“Who is Matteo?” I pried.

  “Not yet, Pretty Darling. Besides, it’s my question.” He sounded sad, and I found myself snuggling closer to him in comfort. “What do you want to do when you leave Vice?”

  “I have no idea,” I confessed. “Before Vice I was going to be a dancer, but that’s off the table now. I like the idea of healing, but I’m doing badly at it... My gifts are apparently made for combat but one of them is basically a torture device and the other hasn’t shown itself... The problem is that there’s just so much I could do and limiting myself to one thing just seems so... disappointing and wasteful.” Those weren’t quite the right words for it, but it was as close as I could come.

  “You can’t use your pathokinesis?”

  I shook my head, even though the three questions were over. “I can’t sense anything from anyone else and believe me, I’ve tried.”

  “How did you discover how to use your other gift?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t want to get shot again... and my odynokinesis isn’t perfect. I’m supposed to be able to get rid of someone’s pain, instead all I can do is transfer it onto myself.”

  He stiffened slightly. “I never thanked you for that...”

  “Don’t.”

  He ignored me, pulling my face up to his. “Thank you, Pretty Darling,” he whispered against my lips, kissing me softly as he used aerokinesis to blow out the candle on my bedside cabinet. “Now go to sleep.”

  “You go to sleep,” I mumbled as tiredness overtook me with a strange urgency. “Enzo are you playing with my tiredness?” I asked past a huge yawn.

  “Strangely enough my power doesn’t see persuading your body to sleep as harming you...” He curled me closer against him. “You need your rest, don’t fight it.”

  I rolled my eyes at his heavy-handed tactics, but I let him get away with it... this time.

  Chapter 17

  Bane didn’t turn up the next day, or the day after that. Time started to wear down my anger until I lost the energy to do much more than stare wistfully at his empty spot at the table at meal times. Two weeks in, and worry overtook what was left of my rage, until I didn’t even have the energy to burn the blue roses that regrew outside my window every night.

  Enzo disappearing as well only made things worse. He’d claimed the weekends for himself, but he hadn’t shown up since he’d slept with me. From what little information I had managed to extract from Blaze, I had to guess that there were only a few members of the Abrosiax family left, all of them in hiding. I knew that they were still disappearing occasionally from the whispers around the school. But none of my mates would tell me anything more, and I was half convinced that they believed Enzo’s absence and his eradication of the Abrosiaxes was a necessary evil. Even Blaze, whose workload had increased tenfold with the murder on campus, never said a word against what Enzo was doing.

  The absence of both of them was making the bonds between us rub at my insides, and I finally understood why those old texts had called mates ‘inseparable’. Not being around one another hurt almost as much as the wall Bane had built between us.

  I compensated by throwing myself at my work with renewed determination, not that it got me any further with healing or combat where I was stuck by my inability to use pathokinesis. I couldn’t tell what another person was feeling, let alone change it. One more lesson with Ruelle had fine-tuned my hold on the odynokinesis to the point where I could make someone in a different room feel like they had pins and needles, and when I visited Mrs Oxomoda I could take her pain and hold it for upwards of an hour at a time. But I still couldn’t get rid of it for her entirely, no matter how much I tried.

  Rezinax was not in the least bit understanding of my block, and Hadrian was becoming impatient but both of them were still willing to try and help me. I’d had two more classes with Professor Saxon since Abrosiax died, and no matter what I did, she found fault after fault with my work. Even loudly commenting that my handwriting was scruffy to the entire class.

  “You’re moping and it’s annoying,” Rina complained, sunning herself in the noonday heat as I poured over my citizenship textbook.

  “I’m not moping, I’m trying to memorise this chapter before Saxon’s lesson,” I snapped, before silently cursing myself because I was trying my best to be nicer to Rina. It was only because of her that Blaze had eventually apologised for tricking me into mating Bane, but the prospect of Saxon’s upcoming lesson, combined with the sticky heat was making me irritable

  “She’ll just test you on something else out of spite.”

  I knew Rina was right, but I still couldn’t help needing to try. It was like I was a sucker for pain when it came to Saxon’s lessons, no matter how much the woman picked on me I just tried harder.

  “How’s Tester stuff going?” I asked her, knowing it was a sore spot for her as well.

  “Ouch, you’re feeling bitchy today, huh?” She stood and pulled her blazer on. “For your information, I am the best Tester student.”

  “You’re the only Tester student,” I muttered, packing away my stuff.

  “And yet my favourite sulky Succubus still won’t let me test her to help with my education.” Rina fake pouted comically. “Oh, however shall I cope?”

  I rolled my eyes at her. “About as well as I cope with knowing that I’m about to have my skin verbally flayed by our beloved Headmistress.” I sighed and lead the way towards the classroom of doom. “Sometimes I wish that Enzo had destroyed that temple with her in it. At least that way I might have a hope in hell of passing the year.”

