by Abbie Lyons
“What?” I said. “Am I bleeding?”
“Your eyes.”
“What about them?” I blinked, once, twice. Everything felt okay. Could I be bleeding out of my eyeballs and not notice it?
Raines stared. “You can’t tell?”
“Tell what?”
He looked up and down the hallway, as if he was worried someone might interrupt us. Then he shoved his hands in his pockets.
“They’re glowing.”
“Seriously?”
I blinked a few more times, held up my hand and stared at it. Still couldn’t see anything.
“You’re fucking with me,” I said. Raines rolled his eyes—his still-normal eyes, I realized. He glanced up and down the hallway.
“Here.” A few steps away was a polished shield that had clattered off the wall during the Chaos. Raines grabbed it and held it up like a mirror. It wasn’t perfectly clear, but there was no mistaking it.
A soft, gold light lit the upper part of my face.
My eyes were glowing.
“No way,” I said. “No freaking way.”
I felt like I was floating on air. If my eyes were glowing, then Wilder was right. I did have powers. There was demon in me.
“Hell yes,” I said.
“They’re golden,” he added. “They look really—”
“Really what?”
“Forget it.” Raines cocked a grin at me. “I don’t want you to get an ego.”
He’d gotten so close to complimenting me that I almost forgot how mad I was at him for dragging me off just to complain about his brother. And worst of all, I didn’t know if Morgan and Teddy were okay. It wasn’t even clear how we could get back to the ballroom.
“Okay, great,” I said. “But now what?”
Instead of answering, Raines started walking. With no choice, I followed.
We wandered down the hallway in silence, searching for an exit that wasn’t blocked. So much of the ceiling had fallen that it was a small miracle we were even alive.
Or maybe not a miracle. Maybe some demon power.
No, don’t get ahead of yourself.
“Are you mad at me?” Raines asked suddenly.
“Yes,” I said. I wasn’t in the mood to explain myself. The grunt he gave me in return seemed to indicate that he got the message loud and clear.
Finding our way out was like navigating one of those corn mazes. We’d make a turn, only to eventually find ourselves at an impasse, then we’d retrace our steps and make a different turn. Hades Academy was difficult enough to navigate on a good day, let alone after some sort of Chaos earthquake.
It all felt so useless.
But then we heard voices.
Quiet and barely discernible voices, but just enough to give us an idea of which direction to go in. They could be our breadcrumb trail out of here.
“Hello!” I yelled. “Can you hear me?”
“We hear you!” a female voice yelled back.
“Keep talking! We’ll come find you!”
From there, it was like the shittiest ever game of Marco Polo, with me yelling “hello” and the other girl yelling “hello” back until she got louder and louder.
A few minutes later, we found ourselves face-to-face with them.
Standing there below a miraculously uncollapsed archway was a group of three angels. Two guys I hadn’t seen before, along with a girl who was unmistakable.
Octavia.
Chapter Nineteen
It would be an exaggeration to say I was pleased to see Octavia. Just looking at her gave me pangs of—well, not jealousy, but something in my stomach. But given how pissed I was at Raines, the awkward look on his face almost made everything worth it.
I decided to be a petty bitch and milk the moment.
“Hi,” I said. “I don’t think I had the pleasure of meeting any of you at the ball. I’m Nova. And this right here is my friend Raines.” I paused for dramatic effect. “Well, really more of an acquaintance than a friend, but we have a few classes together.”
The two guys—who I had real trouble distinguishing between—introduced themselves as Bacchus and Adonis. Ridiculous names, but I expected nothing less.
Octavia was hesitant when it was her turn to introduce herself. I could see the wheels spinning in her head—she was trying to decide whether or not she should pretend that she and Raines had never met before.
“I’m Octavia,” she decided on. “But everyone calls me—”
“Tavi!” added Bacchus or Adonis—I’d already forgotten which was which.
Raines visibly tensed up at hearing her referred to by his pet name. I bet he thought he was the only one who got to call her that. The sucker.
