Saving Year Three (Grim Reaper Academy 3)

“How dare you call me that when you tried to kill me? And, you know what? Since I’ve been at Grim Reaper Academy, many people have tried to kill me. I fought for my life, sucked it up, and moved on. I even forgave one of them. But you… you tried to decapitate me when I was two years old. A toddler! When I couldn’t protect myself, when I didn’t even know what was happening. That’s a new kind of low. Even for you.”

He sighed, jaw clenched and lips pursed. He stood up and reached for his scythe but didn’t round the desk to meet me in my anger. Did he think a piece of wood would protect him?

Shit. I forgot my scythe. I was unarmed. Okay, maybe I hadn’t thought this through.

“You’re new at this dream traveling thing, but I’m proud of your progress. You got some things wrong, though. Don’t worry, I got them wrong too the first time. Let’s go through what you said you discovered. One, parallel universes. Fascinating, right? A whole bunch of other worlds out there, and only us, dream jumpers, can visit them. Completely inaccessible to the less fortunate. Only humans can dream. Well, humans and hybrids. And of all these people who can dream, very few have the ability to be in two places at the same time. In two dimensions at the same time. When I first came to find you, I didn’t know all this. I thought what I saw in my dreams was the past and the future. And I thought that was how prophecies were born. Which is true, by the way. It is the way they are born. But they’re not real, you see? They’re not actual prophecies. Prophecies do not exist. Or, better yet, they are lies.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “I don’t follow.”

“If dream travelers can’t see the future, and what they see is just a parallel world where things are similar but slightly different, then it means that whatever they see doesn’t have to necessarily happen in their own world. After you were born, I came across one of these timelines. In it, I was dead, retired by my own daughter when I’d refused to surrender my scythe and my career. I was an inexperienced dream traveler back then, just like you are now, and I believed that would happen in the future if I didn’t stop it from happening. I didn’t come up with the prophecy, mind you, I just saw what other travelers had probably glimpsed too, because even before I saw it, the word was already out there, in the supernatural community. My own dream only confirmed it. That was when I sought you out and tried to kill you. That was when my scythe broke.”

“You don’t regret it one bit…”

“No,” he said in a cold voice. “Because I still believe you’re going to be my undoing.”

I nodded. “You got that right.” Shit shit shit. Why did I leave my goddamn scythe in my room? Maybe I could subtly ask Corri to bring it? She could’ve done it with a snap of her fingers.

“Mila, you’ve been clearly working against me this past year. May I ask you something? How do you think you’ll retire me?”

I crossed my arms over my chest. Was he trying to intimidate me?

“Year three is almost over. We’ll graduate, and twenty-two of us will be chosen as the next Grim Reapers. Everyone knows by now that I will take your place. I’m meant to. So, if you don’t retire willingly, I will…”

“Kill me with your scythe?”

I cocked an eyebrow. “You think I’m not good enough of a fighter to do it? I trained with an Unseelie soldier last semester.”

“Oh, it’s not that. You’re a brilliant fighter. Another reason why I’m proud of you.”

I chuckled sarcastically. He kept saying those words… That he was proud of me.

“But if I can’t kill you with my scythe because it literally breaks like glass the second it touches you, how do you think you’ll be able to kill me with yours?”

My blood froze.

He grinned.

“That’s right, daughter. It’s not about the weapon itself, it’s about who wields it. You’re blood of my blood. I can’t hurt you. I don’t know why… It’s just an unwritten rule, I suppose. The same applies to you.”

Well, crap. That tiny, little detail hadn’t been in the prophecy that was actually not a prophecy but a creative, highly manipulative, misunderstood gibberish of a lie. And I wasn’t sure my own thoughts made sense anymore.

“However.” He took a step back, pulled a drawer open, and took out what looked like a pretty heavy leather baggie-thing. He undid the knot and turned it upside down. A stream of precious stones that sparkled green, blue, red, pink, and black poured onto his desk. “If I were to hire someone to end your life for me… I wonder if it might work.”

My eyes went as wide as saucers. Any wider, and they would’ve popped out of my sockets. Slowly, without taking my eyes off him, I started walking backwards. My shoulder blades hit the door, and my hand tried to find the doorknob. I was shaking so badly that I failed to grasp it…

Corri started flying all over the place, her wings making that incessant buzzing buzz buzz that I actually found soothing for the first time in my life.

“Mistress…”

Valentine cut her off my grabbing the bell on his desk and ringing it three times. Poof! Corri was in the Blank.

Yeah. He had a bell just like mine.

Was I trapped just now? I felt like I was trapped. My hand found the doorknob. Good. But why wasn’t I turning it? Why wasn’t I running? I guessed it was because I didn’t believe he would actually do it. I didn’t believe my own father, as shitty as he was, would give the order, and my Unseelie bodyguard, who’d been my friend for a second in semester one, would carry it out.

I’d stormed into his office and now I was going to run? I was either very brave, or very stupid.

Morningstar looked at Crassus, and Crassus looked at the gems.