Jasper’s next class delivers Games uniforms and cruel conditioning. He runs everyone ragged. Zavida clocks how on-edge Jasper is and wonders if a geas is throttling his ability to warn them. That possibility chills the room. Most head to Kat’s dorm, but Zavida hunts down Jasper to bleed off the fury.
Xerxes detours Kat to their room. They’ve put the pieces together and state it plain: they think the secret is real, not misdirection. Kat makes them promise silence. She’ll tell the others when trust catches up to love. X promises stealth support—clothes, binders, whatever’s needed—since destruction and accidents keep shredding her stash. They seal it with a blood pact. For now, that has to be enough.
Next day, Anton is prickly with suspicion and a little shut-out, but it’s their usual game with X, so he lets it go. When Kat and Salem emerge, they pile into the elevator with Anton and head to class. Jasper lectures them on unity in public. In Wormwood’s class, the professor hands out a list of spells including ones that shouldn’t be in circulation. Everyone goes tight with alarm.
Lucian smirks through the next period. At lunch nothing explodes. In Weapons, Kat has to enchant a weapon like everyone else except she has no magic. Anton and X promise to help. The matchups are rigged to push Kat into danger and scatter the caliphate so they can’t cover her.
Anopponent threatens the exact wrong thing. It triggers the exact wrong memory. Kat’s powers surge, wild and unchecked. The arena descends into chaos. Caliphate members rage out or fall. Jasper shifts full dragon and takes the sky. It takes dragging brothers from their classes to crush the riot, get Jasper back to human, and get Kat under control. They ignore other demons’ injuries and deaths to haul their own to Dank’s private office.
Dank treats X and Zavida first—they’re worst off. Then he brings Kat in. She begs him to keep the others out of her bay. He sedates her to heal. While she’s under, a Lady visits in a vivid dream—advice, destiny, warnings that won’t hold still when Kat wakes. When she opens her eyes, everyone is hovering. They bring Dottie.
Dank portals her to bed once she’s stable enough to move. The group agrees Kat and X will rest in the main room so people can rotate watch between classes. Neither patient loves it; both accept a compromise. Slash carries Kat to her room when it’s time to change. Oriel appears to help with toiletries and admits how scared he was. Kat doesn’t have a file for that emotion yet.
Morning brings X’s private calculus about Kat’s power—what it looked like in the arena, what it might mean about lineage. The boys compare notes. When they realize what kind of threat triggered her, even Jasper is incandescent. They plan to train smarter. Another day, a follow-up trip to Dank. On the way, Slash mutters that he would solve the people who hurt her in his favorite way if she’d let him. Kat is understandably startled by the blunt promise.
Meanwhile, Oriel turns thief for the greater good—breaking into Wormwood’s office to learn why a professor is pushing forbidden spells. He snatches intel about snitches and compromising hookups, photographs a hidden compartment full of special items, and eyes a black book that might be spelled. Curiosity wins. He opens it, but he doesn’t get caught.
At Dank’s office, Kat confesses to Slash and X that she thinks she stopped time during Lucian’s speech. They tell her never to say that out loud again because chronomancy paints a target on her back. X helps Kat through a small breakdown fueled by too many secrets pressing at once.
Back in Arms, Jasper’s irritation turns volcanic. He’s done being the administrator’s marionette. He storms into the admin office to confront Darkstar and gets a front-row seat to Lucian and Lillabet having sex. Lucian taunts him mid-thrust because of course he does. Jasper delivers a warning, gets a counterfeit promise, and leaves more furious than he came.
He returns to the dorm to find Oriel and Slash painting Kat’s and X’s toes on the couch—symbolically sitting below them, which flips a demon power dynamic on its head. Jasper snaps, and when Kat asks why, he forbids the entire caliphate from explaining. Petty? Yes. On brand? Also yes.
