Saving Year Three (Grim Reaper Academy 3)

This year’s Christmas vacation sucked more than the last two combined. Year one – Lorna revealed that I was adopted. Year two – my adoptive parents and my real father fought over me. Year three – work. Work work work. Headmaster Morningstar had kept his word. No Yule Ball, because parties and celebrations were forbidden. No one got to see their family. Also, yes, practice. He sent us reaping alongside our mentors. He was my mentor, as well as Francis’s and Merrit’s, so he came reaping with us, calling it a vacation. Apparently, he needed a break from the Academy and his headmastery duties, and reaping the souls of the tortured relaxed him.

I was still the only student who knew how to teleport without a teleportation pin. He’d given everyone their pins back, but they all knew not to step outside the boundaries that had been traced for them. The pins were tracked, and if Morningstar didn’t check the locations every day, he checked them at least once a week, for sure. Crassus was off duty, so at least there was that. I didn’t have to see his ugly Unseelie face for a while.

Okay, okay. Crassus was not ugly. He wasn’t the handsomest fellow, either, but he was decent looking. And I didn’t hate him, even though he made my life a living hell. It was his job. He got paid for it. It was the way of the Unseelie. Sometimes I wondered how far the Unseelie were willing to go if they were paid the right price. They were soldiers, and soldiers could be turned into assassins, right? Better not think about it…

But I was thinking about it, as dark and unsettling as it was. And I was thinking about other dark things, too. Reaping could do that to someone who wasn’t yet ready to reap every day, all day, and sometimes all night, too. I hadn’t yet graduated. I wasn’t an official Grim Reaper. And what sucked even more was that we were one hundred students who were spending their winter vacation running from one place to another, to Hell and back, then to Heaven to reap the souls of those whose time had come. One hundred. And of those one hundred, only twenty-two would be chosen to replace the old generation. Which meant… Ugh! Which meant that we weren’t all meant to do this! We weren’t all meant to separate souls from bodies!

Maybe I wasn’t meant to do it…

No. I was the most talented student the Academy had ever had the privilege to train. I was a natural. No, I was going to become a Grim Reaper for sure. No doubt about it. I was Mila Morningstar.

Then why did I feel like… Like I was crumbling. Falling apart. I was… disintegrating. Piece by piece, until there was nothing left of me, until I couldn’t recognize myself anymore. Because I wasn’t me. I wasn’t Mila. I wasn’t Mila Morningstar, and I wasn’t invincible. I was tired. So tired.

I’d gone through the same shit last summer, when my father had sent me to reap in his place to keep me away from GC and Pazuzu. I’d started cutting, then I’d turned to tattoos, so I wouldn’t cut anymore. They were fancier, too. Fancier than deep, white, wrinkled scars. But I couldn’t get my fix this time. Not with Valentine watching over my shoulder, acting like he was my goddamn shadow because he cared about me. Bullshit. He wanted me broken and weak. He could see that I was hurting, that the pressure and the stress were too much, that I needed a break, I needed space, I needed to breathe. He could see that I was suffocating, and he kept pushing and pushing. When Francis and Merrit took a few hours off, I wasn’t allowed to. But I didn’t say a word. I didn’t complain, I didn’t cry, I didn’t even allow myself to think about it. Because if I thought about it – about the pain, screams, tears, blood, guts, scars, tats, about about about… GC, Paz… how much I needed them to hold me hold me hold me… about Sariel and his ripped wings… about about… Francis – at least he was there, at least he saw me, at least he looked at me and his eyes told me to hang in there, just hang in there one more day, one more night… Because. Because if I thought about it, he would see it on my face. He would see it in my eyes. He would see it in the thin line of my lips as my jaw clenched and my teeth grit. He would see it in the twitch of my fingers as I held my scythe when it glowed red red red. He would…

“Mila, are you okay?”

Francis took my hand and squeezed it firmly. I looked at him, but for a second, my eyes didn’t focus.

“Yes, of course.”

“Mila, look at me.”

“I am… looking at you.”

“You’re not.” He placed his hands on my face, and my frozen cheeks sucked in the warmth of his palms. We were somewhere in Alaska. “Hey.”

I blinked, and there he was. Francis Saint-Germain. Warm, kind, alive. No, not alive. I had no idea what he was – he’d never told me, – but he was there, and that mattered. He was there, and he was pulling me back to the surface.

“I see you.”

He smiled. “Yes. Yes, you do. And I see you. Are you okay?”

“No. But I’m going to be.”

“It’s the last day, Mila.”

“Is it?” My heart thumped in my chest, and that was when I realized I still had it. A heart. I had a heart, and it beat. This was the last day, and I was still here. I’d survived.

“We’re teleporting to the Academy at midnight.”

“We are?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

“Then, you are okay?”

“I am now. Thanks.”

“Okay. Because I thought I’d lost you there for a second.”

I looked into his mo

ssy green eyes for a long minute, and when I felt like I was grounded enough, like my scattered thoughts had stitched back together, I traced the sharp edges of his face with my eyes, the tip of his straight, noble nose, the curve of his plump, tasty lips… He must be tasty. Without wanting to or having planned to, I lifted myself on my toes. My lids fluttered, unsure whether they were supposed to stay open or shut, and my lips sought his.

“Mila,” he whispered. And I drank in my own name coming off his gorgeous lips. “You don’t want to…”