Page 21 of Messenger of Death
“Don’t you feel like we should be free to choose who we are connected to? You don’t strike me as the type who does what they are told.”
Ugh. Good point. But also wrong. Thankfully, Professor Thornheart saved me from having to argue with that. I hoped the rest of the year wasn’t like this.
“We’re going to be making a basic protection potion and black salt your first class. You’re going to want to take this back to your dorm. It’s best to wash the floors with it and it’ll please the brownies, but you can also wipe down the mirrors. You’ll want to sprinkle a tiny bit of black salt across the doorway and windowsills. It won’t protect you outside of your dorm room, but it will keep anyone who means you harm from entering. Since most of you are rooming with older students, they would havealready done this, you’ll want to do it again just in case they aren’t keeping up with the basics.”
I liked potions alotbetter than I liked chemistry in high school. We set the cauldron above a black candle and mixed salt, parsley, pine needles, and rosemary, and then we dropped a black crystal in. Potions was like cooking and I could handle that. The black salt just involved crushing salt and ash with a mortar and pestle.
Lola kept mucking it up, and she kept nearly fucking mine up, too. I had a proper protection potion and Lola put coriander in hers instead of parsley, even though I told her it wasn’t right. She insisted it was and tried to dump it in mine, too.
Professor Thornheart looked at the mess in her cauldron and shook his head.
“Did I mention you have to successfully make a potiontogetherfor your midterm? Might want to study together and learn the difference between basic herbs.”
I did. How did Lola not know the difference between parsley and coriander if she was an avid hiker? They weren’t common in the wild in a lot of places, but it was hard to hike and not know how to forage. She was tiny, so she’d be limited in how heavy her rucksack was.
Iwantedto be here. I needed to pass my classes. Lola would eventually get the hint that I only had eyes for Sage, but I didn’t think I could deal with an entire semester of her notlisteningto me and insisting she was right.
I guess this is what I got for being nice.
Alexios was less prickly now that he didn’t have a migraine. He had a very dry, sarcastic sense of humor, but I liked him. I hadsomany questions after potions. Out of all of us, Liam was the most likable if he likedyou.There was something magnetic about him since he was a fertility god.
I didn’t think he would have a problem finding a lab partner when he sent me to partner with Alexios. I even got why he did it. What I didn’t get was Lola. The majority of the class wanted to partner with her. I didn’t know if they had the same connection, but Mazen looked at her like Liam looked at me. I still couldn’t get a read on Radames.
Mazen looked furious when she wanted to partner with Liam. I kept sneaking glances. Lola kept touching and flirting with Liam and Mazen was getting angrier and angrier.
It reminded me of this girl I didn’t like in high school. She had a very dramatic relationship with our quarterback. Any time he did anything she didn’t like, she’d be all over the captain of the baseball team to make him jealous.
From what Morgana told me, we were generally bonded to more than one person, which was an issue Mazen was going to have to deal with. Problem was, Liam was bonded tomeand he’d pretty much announced that to the entire tavern before he launched into his song.
I wasn’t jealous. Liam and I weren’t together. We probably would be one day, but I already knew Liam only had eyes for me. And I’d known him long enough to know he was annoyed and trying not to be mean. He didn’t do that often, but Lola was the Queen Bee at the moment. She either had a crush on Liam or she was using him. At any rate, if we handled her until she named who really did this to her, no one might get stabbed in their sleep.
We had a two-hour break after potions. I knew it was supposed to be for eating and studying, but we could do our reading for history later. We immediately went back to our dorm rooms with the black salt and protection potions just in case anyone got any ideas. Morgana insisted she was religious about that in our room and Elliot and Petros tended to piss people off, so she made them do it in theirs, too.
She did say it wouldn’t hurt to add to it since there were more people in the rooms and Lucian was in a single, so he definitely needed to do his. She recommended Ivar, Ari, and Alexios refresh theirs every full moon.
We met back in their room after we were done in ours.
“Red, we need to stop meeting like this. Lola threw you a flag and you should take it,” Ivar said.
“Ugh,” Liam said. “I get her mind was messed with when it comes to who hurt her, but she’s a complete bellend when it comes to potions. I told her a million times that wasn’t parsley and she wanted to argue with me. She tried to dump it inmypotion. We had servants growing up, but after I ran, I found out I enjoy cooking. There’s something calming about baking. Iknowmy herbs. I don’t know how she doesn’t if she made her money on hiking videos.”
“That’s pretty easy to check,” Lucian said, whipping out his phone.
He was buried in his phone for a few minutes before he came back to us.
“All her accounts on human social media are set to private. Not sure ifshedid that, ortheydid that when they invaded our private space and molested our phones.”
“It makes sense,” Khalid said. “If she’s internet famous, then she has fans. They wouldn’t want them looking around here for her. There’s also the issue that eventually, people are going to ask questions about why we aren’t aging. My family would accept the answer, but seeing them back home would be difficult because of the neighbors.”
I hadn’t thought of that. I had no problem leaving my old life behind. Liam didn’t, either. Lucian didn’t speak about his family much, but Khalid was close with his.
“Listen, shedidseem to know how to pitch a tent and help out, but that wasn’t why she was on our team,” Alexios said. “She practically begged us and we felt bad for her.”
“No, I believe you, but I figured something out. It’s why Lola is still alive and Kira isn’t. I think someone figured out who Alexios was before he did and Ivar was pretty out and proud of being Thor.”
“I’m listening,” Alexios said.
“One of the Forsaken Ones has some darkness power. If Ivar finds his hammer, I know it’s associated with lightning. Alexios is a sun god with the power of prophecy.”
