Fallen University: Year Two

Maybe it was us. Maybe we didn’t grab the right stones. Maybe they messed up the chants or the herbs or—

“Piper.” Jayce pulled my hand away from my mouth again and held it in his, closing both of his large palms around my smaller one.. He turned me toward him and looked deep into my eyes. “We’re going to get him back.”

“When? Now?” My face was wet with tears, but I couldn’t even feel myself crying. “Because it has to be now, Jayce. Gavriel will shred him! And why aren’t those stupid rocks working?”

Shen turned toward me and blinked. “What do you mean, dear?”

“Why aren’t they transporting us back to earth? What’s wrong?”

As I asked the question, I realized with a start that the pounding had stopped.

How long ago had it stopped?

My eyes went wide and my heart felt like a giant ball of shattered glass in my chest. I had left Xero in the underworld. I was home. He wasn’t. I pressed my hands to my chest to make the shattering stop. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see for the tears.

No. This isn’t possible. It can’t be happening.

I couldn’t have abandoned my Xero in the underworld.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

I wiped the tears from my face and stood up straight.

“I have to go back,” I said as loudly and clearly as I could.

Hannah stared at me in horror. Toland pressed his lips together in a thin, disapproving line. Shen laughed. “You’ve gone mad. What on earth would you want to do that for?”

“Did you notice that someone is missing?” My voice was dangerously loud and unsteady. “Where’s Xero, huh? Where’s Xero?”

My voice cracked on his name, and I bit my lip until I could taste blood, willing myself not to fly to pieces in front of all of them.

Shen gave me a very maternal smile and patted my arm. “Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.”

“We have to coordinate with the Custodians,” Toland said gently. “And we all need debriefings. This is unprecedented, utterly unprecedented.”

“I literally do not give one single shit about your precedent,” I enunciated. “Xero saved all of us. And now he is trapped down there.”

“A very noble man,” Toland said solemnly. “Come now, upstairs. So much to do.”

I was going to explode. Wild-eyed, I looked from Jayce to Kai to Kingston, feeling lost and somehow alone even with them near me. I needed Xero just as much as I needed any of them. I had always felt a little bit responsible for him, and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was directly responsible for his current situation. He had thrown himself at Gavriel to protect me. He had saved me.

Now he needed me to save him.

The administrators seemed to have written him off as an unavoidable casualty. Every time I spoke his name out loud, all they gave me were stupid platitudes and empty condolences.

I didn’t want their pity. I wanted them to tell me how to get back to the underworld so I could get my man back. But they just ushered me and my three other bond mates into Toland’s office and had us sit down

.

“Now then, first things first.” The headmaster sat behind his desk and picked up his phone. He held it to his ear tentatively, as if he had done that same thing hundreds of times in the last year, just hoping for a dial tone against all logic. When the dial tone came through, he let out a massive sigh. A smile spread across his face.

I hated him in that moment, despised him for being happy about anything when the entire world was crumbling, falling apart into nothing. Didn’t he see that?

Seeming unaware of my glare burning into his skin, he dialed a number and sat up straighter when someone answered on the other end.

“Dru, Toland.” A pause. “Yes, we are back where we belong. If you will—oh, well then, yes, of course.” Another pause, this one longer. “I see. Yes, we’ll see you soon.”

He hung up, his face going a little pale.