by Everly Frost
“Not so tough,” he says, looming over me as I drop to my knee, clutching my chest.
His knee collides with my face, busting my lip, and his fist rapidly collides with my temple, splitting skin as I fly backward. Blood spills down my face. I taste copper in my mouth, spitting it out as I attempt to rise up on my hands and knees.
The vicious kick he lands in my side with his boot knocks my ribs around. It hurts, but I welcome the pain.
I want blood. I’m happy to see it drip onto the mat.
I’m vaguely aware of figures running toward us as I push up onto my knees, my torso rising just in time for Raptor’s boot to cut across my shoulder, kicking me flat on my back, my legs twisted at an awkward angle.
Lucinda rushes to the side of the mat. “Striker!” But Joseph’s close behind her, shouting at her while he drags her away, hustling Bree with her. Lachlan grabs Ashley, who is turning pale before my eyes. That same strange glow is starting around her hair as if she’s preparing to launch herself at Raptor and fight him herself.
Are they actually trying to come to my defense right now?
I came out here to beat myself up. I’m happy that Raptor’s doing it for me. But I won’t have anyone else get hurt on my account. I’ve got enough red in my ledger already.
I raise my eyes to Lucinda’s as she struggles against Joseph’s hold. He’s tense, worried, even more so when Raptor wraps his hand around my throat and lifts me up by my chin. The other students aren’t used to seeing someone beat me.
Raptor leans in close. “You know, I have a new theory about what Peyton is. If I’m right, you just messed up your only chance to be with her. She’ll only give her heart once. Come to think of it… maybe I’ll give it a shot. She’s the embodiment of violence. And she’s got legs that could straddle me for days.”
He knocks his knuckles against the same split above my eye and I don’t fight back when he drops me to the mat with a disgusted grunt.
He’s right that I blew it with Peyton. If she’s smart, she’ll never give me a second chance. But he’s an idiot if he thinks she won’t kill him if he touches her that way.
A laugh bubbles through my lips and a smile grows on my face as I draw to my feet. I can’t imagine how fucked-up scary I look right now, blood running down my face, seeping between my teeth, one eye shut.
But, hey, I only need one eye to see and the other works just fine.
Raptor stares at me, pausing as I grin at him.
I choke on my own blood, spitting it out at my side. “Fucking brutal, huh? Did you think they were exaggerating?”
Alarm shoots across his face, but he’s too slow.
I fought in cages for two years, learned every trick in the book and then some. I move at full speed, putting all my strength behind my fists.
Crack. One fist to his face, the second to his shoulder, the third an uppercut to his jaw. My foot smashes into his chest and he flies backward, airborne and spinning until he hits the ground. Blood streams down his face as he glares up at me from hands and knees.
I don’t give him time to get up, barreling into him, lifting and throwing him against the nearest practicing post. His back hits it with a nasty crack. He drops to the ground, but I’m already leaping from the mat, covering the distance as he throws his hands up to defend himself. He eats a barrage of fists as I smash his hands, his head, his shoulders against the post, a roar screaming from my throat.
Angry shouts from behind me don’t even register, but the lashes around my hands do. A stream of magic suddenly hits me from all sides as compliance officers rush to take up position and Headmistress Osprey shrieks orders, her wand raised, an unbreakable chain of magic slapping around my arms and chest, dragging my hands behind my back.
“Draven!” she screams.
I struggle against the chains, but I don’t call for the beast because this is what I wanted. Now they’ll send me to the pit and I can sleep as far from Peyton as possible.
Osprey continues to scream at me so loudly, I can’t distinguish what she’s saying until finally I separate the words I want to hear. “Take him to the pit!”
But Raptor lifts his hand, spitting blood as he speaks. “No! Send him back to the attic. Let him sleep in the room next to Peyton’s. Striker Draven will torment himself enough.”
Osprey looks confused—it’s hardly a punishment in her eyes.
“No.” My objection betrays me more than anything else I could have said.
Osprey’s eyebrows rise. “No?” She looks perplexed, but as long as she thinks it hurts me it will be good enough for her. “Very well. Take him back to his room.”
Raptor smiles through the blood on his face, gripping the post to help himself stand. “Then let’s see about getting another beast for the pit. One Striker can’t kill.”
The compliance officers drag me past the other students while my hands are still bound. I’m relieved to see that Lucinda and Ashley have stayed well away. I allow the officers to shove me inside the building and force me up the stairs.
When we reach the attic, Peyton emerges from the bathroom at the end of the hall, her hair dripping down the front of her fresh shirt. Her quick gaze takes in the blood covering one side of my face, my shut eye, my split lip, and the blood splatter across my bare chest, but she doesn’t react as the officers push me into the room.
Releasing me from the magical bindings, Collin shouts in my face, “Stay here until the morning!”
He slams the door behind me, leaving me in silence.
Stumbling to the door, I’m careful not to leave a bloody handprint across the picture of Zara and me when we were kids as I slide to the floor.
I listen for Peyton’s soft footfalls, the smallest vibrations in the wooden floor. She doesn’t return to her room, pausing outside my door instead.
I want her to knock.
I’ll tell her to come in.
