Page 40 of Fortune Academy: Year One
I pushed it away. “Are you sure? My instincts won’t come out if I’m really not in danger. I can’t be so easily fooled.” Melinda had tried her mind tricks on me, as well as many students at Fortune Academy. I didn’t see how some black goo would work either.
He nodded. “I’m sure. Please, just trust me.”
Sighing, I relented. I still didn’t believe him, but I did trust him, so I parted my lips and allowed him to tilt the contents into my mouth.
I expected the black liquid to taste as vial as it looked, but it eased into my system like a fine wine and filled my senses with nostalgic memories that wouldn’t quite come to the surface. I fluttered my eyes closed and let the sensation wash over me as I sighed.
“That’s it,” Kaito said, his voice sounding distant now, “let it guide you home.”
Home. I didn’t know where that was, but with the magic coursing through me, I had a feeling that before I’d lost my memories, before I’d come to Earth, home felt like this.
When I openedmy eyes again I was in a world of pitch blackness, but I wasn’t afraid. I was familiar with this darkness. A low hum surrounded me with a steady thump as if I was in my mother’s womb.
I stretched out my fingers and grazed the thick blackness that encased me. This was home. I could remember it now, before I found myself on Earth. Before I was Lily Fallen.
I was Lilith.
Panic took hold as the memory came back to me. I wasn’t home, I was trapped in the Incubus King’s basement, trapped in darkness where he hoped I would rot away and die. I wasn’t the daughter he’d hoped for.
My mother... she would save me. But how?
I ran through the darkness and hit something hard. I beat my fists against it and screamed. Trapped. I couldn’t die. I was an immortal of unnatural proportions.
I was a demonspawn.
This was the other third of my evil heritage that I’d been suppressing. The place where I’d come from before Earth had been hell itself.
Hunger laced through me with such violent pain that I doubled over and cried out. No, this couldn’t be true. This couldn’t be happening. My worst fear was being a monster and now it was revealed that I was the worst monster of all.
When I went to wipe the tears from my face my fingers scraped across hard skin and my stomach dropped. Sharp fangs poked from my teeth and I knew that I wasn’t the pretty face everyone saw me as in Fortune Academy. This was what I really looked like underneath.
The rune across my arm burned hot, retaliating as if denying that this was my true form. Fresh pain laced through me and I curled up in a ball, for the first time feeling as if I was going to die, not because I was trapped in a memory, but because of what I was. I deserved to die. I deserved for Dante to find me right now and plunge a dagger in my chest like he’d done to Jess.
That was all my instincts needed.
The last part of my supernatural part of me awakened and billowed a wave of light through the darkness, banishing my fears and nightmares with searing determination. A heavy weight settled on my back and a soft draping sensation fell over me. I pressed my fingers to my face again, finding the skin smooth, the fangs gone.
What the hell was I?
When I came back to the real world, I wasn’t in the classroom anymore. No students, no empty vials, just a soft bed and Kaito leaning over me, his eyes alight with concern and that silver streak in his hair still tousled from where I’d run my fingers through it.
His face relaxed when he saw I was awake. His hand went to mine and squeezed. “Lily, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know you would react... like that.”
I groaned from the fresh waves of pain that bolted through my body. Everything inside of me hurt like I’d broken all my bones and then put them back together again slightly different than they’d been before. “What happened?” Everything was so fuzzy. I remembered the classroom. Drinking the black vial. Then...
Dear gods.
My heart twisted when it all came flooding back and tears sprung to my eyes. I didn’t want Kaito to see me fall apart, but I couldn’t help it when my face crumpled. “I’m a monster,” I whispered, my words hoarse as if I’d spent hours screaming.
Kaito shushed me and immediately his lips were on mine. “You’re not,” he promised between kisses. “You’re anything but a monster.”
I suddenly became very aware that I was alone with Kaito and his hands were on me without hesitation. Perhaps it was guilt for putting me through a living nightmare, or perhaps he’d found a way for us to finally be alone without repercussion. I pulled away from him and he went to my neck, making new sensations zing through my sore body.
This must be his bedroom. Simple decorations lined the walls with more than enough books to fill a library. I felt strangely at home among the spines that piled atop one another and was the only audience to our taboo.
He was a school counselor, a teacher, and I was his monster student.
He was also my Virtue, and I was meant to be his.