  “Now, now, is that any way to talk about your mother-by-mating?” Rina tutted with a mocking grin.

  I responded with a rude hand gesture.

  When I took my seat in the classroom, I couldn’t help but look backwards to Daron, who gave me a casual smile, and then my eyes flicked sideways to what I was certain would be Bane’s empty spot.

  He was sitting there, leaning back in his chair, hands hooked behind his head as if he didn’t have a care in the world. The relief that overtook me just from seeing him was enormous, and it felt like a huge boulder had been lifted off me. When he caught me staring, he gave me a small smile and a cheeky wink.

  A goddamned wink.

  After tricking me into mating him and then disappearing for two weeks all he was going to do was wink at me?

  Immediately, I just wanted to throttle him all over again. I turned back to the front grumpily just in time for Professor Saxon to come sweeping into the room.

  “Good afternoon class!” She settled into place leaning against her desk, facing us.

  Her eyes travelled over everyone in the room row by row, and I could have sworn that her gaze lingered on Circe’s empty desk for a second longer than necessary before she moved on.

  “Today, we’ll be discussing crime and punishment in our society,” she began, her fingers playing absently with the edge of her suit jacket. “Who here can name the demonic equivalent of the police?”

  No one raised their hand. ‘Crime and Punishment’ was the very last chapter in the book, of course none of us had gotten close to reading about it yet. I just stared at my desk, knowing that she was going to pick me precisely because I didn’t know the answer, but still trying to avoid eye contact in case she miraculously forgot about me.

  “Come now, surely someone must know?” She smiled warmly. “Carazor, how about you?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know, Professor.”

  She sighed. “You don’t know... Why am I not surprised? Can you tell me anything about the criminal justice system or is that textbook on your desk just for show?”

  I shook my head. “I haven’t gotten to that chapter yet, Professor.”

  The corners of her lips dipped slightly in disappointment. “Perhaps a three-thousand-word summary will jog your memory. I’ll expect it on my desk by Friday, Carazor.”

  She couldn’t be serious! I glanced across the row, looking for support that never came. For the hundredth time I wondered what I’d done to make her hate me so much. Why had she switched from the understanding, concerned teacher in the first year to this harpy who couldn’t even pretend anymore?

  “Professor, that’s unfair,” I objected, into the silence of the classroom. “No one else knew the answers either.”

  She raised a perfectly shaped blonde eyebrow at me. “Speaking out of turn is rude, Carazor. Do it again and it will be detention.”

  I bit my tongue so hard that I tasted blood. I had a temper at the best of times, and Saxon’s attitude combined with this horrid, sticky heat wasn’t helping me keep a lid on it. I was just so sick of her picking on me, and always with that stupid mask of disappointment on her face. I knew I wasn’t as bad as she made me out to be, I couldn’t be since I was getting good marks in all my other theory subjects. I had to make a conscious effort to force back every retort which sprang to mind as I watched her fake a motherly, disappointed expression.

  “I’ll give you a chance to redeem yourself, Carazor. What are the three systems which make up the triad of governance?”

  I shook my head, embarrassment and frustration adding to my anger and making my face warm.

  “No? Can you at least tell me the name of the current senior judge for the British Isles? I should think that you, of all people, should know that one.”

  I shook my head again, mute with mortification.

  “After your essay last year, I thought we had a natural scholar in you, Carazor. It’s such a pity that I was so clearly mistaken.” Her eyes left my face and travelled across the room. “For future reference, class, there is no demonic police force. Each demon seeking help is required to contact either their head of house who may send their personal army to solve the issue. If they’re refused they may contact their embassy which will consult with their caste elders who then allocate teams from the embassy’s private army on a case by case basis. The three points of the triad of governance are: the caste elders, who rule the embassies and settle day-to-day issues; the Primes, who act according to the wishes of the heads of houses and are responsible for international issues and the Judges, who settle disputes between the two.

  “The current senior judge is Constantin Abrosiax, who was the father of your classmate Circe, before she was murdered.” Her lilting accent took on the slightest of accusatory tones and her eyes settled on me for just the briefest instant.

  It was such a tiny action that most of the class probably hadn’t noticed it. But I did, and it sent me over the edge.

  I couldn’t help it.

  My outrage spilled out like a gushing river, but not through my mouth or my fists. No, it wouldn’t be that simple. A wave of power left me at once, leaving me sagging in my seat, hit by a sudden dizziness that made me feel sick. The Professor had the experience necessary to raise a shield before she was hit, but the rest of the class wasn’t so lucky.

  “Oi, leave her alone.” I whirled to see the girl behind me standing at her desk with clenched fists, murder in her eyes.