After they clear out, X convinces Kat to see their animal. She watches them shift into a cobra, wraps around them, and is still petting scales when Anton arrives. His bird gets jealous. She lets him reveal it too. Oriel and Salem get home and shift. The pile grows—four demons in animal form curled against Kat. Jasper walks in and erupts. Slash and Zavida are jealous in quieter shades. Kat covers her eyes so brothers can shift back into clothes. Jasper furies that class was skipped for cuddles.
They table the fight and plan a surface trip. Jasper believes Lucian has backing from outside Discordia. They need to snoop, but Jasper’s father must approve the pass. Before they go, Kat and Salem have a close moment in the kitchen that tips toward a kiss before footsteps cut it off. Xerxes appears with replacement school gear since disaster keeps eating hers. Oriel presents surface clothes from his hoard—unprecedented generosity. Everyone stares. Kat tries them on and they fit, because O hoards for a reason.
They portal to Bay City, where the streets are weirdly empty. Jasper orders a supe-rideshare, and the car drops them near a shuttered block where only Rigoletto’s tailor shop glows. Inside, the tailor is a half-shifted brown recluse spider and Kat nearly passes out at the reveal.
He offers to outfit them for an Apalachin, and if Jasper didn’t know whether they were walking into a trap, he knows they’re walking into a world that watches. Laurel the raccoon shifter assists, and thankfully, Kat’s secret stays safe. The outfits are tailored from available garments and they leave looking like the kind of people who belong anywhere they decide is theirs.
They find the keyed portal, step through, and land in an event with sections mapped to supe species. First stop is Fae-land, and the redcap gatekeeper demands a secret from each of them as toll. They pay. A market sprawls ahead, and everyone splits to investigate. Oriel leads Kat past a jewelry stall that hums against her skin. After hard bargaining, he buys a collar that sings to her—and to the place. When it clicks around her throat, something changes. As they move, the collar and Kat’s magic pulse near specific tents. The caliphate shifts into ready stances as they investigate.
A group approaches that Jasper recognizes—including another dragon. It’s Morgana and her men from State University. Kaspar and Jasper exchange taunts and recognize each other underneath their disguises. Prince Liamcompliments Jasper for seeing through glamour. Cards swap hands, and future cooperation becomes possible.
The collar prickles again, and Kat warns them a beat before the world breaks. Crashes, cracks, the tearing of tents. Salem scoops Kat over his shoulder and runs for cover, following standing orders: get her safe first. She fights to be put down, but he doesn’t stop until they’re tucked into a hide.
Outside, chaos howls, but inside, Kat’s panic spikes. Salem moves deeper and distracts her with touch that somehow calms instead of harming. It tilts toward heavy and real, and Kat realizes he’s about to find out her truth by accident. She stops him, looks him in the eye, and says it herself.
That’s the cliff we left dangling from before the bonus—her secret spoken aloud to Salem while the rest of their caliphate fights an unknown enemy.
Love In An Elevator
Kit/Kat
My lips twist as I look at the guys standing uncomfortably in the elevator. It’s moving crazily, zipping around horizontally and vertically, which I’ve never seen outside of the movies. They don’t seem perturbed by the odd motion though, only the destination we’re headed for. Salem has his hand at the small of my back, his fingertips resting there lightly where the others can’t see, but I can definitely feel.
It’s both comforting and exciting, which is balancing out my anxiety spikes.
“I liked them,” I blurt out. The silence was driving me crazy, and I don’t know why I said that specifically, but someone had to say something.
Jasper grunts, eyeing me suspiciously. “That’s twice today you’ve been nice to new people. It’s probably a fucking record.”
I open my mouth to retort, but I suddenly realize that he might be right. Ducking my head for a moment as I get myself together, I curl and uncurl my toes in my shoes. Once I’ve evened out, I meet his gaze, shrugging. “They weren’t assholes to me from the second we met. It goes a long way, especially for someone like me.”
Slash flashes my favorite grin at me. “Friends are good for you, little demon. But I will make them suffer if they do not behave.”
Oriel chuckles, his eyes dancing with merriment. “I think that’s fair, don’tyou, KK?”
