This wasn’t how her day was supposed to go.
Her mind scrambled for a solution. She flailed and fought the walls of the orbs, but they did nothing but bend and bounce back at her.
Holy hell. It was all over. She swallowed water and sucked it in her nose.
She was drowning.
Then, she remembered something she’d learned in Coach Barron’s class.
Her mind raced, and she closed her eyes, creating a fist with her hands.
Think, bloody happy thoughts.
With that, her body illuminated from the inside out and as she opened her eyes, a sonic charge of electricity shot through the water and burst the orb.
Soaking wet, with electric charges racing up and down her arms and legs, she twitched and shivered as she stood there. For anyone else, it would have killed them. But, Barron had taught her something she never thought she’d use.
Bless him.
Thoroughly pissed off, she glared at the professor under dark hooded lashes.
“You really did try to kill me,” she hissed.
He clapped, still smiling. “Good job. One point for the lass.”
“Piss off,” she shouted, and charged at him.
He laughed like a madman, until she slid across the slick ground and knocked him from his feet by kicking them from under him. She stood and readied herself.
Professor Nolen didn’t expect her to use warrior tactics.
Cassius had taught her well.
She kicked him again, this time across the jaw with her heeled boots, sending him spiraling onto the ground face first.
He cried out, and covered his jaw as blood gushed from an open wound. “Bloody hell,” he shouted, and threw another orb her way.
She dodged it and leaped back to her feet. With the clasping of both hands, she pulled forth more energy from her core and watched with disbelief as her hands started to glow and her feet left the floor.
“Impressive,” he said, watching as she lifted into the air. “Two points for the lass.”
A bit unsteady, she tried to right herself before he threw another orb.
Before she could, he sent wizard’s fire her way. This time, it lassoed her legs and yanked her from the air.
She yelped as the flames wrapped around her ankles and slammed her into the ground. Her head hit the floor, nearly knocking her out. She could hear bone crack and saw stars when she gained the fortitude to open her eyes.
Holy crap, did it hurt.
Professor Nolen stood over her, holding onto the lasso of fire with one hand and a tea cup with the other.
Where the hell did he get a tea cup?
Hailey began to doubt any of this was real as he took a sip and continued to watch her.
“I don’t have all day,” he said in between sips. You’d have thought they’d just been discussing the weather by how calm and collected he was.
Groggy, and groaning, she tried to stand, and he placed his foot on her chest. He tossed the tea cup and it crashed into several pieces on the floor behind him. The weight of his boot pressed to her chest made it hard to breathe.
Her head spun. So far, she’d been nearly drowned, burned, and almost lost consciousness. No, she couldn’t lose. She couldn’t die. She wiped blood from the back of her head and her eyes widened.
This wasn’t good.
Her kingdom needed her.
“Is any of this real?” Hailey asked, totally spent.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Does it feel real enough for you yet?”
As the professor leaned down toward her she realized that her mother’s dreams were right. One of her daughters was about to lose her life.
She hated when her mother was right.
“Well, well, what are you going to do now?” Professor Nolen asked in a soft voice that would have been soothing if he hadn’t been trying to kill her.
She swallowed back what tasted like blood, and it sent a panic through her body like nothing she’d ever felt.
She was frightened. Utterly terrified.
“I’m too young to die,” she whimpered.
He tilted his head. “Then, do something about it.”
She felt something heat up her leg and peered down. The vial. She’d forgotten that she’d brought it along.
“Oh,” he said, lifting a brow. “What’s that you’ve got in your pocket? Anything you want to share, sweet Hailey?”
No use hiding it now. She pulled the vial from her pocket and held tight to it.
“Oh,” he said, again. “Very nice. Looks like a little bit of Enchanted Nymph Blood. Very rare stuff, that. Are you going to use it to save yourself? You know, before I kill you.”
She swallowed, hard. There was a sharp lump in her throat. So much pain. More than she’d ever felt.
Through tears, she looked up at him. She shook her head.
“No,” she said, and tears fell down her cheeks. All she could think of was Cassius.
“Really? This is going to be good. What are you planning on using it for? You can use it to save your life or that of another.”
With that, she knew what she had to do. She knew the only way to break Cassius from the curse.
She blinked away tears and sat up on her elbows, face to face with him. Glaring at the professor, she broke the glass vial in her fist and a cloud of smoke danced between her fingers and lit up the cave in an array of bright iridescent colors.
“I use this vial’s power to save another,” she said, and he started to laugh…before she used her other hand to grab him by the neck. “And, the power within to end yours.”
His smile faded as she sent a bolt of electricity into his ear, shocking his brain.
The entire cave exploded with light and she was blasted backward.
The darkness smothered her, and all went silent.
16
Hailey woke to a knock on her door. Groggy, and confused, she shot up from her pillow. Wide-eyed and panicked, she held her hands up, ready to fight the first person she saw.
