“That’s the great thing about being a human, Prince Anatole, heir to the star throne or whatever you are, I’m a human. Not a dog. I don’t have to take orders from anyone. Not even you.”
Confident steps carried her towards the castle, and white-hot rage colored Ariedre’s face. She raised her left hand, the hand she usually used to conduct magic, pulling back her sleeve.
“Watch this. I’m going to let her know what happens when she defies you, your highness—”
“No. Don’t.”
I’d never said a word to protect a human before. I don’t know what possessed me to say it in that moment. But there was no taking it back once it was spoken. Rage turned to shock as Ariedre returned to me, throwing her spindly body against me, all bones and skin and wide, overly dramatic eyes.
“Why not? She deserves it.”
“...I want to deal with her. Personally.”
Chapter Five
Carolyn
That night, when I finally got back to my room and crawled under the covers, desperately wishing that human technology worked in this stupid, magical world so I could drown out my sorrows with some music, I didn’t let myself cry. I’d told Prince Anatole that I didn’t care what he thought, and I wasn’t going to make a liar out of myself just because he’d let the Supermodel Elf Number One call me a thing.
And I wasn’t going to think about how close we’d come to kissing. And I definitely, not in a hundred million years was going to think about the way my heart kind of sped up every time I thought about the way he looked in the moonlight, like some angel who’d descended just to talk to me.
He wasn’t an angel. He was a demon in elf prince’s clothing. He wasn’t worth my tears. Or any more of my attention, for that matter.
I slept that night without dreaming—-not of him, not of anything—and when I woke, groggy and miserable the next morning, I barely even thought of him.
Mostly because, when I woke up the next morning, Kyra was in my bedroom, decked out in a frilly bathrobe dusted at the collars and cuffs with pink-dyed feathers, organizing an entirely new wardrobe for me.
“More gifts?” I asked, still blinking through the sleep in my eyes. She squealed, and the sunlight pouring through my windows glinted off of her perfectly white teeth, including the unbelievably sharp canines that might have looked terrifying on anyone else, but looked perfectly adorable on her.
“Oh, I hope you don’t mind. I woke up about three hours ago and thought I’d see the tailoring witch about making you up some things. The woman is absolutely magic with a wand and fabric.”
“Well, I should hope so if she’s the tailoring witch.”
Kyra didn’t reply to my little joke. She was too busy hanging up more clothes than I’d ever owned in my entire life up from various bookcase shelves. I shrank back in my bed, pressing my body against the headboard instinctively. I wasn’t used to gifts, to attention, to feeling like someone wanted the best for me. A lifetime of learned cynicism told me that this was a trick, just like when my mother used to give me a popsicle as a child only to watch and wait until even the slightest drop spilled on my hands, just so she would have an excuse to hit me.
“Is everything alright?” Kyra asked, sensing my distress. Was that something pixies could do? I wasn’t sure, but she definitely seemed in tune with people’s vibes or energies or whatever. “Because if you don’t like something, we can change it. Send it back or alter the color or—”
“Sorry,” I said, out of force of habit. “It’s just that I’m not used to someone being so nice to me. I thought I was going to wear ratty t-shirts and jeans forever.”
And after last night, with my run-in with Prince Asshole and his supermodel girlfriend, I thought everyone in this place was going to hate me forever, but I wasn’t going to confess that just yet. For a moment, Kyra said nothing, just clung to the deep blue sundress in her arms, one that I couldn’t imagine wearing out of the room if the temperature outside now was anything like it had been last night, but a beautiful dress all the same. She drew in a shaky breath.
“I know that you have been through a lot. I mean, I don’t know what you’ve been through, but I can tell that you aren’t running towards something here in Velkin. You’re running away from something back on Earth.”
“Are Pixies mind-readers?” I asked, letting out a slight laugh. Her words cut deep, right to the heart of me.
“We all have our talents, but no. I don’t read minds. I read faces. And yours is a face that has seen so much. And been hurt by so many. Maybe, if you really open up your heart to Velkin, you could learn to love it…more than you hate Earth.”
