Surviving Year One (Grim Reaper Academy 1)

My heart jumped and my stomach twisted at the sound of that name. That name that had no place being associated with me.

“Don’t call me that.”

“It is who you are. Mila Morningstar.”

I rubbed at my aching temples. “What’s your condition?”

He closed the space between us and placed a warm, heavy hand on my shoulder. His voice was soft and gentle.

“That you spend the end of this semester and the summer vacation here, at the Academy, and you study Valentine Morningstar. No Reaper has been able to retire him, and he must be retired. Sooner rather than later. Each decade, he gains more influence and power. Each two hundred years, someone fails to take his place, and his ego grows, his abilities expand, and he’s becoming the most powerful and dangerous Grim Reaper that has ever been. No one can say what he might decide to do with that power one day. He might even become delusional enough to call himself Death. The actual Death. Not a personification, not a concept. Death. And if that happens, the world as we know it will collapse. The prophecy…” He sighed deeply. “It’s not much, but it’s all we have. Prophecies can be misleading and unpredictable, but sometimes it’s better to have one than to not have any hope at all.”

“I don’t know what to say…”

“I believe you do.”

“Well, it’s not like I can go home for the summer holiday,” I said bitterly.

He smiled kindly. “So, stay. The Academy needs you.”

I sighed. It was the kind of deep, heavy sigh that made my chest rise impossibly high and drop like a rock.

“How about you give me a better room, then?”

“I could, but I don’t think that’s what you want.”

I laughed. A bit hysterically, but at least it was a laugh and not tears of frustration.

“Mila, the room we gave you used to be Valentine’s room. We thought that if you lived where he lived, maybe you’ll feel something. Maybe you’ll discover something that has eluded us all this time. The room comes with the one condition that can get you out of this year’s practice. Study Valentine. Learn his secrets. Figure him out. When the time comes, we’ll need you to retire him.”

Kill my own father, that was. I didn’t say it out loud, but Headmaster Colin knew I was thinking it. I nodded and left his office. I walked down corridor after corridor in a daze. I crossed the inner courtyard, passed the dining hall, but didn’t stop. Sheer inertia was taking me up to my room. The room that used to be my father’s. My real father, the nephilim. Just as I was climbing the last few stairs of the north tower, I saw Sariel waiting for me up on the landing. I sighed. Nothing that he could do now would shake me more than what I’d just found out. He’d tried to kill me a second time. He could try it a third time by pushing me down the stairs. Whatever, I didn’t care. Old news.

“You suck at murder plots,” I said boringly. “Francis’s god swallowed me up and spat me back out.”

He dragged in a breath but didn’t say anything. He just looked at me. His wings were spread out. With that blond hair of his and those silver eyes, that perfect jaw, and that straight, noble nose, he looked divinely handsome. Too bad he was a devil in disguise. Pazuzu was more innocent than him, and Pazuzu was a demon. That said a lot.

“Are you going to move, so I can pass?” He was blocking the way, of course. “Are you going to push me down the stairs? Just make up your mind sometime today, because I don’t have time for this.”

“Do you know why I hate you so much?”

“No! Please enlighten me! I’ve been waiting for the moment of truth for so long!”

“Because you’re a Violent Death. A true, textbook Violent Death.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “That makes no sense. So are you.”

“But you see… I’m not. I try so hard, I pretend so much. I play a part every minute of every day. A part that’s just not me. But I have to play it. I have to wake up every morning and slip into my Violent Death persona, because otherwise…” And that was the first time when I could swear I saw Sariel drop his act and become his real, raw self. “Otherwise, my parents would disown me. And do you know what happens when an archangel is disowned, Mila? He’s thrown out of Heaven.”

“Sariel, you’re saying words…” If I had to say that one more time to make the Mighty Jerks understand they weren’t making any sense…

“I was never VDC.

I am and will always be MDC. Merciful Death. But my parents wouldn’t have it. So, I cheated on the test and pretended since day one. There. Now you know.”

“Is this why you’re being so cruel to me?!”

He laughed. “You’re everything I will never be. You’re the one true Violent Death in our Cabal. The others? Posers! And now you know my secret. Do with it what you will. I’m exhausted. I can’t do this anymore.”

I bit my lower lip. What the hell was happening? Sariel was being honest for the first time in his life, and I actually felt… sorry for him? If I could feel compassion for the guy who’d tried to kill me twice, then maybe I wasn’t VDC either.