Wicked Heirs (Electi Academy #1)

9. ~Orpheus~

9

~Orpheus~

I knew he’d seen me.

He was taking his sweet time acknowledging it.

He was aware that I wanted a word, but it was a word he didn’t want to have.

Too bad. It was happening.

This situation with Alena was done with.

I was removing her as a target.

With the way she affected me, it had become too dangerous to continue on that road with her.

I couldn’t see clearly, rationally.

My good sense had become compromised where she was concerned.

And, as for Tal, this whole crusade had made him all the more unstable. Vicious, even.

He’d attacked her right in the middle of class surrounded by witnesses.

Sometimes he thought that he was untouchable.

He was the only phoenix here, which made him a special case, and he also had the sympathy vote for being an orphan, something he used to its fullest no matter how distasteful. He saw it as the world owing him.

But it was me who’d intervened when he’d been called into the dean’s office and received his third strike.

I’d had to resort to bribery basically—something beneath me—dipping into my trust in a major way and offering Electi Academy a massive endowment to make the charges against Tal go away.

Given that it was Abigail Rose’s daughter who was in question, there had been even more involved than that.

He had to make a formal apology to her, not get within a hundred feet of her again, which meant he’d been pulled out of certain classes that she was in, which was going to set him back with graduating.

He’d royally fucked up.

So I had to cut the whole thing off at the knees now.

It was done.

As soon as he got down here and ended his flying session, I’d put that into effect.

The notion of flying up there myself had obviously occurred to me, but I resisted. I always did and I always would all the while I was here.

Like him, I could fly extremely fast and I hated being restricted when I was in that headspace, which was what the dome around Electi Academy would ensure.

It could tempt me to break the thing, which I now had the ability to do, but it was something I didn’t want them to be aware of.

I had to downplay what I was truly capable of at this stage.

They wouldn’t like it.

For now, the faculty needed to believe that I hadn’t yet come into my full abilities as Dark Fae Prince, that I was still lacking.

Thanks to Obsidian, though, where I facilitated being able to let our magic and abilities out to play without their strict protocols, I’d been able to get to that point. If they knew about that, they’d be afraid that I was well on my way to matching the power of King.

All in good time.

I looked back up at Talon weaving in and out of the trees, dipping low, before soaring back up toward the stars littering the black sky. It was the dead of night. If he didn’t go to bed soon, he’d only get a couple of hours’ worth of sleep before classes, and Talon didn’t do well without enough sleep, he could barely function. And he became extremely irritable. Given his current state of mind, that would be disastrous.

I was just about to call my magic to communicate a message to him, demanding he cut it short and come down to speak with me, all this avoidance of his be damned, but I was pulled up short by the sight of clouds gathering in his vicinity.

Gathering out of nowhere and certainly not in a natural manner either.

Just over the specific area where he was flying.

Instinctively, I coiled my power, readying my purple flames on either palm.

But as the threat became apparent, I was caught off guard again, and as surprised as hell when gold sparks shot through the clouds.

It couldn’t be.

The sparks gathered, then sped up and collided, until they took the form of several bolts of lightning.

And then they locked onto Talon like heat-seeking missiles, four of them striking him.

He cried out as they stunned him and electrocuted him.

Electrocution to him should impact him no more than the feel of a slight buzzing, but we were talking angel magic here.

They blew him out of the sky.

I reacted, swirling my power and shaping it into a funnel likened to a tornado, in order to catch him, then return him to the ground safely.

But then the gold lightning reformed into a sphere, surrounding him and carrying him back down to the grass.

The moment it dissipated, gold smoke erupted a hundred feet ahead of me right near Talon’s downed position and Alena materialized.

She swung her head toward me, looking mighty pleased with herself. “Little prince,” she greeted, before turning her attention to Talon, who she released from the sphere.

He shook out his wings, then hid them away.

As he got his bearings and saw her standing there just steps from him, and put two and two together, rage twisted his features and he called his phoenix claws forth. “Are you fucking kidding me? Fucking with me like that? You won’t survive that, cunt.”

He moved so fast, it was little more than a blur as he ran at her.

Just before he made contact, she twisted to the side, and I saw a glint of metal a moment before he stumbled past her having missed his target.

She used his disorientation to her advantage and plunged her weapon into his side.

Expecting me to simply shake it off because a simple knife wound would heal in seconds for him, I was shocked when he choked, then slumped to his knees.

“Talon!” I cried, rushing over.

Alena kicked him in the face, forcing him onto his back.

Then she grabbed the handle of the blade and wrenched it out, making Talon shriek and writhe on the grass.

“Burn… burning!” he cried, looking out at me in terror.

“Iron,” I gasped, taking in the blade. “You used an iron weapon against a phoenix?” I demanded of Alena.

“Sure did,” she responded nonchalantly spinning the blade in her hand. “I can also heal him instantly. Just as soon as he agrees to stand down and walk away from this ill-fated vendetta against me.”

A show of force.

That was what she was doing.

I skidded to my knees beside Talon, stroking his hair soothingly. “I came out here to order you to stand down on targeting her anyway. Tell her as much.”

He gritted his teeth. “Ore… she doesn’t deserve mercy.”

“She’s not her, she’s not Abigail . She’s her own person. If you’d allowed yourself to see beyond your rage and vindictiveness even for a moment like Xavier and I have, you’d have recognized that. Now, let it go, brother.”

He growled, then looked out at Alena. “It’s over. No more attacks.”

She nodded, then crouched down the other side of him opposite me, then hovered her hand over the wound.

Her golden glow emanated a moment later and I watched the wound start to heal.

Talon sighed in relief as the burning of his blood—a disturbing effect of a phoenix being stabbed by an iron weapon—also subsided.

“That’s a fraction of what I’m capable of,” Alena told him as she rose to her feet and disintegrated the iron blade with her magic before our eyes. “Remember that.”

Still clearly out of it, he struggled as he went to get to his feet.

I went to offer him my aid, but he shrugged me off with a grunt, then hissed at Alena, “I might’ve agreed to stop the attacks, doesn’t mean I’ll stop hating you. My parents died because of you!”

“What? What are you talking about?”

He roared then, pain and rage colliding, “They were sent to protect your ass and they paid the price. All because of you! So you still think I’m overreacting? Huh? Do you?”

She didn’t respond.

She just stared at him for several moments.

And then she surprised the hell out of me as she used her magic again perfectly and disappeared in a swirl of gold teleportation smoke.

Fuck.