his gaze flicked almost shyly to me, I just nodded, expression neutral, ears open and lips firmly shut.

  “I came from dirt, but refused to live there forever,” Gavriel said slowly, frowning, busying himself with his fingers, nails neat and trimmed. “I wanted to better the family name, so I joined the Ash Court army. And… I was really good at it.”

  I straightened somewhat: the armor in his closet. Suspicions proven: he had once been a soldier, and now he was… this.

  “Rose through the ranks, gained the trust of my fellow warriors, did my duty beyond reproach,” he growled, almost telling the story to himself rather than me. “Decades down the line, I had my own battalion. I had victories to my name and supporters at my back. When a position became available, I took it… and I wanted to become a commander. Highest rank there was. Most respected. I’d have a place at the king’s table eventually, possibly even a seat on the court’s war council.

  “Then some noble’s son swept in to take the job I’d earned. High-born idiot who just wanted the medals, the title, the prestige. Fucker could barely hold a sword, never mind command an army. It caused a huge uproar with the men—massive dissent, threats of mutiny and rebellion. They called me in to meet with the war council and find a way to quash it, said that I deserved the promotion and the rank, but it was all political in the king’s court.

  “So, they offered me an assignment—reclaim an old Ash Court fort fallen into enemy hands. We lost it centuries ago, and that had nearly started a civil war. At the time, it stood in no-man’s-land between our court and the Amber Court, and they assured me it was abandoned. If I could reclaim the fort, the nobles would have no choice but to promote me on the proper merit.

  “I put together a squadron of my best warriors, fae I’d fought alongside since the beginning, who had sworn their lives to me. It… It was supposed to be easy. Simple. Kill the few guards stationed at the fort and toss a flag on the tower.”

  Gavriel went for his soda bottle, and from the disdain on his face, he probably wished it was whiskey. Vodka. Tequila. Anything strong enough to blur the memories.

  “It was a disaster,” he rasped, soft and strained. “The place was heavily armed—total ambush. We stayed. We fought bravely for our court… and I was the only one to make it back. Broken, beaten, I dragged my best friend’s body home to his wife—they burned the others before I could reach them.”

  I pressed a hand to my mouth, shaking my head, eyes stinging with tears I refused to shed. This was his sorrow, not mine. “Oh, gods, Gavriel—”

  “The nobles spun it like I’d gone rogue—that I knew the place was fortified with the best the Amber Court had at their disposal,” the fae snarled, grey gaze a million miles away. He slumped into his chair and tipped his head back with a sigh. “They ran this propaganda campaign that turned even my own men against me. I mean, on my watch, their best and brightest had died. In the end, they gave me a dishonorable discharge. I can never serve in the army again—never don my armor in battle. Never carry the king’s banner. Nothing. Two long centuries of war and conquest for nothing.”

  He sounded numb.

  Disconnected from the trauma.

  I had only heard the stories of my parents’ deaths; I couldn’t imagine the horror of witnessing people I loved die right before my eyes—and not a peaceful death at that. A violent one, brutal and bloody. Warriors were brothers to the end, and they had stripped him of everything.

  All for what—politics? So some rich asshole’s kid could play general?

  No wonder he drank.

  “I’m so sorry, Gavriel,” I whispered after a long stretch of silence. “I can’t even imagine what you’ve been through.”

  “Still wanted the influence and power, to get out of the dirt,” he muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose briefly before sitting back up, “but after everything, I planned to make changes from within the viper’s nest—show the king what his sycophants have done, how they will one day be the downfall of the Ash Court with their greed.”

  “Right.” I reached for my fries, barely lukewarm but salty enough to hit the spot, and shoved a few in my mouth with a frown. If he wanted to make a difference back home, why was he here, at Root Rot of all places? Why would a warrior want to be a librarian? “So, you—”

  “So, I came here,” he mused, cutting me off with a thin smile. “Traveled to this realm and made a deal.”

  I blinked back at him, thrown for a loop again—because fae were experts at deals. Hell, I had considered hiring one of the fair folk to find Benedict initially, but ended up going with a djinn because he couldn’t screw me over once I had him in my service.

>   Fae were tricky that way, always ready to take advantage of a loophole.

  Apparently.

  I’d never made a deal with one, and after Gavriel, the likelihood of ever doing so was down to zero.

  “You made a deal,” I said slowly, working out the mechanics piece by piece, hand hovering over my fries, “with a… demon?”

  Who else could give a fae the unattainable? Gavriel’s smile split wider.

