“No more light magic,” he warned.

I nodded. “I promise.” It would be black whips and neckties from here on out in every fight. I just wanted to see Lincoln. Those blue eyes, that dark hair…

Lucifer stood, seemingly staring off into space. “When your lover boy is in that trailer, I can’t see him—Raphael has the school locked up to scrying—but you’re in luck. He’s not there.”

The trailer? Didn’t he mean the apartment, where he lived with my mom?

I’d deal with that information later. In that moment, I just wanted to see him.

The wall lit up with a scene. It was a dark parking lot, and under the streetlamp, slumped against a brick wall, was the love of my life.

“Lincoln!” I sobbed, knowing he couldn’t hear me.

He was hunched over, holding an empty bottle of liquor.

“Grey!” Noah’s voice cut through the night.

Lincoln looked up as the Celestial walked into view.

“You gotta stop doing this, man.” Noah bent down and tried to haul Lincoln to stand.

When he did, Lincoln dropped the bottle, which exposed his arm.

A sob left my throat when I saw the scars on his wrists.

“No!” I cried out, punching the ground.

Lucifer simply looked down at me, as if I were a circus animal doing a trick.

“I just let him take her!” Lincoln slurred. “She was right in front of me and—”

Noah reached out and squeezed Lincoln’s shoulder. “Man, we were all there. There was nothing any of us could’ve done. She would want you to move on. You can’t go on like this.”

Lincoln looked up into his best friend’s eyes, a fierceness flashing in his own. “I can’t go on without her. She was my family.”

Was.

Noah’s eyes grew misty. “I’m your family too, bro, and I’m still here.”

The edges of the scene started to fade away, and panic gripped me.

“No, please! Just a little more?” I pled desperately.

Lucifer ignored my cries, and dissolved the scene while I burst into a puddle of tears.

“Raksha!” the Dark Prince bellowed.

The double doors swung open and Raksha scooped me up, ignoring my sobs as she sat me in my wheelchair.

“Keep her on the medications for a week, then wean her off,” Lucy ordered. “We’ll see if she can behave herself then.”

I couldn’t stop sobbing. Those scars on Lincoln’s wrists, the fact that he’d try to take his own life, it tore me into a thousand pieces, and every piece was still madly in love with him.

When we reached my room, Raksha wheeled me inside before shutting the doors, and crouching in front of me. Leaning in, she grabbed both sides of my face and put her lips to my ear.

“I was you once. In order to survive here, you have to play the bad girl. The Dark Prince wants to surround himself with the most evil beings alive. He doesn’t trust good or light, so you need to find that darkness. That darkness is what’s going to get you out of here alive.”

I didn’t need to be told twice. Letting go right then and there, I immersed myself inside of the rage and hate that were simmering in my soul.

Chapter Ten

The next two weeks passed slowly. I was like a shell of a human. I felt numb, and I’d completely accepted my fate.

After a week of me being back on the drugs, the Dark Prince finally allowed me to be weaned off. I was able to talk to Sera again, but it didn’t feel the same; I gained no happiness from it. I’d fallen into a deep depression, where nothing mattered anymore, and I didn’t care whether I lived or died. I’d started my walks back up again with Raksha to the red door. I ate meals with the demons and demon gifted, and I spent a lot of time alone in my room, just staring at the wall.

Raksha had become my only saving grace. She brought me special snacks or desserts, and she tried to visit me in my room, and have conversations so I wasn’t alone all the time. She spoke to me about her time at Tainted Academy, about her wife, Elodie, and their son. I considered her a friend. She and Sera were my only friends in the world.

One day, when we were walking back from the red door, she side-eyed me, clutching the letter her wife had sent her.

“You’ve been different these past few weeks,” she stated.

She mentioned that a lot.

I just nodded, too deep in the depression to explain my feelings. Nothing mattered and everything hurt, yet I couldn’t feel anything.

She stopped me in the long, lonely hallway, and forced my chin up so I was looking at her.

“I asked my wife to do me a favor, to bring you something that would repay the kindness of healing our son.” She opened the letter, and my heart started to hammer in my chest.

For the first time in weeks, I felt something. Anxiety, excitement, trepidation.

‘What is it?’ Sera asked.

‘I don’t know yet.’

Maybe it was a letter from Shea or Lincoln. I would faint if she’d told them I was still alive.

“Now, I couldn’t get you a letter because… well, you know. But I got this.” She thrust two small photos in my hand. A sob lodged in my throat when I saw the images.

My thumb brushed over the picture of Lincoln in his academy uniform, my heart beating wildly in my chest. I’d forgotten how handsome he was. He looked younger in the photo, but still like my Lincoln.

Switching to the other photo, I smiled as tears dripped out of my eyes, and fell onto my shirt. Shea’s school picture. Her brown curls, that sassy smile.

