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“Fighting,” I agreed, because I would fight, even if it meant sacrificing something I cared about.
ChapterTwenty-Eight
THE ORACLE MUSINGS
Everyone has their biggest college regret.
Xavier’s was stepping up as Alpha. Sorry, cinnamon roll, but you’re more like an Omega than an Alpha! President Ansi’s was coming back to this university in the first place (yeah, I foretold you complaining!). Mine is that I didn’t start monetizing this column sooner. I should have had y’all put bets on which future was most likely. Sometimes the in-betweens are muddier, but absolutes always come through. One absolute of today: a little entropy would do you good.
I seta trap for my favorite demon today.
My shadows craved disorder, and studying nonstop was agony, so I distracted myself by satisfying them.
With the fruits of trees finally growing, I made a massive, heaping pile of them. I then practiced levitating the fruits, one by one, until I had them suspended in the tree that shed them. And once Gaksi flew through them, I was going to collapse them on him.
He used to prank me all the time. He’d set out candies made of vegetables, toys that were really treats, and love letters from ‘secret admirers’ that were really just from him.
I’d been waiting years for revenge.
Every dawn, he flew in with his favorite form, pigeon, through the tree by my window after going on a fly.
Today, I set my alarm uncharacteristically early. Rested innocently in bed.
Then, when I heard a noise, I pounced.
I unfolded hundreds of pomegranates down.
Where Reaper stood, unfazed, holding up a layer of fruit like a shield.
“Well,” he merely said, “now I know why Gaksi sent me to retrieve you. He said you looked ‘devoutly pleased’ all week and must have been up to something.”
He shook the fruit away, genuinely amused, then rerouted them. “Revenge time,” he threatened, an impish grin crossing his face.
I shrieked and ducked while he chased me with them, hastily throwing up smoke to shield us from prying eyes. For a moment, it was like we were training again and not avoiding each other post-masquerade. I hadn’t contacted him, and he hadn’t contacted me either.
“You have such a pretty dance when you cower,” he said, eyes watching me with rapt fascination. “Have you considered fighting back?”
Cower? I was not cowering from anything, least of all him. I stood straight up, hands outstretched. The fruits stopped, gripped by my shadows, until I yearned for them to drop. They did.
“Good,” Reaper said, stepping through the wall of my dorm inside.
I hesitated, unsure of what to say to him. What were we now? He didn’t have to come here. Gaksi sent him, but he didn’t have to listen.
Reaper rubbed his neck. Perhaps he sensed the awkwardness, too. “Gaksi would like to reward you for obeying his request this year.”
“From our date?” I asked. I was surprised he remembered.
“Yes,” Reaper answered. “He would like you to see his true form in his home.”
“He has a true form?” That was news to me. “I thought he was only a spirit?”
“Goblins have a true form on the other side, yes,” Reaper confirmed. “They can access it here, but rarely do so.”
He had a proper body? All the years we’d spent together, and he’d never once mentioned it. What else didn’t I know about my lifelong companion?
“Can I return from his home once I visit?” I asked.
Demons were known to offer appealing deals before kidnapping naïve girls. I wasn’t falling for that trap. He’d already threatened to leave me in the Beyond once.