“I already do.”
For some reason, my stupid brain flashed to thoughts of Anatole in the moonlight last night. I shook the thought away as Kyra rifled through piles upon piles of new clothes to pull out a soft pink dress, the kind of delicate thing I never could have dreamed of wearing before coming here. It was a gorgeous dress, one that caught the sunlight streaming through the room...and was sure to catch a few eyes if it was as beautiful on me as it was on the silk-covered hanger upon which it rested.
“I think that this would make a great first day outfit.”
I raised an eyebrow, but the draw of the soft fabric was too much. I moved towards it and let my fingers run along the fabric, relishing the soft stitching of the hem line. “What happened to laying low?”
“Well, if the clique of gorgeous elves are going to be looking, you might as well give them something to look at, right?”
✽✽✽
The dress was the most beautiful thing I’d ever put on my body. More than that, though, it was the most beautiful I’d ever looked. During the morning orientation, where we were given our class schedules and formally welcomed to the school and introduced to our professors, the supermodel elves’ clique definitely did give me their fair share of attention. But they weren’t alone. Goblins, fairies, humans, centaurs, sprites, witches, mages, even humans all stared, taking in the sight of me inch by painful inch.
I tried to keep my chin high. But there was one set of eyes that never found me. The one person in Velkin I wanted to look at me and see how strong and unafraid I was never seemed to turn in my direction. Anatole.
Not that I cared what he thought of me. I didn’t. I totally didn’t. But after the way he treated me last night, I wanted him to know that under no circumstances did I care about the way he and that girl had treated me last night. They hadn’t gotten under my skin, not in the slightest.
About halfway through orientation, I followed the map they’d given me—drawn on friggin’ parchment!—to the nearest bathroom. With someone turning around to stare at me every thirty seconds, I needed a minute to myself, just to clear my own head.
...I should have known better than to think the elven version of The Plastics wouldn’t follow me out here. No sooner had I splashed some cold water on my face to cool down my pink cheeks than three of them— the blonde from last night, a dark-skinned brunette with a pink-streaked halo of dark hair, and a redhead with purple eyes—appeared in the doorway, blocking my path to leave.
Uh-oh. Not good. Elf-Girls two and three remained on guard at the door, while the one who’d been all over Anatole last night slithered up to me, her voice dripping with fake enthusiasm.
“Adorable. How simply adorable. Oh, elf-maids, have you seen how precious this is?” She crooned, pointing to all of me. I wrapped my arms across my chest, torn between telling her to get lost and hiding in a bathroom stall forever.
“What do you want?”
“Terribly sorry. Where are my manners? I’m Ariedre. This is Dormea,” she pointed to Pink streaks, then at the redhead. “And Lucela. I believe I saw you last night talking to our beloved prince?”
Her voice was too high, too airy to be really as conversational and casual as she wanted me to believe it was. My suspicions only got worse as she turned to the mirror and began adjusting her already perfect lipstick, her sky-blue ey
es swirling with silver threads of magic. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on-end, which felt like a warning.
“I think what you saw was your beloved prince interrupting my walk. That’s all.”
“Oh, really? Is that why you’ve decided to come to your first day of class dressed like a cheap body girl?”
The phrase body girl wasn’t one I was familiar with, but if it was anything like what I thought it was, then I’d just been totally insulted. Not that I was going to let her see that, though. If my old life taught me anything, it was to never let your opponent sense your weakness. That’s the same reason I fought so hard against Anatole and his arrogance last night. I wasn’t going to let him think he could just push me around whenever and however he wanted.
“The dress was a gift. I wanted to look nice.”
“We all saw how you dressed yesterday. We all see how you’re dressed today. It can’t be a coincidence that you met the prince in between and completely changed your…” The reflection of her eyes in the bathroom mirror shifted to me. A laugh, cold and bitter, tumbled past her lips. “What I guess you call your look. If it can, indeed, be called a look instead of a fashion disaster.”
