Page 78 of House of Mages and Raven

Grace lifted her foot again, and I let it land on my stomach. The impact knocked the wind out of my lungs. Pain seared my flesh and bones. She didn’t remove her foot but dug it deeper into my belly, her face triumphant, her smiling lips savoring a great victory.

She believed that I was done for, and her guard was down, distracted by the heirs, as they now looked at her in a new light. That was the moment I’d been waiting for, as I couldn’t afford to allow her to use her knuckle guards on me again. If she did, I might not get up.

While she rested her adoring gaze on the hot-as-sin heirs, who appeared uncertain and befuddled—in their bones, the heirs were apex predators, and thus it wasn’t in them to root for the weak—I struck back. My hand lashed out and grabbed her ankle to stop her foot from further digging into my stomach, and my leg shot up toward her face, bitch-kick style. I half shifted,and Sy’s clawed foot pierced the front of my boot like a blade and slashed across her cheek, slicing open her lips.

My opponent’s howls of pain shattered the cheers of her followers. Lightning fast, I twisted her ankle until it cracked. I watched her fall in slow motion, her blood dripping in a long crimson string toward the marble.

All it took was two seconds.

Sy licked her lips in hunger.

I rose with flair, like in a kung fu movie, and perched on the small of her back. My boots pinned her arms down so she couldn’t summon her unholy knuckle guards against me. I let her thrash and scream in pain, unmoved. The cunt thought she was suffering pain. She had no idea what true pain was and what it was like to be eaten alive for hours by your own god father.

“Knock, knock.” I lifted my bruised face, my golden curls bouncing, and grinned at the stunned heirs, then at the angry and shocked mob. “Anyone home, littlepigs? Because I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your fucking piggie houses down.”

25

Barbie

“Cease and desist, Barbie!” An authoritative voice full of icy fury boomed across the hall as Headmistress Ethel strode toward us.

The sentinels of the academy flanked her. She didn’t go anywhere without them these days, especially since her druid had turned rogue. The heirs’ security details had increased as well. I used to have security detail too when I was in the House of Chaos. Somehow, I still felt Rock and Archer shadowing me daily, even though Killian had dumped me.

I didn’t drop my grin. “You’re late to the party again, headmistress.”

I adopted a cheerful look despite the throbbing pain from the particles of dark material in my blood. Sy had taken most of the pain into her, but the poison was coursing through my veins, and it’d take time to purge it. I’d need to get to Underhill as soon as this was over.

“You forgot your place again!” Headmistress Ethel barked in hot anger. “But this time, you won’t be able to get away with cruelly attacking a student. I’ll make sure that your time at Shades Academy ends today.”

The headmistress would never warm to me, unlike the heirs. I’d disturbed the hierarchy and the order she clung to so tightly in this elite magical school, and I’d exposed the druid and made her look bad. IMHO, she should be thankful that she’d come out of the druid scandal unscathed. But she wasn’t grateful at all. Instead, she wanted me gone more than ever.

“Rorrwow!” I imitated a lion cub’s cry. “You’re really going to do that, aren’t you? I thought I was following the rules of the duel, which the princess initiated.” I wiggled my ass, which was parked solidly on Grace. “See, she’s up and about, so she can testify to it as a fellow rule follower.”

“Get off Princess Grace now!” Headmistress Ethel commanded.

“Okay, okay, chill,” I said, easing off my defeated opponent with a contented sigh. I beamed at the headmistress. “Happy now?”

Louis chuckled, which did not help me ease the tension.

Bellona and two demonesses rushed to help Grace up. A healer came and helped her sit on a chair. It was good to be a princess, since she got the best health care. No one offered to check on me. I just had to hang in there a little longer.

Sy donated all her juice to keep me standing tall.

Headmistress Ethel glared at me. “You’ll have to answer for your new crime.”

I widened my eyes. “Another crime?”

“Barbie attacked Princess Grace and then openly declared her intention of bringing our houses down, Lady Ethel,” Fake Blonde offered. “Everyone heard her. She must hang!”

It seemed that the mob all agreed that I should be hanged. I might have to check the history and laws of Mist of Cinder and see for myself if they still practiced such a barbaric death sentence.

It wasn’t peachy when almost the entire school was against me. The peer pressure, the fear of public humiliation, and the hostility from the crowd wove a suffocating net around me. If I was less strong, if I didn’t have Sy with me, I would walk with my tail down all day long. Even so, the constant challenges and conflicts had started to wear me out.

One small comfort was that Bea wasn’t here to be put on the spot with me—if she’d been here, she’d never have left my side.

Headmistress Ethel jerked her chin toward her goons, and two sentinels pushed through the crowd with Wyatt between them.

Wyatt was a half-human, half-demon geek. We’d become friends after he offered me a breakfast burrito. Everyone had shunned him and every house had rejected him until I got him into the House of Chaos. He’d been my ace supporter, but now he lifted his one unswollen eye and peered at me in fear. There was dried blood in his ink-black hair streaked with green. His face was covered in purple bruises, his nose was broken, and his top lip was split down the middle. His school uniform was tattered with dirt and blood.

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