Page 18 of The Goddess is Awakened
“My cousin Valkyrie is seven years younger than me and already knows she’s a trickster like her dad. My dad tried to teach me chaos magic, but I can only do it when he’s there guiding me. I’m pretty sure I’m defective.”
“Ah, eighteen-year-olds,” Azren sighed. “That’s not defective. I’m pretty sure it’s a massive clue about your magic. Tricksters are pretty common. It’s not unusual for your cousin to be one. You being able to do chaos magicisunusual. Your dad is the only one with that power. There’s never been a second God of Chaos. There still wouldn’t be. It’s an immense responsibility with the potential to abuse. The Fates wouldn’t pass that torch unless they had a reason.”
That was…a lot, and I didn’t even think about it like that. I let out a breath. My mom was right. Azren was exceptionally smart. They hadn’t turned the lights on, and we were working by candlelight, but they did fire up an electric tea kettle and offered me some.
“How do you drink tea this late? That one is high in caffeine.”
“I exist off caffeine, greasy food, four hours of sleep, and spite.”
“If it was nine hours of sleep, you sound like my dad Balthazar.”
“I have to ask, how are you adjusting to college? The Krauss girl is awful, and she’s going to get worse. Your necklace might hide who you are, but everyone will still know you’re the most powerful person in this school. The Krauss girl is going to start recruiting.”
I threw back my head and laughed. Azren looked like they were worried I would lose my shit and smite Kaylee and her army of mean girls. One, I didn’t even know how to smite someone. Two, if she pissed me off, I’d probably just turn her into a hamster and let her run on a wheel in my door room until she learned her lesson.
“Mean girl politics are so not your thing since you never went to high school. Kaylee is a weak witch who desperately wants to be special but doesn’t want to work for it. She wants what Minerva had, but she never applied herself to be really brilliant at potions. Kaylee and Lindsay want to be important by extension because Minerva was.
“Kaylee used to name-drop Minerva all the time in first grade like they were super close and that Minerva invited her over for strawberry cake all the time. I was only eight and didn’t realize what she was doing. I called her out in front of the class by pointing out that Minerva never ate strawberries because she was allergic and lemon was her favorite cake.
“She got laughed at, and she’s been pissing at me trying to assert dominance ever since. Kaylee is more like a fly, and karma has its way of handling things. I might shoo her away with some magic, but anything more than that wouldn’t be a fair fight. You don’t have to worry about Kaylee and me. We’ve been going to school together since kindergarten. I’ve never viewed her as a threat. She’s certainly not now with magic, nor is any squad she recruits.”
Azren dismissed me. It was a productive lesson, and I learned a lot my dad didn’t teach me. I had no idea why Azren looked more concerned when I said I had no intention of magically blowing Kaylee Krauss up than when they brought it up.
oscar
College was weird. I had certain expectations once my plans changed. A lot of them were exceeded. I wasn’t expecting a god to be teaching history and one of my favorite dodgeball players to be teaching magical combatandto offer me private lessons. That part was pretty badass. All my teachers were amazing.
It was school politics I didn’t get. It should have been just like high school but with magic. I already had a few warlocks flexing their magic around me to prove dominance. I put them in their place and moved on. Ren had some shifters challenge him, too.
None of the vampires messed with Church, and that didn’t have a damned thing to do with his grandfather. Energy vampires had the speed, and strength, and they got fangs, too, but they could completely fuck your head up from a distance. The vampires acknowledged that and weren’t trying to fuck with him.
It was the witches I didn’t get. George Bell was the strongest witch in this school, and she didn’t seem to want to claim it. There were also a good bit of strong witches in this school that appeared to be hanging around Kaylee Krauss, who, as far as I could tell, had nothing remarkable about her except a big mouth and a mother in a position of power.
West and Church were obsessed with George. I was pretty sure they were her biggest fan club here, and Church had never spoken to her before. West was still sparring with her in magical combat, and according to West, she was the most perfect woman ever to exist. By West's standards, that meant she knew dodgeball, could handle him in a fight, and her nipples tasted like beer.
Church had never spoken to her in his life and only had history with her, but he was pretty much stalking her. It had gone beyond social media stalking at this point. Ren and I decided to hold an intervention. Ren thought she had way too much drama around her, and I hadn’t made my mind up about her yet. On the one hand, it could be considered cool that she didn’t involve herself in the powerplays at all. On the other, Kaylee’s vitriol was getting worse every day, and she was starting to look weak, not putting her in her place when it was pretty fucking clear she could.
That wasn’t my business, and I wasn’t getting involved. Ren and I needed to talk some sense into Church. Church was an extremely powerful vampire, and George was a massively powerful witch. They could destroy the campus between the two if he tried to hurt her, and she fought back. Plus, we didn’tknowif Church would or could manipulate her emotions to be some kind of weird energy vampire love slave, and that shit wasn’t cool.
West kept insisting Church was harmless, but he wanted all the details when Church returned from following her around campus. IneededWest to have my back, but we didn’t tell him we were doing this because West thought the moon shone out this witch’s ass.
We were all waiting when Church returned from one of his nightly roams around campus. If George was out there, he was following her in the shadows. It was a nightly thing. He’d creep in the common room waiting for her to leave. He’d wait there forhoursbefore giving up that she wasn’t taking a walk that night.
“Get this. I think George is taking private lessons with Azren. She went to their office and stayed in there a while,” Church said.
That wasn’t unusual. Azren was a friend of her dad. Churchreallydidn’t need to be pissing a god off.
“Stalking George Bell is really weird, Church,” Ren said.
“It’s really not going to end well,” I said.
“It’s an energy vampire thing,” Church said.
He kept saying that, and it really wasn’t. Church was getting obsessed, and he’d eventually cross a line he couldn’t come back from. I liked him, except for this whole stalking thing.
“It really is an energy vampire thing,” West said. “You guys wouldn’t get it.”
“You both have a huge blind spot for that witch,” Ren sighed, rolling his eyes.
