Fallen Academy: Year Two (Fallen Academy #2)(25)

I swallowed hard. “Okay, but what exactly does it do?”

Mr. Rincor walked over to the far wall where a few swords were mounted and pulled one off. Then he approached the orb and dipped the sword into it.

“Be careful,” I deadpanned.

Now Mr. Claymore had walked out and was staring curiously at the spectacle before us. He seemed as baffled as I was.

Mr. Rincor pulled the sword from the orb and it was… on fire. Well, that wasn’t quite right. It was glowing with… light.

“Watch this,” the light studies professor warned. Then he brought the sword down slowly into one of the desks and cut through it like butter. It crashed in half, falling to the floor, and leaving Mr. Claymore and me with our eyebrows raised.

“Um, is that normal? That I made that?” I hated that word ‘normal,’ but I also desperately yearned to be normal. Catch-22.

Mr. Rincor looked at me with blazing blue eyes. “It’s incredible. This could change the war. If you were to make these orbs and leave them for the troops in the war zones, it would greatly improve our odds.”

I swallowed hard.

“Let’s talk to Raphael. She’s still learning.” Mr. Claymore laid a protective hand on my shoulder.

“Of course,” Mr. Rincor stated, looking a bit guilty. “In time, I meant.”

We all stared at the glowing orb.

“So, what do we do with it?” Mr. Claymore finally asked.

Mr. Rincor rubbed his chin. “You can throw an Abrus demon into one of these things, and they’ll dissolve. But it could also hurt a student, so I’ll have to have Raphael break it down.”

Right. Okay. Basically I was a dangerous weapon. Awesome.

The professor turned to me. “Let’s hold off on doing that again until class on Monday. We’ll go for something less grand.” He winked.

I nodded, chuckling. “You got it.”

To be honest, it had taken a lot out of me; I was ready to take a nap after that energy outburst.

Mr. Claymore motioned to the necklace. “Keep it on and I think you won’t have any… unpleasant magical issues anymore.” He meant the dark magic, of course. The unpleasant “magical issue” was that I had Lucifer’s Archangel power inside of me, to a certain degree.

I just nodded, feeling drained of energy all of a sudden.

“Can we end class early? I’m tired,” I confessed to the two gentlemen.

Mr. Rincor shook himself. “Oh, of course. You’ll probably be drained for a few days. That much light leaving you all at once is… something.”

I just bobbed my head and shuffled out of the room. Since this was my last class, I decided to go back to the dorm and take a nap.

Pulling out my phone, I shot Shea a quick text telling her about Lincoln’s party tonight, and asked her to wake me if I wasn’t up by dinner.

I felt like I’d been hit by a truck. The moment I saw my bed, I crashed onto it, and all thought left me as the fatigue won over.





Chapter Ten





It took Shea like ten tries to wake me, and I’d ended up chugging an iced coffee just to get some of my energy back. Now, we were parking at Lincoln’s new apartment complex, slightly off campus, in the Fallen Army housing compound called Lighthouse Villas.

“So… Noah asked me to sleep over at his house tonight. I told him I’d think about it,” Shea told me as I put the car in park.

The time had come to have the real ‘tough love’ talk with this woman. I turned to my best friend. “Do you love him?” I asked bluntly.

She swallowed hard and then nodded.

“Do you trust him?”

She chewed her lip. “You know that’s hard for me.”

Yeah, it was. Growing up with a vacant deadbeat dad, and her mom leaving her for drugs had messed her up. It was hard, but she needed to learn something…

“Not everyone is like your dad or mom, Shea.”

Tears welled in her eyes and she nodded. “I know that.”

Reaching out, I grasped her hand. “I think you and Noah have reached the jumping off point. Either dive in or walk away, because it’s not fair to him to keep stringing him along, if you’re not capable of emotionally investing in him fully.”

Shea laughed. “Wow, when did you become a shrink?”

I chuckled. “I’m just saying it’s okay to put yourself out there, to trust. I don’t think Noah would ever intentionally hurt you.”

She nodded. “I totally started messing around with him at first for fun. But now…”

“Now it’s love,” I finished for her, with a squeeze of her hand.

She sighed. “Yeah.”

“Which is a good thing! The world needs more love,” I declared.

Shea grinned and reached in the back seat of my Fallen Academy-issued SUV, producing a large backpack. “Okay good, because I totally packed an overnight bag.”

Laughter bubbled out of me. “You crack me up.”

She peeked in her bag. “I brought five condoms. Do you think that will be enough?”

“Oh my God, Shea!” I gasped and then laughed again. “If that’s not enough, then you guys need to enter the sex Olympics.”

Shea just rolled her eyes, but then her face grew serious. “Is that a thing?”