“I got a gift from a friend. That’s what happened.”
“If you think that this is going to catch the prince’s eye, then you’re crazier than your little freak pixie friend.”
“I don’t want your prince.”
“Good. Because you can’t have him.”
That’s when the nightmare started. The doors and windows locked with a flick of their magic wrists. They moved on me, all three of them, in terrifying synchronicity, their long, graceful muscles barely even registering my fight as they ripped and tore at my dress, destroying the fabric with their sharp claw-like nails. I tried to push them away, tried to get them to stop, but there was no use in even bothering to fight. They were too strong for me, their hatred of me ran too deep, and they weren’t going to stop until they’d destroyed me.
When there was little left of the dress but scraps, and they pushed me down to the cold tile floor of the bathroom, I remembered something that had been included in the welcome letters announcing my acceptance here. It was against the law for any elf to harm any human in Velkin for any reason.
....I guess that didn’t apply to dresses. Or to mental anguish.
“Anatole is our prince, you little princess of nothing. Don’t you dare try to steal him.”
And with that, the Ariedre and her two friends flounced out of the bathroom, leaving me curled in a ball on the floor. I didn’t want their prince. I didn’t want their crown. But that didn’t matter to them. All that mattered was destroying me until I didn’t have any fight left in me.
Maybe, if they’d only torn my dress and ruined it, I could have picked up head up and strutted back into the hall where the orientation was being held. Maybe I could have been my strong, defiant self.
But the words princess of nothing broke me. Hot, bitter tears broke the dam of my eyes, staining my cheeks.
She was right. I was the princess of nothing. I was a no one that no one cared about. No dress in the world, no matter how beautiful, would ever change that.
I was such a fool to think I could escape my past. To think that moving to Velkin would suddenly save me from the nobody that I’d been back on Earth. No matter how hard I tried to stop them, the tears just kept on coming, pouring down my face as sobs wracked my almost-naked body.
Maybe I was lying there for ten minutes or maybe it was ten seconds or maybe it was ten hours, but I hadn’t managed to stop the crying by the time the bathroom door opened, and a long, feminine shadow fell across my body.
“Oh, great demon’s ghost. Are you alright, my child?”
I didn’t even have the strength to pick my head up. “Besides the she-elves who ripped me up and left me on the bathroom floor? Yeah, things are great,” I deadpanned.
“My name is Freia. You must be Carolyn.”
Freia. That name sounded vaguely familiar. Where had I heard it before? And more importantly, how was it that she knew exactly who I was when I wasn’t even sure if I’d heard of her before? That small strangeness helped me pick my head off of the floor, and my eyes fell to a short, heavy-set woman in resplendent silver robes and a matching gown, staring down at me with kind, concerned eyes.
“How did you know that?”
“Sorry,” her lips quirked upward in a sardonic smile. “Most people know me as Queen Freia. Of Velkin. Does that ring any bells?”
My stomach dropped. My blood roared in my ears. I sat up, trying as best as I could to cover up my mostly-naked body, a feat that proved almost impossible given that most of my dress was now in tattered scraps scattered across the bathroom floor. I was in the presence of a Queen. The Queen of all Velkin. Anatole’s mother! And I didn’t even have a dress on.
“You’re the Queen,” I somehow managed to choke out.
“Yes. And I hand-selected your application for this school. So...” With a kind smile and soft eyes, she knelt down and offered me her hand. “I think it’s high time you and I had a little talk, don’t you?”
Chapter Six
Anatole
“So, the humans have been here an entire day. Twenty-four hours. How many saboteurs have you captured yet?”
In the current royal family, there were three brothers. I, Anatole, was the eldest and the heir to the throne. My second brother, Adric, had been banished and sent to a deep, dark corner of the kingdom after his stunt with the humans and the dragon. And then, there was the youngest of my parents’ sons, Tormin, who thought that his status as the youngest and least-needed son granted him the right to spend his days drinking and running wild with sirens instead of attending school and taking matters of state seriously. Tormin, from the very first time they’d heard about the existence of humans, welcomed their presence in Velkin. He was a strong young elf, a warrior who would one day lead the armies that I would command, and he had no doubt that the immortals would defeat the mortals should the need for war ever come to pass.
