Caleb motioned for me to step in after him, and I snapped out of my surprise. We entered the darkness of Nocturnal Academy, and I found myself facing two figures who waited for us in the narrow corridor. One was tall and broad, the other was a few inches smaller than me.
We were close to the spot where a secret door in the brick wall led to an exit. This was a quiet part of the school. In the distance, the low chatter of fae students heading to the dining hall sounded.
As I stepped closer, my eyes adjusted, and I saw who our allies were. A tall, well-built vampire with blond hair and icy blue eyes stood before me. Beside him was a fae with dyed purple hair and cobalt eyes, which narrowed as she examined me. The air chilled.
“Thorsten. Onyx.” I had been nothing but a complete bitch to them in the past. I had even filmed them kissing and tried to sell out their forbidden romance to Lord Vulthus. My actions were unforgivable, and now, these two had come for their revenge. This was a trap. I backed to the door, but Onyx lunged at me and seized my collar. “Peony. What are you doing here?” Clearly, she hadn’t known that she’d be working with me either.
My thoughts raced. Did her surprise mean this wasn’t a trap after all?
“You know each other?” Caleb’s forehead creased.
“We sure do.” Onyx gritted her teeth and released me with a shove, an ice dagger materializing in her hand. “Peony cannot be trusted.”
Thorsten advanced, fangs flashing, and I shuddered. “Peony tried to get us both killed. She is the type to crawl up to anyone who can give her power. Pathetic. You’re the flavor of the week, Prince Caleb.”
Caleb glanced between us, the creases on his forehead deepening. I didn’t want to tell Caleb about my attempts to destroy Onyx but knew I had no other choice. I had to come clean, even if that meant he’d hate me afterward. “I was a real bitch.”
“You were a psychopath! You tried pushing me off a cliff and helped Vulthus twice!” Onyx interjected.
I nodded, because that was the truth. “I did horrible things, but I swear I’m done snuggling up to the vamps. That’s the truth. You both know I can’t lie.” I stared Onyx down, willing her to see how much I meant the words.
To my shock, the ice dagger in her hand melted as she exchanged a glance with Thorsten.
“I suppose we could use her help,” Thorsten growled. “Then we will figure out what to do afterwards.”
“Keep an eye on her,” Onyx said to Caleb.
I bit my tongue as Caleb let in the rest of the troops, who filed into the crammed hall in silence. I deserved the mistrust. Onyx might’ve landed me in the dungeons during my stint at Nocturnal Academy, but I had done worse. Twice, I had passed information to Vulthus, the king of sadists, unconcerned with how horrible the death or punishment would be that he bestowed on Onyx. I’d let my blind hate drive me. I’d been jealous of how free and unconcerned Onyx was about fitting in. I’d been jealous of her confidence to be herself and not play one role after another. But no more.
The four of us walked deeper into the school and toward the dining hall. The greasy smell of eggs and bacon hung in the air as did the sweet scent of syrup.
We were close. I gathered all the magic I could into my chest. Would there be anything in the dining hall I could use to my advantage? They kept potatoes and other vegetables in the kitchen where fae workers slaved away. They wouldn’t show much resistance.
“Follow me,” I told Caleb, waving him around the corner. “We free the kitchen workers first and then the students.”
“Someone will need to take the students through the secret passage.” Thorsten motioned to a spot in the wall where one of the bricks glowed in a faint greenish light. I would’ve missed it if I hadn't seen the guards open walls before.
Caleb nodded. “Group one will incapacitate the guards with poisoned darts. The potion should last for two hours. You left the package where we agreed?”
“Yes.” Thorsten moved his hand in a quick and complicated pattern over the bricks, and the door opened.
Caleb motioned for the troops to enter. “Split up inside and evacuate the students as discussed.”
The soldiers nodded and filed through the door. We closed it behind them, and Caleb, Onyx, and Thorsten all ran after me down the corridor that led to the food storage cellar. As we turned a corner, the food smell grew stronger. But instead of picking up my pace, I came to a halt.
Two figures occupied this narrow, dim space, and both pulled apart from an embrace and faced us, their faces long.
It was Lord Sullivan in his black robe and Lady Cardinal, dressed to the nines in a violet dress with her hair pulled back in a tight bun. So the rumors about them having an affair were true.
