“I believe I have some say in this.” His breath eked from his lungs. “You figured it out? Or someone told you.”
I waved away the comment. “I can’t let you do it. The charm will drain you away.” It would feed Katya everything inside him.
“Don’t you see?” Rising to his knees, he cupped my face in his warm palms. They shook. We kissed with urgency, wishing it could last forever. Nothing lasted forever but a bespelling. “I couldn’t stand it if I forgot you.”
“You wouldn’t know.”
“You would, and that’s what would finally kill me. Somewhere, deep inside, I’d know. I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it, and I’d fade to nothing.”
“Do it for us.”
“Fleur, I…”
“Please?”
While my eyes stung and the tears I couldn’t deny slid down my face, he pulled me into his arms and held me. Overcome, I sobbed against his chest. I hated what I’d asked him to do and what that meant for the future.
Sometimes, it was better not knowing what tomorrow would bring.
This boy had been everything good in my life. I’d miss him.
We kissed again and clung together as the sun sank one final time on Donovan and me.
“I’ll find a way,” I said. “I’ll achieve a Level Five and I’ll unravel the bespelling before… I promise.”
We held hands, and he stared into my eyes as if he wanted to hold onto my image forever.
I stored this last moment with him in my heart. Someday, I’d be able to pull it out and smile without crying.
No matter how I tried to stop them, my eyes continued to shed.
His did, too.
As the sun winked out on today, on our future, he reached up.
Our gazes locked together.
He lifted the chain over his head.
Then standing, he crushed us—and the spider—beneath his heel.
Chapter 36
One Month Later
“Hey, I, um…I hope it’s okay for me to come over here and, well, intrude,” the cute boy said. “Wanted to introduce myself.”
Seated at the library table next to mine, Ashton snickered. Closing his textbook, he tipped back in his chair as if preparing to watch the show.
I glared at him, but my irritation lost impact when a couple of other kids pointed. Some ignored us, partly because they were here to study but mostly because this had become the new norm.
Cute boy half-smiled, not getting the widely-known joke. “I’m Donovan.”
He was sweet and silly and sometimes, beyond goofy. It killed me to see him because…
“Hey, Donovan!” Ashton said. The Wind Coven prefect, he’d snatched up the crown of ruling bully now that Alys had left the Academy.
Donovan glanced toward Ashton. “Hey, Ash. What’s up?”
“Oh, nothin’” Ashton snickered, and his brother, Vik, sitting beside him, collapsed across the wooden table, hooting with belly-rolling laughter.
Donovan turned back to me, and he paused before another smile rose on his face. “Um…” His hand jutted out. “Hey. Sounds weird, but I…” He swallowed. “I’m Donovan.”
He’d introduced himself to me yesterday, and he would again tomorrow. As well as the day after that, never remembering that we’d know each other since the first day of Orientation months ago.
This was what ripped me apart the most.
I squeezed his fingers as tightly as this boy unknowingly squeezed my heart. “I’m Fleur. Nice to meet you.”
“Fleur. Cool name.” He tugged out a chair and spinning it around, spread his legs and dropped onto the surface, facing me. “Sounds like a stupid pick-up line, but I haven’t seen you around at the Academy. Are you a new student here?”
“I suppose I am.” To him. “I’m an outling.”
Maybe. Probably not. But an Elite? That was yet to be decided.
“Outlings are cool. What’s your skapti?” he asked. “Mine’s controlling weather.”
“I’m an Unraveler.”
“Whoa,” he whistled out. “There hasn’t been an Unraveler born in over a hundred years. How will you learn without a living Master to teach you?”
Great question. With Cloven’s tutelage, I’d almost reached Level Two, but he’d said getting me this far had maxed out his capabilities. I’d have to find a way to advance further on my own.
“I have three-plus Levels left to discover,” I whispered, leaning so close I could kiss his cheek if I wanted to.
But I wouldn’t.
As much as I ached to touch him again, I wouldn’t until he really knew who I was.
And that time was coming. I refused to let go.
“It’s going to be okay, Donovan,” I said as if somewhere, deep inside, a part of him could hear my words. “I have a plan…”
Book Three: Unraveler
My first winter at Crystal Wing Academy
brings frigid weather,
intense magical classes,
and a hunter.
After defeating the nightlace vine eager to kill every outling on campus, I’m feeling kinda cocky. But nothing ever goes smoothly for me, does it?
The good new first. I’ve not only figured out how to ride an aldakor, I’ve convinced the naiad living in the moat I can be trusted. You might say I’ve got an in with magical creatures. And I’ve found a new best friend who’s awesome, even if she’s keeping secrets.
