Jupiter Gate by Mana Sol

Author:Mana Sol [Sol, Mana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Independent
Published: 2021-02-26T22:00:00+00:00

21

I didn’t see him at all until Monday after I released myself from my self-imposed lockdown. But even then I dedicated greater effort than usual in ignoring Zedekiel the entire following week. It was harder in the mornings with the tiny classes where everyone sat within feet of everyone else and there was nowhere to look but at the professor or each other, but he seemed no more eager for confrontation than I was.

A relief, because I didn’t think I could handle looking him in the eye when I could still hear his voice echoing in my memory. Sensitive. I scowled and clenched my hand into a white-knuckled fist, ruining the miniature array I’d just etched above my paper while following along with Professor Pompey’s lecture. God, this couldn’t be happening to me. Annoying, infuriating, unforgivable…But it was, and worst of all was the fresh silvery handprint stamped on my wrist. I’d been so intent on getting out what I wanted to spit in his face last weekend that I’d forgotten all about avoiding any further Nephilim marks, and now it was worse than before. Not only was my entire wrist a shining silver, my palm and inner curve of my fingers glowing streaks as well. I didn’t want to think back too hard on the incident, but his hand must have wandered up at some point. It almost looked like we’d held hands, a thought that made my stomach turn inside out. If I thought I could get away with it, I would stand up from my chair this second and walk over to put my fist in his mouth.

And of course, Addy had noticed, too, which was bad enough, but then she had dragged Genie into it. Thankfully, they had both promptly concluded without my input that the Nephilim marks had come from when I’d tried to fight Zedekiel off.

“That asshole,” Addy had seethed. “I’ll give him a different kind of shiner. Next time, I’ll be ready. Black his eye and make him walk around explaining how a human popped him in the face. I was so close, so close, you don’t even know.”

I’d let them think what they wanted, and I didn’t bother cautioning them against trying too hard this coming weekend when we had to go meet him again. He’d been playing with us last Saturday and nothing more. If we truly wanted to leave a dent, we had to fight smarter, and until we could do it without utterly embarrassing ourselves, we were going to keep getting mauled behind the Academy at Zedekiel’s hands.

We weren’t even good enough to fight in the Arena. I’d gathered as much when I stopped by the amphitheater. These students - they were pompous and insufferable, but they were good at it. Fighting. I saw two other Thaumaturgists out of the bunch in the Form above me, and they didn’t have a scratch on them.

We’d done it wrong. All wrong. Zedekiel had been right to warn me when he came into the infirmary; he hadn’t merely been gloating.

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