  “With the demon.” He nodded when my eyes rounded. “Lucifer himself took my case, but not for my soul. I owe him one hundred souls for Darkwell Academy—”

  “What?” I shot up, heart in my throat and temper at a twelve, then slammed my hands on his desk and shoved the takeout bags aside. “Gavriel, I—you… You did what?”

  “Simmer down, fury.” He waved me off with a more genuine grin, unfazed by my anger. “I can’t force students to do anything they don’t want to do. I can persuade them that Darkwell is the best post-graduate option for their skills, but they need to be accepted on their own merit. I’m basically an admissions scout at this point. In three years, I’ve only had two of my selections accepted. Fucking two.”

  Hand pressed to my forehead, I collapsed into his chair before my knees gave out. Gavriel was here to… prey on my kids? No. That couldn’t be right. He wouldn’t… He…

  “Not going very well,” the fae grumbled, fiddling with his nails again. “Quite frustrating, actually. Who knew the Devil had such high standards?”

  Gods. Brain fogged over and a buzz between my ears, I couldn’t process this—any of it. The warrior part, all the death and betrayal and dishonor, made sense. That explained the drinking, the screwing his way through the entire female faculty—anything to numb himself to his past. But this?

  Making a deal with Lucifer?

  I—

  “Now you.”

  “W-what?” I managed, struggling to claw out of the stupor he had put me in. Gavriel leaned forward, dragging his chair with him, until he was right up against the other side of the desk.

  “Now you,” he repeated, motioning for me to spill my guts everywhere, mix them in with his.

  Fucking laughable, really.

  “Gavriel, we need to talk about this,” I argued. Yeah, he might not be kidnapping students and shipping them to the academy sponsored by Satan, but he was preying on a vulnerable population. These kids were here to better themselves, not to be told they were fine as is and, hey, the Devil might have a place for you in his army on Earth.

  No. Absolutely not.

  “I gave you my secret,” he insisted, plowing straight through my objections. “Death, betrayal, shame, dishonor, and a deal with the Devil. Your turn.”

  I shook my head. No. I couldn’t just… carry on like everything was normal. It wasn’t. I couldn’t look at him the same—not tonight, anyway.

  “Don’t break my heart, fury.” Gavriel might have sounded like his usual teasing self, that sinful mouth crooked and handsome as ever, but none of it reached his eyes. In that layered grey gaze, I saw fear. Hesitation. The expectation that I, like everyone else, was going to screw him over.

  And the point of this was mutual self-destruction. Give as good as we got. Be in each other’s debt, carrying each other’s reasons for drinking and fucking to forget.

  How good will it feel not to drag this burden around alone anymore?

  I swallowed thickly, throat like sandpaper, anxiety sluicing through my veins, numbing my fingertips, my toes.

  Gavriel had just revealed his ugly side. Hell, he had suggested it—because maybe he too was sick of lugging the past around all by himself.

  And if we were both exposed, both out in the open and in the know, we might stop falling back on unhealthy shit to make ourselves feel better.

  Maybe we could just… talk.

  Then have sex because we wanted to, not because we needed to forget some ancient horror.

  Fuck it.

  “Ash Cedar’s real name is Benedict Hammond,” I said slowly, forcing every word, body rebelling against the confession and locking up tight. Gavriel’s expression flatlined to shock, and he just blinked back at me from across the desk, uncharacteristically mute as I added, “And when I was three, almost four, he butchered my parents in our home—then set it on fire and left me to burn.”

  Oh.

  Gods.

  What had I just done?

  What would he—

  What if he—

  Godsgodsgodsgodsgodsgodsno.

  “So…” Gavriel leaned forward and steepled his fingers, unnervingly serious with those furrowed brows. His eyes flitted back and forth like he was working out some complex mathematics equation. He motioned to me, palms up, fingers splayed, then steepled his hands again. Struggling. Failing to find the words. “I… What—the fuck?”

  At that eloquent prompting, I opened the floodgates. Sure, it was only the bullet points—he didn’t need the fine details of how I struggled for years, looked for love and comfort in all the wrong places, acted out, cried, screamed, tried to perform summoning rituals to call my mom and dad’s souls back to this realm…

  You know, just to talk to them.

  By the end, Gavriel was the only one in this castle, this continent, this world, maybe, who knew that a neighbor had pulled me out of my burning childhood bedroom. That my grandparents raised me far away from the sleepy northern town where the Corwin and Hammond covens had clashed for generations. That no one had ever been formally blamed for the massacre. That my grandpa killed himself in his grief and some drunk driver took my grandma from me a few years later.

