Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 99935 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99935 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
“I’ve never been so humiliated in my life,” I cried, skidding to a stop before the entrance to the staircase. Above my head, music pounded, people shouted, and fights broke out. “What is with this place!”
“It’s hell, human,” she hissed. “You better enjoy how horrible and small you feel right now, because it’s about to get a lot worse.”
If there was a retort to that, I didn’t know what it was.
I took the stairs two at a time, clinging to the walls. I was not interested in drawing any more attention to myself than I already had.
I hit the top of the landing and was partially relieved that no one was in the hallway. All the noise was coming from the other side of the doors, but in a few minutes, I’d be on the other side of one of those doors, and with all the shouting, banging, and thudding roaring through the wood... all I could do was hope for a single.
Lifting up my bra, I squinted at the room number etched into the key. “Okay, 201... 201... 201...” I walked the length of the hall, my gaze pinging from door to door. “I’m going to find some bedsheets, then a shower. After I clean up, I’ll start searching for Dora,” I whispered.
I reached the end of the hall and found that it split, leading opposite directions to opposite staircases. “Sabrina, if you can smell demons, then you smell humans?”
“Yes.”
“That’s perfect,” I cried, perking up. “That means all you have to do is—”
“Understand thisss, human,” she sliced off. “You are undertaking an impossible task, and there is nothing I or Lord Lucifer can do to make it less so. The creatures who took her will have taken pains to hide your nestmate and her scent from all who do not know her—which is everyone in this realm. As I said, glamours and cunnings only work on the ignorant, so if you could scent her, you’d find her.
“But you can’t,” she dropped. “Do not expect me to do what you cannot do, human. If you wanted miracles, you should’ve gone up, not down.”
I fell quiet.
We had nothing more to say to each other as I turned left, found myself in the three hundreds, turned back the way I came, and then ascended the right staircase. Room 201 loomed in front of me, beckoning me inside. Carefully, I inserted the key and walked in.
My gasp echoed through the manor.
Running back out, I looked up and down the dark, graffitied hallway of ripped wallpaper, and strewn trash—making sure I was still in the right place.
Darting back into the dorm, my jaw dropped all over again. It was magnificent— No, magnificent wasn’t the word. I’d finally left the mansion, and found the palace.
Gold-inlay marble spread out from beneath my bare feet, glittering under the roaring firelight. Not just from the crystal and gold chandelier and candelabra, but also from the gold-kissed fireplace. The surround boasted roaring hellhound heads on either side, and a grinning demon face beneath the mantel—all carved out of gold.
I moved further inside, my breath stealing away. Even Sabrina was silent beholding the carved balustrade that separated the living area from the resting space. On the other side of us, a massive canopy bed draped in purple and gold-embroidered curtains welcomed me into a soft, satin paradise. Above it all, the fresco painted on the ceiling bore down on me.
I tipped my head back, spinning as I took in the bloody, horrific battle scene. Everywhere above me, demons were eaten, gored, decapitated, or killing on a battlefield, and as much as it should’ve unsettled me to have that hanging over my head, all I could see was the exquisite attention to detail from the rage in their burning eyes, to the detail on the weapons. I didn’t know if you could say that love went into a depiction so grisly, but artistry most certainly did.
Something moved out of the corner of my eye.
Spinning around, I cried out as a pile of luggage popped out of thin air and landed on the plush hearth rug beside the fireplace.
“What’s this?”
“Your things,” Sabrina replied. “Clothes, books, shoes, money. You demanded Lord Lucifer provide you with everything you’d need to survive within these walls. He has done so.”
“I’d say so.” I goggled at the massive pile on the rug. Looked like I wouldn’t want for anything—which was lucky because for a terrible minute there, I thought I’d have to survive in this place with nothing but my panties and a bra covered in demon pee. “Wow, it’s amazing in here. Are all the dorms like this?”
“This is my first time in the academy, sssame as you, human. But I doubt it very much,” she confessed. “Most likely, only a few rooms are a similar shrine to overindulgence. That would be by design. It gives you all something else to fight and kill each other over.”