Page 35 of Fortune Academy: Year One
I shrugged. “Okay, make Orion hang up his dick wand for a while, I can do that.” No fucking clue how I was going to get Orion to stop sleeping around?—he was literally a playboy demigod?—but I’d cross that bridge when I got to it. “So, what else?’
“Then there’s Logan,” Hendrik said wistfully as he eased onto a stool, only wincing slightly as he twisted his leg into a more comfortable position, revealing an attractive curve on the inside of his thigh that the succubus in me wanted to explore. “He already suffers, but I haven’t figured out a way to get his defenses down enough to capture that raw energy. He’s a lone wolf, you see, yet he’s bound to lead his pack. He’s an alpha, even if he never wanted to be.” Hendrik pointed at me. “Get him to turn on his pack and it’ll break those defenses.”
“I thought you wanted me to stay away from Logan,” I sneered. “Now you want me to break him?”
Hendrik chuckled. “Break his defenses, that’s all. Logan will be fine, and maybe better off in the end.”
The thought of hurting Logan made my stomach twist, but if what Hendrik said was true and Logan didn’t want to be alpha of his pack, he was right, I could be helping him in the long run. “Okay,” I relented. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Wonderful,” Hendrik said, beaming. He eased to his feet and beckoned me to follow. “You’ll need an artifact to absorb the suffering. I have just the thing.”
I followed Hendrik into his bedroom which was easily three times the size of my shared room with Olivia. He gripped a painting that I could only describe as the underworld decorated by elaborate caverns and pits of fire, and pulled it away from the wall. It twisted on hinges, revealing a safe.
He leaned down and a scanner moved over his eyes. I wondered how pitch-black eyes could have a signature, but the safe seemed to recognize him and popped open.
I tried to see around his shoulder, but he blocked my view of the contents. He pulled something out and then shut the safe and painting again, settling both back with aclick.
He presented a necklace with a stunning red gem dangling on the end of it. “A Blood Stone,” he announced with pride. “I save it only for special occasions, but in this case, I believe you’ll put it to good use.”
He took my hand and dropped the gem into it, the silver chain pooling on my palm in a fine swirl. I examined it, trying not to be too impressed with how beautiful it was, but the ruby hue was so deep and the facets of the gem caught the light in a way that had me mesmerized. I tore my gaze away from it and raised a brow at him. “How does it work?”
He closed my fingers around the prize and flashed me a smile. “Just be the cause of sacrifice, the stone will do the rest.” He waved his hand over mine and a trickle of magic settled into the chain, heating up slightly before cooling again. “Wear it, don’t take it off. When the job is done, come back to me.” He winked. “I might even let you keep it after I extract your debt.”
It felt appropriate that the first piece of jewelry I’d ever gotten from a guy would be a dark mage artifact designed to feed on suffering.
I nodded, pinching my lips together as I accepted his proposal. If he meant to let me keep the stone, then this wouldn’t be the only job I’d be doing for him.
He eased his arm around my shoulder and guided me out of his bedroom, far too pleased with himself. “I believe this is a start of a wonderful alliance,” he said with a grin.
The scent of roses and blood followed us out and I wondered what kind of shit I’d gotten myself into now.
Three Weeks Later
Watching Olivia set up her new class schedule after three weeks of waitinghad me feeling a bit envious. It was school policy to enforce an adjustment period and Olivia was ready to crawl out of her own skin and get started. We’d been on the same page until now, forming a routine that involved going out to eat and Olivia patching me up after my bouts at the Awakening Arena.
But now... it was time for her to move on without me.
Olivia spread out all the courses available onto a table and admired the different routes her life could take. Unlike witches who were bound to a coven, dark mages could specialize their magic and had enough freedom to contribute to the clan rather than draw from its source. Hendrik might have gone the traditional route of harnessing pain into power, but so many other elements could provide energy. I eyed the titles with curiosity, wondering if Olivia would be interested in sorcery that focused on nature or astrology.
Thinking of astrology made me think of Orion... and I grimaced.
Olivia pointed to one of the papers. “What do you think about this one?” She pursed her lips. “Introduction to Alchemy. According to the description, energies exist in all elements and this provides a fundamental understanding that requires three textbooks. It sounds like it’s just a lot of reading, and maybe something I could do without expending magic, doesn’t it?”
Olivia had been trying to find classes where she wouldn’t have to use magic at all, which was a challenge for a fledgling dark mage. It was going to take some time to pay back the debt we owed Hendrik. He’d made it very clear that if she used her magic, even for a small spell, her life would be in grave danger as her body struggled to find energy to fuel her new magic and the clan rejected her attempts to draw more power from it than she was putting in.
Olivia was so eager to figure out who she was that I could tell it was killing her not being able to go all-out. Even though I could relate to her ambition were I in the same position, I knew we had to do this the right way. First I had to fix the damage I’d caused and then we could both figure out who we were, together.
I peered over her shoulder at the alchemy class card description. “Sounds like a great class,” I said and gave her a warm smile. “Do you know what the professor’s like?”
“Oh,” she said, drawing back from the table, “I hadn’t considered the professors. I’m going to have to rearrange all of the cards.”
I nodded in agreement.After a couple of weeks at the Academy and no sign of improvement from the Awakening Arena, Miss Williams had reluctantly given me a couple of classes to keep me occupied. I found how useful those classes were depended entirely on the professor. Even the teachers had alliances and it became quickly obvious who was in league with either Hendrik, Melinda’s Mindfreaks, the Demis, or the Shifters.
“I don’t know about the professor who teaches Alchemy,” Olivia went on. “Who do you think I could ask? Maybe some of the dark mages?”
Even though we had our own small alliance, neither of us knew much about the inner social workings of the campus other than what we gleaned for ourselves, which wasn’t much. Being a dud made it hard to build any sort of alliance and Logan hadn’t talked to me ever since our fall-out. Olivia was more than understanding. She didn’t press me every time I came back from the Awakening Arena ashen and covered in someone else’s blood. No one was able to kill me. Without the true fear of death, my instincts refused to come out and the truth about who I was remained buried somewhere deep inside of me. In spite of my pretty face and my fragile appearance, I was a lot harder to fight than I looked. Olivia told me I should be proud of my skills, but it made me even more concerned about what kind of life I had before I’d found myself drenched in blood at Monster Mother’s door.
“I don’t know if it’s a good idea to talk to the other dark mages, not yet,” I said half-heartedly. “They know I’m Hendrik’s little bitch right now.” I fingered the stone around my neck that felt more and more like a collar that leashed me to Hendrik’s clan. In spite of that, I felt a fondness towards the gem I couldn’t describe. It awarded me curious stares on campus, but it was too big to tuck under my uniform.