“Your highness, it’s Poppy, here to deliver your mail.”
Still, she didn’t trust the voice on the other side of the door. Poppy was her ladies maid, but she barely used her despite her mother’s insistence to bring her along. Poppy had it made, living in one of the suites with really nothing to do but enjoy its luxuries.
Still, as far as Hailey knew, she was dead.
At least, after that explosion, she was supposed to be.
“Are you okay, your highness?”
“Leave it under the door.”
“As you wish, your highness.”
She watched, still wide-eyed, as a single letter was slipped under the door and sat half across the room on the wooden floor. Her heart still raced. Just a second ago, she was certain she was fighting Professor Nolen.
As she looked around her room, her heart rate began to slow as she realized it was just another one of her dreams.
She breathed a sigh of relief and laughed as she covered her mouth with her hands.
“Goodness. That was the scariest of them all,” she said as she stepped onto the floor and crossed the room. She pulled her hair from her face and knelt to pick up the letter.
For a moment, her heart stopped when she saw who it was from.
Professor Nolen.
She took it to her desk and sat down, opening it.
There was a thick, laminated, card inside.
The color drained from Hailey’s face as she read it.
Congratulations, Hailey. You have successfully completed your senior duel.
1 point for defense
1 point for offense
1 point for character
We are pleased to inform you that you have received top marks for choosing to save a life versus taking one. Your arch-nemesis, Libby was a plant to test you in every way possible. While our methods are unconventional, they send our students into the world a great deal better than they arrived. We test you mentally, physically, and emoti
onally, and you have passed all areas.
It is of great importance that you uphold the purity of our dueling process by keeping your experience a strict secret. Again, we at Raven Falls Academy congratulate you on displaying top marks on the three major areas we strive to teach.
Cheers,
Professor Nolen
P.S. No one has ever beaten me with such flair.
Bloody hell.
Stunned, she lowered the letter and held her hand to her heart.
Was this real? She shot to her feet. Libby was a plant? Like…a real person or just in her head?
No way.
That wasn’t the important part. There was something infinitely better.
She passed with top marks.
A smile came to her face. She practically beamed like the sun.
“I passed! I passed,” she cheered, pumping her arm in the air and tossing the letter.
Another knock came to the door and she froze. Quickly, she hid the letter in her desk and turned the lock, putting the key in the jewelry box beside her bed.
“Who is it?” Hailey asked, hurrying to find suitable clothes to change into.
“Open up,” Vanya called. “We’re starving out here.”
“Yeah,” Marissa said. “Get your tail out here so we can get some breakfast before class.”
“Slacker. Sleeping until nine,” Vanya added.
Hailey stood there, dumbfounded.
Had they forgiven her?
Slowly, she approached the door, half expecting to see nothing on the other end. It was her imagination, playing tricks on her. As far as she remembered it, Marissa and Vanya hated her.
She turned the knob and exhaled.
When she opened the door, there they were.
Real.
Vanya gave her a look. “Why are you staring at us like that, weirdo? Get your shoes on and let’s go. I need waffles in my life. Now!”
Hailey nodded, her smile slowly returning.
She rushed to slip on her boots and joined them out in the hall.
“You look like crap,” Vanya said. “Did you sleep or not?”
Hailey didn’t answer her. Instead, she just wrapped her arms around her neck and hugged her close. “I missed you guys.”
Vanya gave her a pat on the back and pulled away. Hailey laughed. She wasn’t the affectionate type, but she couldn’t help herself.
“We just saw you like, last night,” she said. “Stop being weird.”
“It’s just, after Libby did that whole Wondergram thing, I thought you guys would never talk to me again.”
Marissa and Vanya gave her blank looks.
“Who the hell is Libby?”
Hailey’s eyes widened.
“Are you freaking kidding me?”
“Um, maybe you should see the campus doctor,” Marissa said, feeling Hailey’s forehead with the back of her hand.
Hailey laughed again, nervously this time. Is that what the letter meant? Was Libby really part of the test? Was the first three years of her college career some strange test? It was all very confusing. But, her friends were back, and that made her happier than ever.
They left the building, and she listened as they talked about what they had going on in their day. All the while, she tried to make sense of everything that had happened during the first weeks of the semester. What had really happened?
She stopped in her tracks at the top of the stairs once they were outside.
There he was.
Cassius.
He stood at the bottom of the steps, dressed in his battle gear.
“Hey, gorgeous,” he said. “Let’s skip the café and head into town for brunch.”
“Ugh,” Vanya said. She locked arms with Marissa. “Oh well. Looks like the shifter is stealing you away.”
Hailey shrugged her shoulders and Vanya winked at her.
“Catch you later.”
Speechless, Hailey waved at them as they left.