Thorsten stepped up beside me, a cruel smile on his lips. “I see you two didn’t learn after my sire helped cover up your activities. Being cousins of the first grade never stopped you.” He tsked.
“Thorsten. How dare you? What are you doing here?” Lord Sullivan bared his fangs, and redness crept into his eyes. We were seconds away from a fight.
“We were even, Thorsten. I employed you in exchange for Griffin keeping his silence.” Lady Cardinal too bared her pearly-white, sharp teeth. “I’ve heard that you’ve grown cocky after taking out Gregory Vulthus. You’ll be punished for turning on your own kind.” She reached into her pocket and drew out a radio. “Alert. All guards and staff to the kitchen area immediately!”
16
Lady Cardinal had barely stopped speaking when Thorsten lunged for Sullivan. I supposed it shouldn’t have been a surprise, given how openly Sullivan had always despised the young vampire, but it was still a shock to see a former guard dare to attack a teacher. But Thorsten was no longer a guard. He was now a master vampire.
The two crashed into the wall, clawing at each other.
Lady Cardinal raised her own hands, forming claws with her fingernails, and dove into the fight. The sound of scratching and hissing followed. Thorsten decked Sullivan across the face.
“You bitch!” Onyx shouted, attracting Lady Cardinal’s attention.
Lady Cardinal bared her fangs and advanced toward Onyx, pointing her long, thin finger. “This whole mess was started by you! We should’ve put you down like a stray dog the first day you came to Nocturnal Academy! I knew right from the start you were nothing more than trouble.”
Onyx snorted. An ice dagger materialized in her hand. “Go to hell, Cardinal!”
Onyx let her dagger fly, but it swerved away from Lady Cardinal, who held up a red-pinkish crystal. I tensed as Onyx’s eyes clouded under its influence.
The blood crystal could manipulate minds, and clearly, it had gotten Onyx to miss her mark.
I had to help. Reaching for my magic, I let vines sprout from my fingers, but Onyx shook her head. “Cardinal is mine.”
Footsteps thudded down the corridor from both directions. Vampire guards. I whirled, finding four black-uniformed vamps rushing us.
“Attack!” Caleb shouted.
I unleashed vines at them as did Caleb. Even though my heart pounded with worry, I knew this was exactly what he had hoped for—getting all the vampires in one location so that we could occupy them while the fae soldiers freed the students, inmates, and servants. My vines hit their mark and threw the vamps to the floor, but more came from behind as Thorsten, Sullivan, Onyx, and Cardinal continued to fight.
I whirled, opening the storage room door. The smell of potatoes and vegetables met me. Reaching out with my mind, I summoned roots of anger. Leaves of rage. They shot from the storage room and at the second set of guards that rounded the corner. Vamps shouted, entangled in vines, roots, and leaves.
My knees trembled as my magic and energy drained away in this place of iron.
Thorsten and Onyx continued to fight Sullivan and Cardinal. Onyx summoned three ice daggers and fired them at Cardinal. Sweat formed above Onyx’s brow as the melted remains of a dozen spikes dissolved under Thorsten’s feet, whose forehead bled from a gash. More v
ampire guards entered the corridor, trampling their trapped comrades. We were surrounded.
Then a fae warrior darted through the chaos, straight for Caleb.
“Where’s our reinforcements?” Caleb barked, shooting another vine at the guards.
The fae warrior shook his head. “Group A is dead. B and C are trapped in the prison corridor. Nothing’s working. You need to get down there,” he breathed.
A vamp, a short, mean-looking woman, jumped the fae warrior from behind and twisted his neck in a swift motion. Bones and ligaments crunched, tearing. The fae’s eyes became unseeing, and he collapsed to the ground.
I screamed at the brutality and the suddenness of it, and the killer vamp jumped at me. Caleb shoved me out of harm’s way, and we crashed to the ground, he on top of me. Caleb rolled off me and jumped to his feet, stabbing the vampire in the heart with a wooden stake. She staggered back, screaming as ash and embers spread through her body, destroying it. Caleb extended his hand and helped me up to my feet.
“I need to check on the bomb,” he said. “I’ll send reinforcements! Hold on tight.”