I want to tell her… I don’t know. Tell her that I’m sorry. Tell her she shouldn’t get mixed up with me. Tell her to walk away. Tell her she doesn’t need my shit in her life.
Her footsteps move on and I’m grateful. And angry. Both.
My beast growls an unwanted opinion. Fuck your self-destruction.
I push him away, push harder than I have before.
Am I a monster or a man?
This time, I don’t have an answer.
26. Peyton Price
I pace back and forth outside Striker’s door. Despite the rough way they handled him, the compliance officers leave the floor. What on Earth did Striker do while I was in the shower?
I veer toward the wide windows to take a quick glance below in case I can see anything. On the ground, a ring of teachers surrounds Raptor, who slumps on the grass next to the combat mat. His face and body are covered in blood, but it looks like the teachers are healing him, their spells making him glow.
Striker’s all bloody and so is Raptor.
There’s only one conclusion I can draw from that.
I glance back to Striker’s door. I guess it was inevitable that Striker would take Raptor on, but Striker wasn’t due for his lesson for days, so he must have gone looking for the fight.
Sudden pain in my palms tells me my claws have shot out again and are cutting me. It took me the entire time in the shower to force my claws to retract. I’ll have to be very careful not to reveal them in front of a teacher or a guard. I’ll also need to be very careful about getting hurt again—physically, since I can’t be more hurt emotionally than I am right now. My healing power was only triggered when I kissed Striker and I definitely can’t rely on that option again.
I’m numb and it’s protecting my heart, but I’m scared of how I’ll feel when I thaw out again.
Squeezing my eyes closed, I focus on the present, my next move.
Making a decision, I stride down the corridor to the stairs, hurrying to the third floor. The compliance officers standing outside each of the bedrooms appear surprised to see me, which makes me think t
hey’re aware that Raptor hurt me this morning. Nobody will expect to see me walking around so healthy and unharmed right now. I suddenly regret putting on a fresh shirt. Maybe I should have stayed a little bloody. But I couldn’t very well get around in a shirt with no buttons.
I approach Lucinda’s door carefully, finding her inside with Ashley and Bree, their heads together.
She jumps up when she sees me, rushing over to hug me and pull me inside.
“Peyton! You’re okay.” She quickly closes the door. “When Striker picked a fight with Raptor, we thought Raptor must have hurt you badly.”
I’m a little stunned they’d think Striker would come to my defense. My focus quickly shifts to Ashley. Standing beside Lucinda, she’s paler than I expected and when I look closely, a single green vein pulses at the side of her neck, her power showing through.
Her eyes are wider than normal, revealing her fear. “What did Raptor do to you?”
I wasn’t prepared to give them details. I’m not used to having friends to confide in and it feels like brand new territory—a landscape I don’t know how to journey across. Maybe I should have just grabbed the bag of ice I intended to get for Striker and gone straight back to the attic. I’m afraid to talk about my power, but then… so were Lucinda and Ashley to begin with.
I consider the proximity of the officers outside the room—and the extent to which they can hear us—before I say, “I don’t really want to talk about it but… I want you to know that I’m okay now.”
They glance at the door and nod to let me know they understand my caution.
“Also…” I take a deep breath, glaring a little, willing them not to react suddenly as I hold up my hand, concentrate, and carefully extend my claws.
Lucinda slaps her hand over her mouth. Ashley’s eyes widen and Bree bites her lip hard. None of them makes a sound.
Lucinda quickly gathers herself together, mouthing, Holy hell.
I give them all a lopsided smile. Lucinda and Ashley have both made themselves vulnerable to me by allowing me to know about their powers. Bree has spoken about hers, although we haven’t figured it out yet. I need to be able to trust them with this.
Lucinda seems to make a decision. “You know… I think I heard that there’s an old library in the east wing on the fourth floor. We don’t have classes there anymore, but Mr. Mallard is always telling us to do more research about the gods. We should check it out. I mean… it’s not like we have anything else to do, right?”
“Except wait for Raptor to beat us up,” Bree adds.
She gives me a shrug and angles her eyes at the door. She’s right. We can’t sound too keen about study right now, but Lucinda’s suggestion is a good one. We need to start looking for clues about what we are and not only for Bree, but the other students too.
I ask Ashley a careful question before I turn to leave. “How was your walk this morning?”
Ashley smiles, her eyes lighting up with a satisfied glow as she tucks her hair behind her ear. “Riveting. Some might say the roses were so beautiful, they looked as if they were frozen in time.”
I grin at her before I wipe my face clean, open the door, and head to the ice chest. Scooping a large helping of ice cubes into a clean cloth, I tell myself it’s not because I care about Striker. I’ve left him to his pain long enough to prove that.
I just don’t want to stare at his swollen face in class.
Tying the ends of the cloth together, I carry the ice pack to the attic and drop it outside his door loudly enough that he’ll hear it. Then I saunter away. Whether he retrieves it before it melts is up to him.
It’s difficult sitting beside Striker in Magical Instruments class the next day. The area around his eye is swollen and his face is more bruised than I’ve ever seen it. The ice pack was gone this morning, but I don’t know if he took it inside before it melted.
