MORE FAILURE
Aliferous (adjective): having wings.
DAY 12, HOUR 11
“Bend your knees and pinch your shoulder blades together.” Knox pulled his shoulders back and shook his wings to demonstrate. “Your power comes from your wings. First, you must learn to fly. Once you’ve mastered your wings, then you’ll be able to use the energy of your feathers to create an ice sword. However—flying is the crucial first step.”
His crystalline feathers were so pale they were almost silver and were streaked in black. They clattered loudly in the quiet forest.
Knox bent his knees, flared his wings wide, then flapped downward with a whoosh as he said, “Without flying, we are nothing.”
He hovered a few feet off the forest floor.
Snow whirled around his levitating body and the frosted forest floor. Gray branches clattered together on a chilly breeze that carried the scent of pine.
The wintry forest was eerie with no animal life.
It was steeped in shadows.
Tones of blue-gray distorted my vision even worse than usual, and a preternatural chill froze my bones from the inside out.
I shivered uncontrollably as Knox hovered gracefully among the trees.
His shoulder-length brown hair defied gravity; it floated around the crown of his head like a halo as the rapid beat of his wings created wind.
His face was ethereal.
Contorted in pure bliss.
One black and one yellow eye were opened wide and staring up at the sky as if he’d found his life’s purpose and there was nowhere else he’d rather be, nothing he’d rather do.
He was built to fly.
I’d never known such rapture.
The angel captain folded his wings against his back and dropped to his feet. He smirked at me.
Sadie clapped loudly in the silence, and I glared over at the traitor.
Rina put her pointer finger to her red lips in an exaggerated shushing motion.
Sadie made an obscene gesture back, and Cobra smirked down at her. Jax rubbed at his face like he was exhausted, while Ascher and Xerxes stood behind Sadie, making similar gestures in solidarity.
No one would ever say they didn’t support their mate.
The twins sat on the ground in front of the shifters, watching me silently. I made eye contact with John, and he gave me a thumbs-up.
Scorpius was the only king present, and he’d announced that Orion and Malum had to do “secret High Court business.”
He’d sounded angry that he hadn’t been included with his mates and had been left behind to babysit me.
A part of me was upset that two of the kings had disappeared again.
The blue-tinted forest darkened to gray.
All pigment disappeared.
The cold intensified.
The kings were keeping secrets and lying.
“Now you try.” Knox pointed at me as he demonstrated the motion with his shoulders.
I took a deep breath even though I knew it was pointless. I’d already tried and failed plenty of times.
Standing up straight, I tried to ignore the crushing weight that pulled my spine toward the ground as sweat streaked down the sides of my face and dripped off my chin.
Wild curls were itchy where they stuck to my neck and forehead.
Discomfort radiated down my spine.
Bent knees shaking, I flared my wings wide, flexed my arms, and pushed my shoulder muscles downward with every ounce of strength I possessed.
My muscles strained, and I grunted through gritted teeth. Groaning, I tried to replicate Knox’s smooth flapping.
Unfamiliar appendages ached with pain.
My wings flapped like they were in molasses.
Time morphed and expanded until each second lasted an eternity.
I didn’t fly.
Again.
Mother would have loved this moment, too bad I ate her heart.
Back buckling under the weight of my wings, I gave up and rested my hands on my knees, gasping loudly while cold air whistled through my teeth and burned my gums. I tasted copper in my mouth even though there was no blood.
My teeth ached from inhaling harshly.
Freezing temperatures were a miserable bitch.
“Good job. You’re doing it.” Sadie clapped loudly, and I shot her a glare because I clearly was not doing it.
She stopped clapping when she saw my facial expression. “I swear I saw you hover a few inches.” Her face was earnest and shone with pride.
“Did I really?” I asked doubtfully.
She crossed her arms over her chest and made the symbol of the sun god with her fingers. “I swear on Cobra’s life that I saw you rise off the ground.”
“Excuse me?” Cobra hissed.
