Supernova

Chapter Sixty Four - The Wind Beneath My Wings Is Ice Cold

Demon didn't let me out of his sight for days.

He'd come to my room in the mornings, carry me down to the training gyms, where we'd spar or he'd watch me and Needles do target practice, or the four of us would do whatever other ridiculous things I'd suggest doing to see if he'd get irritated and leave me alone.

He never did.

He'd carry me back up to my room for meals and sit on the edge of the tub when I showered and sat with his back to our front door as I fell asleep next to Elias, who had absolutely no reaction and nothing to say about any of this. It felt like being on some invisible leash.

It also kind of felt like my first month here at The Academy.

"I'm not a child," I hissed at him. "Stop treating me like one."

"If you're going to act like a child," he scolded me back. "You're going to be treated like one."

Raf did not come seek me out. Well, that's not necessarily true nor fair to say. There were a few instances where I saw him peek his head around a hallway corner or into the training gym, but upon seeing Demon and whatever look his face was holding, he'd duck back out without so much as a word or a second thought. I didn't seek him out either. It was a little ridiculous, of course, because I could have easily killed Demon and walked right over to Raf and grabbed his hand and rode off with him into the sunset and into the ocean to see sharks and jellyfish to my heart's content if I really wanted to. But admittedly, a few things had already been bothering me about Raf and his fear and unwillingness to stand up to Demon was the last nail in the coffin. During my first month here, that alone had been a one way ticket to me writing someone off as being boring and not worth my time, and I supposed that old habits did indeed die hard.

Weirdly enough, to me anyways, maybe not to Elias, was that Raf didn't seem to be all that Demon was pissed about, because he wasn't coming around and yet, he was still pissed. He was cold and short with me, so I didn't have much to go on, and it's not like I was going to bow and actually ask him, until he finally gave in and started his regular repertoire of scoffing that indicated that he was about to blow a fuse.

"If you wanted to go to parties so bad," he started. Oh. So that's what the was all about. "Why'd you ask Elias and not me?"

I shrugged. "I didn't know you went to parties."

"How'd you even find out about them?"

"Needles told me."

"How do you think he knew about them?"

I shrugged again. Demon scoffed a lot. I wasn't sure what my face was doing, so I turned my back to him, because I figured that was probably safest. Princess and asshole, sure, but Cassie Stronghold was no idiot, and it didn't need saying that I didn't ask him because I'd started going to parties because I needed a distraction from him as much as I needed him to finally just confess his undying love for me already or perhaps a long, eternal swim in the lake with no suit on.

"Do you still want to?"

"Want to what?"

"Go to parties," Demon spat at me, his jaw clenched like he was just seconds away from smacking an unruly child. Which, all things considered, he probably was.

"I don't know," I answered.

It was the truth. There was a lot of hero in me. It was written in my genetics and stamped alongside every single instance where my name had been written for the past seven years. But there was also something rotten and wasteful. I didn't know where that had come from, but it was there, and it sat in my chest like a one of those black holes Elias had told me about once. I wanted him to look at me like that again. I wanted more moments like that in the snow, even if I was going to have to ruin every single one.