Page 33 of Zero Happily Ever Afters

“Let’s fuck ‘em up,” Derrick shouted, swirling his arms to heighten the raging water he’d summoned.

“You think we’d just let you gang up on our class.” Tiffany surfed along the tidal wave, swerving the direction of each drop of water alongside her beaver partner until the pair slammed into Peterson’s entire homeroom coven.

“Eat it, bitches.” Harrison had a cocky smile, arrogant in the most awkward way from a five-foot-nothing scrawny boy blaring the hardest profanities looped into song lyrics while rifling through the fanny pack strapped to his hip. Even hovering upside down as he swung past Tiffany from another angle, it didn’t hinder his trajectory one bit as he hurled fragile glass bottles that exploded on contact with the water.

One of the scouts observed how Derrick altered the movement of the water to manipulate and strengthen its density, thus ensuring each potion shattered simultaneously.

“Blitz firework destruction. Hell yeeeeeeah!” Harrison cackled, delighting in the mayhem of carnage that swept across the tidal wave as Peterson’s homeroom scrambled to escape the frenzy of explosion enchantment magic.

They couldn’t find an exit, though. The water seemed to loop back around on itself, creating an infinite circle. Harrison’s destructive onslaught appeared endless, too. Neither was true.

Amani stood at the edge of the water’s depths, watching as students in Peterson’s homeroom plummeted to their defeat. As they fell one by one, she released her illusion over them.

Once the last student from Peterson’s homeroom fell into the lava pit, Amani snapped her fingers. Her three coven mates flew to her side, ready to continue their strategy for winning the event now that Vik, Tia, and Emmanuel were no longer being unfairlytargeted. I wouldn’t call it unfair. Hell, it was a smart strategy working as an entire class to eliminate competition.

Amani turned her gaze toward the nearby cameras, ensuring the whole auditorium heard her next words. “Anyone fucks with our homeroom, and they’re dead.”

Tiffany popped a hip. “But, like, not in an actual dead kind of way.”

“Fuck that.” Harrison folded his arms and posed as tough as he could. “Six feet under, mofos.”

“You can’t say that, dumbass.” Derrick smacked Harrison on the back of the head, then pointed to the cameras presenting to everyone.

Apparently, Derrick and Harrison often butted heads with each other quite literally since becoming coven mates, but before either could break out into a familiar tussle, gray static surged along their abdomens. With their levitation roots hexed, the shock of falling left each boy too immobilized to strategize with their telekinesis as a way to prevent their plummet.

Kenzo smirked, a wicked glint in his gaze as he descended from above and closed the distance between himself and Amani. “While you were running your mouth, per usual, I took out your beta boys.”

Few held much competition for Kenzo, but Amani was among the top ten, and he believed she wasn’t utterly incompetent. Too cautious for his liking, but skilled when she wasn’t gossiping about people with his irritating teammate, Layla. He found both girls irksome, but he couldn’t very well punch Layla without hindering his chances of winning the game. Amani would have to do.

“I could take him,” Amani thought before her mind twisted into countless variables, ones she’d likely encounter against someone of Kenzo’s caliber, and she took the remaining time, along with her current score, into account. Most of all, the lossof Harrison and Derek left her vulnerable in comparison to other teams who still had a full coven.

With a snap of her fingers, Amani summoned more than thirty illusions of herself, Tiffany, and Duchess of Damnation.

Amani’s glamour magic was fascinating in the sense that she didn’t alter the perception of what an individual saw or experienced but more like she draped her magic in an area, manipulating the psychic plane and making it hers. Anyone who looked at her glamour was affected; even those well out of her range scattered throughout the auxiliary gym fell victim to the phony duplications Amani conjured. As an experienced psychic, I could see through her illusions, but it wasn’t easy given her expertise.

The girls bolted to the other side of the auxiliary gym while a relentless Kenzo tore through the illusions one electrical strike of disruption at a time. Amani wanted to impress the scouts, which she couldn’t do in a long, dragged-out battle against Kenzo. She accurately surmised that sometimes the most impressive strategy came in the form of knowing when to fall back.

By the time Kenzo had cleared a path forward, he’d already found a new quarry to hunt.

Sheesh.I grimaced. He really did treat this event like he was an apex predator slaughtering defenseless prey.

Seeing as they were both separated from their teammates, Kenzo raced toward his next opponent.

I flinched when his fist collided with an unsuspecting Caleb, who spun through the air in pain and shock and confusion. It took precious seconds to compose himself and determine where the attack came from. Kenzo allowed Caleb those seconds. With each tick of the clock, he strategized weaknesses of Caleb’s he could exploit. The blitz attack wasn’t meant to defeat Caleb or offer Kenzo an edge. It was, in the most sincerely absurdmanner, Kenzo’s way of saying hello, greeting someone he deemed worthy of eviscerating.

“Well, branchless.” Kenzo coiled gray static over his arms, channeling it across his entire body. “Show me what you got. I wanna see those roots in action.”

Kenzo could’ve struck Caleb with hex magic during his surprise strike. He could’ve projected it at a distance now. Two things Caleb surmised. He couldn’t fathom why Kenzo held back, though, why he hadn’t used the opportunity to knock Caleb out of bounds and into the lava pit below. The only thing that came to mind was that Kenzo still found him unworthy. Unworthy of attending Gemini, unworthy of joining the guild industry, and unworthy of being Kenzo’s friend.

“You still think I don’t deserve to be here?” Caleb ground his teeth, channeling a ferocious amount of telekinesis that knocked encroaching competitors away.

When the waves of energy reached Kenzo, his disruption shattered the pulse and fanned it in opposing directions.

“If I didn’t think you belonged here, Branchless Blunder, I wouldn’t be here to fuck you up personally.” Kenzo smirked, gloating confidence radiated so brightly it hid the natural shades of fury that painted his aura. “I’m about to pound you into the ground, so consider this my way—”

“Hello, phrasing!” Gael shouted from nearby. “I might’ve gone with pummeled, but that’s just me.”

Caleb flew toward Kenzo, channeling concentrated telekinesis into his fists. “You won’t be the one doing the pounding here.”

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