Across the clearing, Vegar mouthed, “No, you didn’t fly. You suck,” while Zenith gave me a thumbs-up.
I exhaled exhaustion.
“I promise you flew!” Sadie said aggressively and glared at the other people in the forest, daring them to contradict her.
“I hope so,” I mumbled as I concentrated on not passing out as I asphyxiated on air. Fatigue and zero progress after hours of effort were killing me.
It was like running in place.
Banging my fractured skull against a brick wall.
Being trapped at Elite Academy.
Fighting in a battle against monsters.
Killing when I wanted to rest.
“She’s lying to try to make you feel better,” Jinx’s voice rang inside my mind. “Nothing happened.”
Her voice cleared the haze.
It sounded like she was speaking directly into my ear. Each word was crystal clear and nothing like the fuzzy connection that had cut out in the middle of battle.
I stopped spiraling and glared over at her, nearly falling over from my sudden movement. The unfamiliar weight distribution pulled me lower into a hunch.
I gasped out clouds of water vapor.
Hyperventilated.
Jinx leaned against a tree next to Scorpius, who clenched her elbow in a tight grip and made sure she didn’t fall over. Since Warren was currently in ferret form, wrapped around her neck, it seemed the king had taken his place.
She had a black cast on her wrist. She said she broke it tripping while trying to maneuver into bed.
Annoyance flared in my gut. What was taking the prosthetic so long? The High Court couldn’t be this incompetent.
Black sunglasses hid Jinx’s face as she watched me with a bored expression. Standing next to the tall devil, she almost came up to his shoulders. She no longer looked like a small child.
Had she always had curves?
She was definitely getting taller.
“How old are you again?” I asked in my head, forgetting to be annoyed that I hadn’t made any progress with flying. “You don’t look fourteen.”
Jinx’s voice echoed crisply through my skull. “I’m older than you.”
I scoffed aloud. “Good one.”
“What?” Knox’s mismatched eyes focused on me. “Who are you talking to?”
“A crazy bitch,” I mumbled as I turned back to the angel.
In my peripheral vision, Jinx and Scorpius shared a smirk. When had they become friends? I sensed danger.
“Try again,” Knox said encouragingly as he showed me how to push my shoulders back. Now that I had earned my wings, the angel captain was nothing but pleasant and positive.
In fact, he made it a point to be nice to everyone in the camp.
His attitude differed vastly from how he’d acted during the Legionnaire Games, and contrasted with the haughty arrogance of the rest of the angels.
They used the term grounders frequently.
They sneered when we gave them instructions.
Case in point, Rina huffed loudly at Knox’s proclamation, and she flopped back against a tree with annoyance. The men and women angels around her did the same.
They grumbled and shuffled with boredom.
Glared at me with disgust.
I hated to say it, but I got where they were coming from. It seemed like the gods had made a mistake naming the shifter and academy legions as champions.
We were chaotic, unorganized, and prone to falling apart. Not the best candidates for leading a war.
I wouldn’t want to listen to me either.
But the angels could fly.
They were majestic and elegant, full of confidence, and seemingly unfazed by the ungodly’s violence.
Meanwhile, I still hadn’t stopped spiraling.
Arthur made a comment under his breath, and a female angel laughed beside him.
I ignored them and focused on Knox’s encouraging smile. Whatever his reason was for suddenly acting nice, it didn’t matter to me. If he wanted to pretend to respect us, then I’d take it.
I pushed my hands off my knees and staggered into a standing position.
Thighs trembling, pain screaming across my shoulder blades, I lifted the wings high at my sides.
Blue-white crystals clattered.
Flexing with everything I had, I gritted my teeth.
Closed my eyes.
Focused on moving the new heavy appendages quickly and pretended it wasn’t like trying to sprint straight up a cliff.
Sweat poured down my face.
I yelled through gritted teeth and strained with everything I had, hands fisted as pressure pounded in my skull from the force of my concentration.