The bomb. That was what the fae warrior had meant when he’d said it wasn’t working. “All right,” I breathed, even though the last thing I wanted was for him to leave. As he dashed out of the corridor, five fae warriors crashed into the brawl and hope blossomed in my chest. More fae warriors arrived with raised swords and poised bows. Our reinforcements had made it after all. That was the last thought I had before something heavy crashed against the back of my skull, and I collapsed to the ground, unable to stop the darkness from devouring me.
I awakened in a square, brick room with low lighting. I blinked, trying to get my bearings. Burning. Weakness. A heavy, iron chain wound around my body and bound me to a chair, sucking the strength out of me. A huge lock hung below my chest, but above my navel.
Mr. Chad stood next to me. I eyed his clean-shaven face and watched as his tongue slid over his lips and the tips of his fangs. “We’re going to have so much fun, Peony. I’ve been waiting for this moment forever.” His pants bulged, and my stomach lurched in response.
They had captured me.
No.
Us.
The scene that I found as I looked past him made me even sicker. In the windowless and plant-less room, Lady Cardinal paced, her heels clicking as she held up a blood crystal in one hand and a remote in the other. I recognized it with a burst of panic. The Simulator remote. The box itself stood in the corner of the room. We had been dragged down into a part of Nocturnal Reformatory.
Trapped in the box was Onyx. Her eyes were wide with terror. Sweat poured down her temples. She beat against the glass and fired ice spike after ice spike at the walls, but they shattered, useless. Lady Cardinal grinned as I watched. She wouldn’t allow us to die quickly.
“Let her out,” I screeched.
“Why, our fun has only started, Peony.” Mr. Chad smirked, then his gaze shifted to the other side of the room.
Lord Sullivan stood next to a chair to which Thorsten was shackled. My former teacher held a wooden stake over Thorsten’s heart. Thorsten sat up, proud and unmoving, but his eyes trained on Onyx, betraying the terror and fury raging within him.
“For the last time.” Lady Cardinal advanced on Thorsten, holding the blood crystal up. “Where are these damn explosives and where were the fae taken?”
The fae students had been rescued. I breathed a tiny sigh of relief. But the vamps had discovered the plan somehow. From whom? Had they captured and forced the truth from a fae guard? Or from Caleb himself? Or perhaps they had overheard the fae when they had problems with the bomb.
“I don’t know,” Thorsten gritted out. From the deviance in his face, I could tell he had taken something that made him immune to the blood crystal. A potion. Caleb said such willpower potions were possible, but that they took time to create, and he had used his last one when he had come to Nocturnal Academy. Onyx must’ve had a Winter fae create such a potion for herself and Thorsten. Her falling under Lady Cardinal’s blood crystal influence earlier had been nothing but a ruse, then.
Not that it mattered now.
“Since seeing your girlfriend tortured isn’t incentive enough, we’ll have to literally up the stakes.” Lady Cardinal nodded at Sullivan, who raised his stake and plunged it into Thorsten’s chest.
A scream tore out of my throat. Thorsten’s eyes widened. Sullivan removed his weapon and since Thorsten was still breathing despite the blood gushing from his chest, the blow hadn’t gone to the heart. Sullivan had stabbed the right side of his chest, not the left.
Lady Cardinal turned her attention to me. “So glad you’re finally awake, Peony. Would you like to enlighten us?”
Mr. Chad inched closer to me, practically pressing his erection against the back of my chair. I wanted to gag, but managed to sound calm as I said, “All I know is that we were supposed to distract you and the other vampires long enough until the fae were far enough away, then the bombs were supposed to go off. Nobody told me where they were though, because they don’t trust me fully.” As they clearly shouldn’t. This time, my word diarrhea hadn’t come from viciousness, but fear, yet it still had the same result. I wanted to punch myself. Why was I so stupid? Stop. Wallowing in self-hate wouldn’t help anyone.
Cardinal seemed satisfied with my response because she faced the Simulator and pressed a button on her remote, which made Onyx fall limply to the ground. “Let’s see if Miss Vinter has anything to tell us.”
Terror multiplied within me as Cardinal opened the glass door where a nearly unconscious Onyx lay at her mercy. Thorsten wasn’t doing better. He was still bleeding, his face pale. It would take him time to heal, and by then, Sullivan would probably stab him again.