Raksha had given me a great gift. My depression burst like a balloon, and suddenly a yearning, a flaming desire to leave this place and reunite with my family flooded through me.

“Thank you, Raksha,” I managed to croak.

She was watching me with a small smile of her own. “My wife hacked the school admissions website and was able to get their ID card photos. I thought it might bring you some happiness.”

I nodded, caressing the pictures like they were made of gold. “It has.”

“Now hide them. I could get into a lot of trouble for that,” she ordered, returning to her snippy self.

“Of course.” I tucked them into my pocket, following Raksha down the hall with a new bounce in my step.

‘I’m going to kill the Dark Prince and get the hell out of here,’ I declared to Sera. If I died while trying, then that was just the price I was going to have to pay. I had to try.

‘Oh it’s about bloody time you said that!’

I frowned. ‘Since when do you say ‘bloody’?’

‘Since now.’

I’d had a lot of time to think in my weeks of drugged bed rest, and one thing was for certain: my light magic not only scared the Devil, but it had hurt him. It physically hurt him. There was nothing that made me happier than knowing I had the ability to cause harm to that man.

“You’re training with the group again for the first time today,” Raksha announced.

Good.

I hadn’t trained with the group since my incident with the Dark Prince. Now I was being led into the training room again and all eyes were on me.

This is where I killed the Brimstone demon. This is where I made an oath to use only my light magic. And this is where I’m going to unleash my dark magic on all of them, just like Lucy wants.

“Hello, Brielle. So nice of you to join us today,” the Prince of Darkness trilled.

I gave him a glum smile. Knowing my two secret photos were stashed safely under my mattress, having that secret, gave me power. It made me feel like I had something over him.

“Good afternoon, sir,” I offered.

He pointed to the dark witch we always ate breakfast with, Raven. “Why don’t you face off with Brielle. I want to see how her powers are doing since her… reeducation.”

Reeducation. He attacked my mother, threatened to kill my family, and drugged me. Nice freaking reeducation.

I glared at both him and my opponent, pulling on that anger, and letting it ignite my powers. It pulsed through my veins, until my dark magic burst out from just below the surface, flooding out of my palms and turned into a dark whip. The thick rope erupted from my hand, and flowed in a serpent-like manner toward the ground.

The Dark Prince sighed contentedly. “Yes.”

I met the gaze of the angry Dark Mage, preparing myself for her magic. What I didn’t prepare for was the boot that slammed into my back.

“Look out!” Raksha called out too late.

The heavy boot crashed between my shoulder blades and shoved me down, face first onto the ground. Thrusting my hands out to break my fall, my whip fizzled into nothing. I caught myself before face-planting, but it gave the Dark Mage time to ready a spell.

Recovering quickly, my wings snapped out behind me, and with two pumps I was standing again. Peering over my shoulder, I saw an Abrus demon had been the one to kick me.

Jerk.

When I turned back around to face the Dark Mage, I saw her spell hurtling through the air. Leaning my body to the right, I dove out of the way, just barely missing getting whacked in the head with an angry red ball.

“Show her what you can do!” Lucifer shouted at me.

Screw you, Dad! I wanted to shout back. If my real father were here, he’d probably counsel me on taking the high road.

Not today.

With a guttural scream, I produced a dark magic blob from my throat. It launched across the open space, and wrapped itself around her neck. She reached up, clawing at it frantically, her eyes bugging out, mouth turned down in panic. That panic had me feeling pity for her, even when I didn’t want to feel it.

I hated this. I hated knowing we were all prisoners down here, only fighting because we were scared of what Lucy, douchebag of the century, would think or do to our loved ones. I hated it, but I was also a survivor. If nothing else, this place had taught me that. So I’d do what needed to be done, to get the hell out of here with my limbs attached, and no drug addiction.

Reaching down, I picked up a small throwing knife.

The Dark Mage had ceased her panic, and was now throwing spell after spell at the necktie, trying to regain her breath. I wouldn’t let her die, but I wanted her to hurt. I wanted her to learn not to mess with me in the future. I was pretty sure she was sleeping with the Abrus demon who’d kicked me, and I didn’t need any shit from either of them while I was here.

I needed them to fear me. Them, and everyone else now present.

Finally, she was able to use her magic to make the necktie fall away. As she gasped for air, she set her sights on me again. Just as her eyes met mine, I threw the knife and hit my intended target. It sank into her left shoulder, knocking her backward and pulling her attention away from me.

I grinned.

“All right, now why don’t you jump in,” Lucifer commanded to the Abrus demon.

Wait, what? Both of them?

I spun.

The Abrus demon was grinning, a ball of black bees spinning in his hands.

“And you too,” the Dark Prince said to a Snakeroot demon.