My combat boots sank deeper into the snow as my wings pulled me downward instead of upward.
Cartilage and feathers chained me to the dirt.
Tied me down.
The temperature dropped, and when I opened my bulging eyes, the shades of gray had become shades of black. Emptiness expanded into a chasm within my chest.
“You are nothing but a failure.” Mother straddled my writhing form. Blue flames tortured me as I screamed in pain.
I’d failed as a fae, and now I failed as an angel.
Pressure intensified behind my eyes, and liquid dripped down my cheeks, thicker than tears.
“That’s enough. She’s had enough training for today. Everyone, leave.” Luka’s voice cracked like a whip through the forest, and his tone brimmed with violence.
For the first time, Rina had nothing to say.
“Pull your wings in, Aran,” John said in my ear.
I hadn’t seen him approach.
He grabbed my arms and used his strength to tug me up while he wiped his fingers across my cheekbones. They came back stained with blood.
At least, that was what I assumed the black substance was. My vision wasn’t picking up most of the color spectrum.
Shadows coalesced around me.
I choked, unable to draw the frigid air into my lungs.
“Pull your wings in. Now,” John ordered in an uncharacteristically angry tone.
I complied.
The crushing weight became manageable, and suddenly the chains pulling me to the ground disappeared.
I felt bizarrely light, like I could float away as a shaky trembling permeated through my muscles.
“Whoa, steady.” John wrapped his arms around me.
He grinned down at me with his dimples on full display. His dark eyes twinkled as he took in my questioning expressions and pulled me flush against him.
Pinpricks of pain raced down my spine.
I loved his smile.
“Yes.” John grinned. “I pretended to get mad to make you obey. Reverse psychology. I’m a genius.”
“You’re an idiot,” I huffed as I leaned into his embrace, relieved in ways I couldn’t put into words.
There were two constants in the realms: John was good-natured, and I was depressed.
It was who we were.
Intrinsically.
Two halves of a whole.
His arms wrapped around me squeezed punishingly, and I relaxed for the first time in hours.
He mumbled into my hair, “Let’s get you inside and warm.”
“I think we can still work—”
Knox was cut off by Scorpius shoving him in the chest and sneering menacingly, “She needs to rest.”
Knox’s black and yellow eyes flashed with violence.
They squared up to each other, equally matched in height and muscle, warriors bristling with barely constrained energy.
The forest appeared darker.
Sinister.
Abruptly, Knox’s features smoothed out, and he held his hands up in the universal gesture of surrender. “Of course, I meant no offense. My mistake. I didn’t realize we had been going at it for hours.” He stepped around Scorpius and looked at me. “Don’t get discouraged. Most people earn their wings when they’re younger and have spent their entire lives preparing to fly. We’ll figure it out.”
He smiled.
Too late, I was way past discouragement. We were entering manic breakdown territory.
Everything is going to work out great. Just have positive thoughts and keep trying. Blah. Blah. Blah.
I’d show him how positively deranged I could be.
John stepped forward and blocked me as I flipped off Knox with both my hands. The angel missed the gesture.
I punched him in the gut. “Move out of my way.’
He punched me back, with far less force, then the forest blurred as he swung me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
I was too tired to stop him.
“To the bunk beds.” He pointed an imaginary sword dramatically and ran down the path.
“You’re so fucking stupid,” I said between laughs. “I hope the ungodly kill us all for being loud.”
The world tipped again, and I shrieked.
Head swinging upside down, it took me a moment to process that John held my ankles in his hands with his biceps extended above his head.
He held me upside down behind his back so I was perpendicular to the ground.
Since we were almost the same height, my head was close to the ground and enveloped in warm steam.
I shrieked and tried to kick free. “Put me down right now, you idiot.”
“Nope.” John ran forward awkwardly as I pushed against his calves.
“I’m going to trip you,” I threatened.
He flexed and straightened his hands so I was hanging higher off the ground.
In this ridiculous position, he ran past the rest of the group, who were walking on the path like normal individuals.
