Hidden

you have?”

He shrugged. His massive wings lifted slightly before settling again. “I have lost count.”

“Seems like knowing how many kids you have is a good place to start in the whole I’d-like-to-be-a-good-dad thing.”

“Knowing a thing and acting on a thing are distinctly different,” he said.

“Yeah, totally. But I said it’s a good place to start.” Shaunee jerked her head toward Nyx’s statue. “That’s also a good place to start.”

“At the Goddess’s statue?”

She frowned at him, feeling a little easier under his gaze. “There’s more to it than just hanging out at her statue. Try asking for her—”

“Forgiveness is not granted to all of us!” his voice thundered.

Shaunee felt herself begin to tremble, but her eyes shifted to Nyx’s statue. She could almost swear that the full, beautiful, marble lips tilted up, smiling kindly at her. Whether it was her imagination or not, it gave Shaunee the burst of courage she needed and the fledgling continued in a rush, “I wasn’t gonna say forgiveness. I was gonna say help. Try asking for Nyx’s help.”

“Nyx would not hear me.” Kalona spoke so quietly that Shaunee almost didn’t hear him. “She has not heard me for eons.”

“During those eons how many times did you ask for her help?”

“Not once,” he said.

“Then how do you know she’s not listening to you?”

Kalona shook his head. “Have you been sent to me to be my conscience?”

It was Shaunee’s turn to shake her head in denial. “I haven’t been sent to you, and Goddess knows I have enough trouble dealing with my own conscience. I sure as hell can’t be anyone else’s.”

“I would not be so sure, young fiery fledging … I would not be so sure,” he mused, and then, abruptly, Kalona turned away from her, took several long, swift steps, and launched himself into the night sky.

Rephaim

He didn’t mind all that much that most of the other kids still avoided him. Damien was nice, but Damien was nice to just about everyone, so Rephaim wasn’t sure if the boy’s kindness had much of anything to do with him. At least Stark and Darius weren’t trying to kill him or keep him from Stevie Rae. Recently Darius even seemed a little friendly. The Son of Erebus Warrior had actually helped him when he’d stumbled onto the bus the night before, still weak from his magickally healed injury.

Father saved me and then pledged himself as Death’s Warrior. He does love me, and he is choosing the side of Light against Darkness. The thought of it made Rephaim smile, even though the former Raven Mocker was not as naïve and trusting as Stevie Rae and the others believed him to be. Rephaim wanted his father to continue on Nyx’s path—wanted it badly. But he, better than anyone except the Goddess herself, knew the anger and violence the fallen immortal had wallowed in for centuries.

That Rephaim existed was proof of his father’s ability to cause other’s great pain.

Rephaim’s shoulders slumped. He’d come to the part of the school grounds where the destroyed oak lay—half against the wall of the school—half on the ground inside. The center of the thick old tree appeared as if it had been struck by a lightning bolt hurled by an angry god.

Rephaim knew better.

His father was an immortal, but he wasn’t a god. Kalona was a Warrior, and a fallen one.

Feeling oddly disturbed, Rephaim’s gaze moved from the gash that was the destruction at the center of the tree. He sat on one of the downed limbs well toward the edge of the tree’s broken canopy, studying the thick boughs that rested against the school’s east wall.

“That needs to be fixed,” Rephaim spoke aloud, filling up the silent night with the humanness of his own voice. “Stevie Rae and I could work on it together. Perhaps the tree is not a complete loss.” He smiled. “My Red One healed me. Why not a tree?”

The tree didn’t answer, but as Rephaim spoke he had the strangest sensation of déjà vu. Like he’d been there before, and not just during another school day. Been there before with the wind in his wings and the brilliant blue of the daylight sky beckoning to him.

Rephaim’s brow furrowed and he rubbed it, feeling a headache build. Did he come here during the day when he was a raven, when his humanity was hidden so deeply within him that those hours passed as a shadowy, indistinct blur of sight and sound and scent?

The only answer that came to Rephaim was the dull throbbing in his temples.

The wind moved around him, rustling through the downed boughs, causing the sparse, winter-browned leaves that still clung tenaciously to the old oak to whisper. For a moment it seemed the tree was trying to speak to him—trying to tell him its secrets.

Rephaim’s gaze shifted back to the center of the tree. Shadows. Broken bark. Splintered trunk. Exposed roots. And it looked like the ground near the center of the tree had already begun to erode in upon itself, almost like there was a pit forming beneath it.

Rephaim shivered. There had been a pit below the tree. One that had imprisoned Kalona within the earth for centuries. The memory of those centuries, and the terrible, semi-substantial existence filled with anger and violence and loneliness that he had lived during that time, was still part of the heavy burden Rephaim bore.

“Goddess, I know you have forgiven me for my past, and for that I will always be grateful. But, could you, perhaps, teach me how to truly forgive myself?”

The breeze rustled again. The sound was soothing, as if the tree’s ancient whispering could be the voice of the Goddess.

“I will take that as a sign,” Rephaim spoke aloud to the tree, pressing his open palm to the bark beside him. “I will ask Stevie Rae to help me make right the violence that shattered you. Soon. I give my word. I will return soon.” When Rephaim walked away to continue his patrol of the school’s perimeter, he thought he might have heard a stirring deep beneath the tree, and imagined it was the old oak thanking him.

Aurox

Aurox paced in agitation, covering the small, hollowed-out space beneath the shattered oak in three strides. Then he turned, and took three short strides back. Back and forth, back and forth, he went. Thinking … thinking … thinking … and wishing desperately that he had a plan.

His head pained him. He had not broken his skull when he’d fallen into the pit, but the lump on his head had bled and swollen. He hungered. He thirsted. He found it difficult to rest within the earth, though his body was exhausted and he needed to sleep so that he might heal.

Why had he believed it a good idea to return to this school—to hide on the very grounds where the professor he had killed, as well as the boy he had attempted to kill—lived?

Aurox put his head in his hands. Not me! He wanted to shout the words. I did not kill Dragon Lankford. I did not attack Rephaim. I chose differently! But his choice hadn’t mattered. He had transformed into a beast. That beast had left death and destruction in his wake.

It had been foolish of him to come here. Foolish to believe he could find himself here or do any good. Good? If anyone knew he was hiding at the school he would be attacked, imprisoned, possibly killed. Even though he was not here to do harm, it would not matter. He would absorb the rage of those who discovered him, and the beast would emerge. He would not be able to control it. The Sons of Erebus Warriors would surround him and end his miserable existence.

I controlled it once before. I did not attack Zoey. But would he even get an opportunity to try to explain that he meant no harm? Even have an instant to test his self-control and to prove he was more than the beast within him? Aurox resumed his pacing. No, his intent would not matter to anyone at the House of Night. All they would see would be the beast.

Even Zoey? Would even Zoey be against him?

“Zoey shielded you from the Warriors. It was because of her protection that you were able to flee.” Grandma Redbird’s voice soothed his turbulent thoughts. Zoey had shielded him. She’d believed that he could control the beast enough not to harm her. Her grandmother had offered him sanctuary. Zoey could not