Marie dragged me back.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I said. “I need to see my friends!”
“I’m doing you a favor, girl,” Marie said. “I’m helping you survive in this place.”
“Demigod Axel has ordered that if you cause trouble, your friends will suffer the consequences,” Cameron said. “Do you copy?”
I glared at him, shaking in anger. He held my gaze, daring me punch him with my tight fists. He’d punch back, then probably shock me good with his lightning.
“You need to focus on your trial, Marigold,” Marie said, softening her tone. “If you live, you’ll get to see them once every three weeks in the main dining hall where all the students and trainers socialize. Your friends belong to the Other Academy on the secondary campus, a place for all other supernaturals, like witches, shifters, warlocks, mages, fae, and vampires.”
“But shouldn’t my friends be here for me during the trial?” I said in a last-ditch effort to get the Dominions to show a little sympathy or bend a little. “Could you talk to Axel about it, please?”
Marie snorted. “He’d have my head for calling him for something like that. Look, rules are rules. The Ritual of Blood Runes is only to be observed by the demigods, the senior Dominion officers, and other initiates. Outsiders, not even the leaders of the supernaturals who aren’t descendants of the gods, are not allowed to watch.”
“I just want to see my team one last time before shit goes down,” I said. “If I don’t make it, at least I get to say goodbye.”
“Then you make sure you make it,” Marie said.
There was no point in arguing with her. She knew it wasn’t up to me but the gods’ power that decided who lived and who was doomed.
I stared into empty space. I didn’t want to ruin the first day for Jasper and Circe in their academy life.
My shoulders sagged as I watched the soldiers take my former teammates down the opposite path and vanish behind a building trellised with ivy and lilac.
That might be the last of them I ever saw.
CHAPTER 5
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Ijoined twelve othercandidates, some of them a little younger and some a little older than me. I bathed and put on a white robe, the only thing they offered me.
I was so sick and tired of fighting the Dominions and ending up nowhere, so I didn’t even bother to complain that I didn’t get to wear a bra and panties.
In low spirits and bare feet, I padded quietly down the cobbled path lined with red maple trees along with other initiates.
They had arrived a week earlier and already formed a clique. Six of them gathered around Demetra and Jack, hanging on their every word. The other four were outsiders like me.
Two of the outcasts constantly darted longing gazes at the popular group, as if that would get them into the exclusive club. All they got was the evil eye from the snobs, who regarded the rest of us as the slough beneath their noble feet.
“Stay away!” A clique girl, Barbara, hissed and patted her sleeve as if even our gazes could dirty her clothes.