Sadie slapped my ass as we passed.
John almost tripped at the loud crack and then said in his most serious tone, “Touch my wife’s ass again and I’ll remove your hand.”
“What did you just sssssay to her?” Cobra hissed.
Before we could die via snake, Luka appeared out of nowhere and blocked us protectively. There was a loud shhhhhk that signaled Xerxes had pulled out his knives, and suddenly Orion was standing beside Luka creating a wall.
“Later, suckers!” John shouted as he continued running down the path.
Sadie yelled after us, “I fucked her first!”
John stumbled but caught himself and resumed running awkwardly with me hanging behind him.
“Be fucking quiet and stop breaking protocol,” Rina snarled angrily, and Sadie replied, “That wasn’t very quiet of you.”
They were getting far behind us, and I barely made out Rina saying some choice swear words that were mixed with the words grounder and idiot.
Abruptly, we burst into our barracks, and John dumped me.
I was lying in an undignified heap on the floor of our room. Out of breath from laughing and general exhaustion, I could do nothing but lay immobile and gasp.
John grinned down at me proudly. “That was fun.”
I kicked him in the back of the knee, and he crashed down beside me.
“You’re so stupid,” I said. “I don’t know why I put up with you.”
Before I could catch my bearings, he was straddling me as he smothered me with a pillow that he’d somehow procured.
“Be silent, witch,” he said dramatically as he pressed harder and actually asphyxiated me.
I kneed him in the balls and threw him off.
He moaned as he rolled over, cupping his junk like a wuss.
I ripped the pillow away from him and slammed it down into his face as hard as I could. There was a crunch because I’d accidentally made the fabric icy.
I grinned with satisfaction.
“She’s killing me. Someone help!” he wailed dramatically.
I hit him harder.
The crunch was louder.
“What the actual fuck is wrong with you people?” Vegar snarled from where he was lying on Zenith’s bunk, and from the way the covers moved, he was also lying on top of Zenith.
At this point, all the demons did was nap and yell at us.
Frankly, I respected their lifestyle.
“So much.” I staggered to my feet and held my hand out to help John up, but instead of taking my offering, he kicked out at my shins, and I slammed down on top of him with an oof.
The wind was knocked out of my lungs.
While I was momentarily distracted, two hands wrapped around my throat.
Darkness twinkled around John as he winked down at me. “I win. Take that. Now who’s the idiot?”
I flipped him off as he crushed my trachea with his fingers.
He waggled his eyebrows like he wasn’t strangling me to death. I slammed my hips upward with all my force, and pushed him off.
A flash of black streaked across the air.
John’s eyes widened, and suddenly he was moving much quicker. In a split second, he rolled on top of me protectively and tugged us across the floor.
Clang.
A black dagger, made of nightmares, lay on the ground right where we’d been fighting.
“Did you just try to stab them?” Luka asked with anger, chest heaving as he stood silhouetted in the doorway, snow and ice wafting around him.
Scorpius stood behind him, plush upper lip contorted into a scowl. “Did you say ‘stab’?” he asked menacingly.
The violence ratcheted up.
“To be fair”—John offered to help me up—“we deserved it.”
I ignored his hand and stood up, then shoved at his chest. “Maybe lay off choking so aggressively? What is wrong with you?”
John shoved me back with so much strength that I flew across the room and slammed onto my bunk bed.
He stalked after me and leaned forward. His voice dropped an octave, and he grinned. “But I liked that my fingerprints are on your neck.”
He winked.
“What the fuck? Be gentle with her.” Luka grabbed his twin and pulled him back from me.
I gaped at John as he was dragged across the room by his twin, and I tried to process his words.
He shimmied his hips and winked in his brother’s arms, dimples on full display as he licked his lips.
His dark eyes twinkled with mirth.
Outrage turned to gratitude in my chest as I realized what had just happened.
Once again, John had acted so ridiculously that he’d successfully distracted me when I was spiraling.
