by Riley London
“Celeste has a right to the throne. If her parents are overthrown, then she could always descend into Hell and become its rightful leader. It’s her blood-right.” Benjamin continued. “Which means, that a lot of demons are going to be after her, especially if the news spreads that she is the true daughter of Lilith and Lucifer.”
“How could it spread, though? Who’s going to tell other people?”
“Demons talk now, apparently.” Zachary sighed. “The direct descendant who attacked Celeste and me in our dorm room knew who Celeste was. Maybe others know now, too.”
“The direct descendant?” Charlie shook his head. “Wait. You guys got attacked?”
“Yep. Keep up, Charlie.” It was all Zachary said in response.
“We need to go to Mrs. Deveraux.” Charlie shifted out of bed, as he stood to his feet. “We need to go right now. If something this big is brewing, then—”
“We don’t know how she’d respond to the revelation that Celeste is Hell-born.” Benjamin gave Charlie a sorrowful look.
“And what does that mean?”
“It means that if Mrs. Deveraux decides to send Celeste to the council, none of us will ever see her again. She’ll probably be locked up somewhere, underneath the courthouse.” Zachary shrugged. “They couldn’t take a chance on her lying. What if she was lying, right now? What if she’d always known exactly who she was, and she just needed to infiltrate the academy to convince a bunch of dummies to help her out, somehow?”
“Watch it.” Charlie’s words sounded like a threat.
And Zachary held up his hands, as if in surrender. “Hey. I’m not saying that Celeste is lying. I’m just telling you what the council might say, what Mrs. Deveraux might think. There’s a whole thing between angels and demons, you know.”
“Yeah, I know.” Charlie tugged at my shirt sleeve, signaling that he wanted to pull me aside.
“Just give us a minute.” I directed the words to Benjamin and Zachary, as Charlie and I stepped off towards the dorm’s bathroom.
Charlie closed the door behind us, as he gave me a panicked look. “We need to go. Right now.”
“Charlie. No.”
“Celeste. Listen to me.” Charlie brought his hands up towards either side of my face. “I love you.”
“I know.”
Those familiar, electric sparks danced across my skin.
“I don’t know where we have to go, but we can’t stay here. I can’t watch you get hurt. I can’t watch you die. Not for them.” Charlie seemed like he was contemplating his every word.
“There’s nowhere to go, Charlie. They’ll follow me, follow us, wherever we go. We just have to be brave—”
“You don’t understand. I can’t watch you die, Celeste! You’re it. You’re all I have, the only thing left for me that’s good in this world. Don’t you get it? If you die, I might as well be dead, too.”
“Charlie...” I stared into his deep, brown eyes. “I’m sorry, but there’s no other way. We have to stay. We have to fight this, the best that we can.”
I brought my hands towards Charlie’s shoulders, as I peered up at him. “And you’re so freakin’ smart, Charlie. The smartest guy I’ve ever met. If anyone’s going to help us figure this whole thing out, it’s you—”
My words were intercepted by Charlie’s mouth meeting mine. His kiss was desperate and rough, like it was the last time he was ever going to see me.
And fuck.
Maybe this really was the last time he was ever going to see me. For all I knew, I could be dead in the next five minutes.
The rush of fear and adrenaline seemed to mingle in my veins, creating a sense of urgency that I’d never felt before.
I needed Charlie, and it felt like if I didn’t have him within the next five minutes, then I just might die.
I took a moment to subtly reach a hand out towards the bathroom doorknob, wanting to make sure that it was locked.
It was.
Good.
I then felt Charlie pushing me up against the door, his body intertwining with mine as his leg slid in-between my thighs.
I moaned at the contact, the electric shocks now taking over my body, making me feel like I just might explode with the pleasure.
Charlie groaned, too, as he picked me up by my waist. In response, I wrapped my legs around his torso, with my back still pressed up against the door.
It only took a few moments for Charlie to be inside of me, the head of his cock pressing into me with ease. I couldn’t remember when, exactly, he’d pushed my panties to the side, or when he’d taken off his boxers, the heady sensation of the angelic jolts making my thoughts fuzzy and useless.
Shit.
I wasn’t even sure if I could speak right now. All I could do was feel, feel Charlie moving inside of me, the tip of his cock pressing right up against my g-spot, feel the way he groaned into my neck as he kept his pace rhythmic and steady, feel the way my throat was growing hoarse with how loud I was screaming his name.
“Charlie...Charlie...Charlie...” I whined, as my pussy tightened around his cock, and soon my hips rocked with the kind of orgasm I’d never had before.
Holy shit.
Sex with Charlie felt like...
It felt like...
Heaven.
I wrapped my arms around the back of his shoulders as he continued to pump inside of me, chasing after his own release, too.
When he’d found it, he groaned with a sense of finality, his body going still against mine. I pressed a kiss into his forehead in that same instant, wanting to feel even closer to him than I did, wanting us to live in that closeness for as long as we could.
“Are you two finished with each other yet?” Zachary’s voice cut through our bittersweet moment together. “Celeste, we need to get back to our own dorm, before someone comes to check out all that screaming they probably just heard.”
