Phoenix Academy - Lucy Auburn Page 0,48

and that good will arise to fight evil wherever it flourishes.

Walking out onto the campus, I'm tempted by nature so much that I decide to take my shoes off and dig my feet into the bare grass. It's cool and slightly damp from dew; morning is still hours away, and a light mist hangs in the air. My breath doesn't quite fog in front of me, but it'll be winter again soon. So much time has passed that I can barely believe the world around me.

It was spring the last time I was here. Summer came and went without me in it. The campus has been rebuilt from multiple attacks, yet it still stands, ancient and new at the same time. More phoenix are born every day—and even more will be born now that I've undone what the mages did.

Magic flourishes.

And my heart keens for my sister.

Lizzy. Lizzy. Lizzy. That's what every beat of it speaks against my chest. Moving through the campus towards the wild back acreage, I find myself in the sparse woods where students throw parties and carve their initials into tree trunks, traditions the faculty turn a blind eye to in order to give everyone here a sense of normalcy.

My finger trail across the carved edge of a picnic table sitting in a small clearing. A box of bright red plastic cups sits beneath one of the benches. It makes me wonder if my life will ever be normal: Hennessy and off brand cola drunk together under moonlight, bad pop songs playing, boys with dumb names kissing me, and textbooks to study in the morning. Instead I have all that and an extra helping of Hell, feral magic, shifter maybe-boyfriends, and a not-dead sister to track down.

I hear noise in the woods.

Witch senses instinctively furling out, I feel the fuzzy shape of three sleeping bodies. Curious, I walk further into the woods, my eyes adjusting to the moonlight, bare feet nearly silent in the leaf litter and grass. I use a trick my mother taught me while hunting deer to sneak up on the sleeping students: shifting my weight to the balls of my feet, I step on tree roots and place my toes under the edges of leaves so my steps won't make any noise.

By the time I make my way to them, though, at least one is awake. Two eyes glow at me in the darkness, reflecting the light like an animal's. My heart does a start-stutter-start rhythm in my chest.

They're curled up together in the ankle-deep wild grasses, fireflies glowing around them, the sound of their snores animalistic and wild. One black panther—I'm pretty sure it's Xavier—is up and looking at me, but the other sleeps in a sprawl with his belly exposed, while the grey wolf has his nose buried in leaf litter.

Standing up and stretching, the black panther pads towards me. He shifts at the halfway point, and it's Xavier, just like I thought. With his braids loosely collected at the nape of his neck and dark grey pajama bottoms on, he looks like a different man than the one I'm used to seeing during the day. His bare chest is glazed in silver moonlight from above, his eyes glowing in the darkness, glasses nowhere to be seen.

"Ari." Voice soft, he cocks his head at me in curiosity. "Is something wrong?"

"No." I shake my head, heart pounding wildly despite the fact that I'm in no danger. I can't seem to quiet my pulse at all. "I just... was having trouble sleeping. So I came out here. And sensed you guys."

"We were having trouble sleeping too." His mouth quirks up in a little lopsided smile that takes my breath away. "It just seems so loud inside. The air conditioning and all those people sleeping nearby. Not to mention the smells. Especially because we dorm with a bunch of dudes. I miss sleeping in the meadow."

"I miss the meadow too," I confess, realizing belatedly that Xavier said he misses sleeping there, while I just miss it completely. "It was... peaceful. Even though it was all a lie. Is it messed up that I wish I could go back? Just every once and a while."

"It's kind of messed up," he tells me with a smile. "It was Hell, after all. But I get it. While we were there, I didn't have to worry about anything. None of my metaphorical demons haunted me, which is ironic in the extreme. Now, though..."

"Back to the real world."

"Exactly."