“Hi, Raines,” Octavia—Tavi— said. He gave her a stiff nod.
“Oh, do you two know each other?” I said, badly feigning airiness.
“Yeah,” Tavi said, her voice a little hesitant. “Our families are friends,” she said, just as Raines said, “We go way back.”
I was eating the awkwardness up. Served Raines right for pulling me away from my friends. Such glorious karma.
“Any idea on how to get ourselves out of here?” asked one of the boy angels. “We wanted to explore the campus and take a little break from dancing, and then boom, all that craziness went down.”
“We’re just focused on getting to that ballroom and helping out any way we can,” added the other boy. “Seems like it’s gonna be a real mess in there, and we’re happy to lend a few extra pairs of hands.”
Oh, angels. So pure and noble.
“We’ve just been wandering ourselves,” I said. “Most of the ways that would take us back out toward the ballroom seem to be blocked. Any ideas?”
“Probably best just to remain positive,” maybe-Adonis said.
Raines and I both let out an unintentional scoff. It was just such a stupid non-solution, I couldn’t help myself.
“So basically what you’re saying is we should just wait around until help comes?” I asked.
“No,” maybe-Adonis corrected me, looking a little embarrassed. “We should collectively try to draw in positive energy.”
“I don’t know if that’ll do much,” Raines said. I could sense that he was trying to be polite around Tavi. Otherwise he would’ve been much more critical of the peace-and-harmony bullshit.
I was going to have to be the blunt one.
“Doesn’t anybody here have rubble-moving powers or something?” I asked. “Or the power to break through a wall? I’m really not in the mood to wait here for hours.” Or starve to death.
“Those aren’t really things guardians do,” Tavi said. “We’re not destructive by nature.”
But you sure destroyed Raines’s heart, I held myself back from saying.
“Then what do guardians do?” I asked.
“We protect,” maybe-Bacchus said proudly. “And we bring positive energy into the world.”
Never did I want control of my powers more than in that moment. Tearing shit down was totally the kind of thing a good demon should be able to do. And if I was really harboring as much latent skill as Wilder seemed to think—if my glowing eyes meant anything—then it was frustrating that I couldn’t just use it. My friends were out there somewhere, maybe even buried under debris, and I needed to know now if they were okay.
“Tale as old as time,” Raines said, an edge to his voice. “Angels and demons just aren’t made to agree. It never works out.”
“You say that like you’ve experienced something like this before,” I said, playing dumb. Even at a time like this, taking shots at him was just too juicy to pass up.
Raines glared at me. I blinked innocently.
“I can’t just stand idly by while you trash the working relationship that guardians and demons have had for millennia,” snapped one of the boys. “Working side-by-side with our demon compatriots is a pleasure. An attitude like yours is exactly what started all these problems tonight.”
“Don’t get
all high and mighty.” Raines groaned. “Of course the relationship between our people is important. But we should also recognize that working together isn’t always easy. Why are you so naive about that? Creating balance isn’t all fun and games.”
Super convenient that everything he said was still echoing his feelings about his romantic relationship with an angel, but from my early impressions, he wasn’t wrong. These angels were useless.
“That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try!” said the other boy, aghast. “It’s the whole point of us being here!”
“You think we’d come to this place voluntarily?” said the first one. “Honestly, I’m not surprised this happened. Even if it is some sort of test—”
“Okay, everyone shut up!” Tavi’s face was flushed pink. “Raines, you’re not making this any easier. You don’t think it’s weird and hard for me to see you too?”
Adonis and Bacchus gasped.
“I’m sorry about what happened, Raines,” she said “I really am. But you’re being a jerk right now. And you’re proving to me that I did the right thing.”
As much as I was enjoying this Very Special Jerry Springer episode, we needed a plan. What if Raines was wrong and the Chaos started back up? The ceiling might finish its collapse and then we’d all be dead. And dying in the middle of an argument between supernatural ex-lovers? That’s not how I wanted to go.
