Fallen Academy: Year Two (Fallen Academy #2)(40)

Suddenly, she latched onto my steel arms cuffs with both hands and they started to heat up, like really hot, really fast.

“Lincoln’s parents and my parents always wanted us to end up together. Once he’s done slumming it, he’ll settle down with a proper girl like me. You’re just the interim chick,” she spat.

Holy shit, my skin was smoking. Literally.

I tore my right hand away from her and flattened my palm before driving it into her nose. The impact with her cartilage sent warm crimson fluid spurting over my hand at the same time a popping noise sounded in her nose.

She let my cuffs go and I released her neck, and then we were falling.

“All right, that’s enough!” Lincoln shouted.

My cuffs were still hot as hell, so I clawed at the edges and ripped them off, letting them drop to the floor.

“Noah!” Tiffany shrieked behind me. “She broke my nose!”

Noah sauntered over slowly. “I see that. Bummer.”

Tiffany glared at him with murder in her eyes. “You better be able to put it back the way it was.”

Shea and Tiffany #2 looked bruised and bloodied, but nothing too bad.

My boyfriend was trying to contain his smirk. “Thank you, Tiffany, for agreeing to this exercise.”

She gave him a sugary smile, dripping with malice. “I hope your girlfriend loses and stays in Demon City where she belongs.” Then she spun on her heel and left the room. But not before shouting Noah’s name to follow.

Once we were alone, I sighed. “Oh man, that felt good!”

Shea limped over to me. “Please tell me you ripped a little chunk of her hair out.”

“Okay, okay, enough evil plotting. That was really great. It gave me a sense of what to expect for Fight Night, but….” Lincoln turned on me. “You held back. She’s your archnemesis, and yet you held back.”

I frowned. “What do you mean?” Did he expect me to produce the dark energy whip and cut her head off? Because that could definitely be arranged.

He tapped my necklace. “Your Light Magic. I was hoping to get a good show. Maybe even see an orb.”

Yeah, my Light Magic. Whoops.

I hadn’t actually used it since I’d returned from Hell with Sera. I technically wasn’t sure it still worked, and Mr. Rincor agreed that we shouldn’t really mess with it too much after what happened. So we’d been working on other things, things Sera could do with light and commands I could give her to help my fighting. Ever since I’d taken the necklace off and gone into that dark place… well, it felt like maybe what Noah had said was true. Like maybe my darkness was scared of getting pushed back again, so it rose to the surface and fought for space or whatever.

“Oh yeah.” I didn’t know what to say. “I didn’t want to make an orb and crash for the next few days.” That was true, as it did knock out my energy. He knew that from last time, so maybe I could just play that up and he’d be none the wiser.

Lincoln looked skeptically at me. “But you still feel it, right? Your light magic?”

What was normal for Lincoln wasn’t normal for me. I was sure he could just close his eyes and ‘feel’ his light magic, but I couldn’t really. I didn’t work like that. I’d been given both light and dark magic, and that was my normal. But he wouldn’t understand that.

“Yep.” I gave him a cheery smile.

“So,” Shea interjected, “I know my ex-boss. He’ll go back on his word the second he can. I think we should have a blood contract written up so we both agree to the terms of your mom’s release. Otherwise, we might just be giving him a million dollars, with him telling us to screw off.”

Lincoln nodded. “I was thinking the same thing, and I’ve spoken to Raph and Mr. Claymore about it. They have agreed to draft one up. Blood contracts are magically binding, so they take a lot of work.”

Damn. I was glad they were on the ball, because if it was just me in charge, I’d probably get myself screwed over.

“Okay,” I told them both. “Just let me know if you need my blood or whatever.”

Lincoln swallowed hard and nodded. When he did that, it was like a nervous tic. The hard swallow, his Adam’s apple bobbing—all signs he was hiding something.

“Out with it! What are you hiding?” I put a hand on my sore hip.

He groaned. “You know me too well. That’s not fair.”

I did the time in this relationship, and now I knew him well enough to catch him in lies. Perfectly fair.

He sighed. “I won’t be needing your blood. I’m the one signing the contract. If it all goes wrong, I want the fallout to be on me, not you girls.”

I clenched my jaw. “No way!”

Lincoln nodded. “Yes way. I looked at the rules last night. Fights end in either death or submission. If you girls submit, you walk away with your life, and what does Grim get for letting you fight? He’ll want some type of collateral. They always do. So I’m the collateral.”

Shea was staring at him with her mouth open, as was I.

“If we lose, we’ll give him Sera.” I hated it the moment the words left my mouth, but Lincoln wasn’t something I could afford to lose, and I had faith I would win.

‘I understand,’ Sera said in a melancholy tone. She was part of me, and she loved Lincoln too.