With iron draining me and no plants in sight, I was useless.
Or was I? I glanced sideways at Mr. Chad, who was now watching the spectacle. All this time, I had believed that pleasing others and flirting was my second biggest skill. I had acted like my mother, using my beauty to get what I wanted. Yet it wasn’t my beauty that allowed me to survive but my mind, concocting solutions to impossible situations. I had a body, but I was not my body. I knew what I had to do.
Lady Cardinal grabbed Onyx by her purple hair and shook her. Onyx blinked, clearly in no shape to hit back, let alone summon an ice stake.
“Mr. Chad,” I whispered in a seductive voice, knowing my allies were counting on me.
His gaze met mine, and I gave him the sweetest smile while batting my eyelashes. “You were always my favorite teacher. I can’t wait to be with you.”
A smugness radiated from him, but then his face contorted with suspicion. I licked my lips, biting my lower lip in the process and releasing the sweet scent of my fae blood. I was the hybrid plant petal now. “Would you mind giving me a kiss? I can’t wait any longer.”
Hunger turned Mr. Chad’s irises red, and he stepped in front of me, blocking me from the view of the others. He leaned down just as I had hoped. If the vamps had bothered searching me for weapons, they had done a lousy job, probably thinking themselves victorious if they put me in iron chains. But while the iron had drained me, I was not useless, especially with the piece of thorn bush hidden in my suit. I reached for its tiny amount of magic. Despite the iron, it responded to me, and I shoved every bit of energy into it.
Mr. Chad leaned in, and the thorns shot out of my collar and snapped around Mr. Chad’s throat like a noose, hiding underneath his own collar. “Unlock me,” I hissed as a headache exploded between my temples, knowing the other two vamps would think that Mr. Chad was harassing me, not getting me out of my restraints.
“What shall we try next?” Lord Sullivan asked Lady Cardinal. Onyx groaned, weak.
Mr. Chad opened his mouth to shout, but I tightened the noose, stopping him. I would finish what I’d started even if it drained all my strength from me and killed me.
Mr. Chad wasn’t the type to endure pain, and his hand wandered to his pa
nts pocket, from which he produced an iron key that he put into the lock right below my chest. With luck, the other vamps would think he was fondling me.
“Oh, Mr. Chad,” I moaned as he undid the lock to hide the clicking noise. I shimmied out of my restraints, strength immediately flowing back into me. Then I grabbed the wooden stake hidden in my boot, pulled him close with my vine and jammed the stake straight into his heart.
“Peony,” Mr. Chad croaked in shock, eyes widening, as if he couldn’t believe I’d go this far. His expression froze and then his face and the rest of him cracked like china. Embers spread and ashes took the place of flesh. He exploded with a bang, raining fiery remains all over the room.
Both Sullivan and Cardinal whirled. Apparently, that was all Thorsten needed to spring out of his restraints and to put his hands around Sullivan’s neck. I couldn’t believe it. The hole in his chest had already almost healed. Thorsten choked Sullivan, who dropped the stake. I quickly retrieved mine from the ground and threw it to Thorsten. He caught it as a form crashed into me.
“Stop it, Peony! Stop it! What is wrong with you?” Lady Cardinal had finally lost her cool. She bashed the blood crystal against my head. Once, twice, thrice. Stars exploded in my vision along with hellish, screaming pain. I tried to shove her off me, but it was too late.
Darkness descended. But with a breath, I clawed my way back to consciousness. Lady Cardinal dropped me to dash toward Thorsten and Sullivan. I tried to go after her, but my limbs refused to move. I could only lie and watch on as Thorsten pressed Sullivan against the wall with one hand, then raised the wooden stake.
“No!” Lady Cardinal threw herself at Thorsten as he plunged the stake into Sullivan’s heart.
Sullivan’s expression froze. Embers spread. And my former History teacher and torturer exploded into ashes and dust.
Lady Cardinal let out a screech and clawed at Thorsten, who pushed her away and locked his gaze with Onyx, who had risen to her feet and exited the Simulator. “She’s yours,” Thorsten growled. “Make it quick. We need to get out of here. The others might think we’ve left.”
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