His eyebrows furrowed with confusion.
Oh, he meant I was Aran. I rubbed at my bruised face. “Yeah, I was disguised as a man.”
Luka turned around slowly.
Grabbed a boulder and chucked it as far as he could while he let out a war scream.
The hair on the backs of my arms stood up.
My knees gave out, and I sat back on the nearest rock, which put me right next to the demons.
“Well, I didn’t see this coming,” I said to Zenith.
He didn’t turn to look at me and said in a deadpan voice, “Don’t speak to me.”
I nodded in agreement and lay back. He liked to rib on me. That was how our friendship went.
I sucked on my pipe and blew out Horse.
Luka threw another boulder hundreds of feet across the shore.
Crash.
Rocks exploded on a gloomy beach.
Horse flapped his wings lazily as he flew higher into the sky, backlit by the eldritch eclipse. Celestial bodies consumed the sky.
I inhaled drugs, smoke pouring from my lips.
Malum ranted. He screamed something about being team captain and everyone keeping secrets from him. He said a lot of words.
I watched Horse longingly, wishing I could also fly away.
Chapter 28
Aran
INTRODUCTIONS
Metamorphosis—Day 37, hour 11
“And then John carried me from the arena back to the room,” I finished telling Luka about the punishment.
John’s twin narrowed his eyes but said nothing.
Our bare feet slapped loudly against water and rocks. The surf slammed in with a roar, then retreated reluctantly back to sea.
Compared to his easygoing, talkative brother, Mr. Hyde was a quiet man.
Intense.
Intimidating.
We were two hours into a long morning jog, and even though I was sore and tired, I was grateful Malum was making us train. The run gave me a distraction from everything that had gone down yesterday.
The revelations.
High above us in the sky, the angels once again fought with their ice swords. Far below them, hidden in the shadows behind the academy, the devil legion also trained with swords, but theirs were made of fire.
I shivered as I studied the two legions.
Fire and ice.
Angels and devils.
Sadie said they shared a realm, and I hadn’t understood until this moment what that meant.
Now I saw the similarities.
Strength and power radiated from both groups, and even their swords were mirror images of each other.
I squinted at the devil legion as we ran past. It wasn’t hard to picture them with wings.
BANG. Ice swords slammed together, and blue flames exploded.
BANG. Fire swords bounced off each other loudly.
It was the alchemy law of extremes: At its hottest temperature, fire mimics the properties of ice. At its coldest temperature, ice mimics the properties of fire.
Goose bumps shivered down my spine.
A shadow flashed in my periphery, and I looked over my shoulder. I scanned the surf, but there was nothing, just rocks and the sea. I must have imagined it.
Movement. I whipped my head to the right.
There.
A pale body dashed swiftly across the rocks, angling itself in the shadows of boulders so that it was almost impossible to follow its progression.
It was a member of the assassin legion.
I’d assumed the other legions were all resting inside between competitions, but now I wasn’t so sure. To the naked eyed, there was no one else outside training.
Has the assassin legion been training around us this entire time and I’ve never noticed?
Taking a deep breath of sulfur-stained air, I relaxed my arms and drove forward with my legs. I focused on each step.
I ignored the angels in the sky, devils on land, and assassins in the shadows.
Endorphins pumped through my blood.
They kept the haze at bay. Just barely.
I focused on my breathing and not the stranger who was matching pace beside me. Stride for stride, we ran together like we’d been doing so our entire lives.
Just like with John, Luka and I ran in perfect tandem. We’d done this same jog dozens of times.
But unlike with John, I didn’t know this man.
Yet, he knew me.
From the shitshow that had been yesterday, Luka had no interest in getting to know any of us further.
After Luka had revealed who he was, everyone in our legion had spiraled into a mini meltdown over the revelation.
For hours, we’d bombarded him with questions, which turned out to be a pointless and infuriating exercise because unlike his twin brother, Luka wasn’t a big talker.
He was more of a glowerer.
Sun god, he was even quieter than Orion, who at least mouthed responses most of the time.
Luka didn’t pretend to care that someone was talking to him. He was perfectly content ignoring everyone.
Even as he jogged beside me, his lips were pulled tight in a scowl, dark eyes stormy.
How had I ever thought he was John? They looked bizarrely identical, but their personalities were like night and day.
John shone with brightness.
Luka was shades of black.
A wave of melancholy hit me, and I staggered from the force of missing John. No wonder Mr. Hyde had always put me on edge.
He wasn’t my friend.
I rubbed at the bruises under my eyes as my legs pumped faster.
My skin pinched as my stitches pulled.
I wished Luka would open up so I could at least figure out if John was okay. Where did he go? How did they travel? Why did they conceal their identities? Why all the secrecy?
So many questions.
No answers.
I stretched my head to the side as we rounded the bend and tried to ignore the tightness in my neck muscles.
I’d slept on the floor in an awkward ball.
At least it hadn’t been cold.
I’d woken up with a pillow under my head and a cozy blanket tucked around me. I’d gone to bed with nothing but a sweatshirt under my head, so I assumed a servant had seen me on the floor and brought me stuff in the middle of the night.
I didn’t know how much I depended on John until he was gone.
Everything that had happened between us still couldn’t detract from what he was to me.
My rock.
I spent my days sleeping beside John and sitting next to him at every meal. He was my running partner and confidant and the person I turned to for a laugh or a hug.
John was everything that made the academy bearable.
Now I was painfully alone.
I glanced up at Luka under my lashes, and it hurt how much he looked like John. He was a sad substitute.
Luka hadn’t said a single word all run. Meanwhile I’d spent the first ten miles explaining in excruciating detail every second of the punishment. I’d told him everything that had gone down between John and me. I’d left nothing out.
I owed him that much.
I’d finished the story miles ago, and Luka still hadn’t responded.
Was he waiting for an apology?
After another three miles, I broke the silence and said, “I’m sorry.”
Luka furrowed his brows, and his dark eyes narrowed, but he didn’t respond. He didn’t care.
Whatever.
I turned my attention back to the shoreline.
Thirty-two miles later, we finished our run, and Luka walked beside me back to the academy.
I glanced over at him in confusion.
Yesterday, he’d made a point to avoid me and not stand anywhere near me. Now he was purposefully slowing his stride so we were side by side. Sweat covered both of us.