Cassius gave her his charming smile—the smile she wished she could marvel at for the rest of her life, and met her half-way up the stairs. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and kissed her cheek.
“Morning,” he said.
“Morning.” She smiled at him.
“Sleep well?”
As they walked from the dorms and to his car she just smiled, not sure what to say exactly. What could she tell him?
He took her by the hand and she let it go. What did it matter? He wasn’t cursed. Libby didn’t exist. And, above all…he loved her.
“Bloody brilliant,” she said under her breath.
*
https://www.amazon.com/K.N.-Lee/e/B00CR5IPGM/
Witchcraft is for Weirdos
A Merlin Academy Prequel
Madison Stone
When Honey is sent to the Merlin Academy for misuse of magic, she isn’t quite sure what to think. The students are delinquents; the professors are … strange, and ghosts of dead girls roam the halls, seeking justice. When one of those ghosts realizes Honey can see her, she’s immediately thrust into a world she doesn’t recognize. Forced to hide her magic or suffer the wrath of the Assembly, Honey tries to untangle the mysteries of the Merlin Academy while trying to squash the strange and new power rising in her.
That’s the thing about secrets, though. They always find a way of revealing themselves. But will it be Honey’s secret? Or will the shroud of secrecy surrounding the Merlin Academy finally fall?
Copyright © 2019 Madison Stone
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Characters, incidents, and dialogs are products of the author’s
imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events is strictly
coincidental.
1
My name is Honey Celeste. It sounds like a stripper name, I know, but it’s real and it’s mine.
It’s the only thing I have left.
My name. My magic. The impenetrable shell that surrounds my wounded heart.
Overdramatic, right?
If you truly knew me, you wouldn’t think so.
Today was my first day at The Merlin Academy for Delinquent Paranormals. MAD Academy is what the adults called it. After all, it wasn’t super PC to call someone a delinquent. We preferred the term “socially challenged” or, my personal favorite, “youthful offenders.”
But we weren’t just delinquents. We were dangerous. The entire lot of us. If our magic accidentally went errant or even if we did it on purpose, depending upon the infraction, some of us (those without rich parents and greasy palms) wound up in here. I’d lost my parents or any family who gave a crap about me. I was a witch who wasn’t quite a witch.
Make sense? No?
Let me explain.
Witches are tied to the moon. The same way werewolves and some shifters are. Television gets it all wrong. We’re supposed to be completely useless without one of the major phases of the moon. New moon? We can do things your mother only dreamed about. Waxing crescent? Yes, please. But the big one? The one where we get scary as all hell? The full moon. Were you expecting something different?
This was the one where we could do some really scary things. Time travel? Yep. We could 13 Going on 30 the crap out of you.
But did we?
Umm...yes. That answer should be no, but how could we know we could do it unless we actually had? See where I’m going with this?
Witches have eight absolutely terrifying days out of the month where they could rock your magical world.
Except… not quite. For the vast majority of witches out there, unless the moon is in the first day of a new phase, they are forced to use potions. Earth magic. Hoodoo stuff. Most people look down on that form of magic, but the truth is, it works. Scary good. This m
eans a lot of time in the lab or basement, or where ever else you stored all your weird herbs and scary bat wings.
I was in here because I wasn’t any of those things. Tied to the moon phases, that was. I’d discovered it accidentally after my mother made me angry. I remembered going back to my room, making some hand gestures for a silence spell, and two hours later getting suspicious about how quiet the house was.
I found my mother and father sitting on the back deck that night.
Their mouths were completely gone. Like they’d never existed.
They were both holding a pen and a notebook and being monitored by a Ravenscliffe police officer.
Less than twenty minutes later, I realized they’d sold me out.
I’d gotten silence at the expense of my freedom.
So here I was. Standing in front of the MAD Academy, staring up at the imposing stone building, wishing I were better at controlling my impulses.
My parents never loved me. I knew it now. How could someone who claimed to love you send you away with nothing? I spent four days locked in a cell at the local jail. Not a single family member had shown up to help. I was a pariah now, but I also knew they were too scared to admit to anyone else what I’d done. I found out later that my parents claimed they were the victim of one my herbal spells gone wrong.
So technically I was in here for “misuse of magic”. At least that’s what my file said. I sent a rat in to find it after the second day when no one would tell me what I’d supposedly done. Easy magic using the little creatures for spying. At least for me. The witch who wasn’t a witch.
I knew what I had done, but I was curious if my parents admitted it.
To save their own skin, we were the only ones who knew. Me, my father, and mother.
Not even the academy knew. They just assumed I was a delinquent who couldn’t properly mix a spell.
A smile ghosted over my lips but the amusement died a quick death once the doors began to creep open. I took an involuntary step back only to be pushed back upright by a member of the Ravenscliff Police Department. I turned back to look at him, but his face was impassive.
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