Scorpius pushed past John, bumping against him with his entire body as he passed, then he glowered down at me. “I wanted to ask you something.” He clenched his teeth, and a muscle ticked in the sharp edge of his jawline. “Can we talk?”
His cut cheekbones were stark against his hollowed cheeks.
There were dark-purple smudges underneath his eyes.
The man before me looked exhausted, and my gut told me his change in demeanor had nothing to do with war against the ungodly. Scorpius was a self-proclaimed sadomasochist and wasn’t someone to balk at something as trivial as murder.
No.
It wasn’t the war; it was something else.
His jaw clenched tighter, and he tapped his foot with impatience as he waited for me to respond.
I sat silently and stared up at him blankly as I purposefully said nothing just to piss him off.
He clenched his jaw tighter.
Pride filled me because it was nice to set goals and achieve them, especially when those goals were tormenting men.
I rubbed my eyes, trying to process the fact that John had purposefully left red marks on my throat while we play wrestled, and now Scorpius was asking for permission to speak.
Men were bizarre creatures.
“Shoot.” I leaned back on my covers with my arm behind my head, legs spread wide like the fuck boy I used to pretend to be. Casual and unbothered, with the confidence of someone who’d achieved greatness while doing nothing.
It was empowering being delusional.
“I’m manspreading, just so you know,” I said, just so he could get the full picture.
Scorpius’s dark eyebrows contrasted with his pale complexion as they lifted. “Okay?” he asked with confusion, then shook his head and said forcefully, “I know you’re exhausted after training, so”—he gritted his teeth together—“please let me wash you in the shower.”
He said “please” like it was a filthy word.
“Why?” I asked, genuinely confused.
He pulled at the neck of his sweatshirt like he was dying from discomfort.
“I’m your Protector,” he said with a sneer that insinuated I was stupid for asking.
“False—you’re just a rude asshole.”
White teeth flashed as he bared them at me, then his expression smoothed over like he was forcing himself to appear unthreatening.
He failed.
“I want to show you that I meant what I said about serving you. I want to be your hound. I want to—” He swallowed thickly. “—have a relationship with you.”
“And I want to fly,” I said dryly. “Get to the point.”
His sneer returned, and he snapped, “You’re literally a fucking angel.”
“But”—I popped the B obnoxiously—“I can’t fly.”
Scorpius exhaled loudly, and it sounded like he was screaming through his nose. I slumped back on my bed and rolled my eyes.
Instead of walking away like I expected, Scorpius smiled, and it transformed the harsh edges of his face into a breathtaking work of art. “I would like to have some quality time between the two of us. Is that okay with you?”
For a second, I was speechless.
I’d never seen the cruel king smile before, and holy sun god, his face was a weapon of mass destruction.
Pain streaked across my back, and my breath hitched.
He frowned and narrowed his eyes.
I whispered, “No.”
He scowled darkly and clenched his hands into fists, and the dark circles under his eyes seemed to expand.
“No,” I explained with another heavy sigh. “You do not get to spend quality time with me, because I still hate you.”
His scowl deepened, and he opened his mouth.
“However,” I cut him off, “you can spend quality time with me because it will probably piss off Malum.”
He would be so angry if I let Scorpius shower with me when he wasn’t around. I could practically feel the heat from his meltdown.
The blind devil kept looming over me, but he unclenched his hands and quirked an eyebrow.
I opened my mouth to say something derogatory about his mates—because I never missed an opportunity to talk shit about my enemies—but he grabbed my wrist and I forgot what I was going to say.
Without saying another word, he tugged me out of bed toward the small bathroom and pulled us both inside before I could change my mind.
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” John yelled cheekily, and we both ignored him. “Let us know if you want help. We’re happy to join.”
Scorpius mumbled under his breath, “We’ll get to that later.”
I stumbled. He really was becoming obsessed with John.
“Speak for yourself,” Luka muttered as the door closed with a loud click.
Suddenly, I was trapped.
With the king who liked pain.
