Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 111353 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 557(@200wpm)___ 445(@250wpm)___ 371(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 111353 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 557(@200wpm)___ 445(@250wpm)___ 371(@300wpm)
“Wait,” Nik called, stopping me with a hand on the wrist. “You haven’t asked, but aren’t you wondering how I passed the entrance test? The lava pit walk? The climb?”
“Uhh... I guess, but...” I flicked to the demons in the class, who were tearing off and leaving us in the dust. “Do you have to tell me now?”
His smile widened. Stepping back, Nik turned his face to the sky and let out a series of clicks, rattles, caws, and coos that broke my brain.
I had no idea what was happening... until a shadow fell over us.
Nik grinned at me. “My mothers couldn’t teach me dark magic, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t teach me anything. How’s this for two hundred laps around the school?”
“Wha—? Ahh!”
The carrion crows descended on us. Hooking their unnaturally large claws around me, Dora, and Nik, they lifted us into the air.
I was shrieking my head off.
Soaring over the running demons and the black-stone turrets—my red clown shoes skimmed nothing but burning air and my assured death if these crows decided to drop their baggage.
“Forest-speak!” Nik shouted over my screeching. “My mothers taught me all the languages of the creatures that perch on their branches, nest in their trunks, and scurry over their roots. Comes in handy, right?”
“Ahhhh!” was my reply.
“Woo!” Dora had three crows on each arm and a baby crow trying to nest in her hair, and she was loving every minute of it. “This is awesome! Char!” she cried, snapping my head around. “Char, put your hands out like this!”
I snapped out of my freak-out, gaping at her. “Char?”
Not Agata. Not Melody. Not Eustace. Did Dora just say her nickname for me?
“Nik, you too,” Dora cried, once again saying the correct name. “Arms out like this. We’re flying!”
Sharing a look between the three of us, and a glance up to the beady-eyed birds that tried to kill me... I put my arms out.
“Woo!” we whooped, laughing and carrying on as we soared through the skies—flying over the tall, imposing, and in so many ways, beautiful manor.
Every minute of every day in hell had been terrible... except for this one.
Our laughter echoed across the scorched plains. Holding my arms out, I shared in the joy with my sister, and my friend, and I flew.
“Yeah!” I cried, giggling as a baby crow came for my head too. “You guys aren’t so bad when you’re not pecking me to death. This is so cool—”
Everything winked out.
In an instant, the crows, the sweeping turrets, and the dead and barren wasteland spreading before me were gone.
I pushed up on my knees, blinking to find myself suddenly in a space I’d never forget. Only a month before, Tristan took me into this courtyard to show me the dead and maimed bodies of the demons my own mother sacrificed on the statue of the half man, half goat.
“Marie?” Dora peeled herself off the black cobblestones. “What’s going on? Why aren’t we flying anymore?”
Kazuya, Pravat, and Bruno stepped out from behind the statue. Something dark, sludgy, and cold coated my heart as Kazuya grinned.
“Take a guess.”
“Dora!” I snatched her hand, yanking her up. “Run!”
“Run where, mortal?”
Kazuya snapped his fingers and a shower of cobblestones ripped off the ground and flew to the doors.
It was like watching a DIY home improvement video on fast motion. Before my eyes, the cobblestones lay at the threshold and stacked themselves in rapid, precise succession. Where there were once doors—was now nothing but hard, bumpy, impenetrable walls.
We weren’t going anywhere.
“Stay back,” I screamed—whipping around and shoving Dora behind me. “Leave us alone! We haven’t done anything to you!”
“Haven’t done anything to us?” Kazuya laughed a strange, almost purring laugh from his feline maw. “That mutt beat us within an inch of our lives all to keep your precious pussy to himself. And then,” he crowed as the three of them spread out, blocking every path, “because of you, he didn’t kill us!”
“Didn’t kill you?” I cried, whipping between them. “Are you— You’re mad that I stopped him from killing you?!”
“You should’ve just pissed in our fucking faces,” he hissed, his furry face twisting into something unrecognizable. “It would’ve been less embarrassing! Instead, the whole class saw us get our asses handed to us by a filthy mutt who only spared us because a sneaky mortal bitch told him to! We’re laughingstocks!”
I could only gape at him. “Then maybe you should get mad at the people doing the laughing! Hating someone for saving your life is as stupid as throwing someone you just met off a cliff for no damn reason. You’re insane!”
That terrible Cheshire cat’s grin curled into his cheeks. “No one’s going to be calling us stupid, insane, or weak when we’ve got something that no one’s had in hell for the last three hundred years.