Page 16 of Creatures of Chaos

Ensley barks out a short laugh. “Chaos. Are you serious? Do you think that story is going to trick anyone into attending one of your lame parties?”

Leo shoots her a nasty look. “This isn’t my party.”

“Yet you’re passing out flyers you made. Sure seems like it’s your party.”

“No,” Leo says again, getting angry. “Someone sent these to me. They’re paying me a hundred bucks to pass them out.”

“Who?” Ensley presses.

“No one knows who runs Chaos,” Leo says, shooting Ensley another glare before turning back to Becks.

“Chaos is nothing more than an urban legend,” Becks scoffs, and then digs back into his food, a clear verbal sign he’s done talking with Leo. Unsurprisingly, Leo doesn’t pick up on the hint and instead pulls out a chair next to Becks and plops down into it.

“It’s not a legend. It’s real,” Leo says defensively. “My second cousin swears he was a competitor in the last one. That’s how he lost his eye.”

Every student at Nightlark Academy, former and current, has heard about Chaos. It’s some sort of underground competition that happens every ten or fifteen years or so. No one knows who the organizers are, but the prizes are always said to be life-changing. And they’d have to be, because the trials themselves, a series of five events, are dangerous enough to take a life. The rumor is that during the last Chaos two of the competitors failed to escape one of the trials and died, and then their deaths were covered up as a double suicide. But the thing is, Chaos has always just been a rumor, no more than an unsubstantiated legend passed down over the years.

Becks snorts. “Vanguard lost his eye in Mr. Smalls’ shop class six years ago.”

Leo’s face starts to redden in anger.

“You’re just scared you won’t be able to win,” he accuses Becks, who doesn’t even dignify that with a response.

When it’s clear Becks isn’t going to engage with him, Leo turns on me.

“How about you, gimps,” he says, smirking. “It might be entertaining watching you get smashed during one of the trials. At least that way you’ll be good for something.”

I clench my fists under the table, but as humiliating as it is, Leo isn’t wrong. If Chaos were real, I probably wouldn’t last a single event. As a magicless creature, the only chance I’d stand would be having a good chance I’d get myself killed participating in the events that are specifically supposed to test the strength of your powers.

Ensley chucks a tomato at Leo. It hits him in the chest, splattering over his orange t-shirt.

“Hey,” he says as he flicks wet seeds off him.

“Get out of here,” Ensley says. “No one at this table wants to be in your space.”

Becks tries to hand the flyer back to Leo, but he won’t take it.

“Keep it,” Leo says. “You might change your mind.”

Rolling his eyes, Becks crumples the flyer. With a twist of his wrist he sends a spark at the balled-up paper, and it goes up in flames, not even so much as singeing his skin because as a dragon shifter he’s fireproof.

“Whatever,” Leo says, shoving out of his chair. “You’ll see this is the real deal and wish you’d taken me seriously.”

“How about you hold your breath waiting for that,” Ensley suggests with a smirk.

Leo flips her the bird and then ambles off to the next table. He slaps another ominous flyer down, but they look more receptive to Leo’s bull than we were.

Ensley surprises me when she says, “You don’t think it could actually be happening, do you?”

I look over at her, my eyebrows hiked. She’s one of the most cynical creatures I know. Out of the three of us she’s the last I would expect to take this seriously.

“Naw,” Becks says. “I don’t think it’s true. He’s just trying to get classmates to come to some party he’s throwing.”

Truth be told, I’m a little surprised Becks isn’t taking it more seriously. If Chaos were real, he’d probably be able to win the whole thing.

“If it were true, would you enter?” I ask, curious.

Becks chuckles, but the sound is brittle. “You think I’d be allowed to participate in something like that? The house owns me now. I can’t do anything without the council’s approval.”

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