  “Yeah, back the fuck off.” The guy to my right pushed out of his chair so fast that it went flying backwards into another girl who promptly dived at him, fists swinging. Her foot caught the shin of the person next to her, whose friend giggled at his furious expression, only to receive a fist to the face.

  Utter pandemonium ensued. Within minutes, everyone in the room was arguing or fighting, fists flying and friends turning on friends. My eyes met Professor Saxon’s, who was glaring at me accusingly, but whatever floodgates I’d opened were two way, and I could sense underneath her veneer of anger was a smug sense of satisfaction and even... relief.

  “Stop this at once, Carazor!” she ordered, even as her emotions told me she didn’t really care at all.

  “I don’t know how.” I looked behind me to find only Bane and Daron unaffected, both of them trying to reason with an incensed Rina.

  Professor Saxon noticed as well, her eyes narrowing from behind her shield. “You clearly know enough to spare your friends.”

  Shit, she was going to figure out we were mates if I didn’t do something fast.

  Before either of us could say or do anything else, someone on my left launched the first PK missile. Professor Saxon blocked the strike with a well-timed shield between the attacker and the intended victim, but she was clearly at a loss as to what she could do without harming her students.

  “Calm them down, Carazor!”

  I floundered, I hadn’t meant for any of this to happen, I’d just gotten angry and it had sort of passed onto everyone else. I just had to replicate that with calmness, right?

  “Calm, calm, calm...” I tried to force the emotion out of me, but all I ended up with was anxiety, which pulsed out of me again.

  My head started screaming at me, a sure sign that I was low on power. It distracted me enough that for a second, I didn’t notice that everyone was backing away from one another, looking petrified. One guy bolted for the door, but Professor Saxon cast another shield in front of it to block his attempted escape. Most other students were moving away from one another, and one girl shrieked in terror when someone accidentally backed into her.

  “That’s fear not calmness!” Saxon snapped.

  “I’m trying.”

  I didn’t know how to be calm. I wished more than anything I was like Blaze, able to calm my mind at will. It would even help to be like Kain who was always smiling and wasn’t fazed by anything. Instinctively, I reached for his mating bond to try and steady myself.

  He wasn’t just feeling relaxed as I expected, instead he was downright gleeful about something, and on impulse I tried to project his emotion to the rest of the class.

  The final pulse of power hit the whole room at once.

  Almost every student in the class beamed but I was too busy holding onto the desk, trying to keep myself upright, to notice. I knew the worst was over when Professor Saxon finally dropped her shield and I got hit by another wave of her relief and satisfaction as I slipped down to my knees.

  “You have outdone yourself this time, Carazor.”

  I lowered myself into my chair, exhausted, as people started giggling and clapping all around us. “Sorry, Professor.” I didn’t even have enough energy left to hold onto the anger from before.

  “Class is dismissed,” Saxon called, but the other students were too busy laughing and hugging one another to care.

  She rolled her eyes and swept out of the side door, leaving me alone at my desk.

  “I think you figured out how to use your pathokinesis,” Daron observed as he and Bane approached me, a giggling Rina in tow.

  “Isn’t that so great?” She beamed, the carefree expression seemed wrong on her normally irritable face. “I’m so happy for you, Lilith.”

  Bane snorted, looking around the room with a giant grin on his face. “I wonder how long this will last.”

  I wanted to answer him, but I just ended up sliding sideways off my chair, my entire body suddenly too heavy to hold up.

  “Whoa, Lilith!” Daron caught me before I hit the floor and stroked my hair out of my face. “When was the last time you properly took power from one of us?”

  I shook my head. “Days,” I admitted, trying to keep my head upright. “Too worried about Bane and Enzo...”

  His mouth descended on mine, but I was too exhausted to really do more than hold my head in place.

  “Come on, take the power,” he cajoled, when our lips parted. “Come on.”

  He kissed me again, and I tried my best, all but yanking the last wisps of my power towards his.

  It was the roughest exchange of power I’d ever done. There was barely enough of my power there to take what Daron offered and shepherd it back to me. The moment the first pieces of his energy were absorbed into me my headache started to disappear, and my limbs felt less heavy. I pressed myself closer to him, revelling in the way he was holding me against him.

  “Mine, mine, mine,” he whispered against my lips, stroking a few loose strands of hair from my face and meeting my eyes in a strangely intimate moment before joining our mouths again.

  This time I was conscious enough to revel in the sweet warmth of his lips and the gentle caress of his tongue against mine. I moved my mouth against his, eager to participate now that the lethargy of before was over. Daron moved closer to me, holding me against the hardness concealed by his trousers, and I squirmed against him, wanting more. He groaned as the flow of power evened out, turning from a rough pull to a gentle stream and our mouths moved together in that perfect rhythm.

  “Better?” he asked, pressing his forehead against mine.