No one said anything. Tavi sighed, and dragged the heel of her hand along her eye, her shoulders shaking gently.
Was she crying?
“Tavi—” Raines said, and stepped toward her. But he stumbled, then fell to the floor.
“Raines!” Tavi and I gasped at the same time.
We both moved forward but Tavi was faster. She lifted his head, gently, and turned it to the side.
“He’s bleeding,” she said softly.
He was bleeding, I realized—a not-insignificant gash over his right eye, now streaming blood down his eyebrow and towards his mouth. And clearly it was enough to take him down.
Raines mumbled something indistinct.
“Shit,” I whispered. But before anyone could move, Tavi reached out, two fingers extended, a silver light shining from her hand. Gently, she touched Raines’s cut, and when she drew back, the bleeding had stopped and healed to a mere bruise.
The pain was probably gone, but you wouldn’t know it to look at Raines’s face. He looked...well, I couldn’t even think of a word for it. It was a look I’d never seen on him before.
“There,” Tavi said. “Anyone else hurt?”
I did a quick scan—covered in dust, but no blood. The angel boys shook their heads.
Raines blinked, then rolled quickly to sitting and stood, wiping the blood from his face with his shirttail.
“Okay.” With a deep inhale, Tavi shook her head, swept, blonde waves off of her neck, and swooped them up into a ponytail using some unseen hair tie. She squared her shoulders and put her hands on her hips. “Enough stupid crap. This girl—”
“Nova,” Raines and I said at the same time. Tavi blinked. Raines’s hand instinctively went to his former injury.
“Nova is right,” Tavi went on. “We need a plan, and we need it sooner rather than later.” She glared at Bacchus and Adonis. “Please try to be productive, guys.” Her voice was gentle, but firm.
Damn. I didn’t hate her as much as I wanted to. I maybe even kind of liked her attitude.
“Do you have any powers, Nova?” she asked. “Something that’d be useful here?”
I stared at my now-bare feet. Tavi was still wearing her pearl-colored heels, I noticed. “Uh, no. Unfortunately.”
“Okay, no big deal,” she said, genuinely sounding like it wasn’t. “As you can see, I’m really only any good at healing so far. And these two...” She glanced back at Bacchus and Adonis.
“I’m sure we’ll figure something out,” said one of them. Tavi all but rolled her eyes.
“Thanks for the positivity,” she called back. She blew out a breath. “Gods, maybe I could have made it work as a demon.”
She glanced sideways at me, smiling, and then—for just a second—Raines. I didn’t know whether to smile back or scowl or what.
“Raines,” I said, taking charge of the conversation. “You can do something, right? Anything? Even if it’s a long shot.”
He hesitated. I knew that look.
The bastard was keeping something from us.
“Spill it,” I demanded.
“I can do an advelum,” he blurted out.
The angels audibly gasped. Tavi looked the most shocked of all.
“You’re just going to admit it?” she said, lowering her voice to a whisper. “Just like that? What if she—”
“She doesn’t know what it is,” Raines interrupted. I realized that she was me.
“Hey,” I said. “I’m right here. And I want to know what an advelum is.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Raines said. “I’m not doing it.”
I gaped. “Why not? We need to get out of here.”
“Because I don’t want to.”
“Why not?”
“Because it will hurt you,” Raines said. “Okay? I’m not doing it.”
Mouth open, I glanced around.
“It’s a powerful spell,” Tavi said, as if she was almost embarrassed that Raines was being such a brat. Probably had enough experience with the situation. “Like a...radial blast, I guess? Did you ever play League of Legends? It’s basically an AoE spell.”
I gave my head a little shake. “Uh, like the video game?”
Tavi blushed. “I mean, video games are fun. Anyway, the real point is, it does have downsides—”
“And so I’m not doing it,” Raines said.
“You didn’t answer the part about how I could get hurt,” I reminded him.