In Maintenance class yesterday afternoon, we were told to clean the floors, so we headed up to the fourth floor in the east wing to scope it out. Lucinda was right about the library. We found it at the end of the hall, all four walls lined with bookshelves filled with old books. She and I took our sweet time scrubbing the floor while Ashley and Bree “dusted” the books under the watchful eye of our compliance officers. The girls quickly flipped through the books before we were ordered to finish up for the day.
At dinner, Bree and Ashley reported that there’s a gold mine of information about rare supernaturals in those books. We have to be careful, but we’ll go up there again today.
Now Ms. Sparrow stalks into Magical Instruments class, her gaudy red hair even brighter, making me wonder if she’s attempting beautification spells that keep backfiring. A bundle of wands float in the air behind her, quickly dispersing among the other students.
I wait for mine and so does Striker. They replaced his broken one a while ago, but Ms. Sparrow doesn’t allocate it to him.
A slight crease appears on his forehead when Ms. Sparrow starts giving instructions without handing us wands.
I stare at her, but she ignores us. Once she’s ordered the class to attempt a spell that is supposed to move the crystal across the desk, she spins and heads in our direction.
She slowly pulls a wand from her belt and places it with a flourish across the space between our desks, its tip resting on my desk and its base on Striker’s.
It’s Kaitlyn’s wand.
I cast my hatred at the damn thing. Raptor has to be behind this. He told me his job is to find out all our secrets and discover our weaknesses. He already seems to know everything about our pasts. He’d be sharing his knowledge with the other teachers, informing them of the best ways to get under our skin.
Without another word, Ms. Sparrow turns and saunters back to the front of the class, ignoring us again.
I stare at the wand, imagining all the things I want to do with it.
Snap it. Stomp on it. Or maybe… catch another glimpse of past Striker, the person he was before he became a complete asshole.
No. I have a better idea.
My hand darts out, grabbing the wand before Striker’s palm lands on the table seconds after mine. His fist thuds my desk and his angry eyes meet mine for a second before he withdraws again, fixing his gaze on the front of the class.
I’m not sure what he intended to do with it, but I know exactly what I’m going to do.
My fist shakes. Memories assault me, but I fight them, all of Kaitlyn’s cruel, manipulative thoughts. All of Striker’s pain. I struggle to focus through the memories to concentrate on my forefinger as it rests on the wand. With a deep breath, I allow the tiniest tip of my foreclaw to rise.
With the small surge of power through my finger, the assault on my mind eases. I’m surprised. I assumed my ability to catch a glimpse of thoughts and feelings when I touch an object would be completely out of my control, but it seems I was wrong about that.
Maybe I can control this after all.
As much as I want this wand out of my hands as soon as possible, I also want to test my abilities. I draw on my power a little more. Kaitlyn’s memories recede even further when I do. Every small extension of my claw gives me greater control over the stream of memories until her cold thoughts are merely a tickle at the back of my mind, easily ignored.
With a growing smile, I dart a glance at Ms. Sparrow’s back to make sure she isn’t looking.
Striker’s glare suddenly burns into me. I sense his gaze on my hand, drawn to my claw as if he can’t look away.
I run my fingernail in quick, deft strokes across the wand, etching deeply into it before I place it, carefully balanced, between our two desks in the same position that Ms. Sparrow left it.
A sideways glance tells me Striker is reading what I scratched into the wand’s surface.
Peyton woz here.
There’s a pause.
Then a deep rumbling sound makes me glance up despite myself.
Is he laughing?
Not with humor. A bitter smile spreads acr
oss his face before he winces, his hand darting to his swollen lip as he looks away.
Yeah. I’m here, and no matter how much you hurt me—no matter how much I get hurt in this place—I’ll fight back with everything I’ve got.
27. Striker Draven
Peyton promised to tear out my heart and that’s what she’s doing, scratch by careful scratch.
I stare at Kaitlyn’s wand, a bitter laugh at the back of my throat, taking in the way Peyton etched her own name into it like a brand, laying her own identity over the top of it. It’s Peyton’s wand now and she’ll do whatever the hell she wants with it.
Last night, she brought me ice. She dropped it at my door and I heard the message in the slap of cold against the floor. She has the power to leave me in pain. She has the power to end it. She’ll choose whichever suits her.
She catches my eye before she faces forward again, the chill in her eyes telling me I’d better watch my step.
Damn. I love the way she hates me. The more she pushes at me, the more I want to reach out and drag her chair across the distance.
But I won’t. Not yet.
Somehow, I have to find a way to mend the broken bridge between us because, like it or not, my beast was right. She’s my match.
28. Peyton Price
A strange calm descends over the Academy over the next week. The teachers are more subdued in the classroom, but I catch sight of them whispering to each other in the hallways, their gestures urgent before they wipe their faces clean again.
Lucinda is second to have her lesson with Raptor but she emerges unharmed and slightly perplexed.
“He asked me a bunch of questions,” she tells me. “But it was nothing, really. Where did I go to school? Who were my friends? That one was easy—nobody and no one. He asked me about my parents, too. Where do they work? What supernatural species are they? Basic stuff.”