Not that he thought it would come to pass. He actually—shudder the thought—enjoyed the humans. He spent long hours with their analogue video machines, letting machinery crank the wheel and project the canisters of film they sent, reveling in the antics of characters with ridiculously improbable names like Cary Grant and Meg Ryan. Many times he’d invited me to join in the “fun,” but I’d never accepted. The humans probably sent those light-hearted comedies as propaganda films. Those movies were meant to convince us they weren’t a threat, but I knew better, even if my brother didn’t.
“You aren’t taking this seriously.”
“Of course I’m not taking it seriously. It isn’t serious.”
“They hate us.”
And I knew it firsthand. Some of them, sure, were making doe-eyes at me, trying to jam their sharp elbows into the competition for my human queen. But I couldn’t shake the feeling of Carolyn Connors’ eyes upon me, the way they burned and froze all in one look.
“They hated us. Now, they’re afraid of us. What is a tiny firefly going to do in the face of the big hand coming to smash it against a window or pluck off its wings? They can’t defeat us. They’d be stupider than we thought if they’d tried.”
That was Tormin for you. Always so confident, even when he hadn’t seen the battlefield or the enemies in their full, terrifying splendor. I preferred to rest between my two brothers’ extremes: Tormin though the humans were no threat. Adric wanted to burn as many as he could and enslave the rest. I, on the other hand, just wanted to stop them before they were able to hurt any of my people. My father thought peace talks would prevent that; I just happened to think war would instead. I was caught between all of the many poles of my family, trying to navigate their counsel and demands.
“So, what do you suggest?”
“I suggest that you take full advantage of a castle full of women who want nothing more than to win the favor of the future elf-
king.”
Why was my first thought of Carolyn, the human who had defied me? Why did my mind float to thoughts of her when he mentioned taking advantage of women who wanted me? I didn’t know, and I wasn’t interested in finding out, no matter how much my imagination begged to be set free, to imagine her in compromising positions in my bed. I wasn’t interested in fantasizing about her, no matter how appealing she was to me physically. Inviting a woman into bed was inviting them to easy access to your bare, vulnerable flesh. If I did have to one day marry a mortal, allowing her into my bed would probably be the most difficult part of it.
“Why? So they can slither their ways between my sheets and murder me in my sleep? You’re too complacent.”
“You’re too cautious.”
We both jumped as the jeweled, diamond-shaped talisman in my personal library came to life, projecting the magical image of our middle brother, Adric, in fire. All of our family was powerful in magic, but Adric had cultivated and studied his, as I studied statescraft and as Tormin studied swordsmanship. Even now, in exile, he could reach out and communicate with us, and he did so...often. “And you’re both going about this whole thing the wrong way.”
It didn’t take to long for us to readjust ourselves to the presence of our brother. The three of us had grown up closer than most, and his absence regularly brought strain to our family. Having him here, even in only a fiery projection, still brought me some small measure of comfort. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that you are ignoring your duty to your people and you—” His fiery hand pointed to Tormin, who scoffed and waved off the insult before shifting to me, “—are waiting too long. By the time someone with a skull as thick as yours figures out the human’s sabotage plan, they will have enacted it already. It could be in motion already.”
Tormin sprawled his big, muscular body across the couch, his limbs reaching lazily outward and his long, blond hair spreading across the dark greens and blacks of the fabric. These sorts of conversations always bored him to tears; he was a man of action, a man of war, even more than Adric and I were. “What do you suggest? We kill father, take the throne and slaughter all of the humans we’ve vowed to protect?”
Magic Exchange: A Supernatural Academy Romance (The Velkin Royal Academy Series Book 1) Page 4
