“When did you get that?” I asked her. She clutched at my hands.
“Malachi helped me apply for it the day after I left Seraphina.” There was that twitch again. I couldn’t seem to temper my reaction whenever anyone mentioned him. Nanna reached out a hand and cupped my cheek. “I’m so sorry,” she said.
I shook my head. “It’s okay,” I told her for the billionth time. She’d been apologising to me every ten minutes since she woke. Like it had been her fault that a demon has chosen to possess her.
“It’s not okay.” She glared at the folder as if it were going to transform into a beast and attack us. “The things you had to go through.” She retracted her hands and slammed them onto the arm of the couch.
“I’m okay,” I told her. I tugged on her sleeve to get her to look at me again. “I’m really okay.”
Her eyes watered. “You don’t always have to be, Alessia.” She hugged me to her, and I squeezed back. She never used my full name unless she was super upset. “Two of those people are in prison.”
“I know.” I’d called it the moment I set foot in their homes. They were up to code, of course. They had to be in order to pass as foster homes. But there was just a feeling in there that had set off something instinctive in me.
“When I think about what might have happened to you....”
I held her shoulders at arm’s length and showed her my fearsome smile. “It’s a good thing I was taught not to take shit lying down.”
She frowned at my expletive. “It makes me sick to think you felt safer living on the streets.”
Safe was an interesting word. I didn’t put much stock in it anymore. Nanna cleared her throat.
“This thing with Malach–”
I dropped my arms. Nanna tipped my chin up when I tried to avert my gaze. “I know what it will cost you to forgive him.” She was just about the only person in the world who would understand. I had no parents. The people who were meant to protect me had either been overworked and underpaid, or had turned out to be monsters. I lived for years watching my own back every second of the day. At this point, self-preservation wasn’t second nature. It was who I was at my core.
“For what it’s worth,” Nanna said, “I lived in Seraphina for months. Even as a clueless human I saw glimpses of the amount of pressure they put on him. The last of his line. The only Nephilim with his ability. Just the very fact he’d managed to retain a small part of himself is a miracle.”
Great. Nanna had joined the Malachi Pendragon fan club. It was an all-ages club it would seem.
“I know, Nan. But would it have killed him to give me a heads up?”
“Maybe it would have,” Nanna said. “Maybe after spending all his time trying to be what everyone else wants him to be, he wanted something untouched by all of that?”
“You know, you’re supposed to be warning me off boys.”
She laughed. “I think Basil does that enough for the both of us.”
She grabbed me and hugged me again. “He’s spent so much of his life fighting for others,” Nanna said. “Maybe it’s time someone fought for him.”
As I hugged her back, I realised that smug jackass had gotten to Nanna. When I got my hands on him, I was going to strangle him. Then he’d really need saving.
5
By lunch time the next day, I still wasn’t feeling any more magnanimous about the situation. But I couldn’t drag this on forever when I’d be seeing Kai at the Academy.
“Can you open up a portal for me?” I asked Basil. Some not so discreet enquiries with Cassie and Jacqueline told me Kai was in the Grove this morning.
Normally, stepping through a portal was instantaneous. This time there was a lag. My muscles bunched at the thought of something snatching me. Great. Now I had portal post-traumatic stress.
Basil’s magic flared. It gathered around me and gave me a push through to the other side. I landed just inside the gate of the Grove. My heart was racing. I wrapped my arms around the old oak tree beside the gate. I pressed my forehead to the bark and breathed in the familiar scent. When my eyes closed, I saw the moss-green lines of the Ley dimension running from the oak into my body. The branches groaned overhead.
With a small yelp, I let go. If I’d stayed there any longer, the oak might have come to life like the trees had the night the Academy was attacked by Giselle. The nymphs would skin me alive if I did anything to their home. I rubbed at the oak’s bark with my hand. Then I made myself walk down the path.
I tried to breathe meditatively. It was working until I got to the Arcana-tree clearing. Kai was crouched down beside the watering pond with the nymphs flying about his head.
I swear I hadn’t meant for the acorns to lift up off the ground. They hung suspended in a wall behind me. Who knew how they suddenly launched at him like a spray of bullets?
The key to good aim for someone as uncoordinated as me is volume. I might not be a crack shot, but with hundreds of acorns at my disposal, at least a dozen of them popped Kai in the back of the head before he realised what was happening.
A flurry of nymphs scattered. They lifted themselves into the air above the firing line. Kai turned. His wings snapped out to form a barrier. The nymphs emitted high-pitched screams. I braced myself for their retaliation. To my surprise, a second wall of acorns appeared on the other side of
