DOFAB#3

Chapter Thirteen

~  KINLEY ~

Ding.

The elevator opens on the eighteenth floor.

He knows...

Tristan Darkos knows Neziri is the nameless one. If he doesn't, he'll figure it out before I can lock him up. Let alone a spell strong enough it would not require me to call upon the three gods of the afterlife for their help like it took last time. A binding incantation was possible before Tristan was released. All it required was severing the thread that connects the hellmouth to this realm. Now that he's out...

How could I think I'd be able to conjure a new portal and imprison the Beast of the Damned in a hellmouth by myself?

How could I have let Neziri's name slip?

Why would Mother Egret allow me to come here if she knew she was going to release Tristan early? She promised I'd have time. There is no time left. It won't take Tristan ninety-nine years to put the pieces together. I have hours, weeks, a few months if I'm lucky and can keep my sister away from him. Neziri won't stay away knowing I'm paired to a Darkos and the Hand of Death is out there somewhere.

Ice cubes tumble down the hallway, the bucket Adalynn was carrying knocked from her hands as I collide into her.

"Are you okay?" Adalynn asks. She and Ruby exited the second elevator at the same time I did the first. "What was happening earlier? Did he attack you?"

"I'm fine." I conceal my distress the way Tristan must have that dagger he stabbed my sister with. "I got injured. The cut was pretty deep, so my pat'na healed me." I scoop the spilled ice into the bucket, distracting myself before the tears stinging in my eyes blow my cover when they turn into petalflies and fly away. That's all I need right now. For Nadora to find out I lied on my application.

"Oh, it looked...it didn't look that way to me." Adalynn helps me gather the ice off the floor. A tinge of shame keeps her chin tucked that she misjudged Tristan's behavior.

"I thought that vampire blood healed us. It looked like he was the one ingesting you." Ruby joins us in cleaning up the mess I made, using the lid of her bucket to pile on the cubes that rolled further away.

"Their saliva has healing properties too." I take the last scoop of spilled ice and dump it into the bucket it came from. "I can go back down and get you a new bucket."

"Don't worry about it. You've already had a day, from what Ruby has told me. She said the whole class thought you died."

Precisely what I don't need on me. Attention.

"Yeah." I force out a laugh. "Being a sterling doesn't seem so bad right now."

"There you guys are. What's taking so long? What happened to your shirt? Is that blood?" Maya comes up to us.

Ruby, Beck, and Cora's room is only ten doors down. Next is Maya's, Azlan's, and Adalynn's then mine.

"This? It's nothing." I close my torn shirt, uncomfortable with how easy it was for Tristan to rip it. But that is not as disturbing as his speed. One second, I was at the harbor bay. The next blink, my shirt is torn open with a vampire lapping at my wounds in an elevator shaft.

Not any vampire.

The Prince of Ash and Bone.

"She got injured. Tristan used his saliva to heal her," Ruby says.

"You mean the nosebleed god of my dreams has magical spit too? Why am I cursed?" Maya dramatically slumps against the wall, hand on her forehead.

"Here, have a consolation prize." Adalynn chucks the ice in her bucket at Maya. Maya's substitute prize accurate to the sensation of vampire's cold, wet tongue on you.