Bloodline Diplomacy: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 3), Lan Chan [best way to read an ebook .TXT] 📗

through the archway of the big white building where they always seemed to take Nanna away from me. As we passed under the archway, the sweep of a cloak had my head turning. I almost dropped to my knees at the sight of Raphael.

Kai lowered his head. “My Lord.”

Raphael nodded. I knew I should do the same, but the anticipation of what was to come had made me lethargic. My heart was pounding erratically in my chest.

“There is no need for this,” Raphael said.

“I want to see her.”

He blocked my path with his enormous arm. Kai stepped to the side. I knew he would throw himself at any threat that came at me, but he wasn’t going to defy the deity whose blood he had inherited. I wanted to kick him.

“Alessia. There’s no need to disturb her. I can give you the answers you seek.”

He wasn’t the one I was furious with. That pleasure belonged to one of his brothers.

You know, don’t you? I snarled at Azrael. There was silence in my mind. My whole body must have tightened because I heard something crack.

Raphael knelt down beside me. His blue eyes were ringed with concern. The stabbing in my gut eased. “There are things we cannot do,” he said. “So much of what we can reveal would make your lives more difficult.”

I clenched my mouth shut because I didn’t want to say anything contrary.

“I’m sorry.” His apology cracked something inside of me. The tears I’d been trying to suppress overflowed. Through my blurry eyes, I saw Kai step towards me, but I shook my head and swiped at my face.

“Just tell me once and for all. Is she my grandmother?”

Raphael sighed. “No.”

I swallowed hard. My pulse was pounding in my ears. I wasn’t sure how long I stayed that way, but the light outside was fading. When my tears eventually subsided, Raphael patted my hair before he teleported away.

“Blue,” Kai finally said. I continued to sit and stare.

“What if I free her and she still doesn’t know who I am?” I let the fear out into the world. “What if everything is a lie?”

He held me against his chest. “The woman I’ve come to know inside Seraphina loves bugs,” he said. “How could she not love you?” I knew exactly how. I wasn’t particularly likeable. I had so many childhood memories in which I’d stubbornly refused to do as she asked. Back then she had to love me because she was my grandmother. What about now?

“Maybe I shouldn’t mess around with her binding.” It was a statement borne of terror. Kai understood that and didn’t say a word. If Nanna never regained her memories then she would never remember I wasn’t her blood. So then who was I? Could I condemn her to being trapped because I was selfish? I balled my fists.

When I got myself under control, Kai teleported us back to the soul gates, I rattled the bars with my hands. “Teach me to unbind her and I’ll join you.”

The guy gave me another sardonic smile. If he thought he was charming in any way, he had another thing coming. After a year of living with supernaturals, human charm did nothing for me.

“We had a feeling you would want to know,” he said. Did he want a medal? It wasn’t exactly a difficult prediction to make.

“We should discuss the terms of your stay,” the blonde woman said. “If nothing else, the things you can do are dangerous. You’re not stable. You could endanger a lot of people.”

She looked at Jacqueline for the first time. “Isn’t that what you’ve been afraid of this whole time? You took her in because you couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her. You couldn’t take the risk of exposing her to your world.”

“Please don’t put words in my mouth,” Jacqueline corrected.

Except that was exactly the reason why Bloodline Academy had taken me. I couldn’t help staring into Kai’s impassive face. He had locked me up after our first encounter and refused to let me out based on the fact that I was an unknown quantity.

“She’s not going to do anything like that,” Sophie said. She put her arm around me. “And you can stop trying to scare her.”

I leaned into her. The short-haired woman picked at her stubby nails. “We’re not trying to scare her. But she can’t just be at large any longer. She’s Sisterhood. She needs to be brought into the fold.”

This was starting to sound more cultish by the second. “I’m so not going to do anything just because you say I have to.”

“We’re not saying you have to, sweetheart,” the blonde woman said. “But you’ve been...persuaded into a line of thinking. Give us a chance to convince you otherwise.” She was everything Nanna wasn’t. Prim. Narcissistic, and worse of all, cajoling. If Nanna wanted something, she came out with it, and if I didn’t like it then tough luck.

“How can she decide if she wants to go here if you won’t even let her through the door?” Mani asked. He was massaging his quads. They had been standing around for a while.

“Alessia can come in at any time,” the short-haired woman said. “The rest of you are a different story. Why you felt like you could take it upon yourselves to trespass on our land is questionable.”

“It was either we came with her or she didn’t come at all,” Kai said. “Take your pick.”

The woman eyed him. Her cheek quivered. That’s right. Supernatural or not, he had that effect on people in general and red-blooded women in particular.

Jacqueline poked Kai in the ribs. He was trying very hard not to just barge into Terran Academy. The adults conferred. Sophie and I stood apart. We’d spent a lot of time together in the past year.

I knew some of the supernaturals possessed telepathy, but I would bet I could work out exactly what Sophie was thinking right now.

She had a tendency to try and rationalise things so that she could