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Gods, I miss him. His smile, his scent. The way he’d pull me into him and wrap me in his arms. No one has ever felt more like home than my betrothed.
I unpack. It’s not much. A few changes of clothes, the makeup Sera painted me with, and a scrying mirror. Plus enough rings charmed with demon magic to convince everyone I am what I’m pretending to be. They’re likely what Stevie thought was so heavy. Magical items tend to weigh an amount equal to the magic stored within them.
After I find places for everything, I discover five uniforms hanging in the closet. Black pleated skirts with gray pinstripes and black button downs. Plus black socks in the drawer and a pair of black boots tucked in the back of the closet.
I suppose an all-black uniform shouldn’t be all that surprising, but I saw quite a few students today and not a single one of them wore a uniform.
I’ll need to ask Stevie about that.
I move on to the attached bathroom. It’s not quite black but a dark gray marble with what must be every conceivable personal grooming and hygiene product in the realm. There are so many, I’m not sure what some of them even are.
A bath bomb? Sounds messy.
What exactly is a hair mask, and why does hair need a disguise at all?
A face peel? Disgusting.
And is the sun of this realm so damaging humans must shield their hair from it with something called heat protectant?
Before leaving the bathroom, I check my glamour in the mirror and then sit on the bed and spend some time familiarizing myself with the tablet.
The first thing I find is a map of the campus, which would have been extremely helpful when I was trying to find my dorm. Upon studying, I see there are four different dormitory buildings, or house halls as the map calls them, all situated around the main lecture building. Pride Hall to the north, Envy Hall is to the east, Lust Hall south, and Wrath Hall to the west.
According to my class schedule, I’m in Pride Hall.
And that explains the mirrored building.
I shuffle through my memory of the other buildings I saw. The castle? Had to be Envy Hall, right?
And now that I have a mental map of the north and south buildings, I extrapolate the other buildings. The square concrete building was to the west, so it must be Wrath Hall. That just leaves the curving marble structure that looked more like an art piece than a building.
Definitely lust.
The next app I investigate is the lecture app. Instead of the heavy textbooks I’m used to in Celestus, all our reading assignments for every class are in this app. I swipe through the different classes and give the Practical Magic course work a cursory glance.
It’s very basic material, remedial for even the lowest ranked angel in my graduating class. That’s not ego. It’s truth.
I shouldn’t have trouble in any of the classes here, which means I’ll have more of my faculties available to get what I need.
“Knock, knock. You ready, new girl?” Stevie says, poking her head in my door.
“It’s Dove, and as I’ll ever be, I guess.”
Stevie grins at me and stretches out her hand. “That’s the spirit. Come on. I’ll introduce you to the group,” she says and tugs me out of the room.
Chapter Six
And it came to pass the Zealot King took his last breath. Only his memory and zealotry remain.
- The Kings of Celestus: A Compendium
The dining hallis just east of the lecture hall on the same path as Envy Hall. I likely could have found it on my own, and now that I have my bearings, and the map app, I can appreciate the care that was put into the grounds. Tall, willowy trees line every path, providing shade and rain cover. There are benches and tables everywhere, and plenty of hedged areas where students gather and chat and enjoy the last dregs of autumn sun.
But all that pales compared to the dining hall.
“Oh wow,” I murmur as we enter the innocuous brick building.
“It’s really something, isn’t it?” Stevie agrees as she escorts me to the buffet line. “I love being with the new students the first time they see the dining hall.”