Charlie looked up at me and silently shook his head. “Celeste. Please. Don’t do this.”
“I have to. I have to...” I whispered in return.
And somberly, Charlie set my feet back down on the ground.
Chapter 8
“So, is he your boyfriend now?” Zachary asked, nearly as soon as I’d woken up.
“We never talked about labels.” I replied, before I pulled my hair away from my face. “Why do you care, anyway?”
“I don’t. I’m just making polite conversation.” Zachary continued. “Besides, it’s nice to have some sense of normalcy, isn’t it? In the midst of all this...bullshit.”
“In the midst? You’re starting to sound like Benjamin.” I smirked.
“Ehh. Maybe he has rubbed off on me, just a little.” Zachary sounded slightly amused. “You need to get going, though. Don’t want to be late for class, arouse any suspicion.”
“Wait. I need to get going? What about you?”
“I have a follow-up meeting with Mrs. Deveraux.”
“Right, another super-secret meeting that you don’t think I need to know about.” I rolled my eyes. “Although, I think at this point you might as well tell me. You know a bigger secret about me, than I do about you.”
“Well, tradition says that if I tell anyone about this before the week of the event, I’ll be cursed for the next seven years...” Zachary continued. “But fuck it. For all I know, I’ll be dead by morning.”
Zachary then reached out beside him, before he pulled a blue binder into his grip. He then handed the binder to me, as a smirk came across his face. “Here it is. The biggest secret you were never supposed to know.”
I opened the binder to its first page, and immediately shook my head in confusion. “Angel Academy’s 2019 Spring Formal?”
“Yep. That’s right. Benjie and I are in charge of this year’s school dance.”
“...And this was super-top-secret because?” I flipped through more of the pages, seeing various theme suggestions and detailed budget outlines. “Who cares what the school theme is this year? And why are you a
nd Benjie overseeing everything, anyway?”
“It’s the privilege of the valedictorian and the salutatorian to pick the dance themes each year. Of course, we won’t know the final results of our grades until we graduate as seniors, but we currently have the highest grades of the freshman class.”
“Oh. I didn’t know that Benjamin was valedictorian. Good for him.”
“Yeah, Benjie’s not valedictorian.” Zachary laughed. “And if he was half as smart as you thought he was, he would have never brought you here, in the first place.”
“You’re valedictorian?” I made sure my question came out with as much disbelief as I could muster. “Can you even read? I’m serious. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you with a book in your hands.”
“Fuck you.” Zachary laughed again, and it sounded like a genuine sound.
I beamed with a sense of pride, and I wasn’t sure why.
Why was I so happy to have made Zachary actually laugh?
“What class is Mr. Toorin teaching today?” I asked. “I mean, does he teach anything besides biblical lineage?”
“Languages. Latin. Hebrew. That sort of thing.”
“Latin kinda’ feels like it’s a prerequisite course before you can even enroll at the academy...” I voiced my thoughts out loud, as I walked towards the dorm’s closet. Another thought then occurred to me, and I turned back towards Zachary with a question on my mind.
“Hey, Zachary?”
“Yeah?”
“What happens after graduation?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“What happens after graduation?” I asked again. “I know it sounds like a stupid question, but I have no idea what the end goal is to any of this. What’s the point of graduating from the academy?”
“Ehh. It’s no different from the same kind of colleges that humans enroll in, really. The end goal is similar enough.” Zachary shrugged. “The point of going to college is to get a good job. The point of going to Angel Academy is to get a good placement, when all is said and done.”
“A good placement?”
“Yeah. Depending on your skill level, when you’re finally assessed by the council, you can either end up stalking the city’s streets for the rest of your life, or in some soul-crushing office job, where your main source of joy is gossiping about your co-workers because the council determined that you couldn’t hold your own in a fight.” Zachary continued. “You could even end up with a seat on the council itself, which I guess is what Benjie’s been aiming for since the day he was born. There’s always been a Nash on the council.”
“Has there ever been a Lancaster?”
“Has there ever been a Venoix?” Zachary turned the question back on me. “Not all of us were meant to fly that high, Celeste. Being on the council is like being the president and the pope, all in one.”
“I think you could handle that.” I replied. “I mean, especially if you end up being class valedictorian. I think that means that you could handle anything, angel-related.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. No need to kiss my ass. Being valedictorian doesn’t mean that I can get you a special parking pass or anything.” Zachary chuckled. “Seriously, though. Get to class, before Mr. Toorin marks you as late. We don’t need anyone asking a bunch of questions about you, Celeste. Not right now.”
If I didn’t know any better, I would’ve thought that Zachary honestly cared about my well-being, but I knew that ultimately it was more about him needing to save his own ass again.
“Right. Just let me get my uniform on.”
Mr. Toorin’s class had been awful, but not more awful than it usually was.
Today, he’d decided to focus in on languages, talking to us about prefixes and suffixes, and how our names potentially came to be. He’d even called on me, early in the class discussion, and asked me about my own.
“Ms. Venoix?” Mr. Toorin walked right up to my seat, with a smile on his face. “What an interesting last name you have.”
“Uh, thanks?” I was a little taken aback by the attention I was getting.
“Do you know where it comes from?”