  That I paid a djinn an exorbitant amount of money to find the real killer.

  That I had him manipulate the cosmos to make Atkins retire so I had a legitimate reason for being here at Root Rot.

  “And now he’s here, and I’m here, and it’s been months of just… coexisting.” I spat the word out and tugged Gavriel’s jacket tighter around my naked frame, then folded my leg up so I could hug something sturdy, resting my chin on my knee. At no point did I care that I was flashing my pussy at him—nor did Gavriel’s gaze dip down for a quick peek. Not once had his eyes left my face throughout the entire story, like he wanted to scrutinize every twitch of my expression to gauge whether or not this was real. I licked my lips, the meat of my self-loathing and guilt finally coming to the surface. “And I… I’m really struggling. I don’t know what to do about him. I feel like I’m letting everyone down, like I’m wasting this opportunity, but I can’t just, you know, kill him.”

  The fae tipped his head to the side with a frown. “Why not?”

  Why not? Simple as that. Unlike me, he didn’t throw my secret back in my face. He didn’t judge any of it. He rolled with it, unflinching acceptance in his tone, his body language reading like we were just shooting the shit about academy gossip.

  And that felt so—fucking—good.

  So good, in fact, that tears stung my eyes and soothed my aching throat. Finally, finally, I had someone to just talk to about it.

  He’d never, ever know how much that meant to me.

  Thievery in the greenhouse last term—forgiven.

  For now.

  “Because…” My cheeks warmed at his little eyebrow arch. “Because the thought of physically, uh, killing him makes me sick. I don’t… I don’t want to be like him, but I feel like maybe there’s no other choice?” I shook my head, deflating at the realization. “I’m scared, and I’m frustrated and angry and floundering. My current plan is to get a taped confession and turn him over to the authorities.”

  “Boring.” Gavriel scoffed, then popped his elbows up on the desk. “D’you want me to kill him? I could just do it tonight—smother him in his sleep.”

  An offer like that should have sent me running for the hills. Instead, it made me all warm and fuzzy inside, the butterflies in my chest aquiver at the thought.

  “No,” I told him, firm and with a smile. “That’s, uhm, sweet, but it needs to be me. He nee
ds to know it was me, that I survived and I’m here to ruin his whole life just like he ruined mine.”

  Gavriel settled back in his chair again with a nod. “Fair enough. So, he thinks you’re dead?”

  “Pretty sure he thinks Hannah Corwin burned in her bed, yeah. My grandparents and I cut ties with the rest of the family as soon as we moved. Like, they had a kid’s coffin at my parents’ funeral, so—”

  “And now you’re…” His brows shot up again, gaze sweeping over me from top to bottom. “Alecto Clarke?”

  “I’ve been Alecto for years,” I said with another bob of my head, the anxiety ebbing the more I shared, “but Clarke is new.”

  In the quiet that followed, Gavriel gave me a longer, more intense once-over, for once nowhere near verging on a leer or a sneer or a seductive perusal. Instead, it almost felt like he was calculating my worth suddenly, and I shifted in his chair, leg down and arms crossed, his jacket covering most of the good bits as a self-conscious blush prickled in my cheeks.

  “Alecto suits you,” the fae admitted softly, and now it was my time to scoff.

  “Right.” I forced out a hollow laugh. “Because I’m totally killing it on the whole revenge thing. He hits on me all the time, and I do nothing but pretend to be flattered.”

  “Because you’re playing it smart,” Gavriel growled, hands clenching over his chair’s armrests. “You’re playing the long con, fury, and that’s the game. All the moving parts need to align or you’ll fuck it straight to hell—end up like your parents.”

  My eyes narrowed. “Okay, too far.”

  His usual impish grin returned, triumphant and genuine as his hands slowly loosened on the armrest, the wood literally groaning as he released it.

  “You know, the furies aren’t all violence and bloodshed,” he mused, tapping his finger on his desk as if to nail the point home. “They have a purpose in this world—creatures of righteous justice. They punish those who deserve it, and my darling girl, if you’re one thing, it’s righteous.”

  “Wow…” I snorted and went for the fry crumbs left in the container. “What a lovely backhanded compliment. Thanks.”

  Before he could add to it, I hurled an onslaught of crispy fried potato bits at him, and Gavriel actually dove to catch them in his mouth. The second he snapped up the biggest piece, we both threw our arms up at the same time in celebration—like he had just scored the winning touchdown at the big game.