Nocticadia

by Keri Lake

I, Lilia Vespertine, was going to fucking Dracadia University.

He’s an asshole, the voice inside my head argued back. Don’t put too much into it. Yeah, he was. An exceptionally good-looking and smart asshole.

Without a doubt, Lilia Vespertine was going to be a massive headache. But she was my headache.

Relying on Conner was like praying for snow in Hell. As decent as the guy might’ve been, he just wasn’t cut out for dad shit.

Ungrateful little pricks who only saw her as a set of toned legs and pussy. They had no

idea the girl was brilliant and witty. Too damn smart for her age. Too damn beautiful to be seen as something so simple and entertaining.

I was drawn to her, for reasons I could neither justify nor understand. A realization that annoyed the shit out of me. She was an itch on my brain that I couldn’t scratch. The maddening shimmer in the corner of my eye during lecture that distracted my thoughts. The kind of girl who seduced with nothing more than a single glance. A bite of the lip.

Yes, a man. Not a boy. Not a classmate. My professor, whom I found myself thinking about far more than I should’ve.

“Stay out of trouble, Curious Moth,” he said, as he strode for the door. Curious Moth. A nickname. A fitting one, too, given the fact that I had no intentions of avoiding the flame.

“That is the tragedy of women, isn’t it? We deny ourselves beauty for the sake of misleading men.”

“The wealthy possess an insatiable appetite for the rare and priceless. They stare because you’re the only thing worth staring at.”

Calling her beautiful was like calling the sun lukewarm. She’d blazed like the hottest part of a flame in that dress. And fuck me, I’d felt the heat.

The world around us disappeared. The kiss began slow, a mere sampling, as he brushed his lips over mine. He grabbed either side of my face, pulling me closer, fully committing to the kiss, and a tingling deluge of excitement scattered across my skin. Some kisses were said to feel like fireworks. His felt like a slow-drip anesthetic, silently siphoning my senses, until all I could smell, taste, and feel was him.

“You’re a sickness inside of me that begs never to be cured. Infecting me with this unshakable craving for things I shouldn’t want.”

Bramwell was my moment. Even if he wanted nothing to do with me tomorrow and would cast me aside like leftovers, he was my greatest risk, and I needed to grab it by the balls and not let go.

“And because I’m a selfish prick who has to live with the fact that I cannot have you to myself, I’m going to ruin you so that any boy who comes after me will leave you deeply unsatisfied, and you’ll be left fucking your own fingers, desperate to remember the time you had your professor’s face between your legs.”

She was the warmth of the sun on a cold and rotting corpse. The first breath after a lifetime of death. How could I share an entire campus with

her, knowing she could fall in love at any moment with some inexperienced cad who wouldn’t have a clue what to do with a girl like her. The very thought sprouted cruel and vile schemes, like keeping her in one of the cells below. Caging her like one of my little moths.

“And if you think, for one second, I’m letting you jog around here in the dark in those tiny fucking shorts, looking like a midnight snack, you’ve grossly underestimated just how much of a prick I can be.”

“Let’s just call it what it was–one amazing night. One I hope you remember with the same relentless longing and anger and ache that I feel every time I look at you. It fucking hurts to know that I can’t have you, Lilia.

“There isn’t a sharp enough blade to carve you out of my head, Lilia. I’d have to tear out my own goddamn eyeballs to keep from noticing your every move. Who you talk to. Who you fucking kiss.”

“Jealousy is a callow schoolboy’s emotion that ends in hard feelings and bloody noses. What I feel for you, Miss Vespertine, would destroy lives.” Palm to my jaw, he kissed me hard and bit my lip to emphasize his point.

If Heaven existed, I'd found it in those ancient,

dark hallways, under cold misty skies with autumn's wet leaves sticking to the soles of my boots, in the scent of coffee and old books. And him. My moody and devilishly handsome professor.

“You can’t leave. I won’t let you. You hear me? I won’t let you fucking die. You are my most important thing, and I swear, if you don’t come out of this, I will fucking hunt you down in the afterlife.”

“You’re the fever in my veins,” he said

“An incurable madness I can’t shake.

“You don’t have to be scared. I will never hurt you, Lilia. In fact, I’ll rain hell on anyone who ever hurts you again.”

I loved him. Every cell, every fiber of my being couldn’t hide that truth. Even if I wasn’t bold enough to say it or brave enough to risk the universe stealing it away from me, the words were as real as my fears.

“That I would kill for you without a beat of hesitation, or remorse. And yet, at the same time, I could be reduced to nothing more than a pile of ash without you. I’m weak for you, Lilia.”

I hadn’t come to Dracadia with any notion of falling in love with my professor, or Death, as some had referred to him. Perhaps that was the nature of the world, to take so cruelly, then swoop in and blindside us when we least expected it.

He taught me passion and courage, and to seize what I wanted by the teeth. And in return, I taught him to feel again.