“No idea.” I shook my head. “Sorry.”
“Your parents never discussed with you any potential meaning of your name?”
“No. I guess they just never got around to it.” I shrugged.
“Hmm. Well, I’ll be happy to do the honors.” Mr. Toorin pushed up the glasses that rested on the bridge of his nose. “Venoix is composed of two different names. The German word vogel and the German word sang. On their own, vogel translates to bird and sang, of course, translates to song.”
Mr. Toorin grinned down at me again. “Now, what about your first name? Did your parents ever bother explaining that?”
“No.” I was growing embarrassed by the line of questioning, even though I knew that it wasn’t my fault.
My parents hadn’t been in my life, because they’d been too busy running Hell.
Still, there was a sense of shame about not really knowing where I came from, or what my name even meant.
“Celeste. Your name means ‘heavenly’.” Mr. Toorin folded his arms against his chest. “You, Celeste Venoix, are a heavenly bird, singing a happy tune in God’s house. It’s a wondrous name for an angel, is it not?”
An angel.
Sure.
“Yeah. It’s really pretty.” I agreed with Mr. Toorin, then turned my face down towards my textbook, desperate to get his attention off of me.
The rest of the class had passed without any incident, as Mr. Toorin bounced around the room, explaining other students' names to the rest of us.
I was ecstatic to finish with the class, and I hastily made my way towards the training room I’d so often shared with Benjamin.
But my trek down the hall was intercepted by Mrs. Deveraux. She was wearing a bright, pink jacket, and her lips were curved into a welcoming smile. “Ms. Venoix.”
“Mrs. Deveraux.” I slightly nodded to show my respect.
“You do know that you’re not allowed to wear your jacket over your uniform, correct?”
“I’ve...been told that a few times, yes.” My cheeks burned red, and my hands began to pull my leather jacket over one of my shoulders.
However, Mrs. Deveraux waved her hand, as if she was waving off the entire issue. “I apologize. Today is not the day to enforce the uniform code.”
“Then, what day is it?” I tried to hide the nervousness in my tone.
Shit.
Did she already know about who my parents were?
Did she know about the fact that we’d summoned a demon last night?
Neither of those were exactly great revelations, but I tried to keep my head up as Mrs. Deveraux stared back at me.
“Today is gladius diem.” Mrs. Deveraux’s eyes shone bright. “The Day of The Sword.”
I was standing outside on the quad, where a small group of students were seated and waiting for something.
I even spotted Benjamin and Zachary among the seated students, with stoic expressions on both of their faces.
What the hell was going on?
“Ms. Venoix.” Mrs. Deveraux approached me from the side. “Are you committed to the cause?”
“Yes?” I answered, unsure of where she was going with that line of questioning.
“Well, dear, are you an angel, or are you not?” She asked with a wide grin.
“Yes.” I nodded. “I’m an angel.”
Kinda’.
I kept that last part to myself, as Mrs. Deveraux took both of my wrists into her grip. She then pulled my arms out in front of me, until they were stretched all the way out. Lastly, she positioned my palms towards the open sky above me.
“Call for a weapon.” Mrs. Deveraux still grinned. “Da mihi telum.”
“Da mihi telum?” I repeated after Mrs. Deveraux.
“Pray it to the angels and say it like you mean it.”
“Da mihi telum.” I repeated the phrase again, and this time I tu
rned my gaze up towards the sky.
And then, I waited.
And waited. And waited.
It felt like at least ten minutes had gone by, as I stood there, standing and waiting for something to happen.
Of course, as I waited, it dawned on me that if I was expecting anything from the angels above, then I wouldn’t be rewarded.
Why should I have been?
I was my mother’s daughter, after all.
The angels’ refusal to assist me in any way, shape or form would’ve been the absolute worst way for the whole school to figure out my true identity.
But I still hoped against hope that today wouldn’t be the day that I was kicked out of the academy or locked up somewhere forever.
Please. Today can't be the day.
Just then, there was a whooshing sound right by my ear, as if the air around it had been sliced with something clean and sharp.
And then, a sword appeared in my hands.
“Ferrum novum!” Mrs. Deveraux clapped with excitement, and the students outside on the quad seemed to follow her joyous lead. “A new blade! A new blade is among us all!”
I looked down at the sword in my hands.
It reminded me of Benjamin’s, but there appeared to be a few small differences, mainly in the hilt.
My eyes moved over the intricate design of silver and gold, and when I realized that the twisted design showed what may have been a family symbol, my heart skipped a thousand beats.
There was a silver snake, wrapping itself again and again onto an angel’s back, slithering between its golden wings.
Lilith and Lucifer.
My parents.
My family.
Could anyone else see the true design of the sword?
I pressed my hand over the hilt, as Mrs. Deveraux patted me on my back. “Oh, Celeste. We’re so happy to have you here.”
“I didn’t know that there was going to be a whole ceremony with the weapons.” I replied. “I guess I just thought people got them out of the weapons room.”
“Yes, of course, you’re welcome to use the weapons room.” Mrs. Deveraux waved at a passing student. “But that sword is yours forever. Treat it as your companion, and it should serve you well.”