“The advelum is so powerful that it can injure anybody with demon blood within close range. Guardians are immune. I’ll be able to break apart some of this rubble, and maybe clear a path, but it’s not worth it.”
“Why not?” I shot back. “We’re all stuck here!”
“Because I would hate myself forever if I hurt you.”
The hallway fell deadly silent. Tavi looked at her toes. Bacchus and Adonis even could tell that something awkward was going on.
No. I had to focus on solutions. I did want to get out as soon as possible, but I also wanted to get out alive. We’d have to think a little more about this one.
“What kinda injuries are we talking here?” I asked. “A scrape? Nausea? Death? Sudden loss of blood pressure?”
I was sounding like one of those warnings at the end of a pharmaceutical commercial.
“Any of those things, or even nothing,” Raines said soberly. “The advelum is unpredictable. Some serious broken bones are a real possibility. Your life could be changed forever.”
“Well,” I said, weighing my options, “if we don’t get out of here soon, there’s a chance we die, and that would also change my life forever. Not to mention everyone else’s.” I couldn’t help but glance at Tavi at that. Sure, I didn’t know her as much more than Raines’s angel ex-girlfriend who apparently liked human video games, but I also didn’t want her to up and die if she didn’t have to.
“We’ve gotta risk it,” I said. “Do it.”
“You don’t need to be so heedless,” one of the guys jumped in. “There’s always the power of positive thinking!”
“Yeah, I’ll pass on that,” I said. “Do it, Raines. Let ‘er rip.”
“Are you sure?” Raines turned to me, so that he filled my vision, blocking everyone else from sight.
It occurred to me, for no reason at all, that if this were a movie, he’d kiss me now. In case we both died in the blast. Or just because.
But he didn’t, of course.
Come to think of it, I wasn’t even sure where that thought came from.
“Nova. Are you sure?”
I nodded.
Raines shook his head. �
��You have to say it out loud.”
“Why, so the spell will work?”
“Because I need to hear you say it out loud.”
I swallowed, my throat inexplicably dry. “I’m sure. Do it.”
Raines nodded. He took a step back, and motioned for Tavi and the guys to clear out to the opposite side of the hall.
“Stand in front of Nova,” he said. Tavi nodded, and the three of them actually joined hands and stood guard in front of me. Like guardians, I realized. I felt a swell of gratitude. Tavi could have been a total bitch to me, the girl who was to all appearances Raines’s new girlfriend (ha), and instead she was actually going to protect my life.
Raines threw off his suit jacket, and rolled up his sleeves, standing in front of the wall of rocks. He clenched his fists, and jerked his head upwards, which would have looked ridiculous had he not immediately been covered in a column of black smoke.
“Shit,” I whispered.
Then the smoke turned to blinding light.
For a powerful, rock-clearing blast, the advelum was oddly quiet.
At first, I heard nothing at all. Then a high-pitched whine like a broken TV set, getting gradually louder until, all at once, a wall of sound that shook me through to the insides, ten times more forceful than the loudest concert I’d ever been to. I felt myself thrown backwards, at once speeding faster than I’d ever fallen and moving as slowly as through a wall of Jell-O. It was, quite frankly, terrifying.
Then I slammed to earth.
“Nova!”
I blinked, but the first face I saw wasn’t Raines’s, but Tavi’s.
Up close, she was even more beautiful, and I wanted to hate her for it, but I couldn’t. Even with dust coating her eyelashes and her lipstick smeared, she was still astonishingly pretty. Suddenly, I imagined Raines kissing her, and the image struck me like a flaming arrow to the heart.
“Ah!”
“Are you okay?” Tavi’s eyes widened with worry. “Are you hurt? Show me where.”
I shook my head. “No, it’s just...” I didn’t think I was hurt. I sat up, slowly. My back was against the wall, now, but the stones had cleared—or cleared enough that we could get through.
Tavi looked over her shoulder. Raines was crouched on the floor, in the center of a crater of split flagstones he must have broken in the blast.
