Page 9 of The Goddess is Awakened
We all had history together as our first class. I was crazy excited about what kind of lecture Azren would give us. We weren’t the first people to arrive, but we cut it close to being late. I was the first to walk in, and I got hit by someone carrying amassivesecret. I followed my senses to twins sitting next to each other.
It was the pretty dark-haired twin that was keeping the big secret. I immediately took the seat behind her. Some secrets were bad and could hurt people. This wasn’t one of those, but it was life-changing. She’d been keeping it for a very long time.
This girl officially just became the most interesting person at the Academy of the Profane.
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Being given a scholarship to the Academy of the Profane was a huge honor. Especially since my original plans weren’t to go here, and I applied super late. Dodgeball was probably the most popular supernatural sport in the world. Humans had a version that was pretty lame. Supernatural dodgeball certainly didn’t involve standing there and dodging rubber balls.
I was going to go pro. They had high school teams with the four magically-imbued balls, and it was just that the majority of us didn’t have our magic yet to do much with them but throw and catch them. When we got our magic, we’d just need a little extra training to up the ante on the field. The pro teams were willing to give us that, and I had offers.
I turned eighteen early, as did several people on my team and the teams we played against. Sheclaimedit was an accident because she was new to her power, but I was about to score with the earth ball and win the game. I had it right by my head, ready to guide it with magic. The only thing that could have stopped me at that point was the vampire guarding the goal.
The fireballs could burn you. The only people on our team allowed to handle those were seniors with magic. The water and air balls were equally dangerous. If you could tame the earth ball, thereshouldhave been no harm from it after that. Earth balls didn’t explode except when witches who tried to cheat made them.
I woke up in the hospital with cuts all over my face, and I couldn’t hear a fucking thing. Ren’s sister Hana was born deaf. Ren and I lived next door to each other our entire lives. We started out as best friends and ended up dating when we were fifteen.
We were both amazing with sign language, but I was miserable at lip reading. Hana was this incredible kid, and one day, she would be a fantastic kitsune like the rest of her family. The doctors told me my hearing may or may not come back. I’d love it if it did, but Hana was proof my life wasn’t over if it didn’t.
Still, all my pro offers disappeared when they found out my hearing might not return. I adjusted. My family went through a lot of shit in Mexico, and my Abuela risked a lot bringing her family here. She didn’t raise me to wallow in my shit. You dealt with the hand you were given.
So, I was here at the Academy of the Profane with my boyfriend and my translator, West. Everyone tried to talk me out of picking West as my translator, but I just knew he’d fit in with Ren and me.
West was a lion shifter. I’dneversay this to his face, but they were basically like giant orange housecats. They were massively affectionate goofballs but occasionally would get a spectacularly bad idea that got them in trouble. West ended up working as a janitor at a school for the deaf as community service in high school and ended up intrigued. He learned everything he could about sign language and teaching lip reading.
Ren was a kitsune. We got into troublea lot.He already had two tails, which was almost unheard of for an eighteen-year-old. I could have picked a tamer translator than West, but why would I do that when I could pick a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound lion shifter with the loyalty of a shifter and the chaos of a ginger cat?
Our roommate Church seemed pretty fucking cool, too. He was making an effort to learn sign language to talk to me since my lip reading still wasn’t very good. He could have just relied on West, but he didn’t. Church was kind of intense, but he was cool.
Our first class was history. I thought I was more excited about the magic classes. Brujos used magic differently than witches because a different god created us, but we were similar in many ways and had some kinship. There didn’tusedto be a program here for brujos and kitsunes back when this university was founded, but when more people started immigrating here, they added classes.
I thought history would be as dry and dull as my high school classes, but then Headmaster Krauss introduced the new history teacher. We had the history that was taught in schools, and then you had the nutty conspiracy theories that got floated around. Loki was handfasted to the witch who ran the Museum of the Profane and had a blog with things like that, but some of what he posted was utterly wild, and it was Loki we were talking about. He could just be trolling everyone.
Azren had probably seen some shit. I wasn’t an ass-kisser, but I took a spot in the front row. It was easier to see West that way. It would be weird to single myself out and introduce myself to my professor when no one else was doing it. West did. That was West, though. He was friends with everyone.
West took a seat in the corner. I didn’t knowwhyI was shocked that Azren started signing when they spoke so I could watch them give the lecture and follow along. I was pretty sure they spoke countless languages, but I didn’t take most gods for caring enough to learn sign language.
Then again, no one knew what they were the god of. We just knew they gave outimmensepower, and ‘god’ was the only thing they could be.
Azren didn’t start out by telling us, either. In addition to bothering to sign for me, they called roll and wanted to put our names to our faces. I didn’t know most of these people. I was particularly wary of the witches. Some of them were at the point they’d be auditioning coven members without a care that they might already be dating someone.
They’d love to get involved with a brujo and a kitsune, and some of them might not want us as a package. Even if they did, they might be the jealous type.Ifwe did that, it would be with the right witch.
Speaking of wrong witches, the one sitting next to me wasterrible.She wasn’t giving off a ton of magic, but she was mouthing off to a god, and a class full of supernaturals could definitely kick her ass. She hadn’t even directed that shit at me, and I was mad.
A witch was sitting in the next row, giving off some pretty intense magic. She was gorgeous, and she had a twin. Her familiar was sitting at her feet, and I didn’t know what kind of dog that was, but I didn’t want it after me. Azren seemed to know the twins. They called their name and said as much. One went by Matilda, and the other went by George.
“Hernameis Tempest. It’s on her birth certificate. You shouldn’t entertain her delusions just because her dad is a god. She’s a witch like everyone else,” the nasty witch sneered.
Azren had this utterly serene resting bitch face as they took her in.
“And you are?”
“Kaylee Krauss. My mom is headmaster of this school.”
“You and your mother are both eggplants in terms of the cosmos. I could throw you both in a stir fry, and no one would miss you. George’s dad is an old friend who helped create the universe with me. He’s Chaos, and I’m Death, so I’d watch what you say in my class.
“Gods don’t have birth certificates. I have had more names than you can currently keep track of. So has George’s dad. When you’ve gone by several names you hate that were picked by someone else, you take the view that if someone wants to pick their own name, that’s their right. If you call her anything but George in my classroom, I’ll make sure you have zero history credits on your transcripts and can’t graduate.”