The bad news? Donovan’s bespelled. If I don’t break his curse, we’re doomed. And, in my class, Magical Horticulture of the Night: Adding the D to Deadly, I accidentally freed a beatleycarne, unleashing the deadliest prankster known to the fae world. Need to catch that baby and lock it up fast before the Academy collapses around me.
Seems like I’m fighting one crisis after another. Then someone unexpected emerges from my past. And the person responsible for the nightlace murders? She wasn’t working alone, and the wizard isn’t finished with me yet.
With the beatleycarne wreaking havoc on my life, Donovan bespelled, and someone determined to kill me, I need to harness every strand of power I can find. Because a battle’s coming and only one wizard will emerge the victor.
Chapter 1
Winter
I was about to dig up an entombed beatleycarne. A slimy, squishy, plant-slug combo that, per our class syllabus, released a substance vital to Seekers.
Nobody could beat Professor Grim for spicing up an evening.
I’d initially signed up for this class to learn more about nightlace, a vine that had been stalking and killing outlings like me. Born of non-magical parents, outlings were despised by many at the Academy. Until recently, we’d been safe, almost accepted. No one had hunted us for years.
I could’ve dropped the class after I’d exposed the true murderer, but I’d decided to stick with it. Most of the time, it was fun.
Tonight’s excursion was still up for debate.
“Beatleycarnes are a root-goblin hybrid,” Professor Grim shrieked. “Exceedingly rare, they’re one of our more stealthy, devious plants.”
I’d even gotten used to our Professor’s screaming. He couldn’t help how he spoke; it was part of his former Grim Reaper persona. While he’d traded in his job harvesting souls to teach Magical Horticulture of the Night: Adding the D to Deadly at the Academy, he’d held onto some of the trappings of his former profession. Like his sickle. And his shredded robe. Only reaping souls had been set aside.
Cupid had been enlisted to collect them instead. No idea who’d taken over shooting love arrows, but it wasn’t gonna be me. Achieving a Level Five—which meant I’d be a Master in my Unraveler skapti—was enough to keep me busy.
“Beatleycarnes grow in caves found only on the Cliffs of Navarrene,” he said. “And tonight, we shall exhume them.”
“Exhume, huh?” Moira whispered behind me. “Sounds…delightful.”
Walking beside me, my roommate, Patty, snorted.
Five of us strode north behind Professor
Grim on a wooded path weaving through the eastern Academy forest. Our breaths created white puffs that dissipated in the chilly night air.
Bryce, Patty’s boyfriend, hustled beside the Professor, debating the merits of catching tranas with butterfly nets versus our bare hands. After capturing them for our last assignment, we’d taken them to the greenhouse lab and descaled them. I shuddered and blocked the memory of that out. In my nightmares, blue trana gook still coated the underside of my fingernails.
There used to be eight students in our class. Drea had been murdered by Alys, who’d been bespelled to shift into a nightlace cluster and kill every outling on campus. The Seekers had flitted her to the Council for trial, and we hadn’t heard a thing about her since.
Which left me, Patty, Bryce, Moira, Eben…
…and he who really shouldn’t be named.
“No D tonight,” Patty said forlornly.
So much for not naming him.
“Probably just as well he’s not here,” I said. Whenever I ran into my boyfriend, a part of my soul died.
Or was I supposed to call him my ex-boyfriend now, since he’d been bespelled by his older brother, King Niles, to forget I’d ever existed?
“I know it hurts to be around him,” she said.
How could it not? I’d moved forward, into the future, while Donovan remained frozen in my past.
“I’m going to fix it, break the spell,” I said.
“With your unraveling skapti.”
I loved the confidence shining her voice. She believed in me when I was having a hard time believing in myself.
“Yup.” I stiffened my spine. Somehow, I’d find a way.
“After we exhume beatleycarnes, we shall extract their lardlets,” Professor Grim yelled, making Patty jump.
Lardlet. The name itself was enough to creep me out, even though I was excited to learn more about magical creatures.
Eben rushed around me and Patty, trampling leafless raspberry stalks spearing out from the sides of the path. He caught up to Bryce and the Professor.
“Actually,” he said in a snooty voice. “Spears work even than nets for capturing tranas.”
By the fae, he was so conceited. I rolled my eyes at Patty, who shook her head.
“But…” Bryce frowned. “Tranas are easier to descale when they’re alive. If you kill them, their skin solidifies into a substance resembling concrete, correct Professor?”
Patty grinned. Her boyfriend was so smart.
“Excellent point,” Professor Grim said, tapping his sickle on Bryce’s shoulder. “I’m pleased to see you paid attention in class.”
Beams from the full moon lanced through bare branches overhead, lighting our way and glistening on the dead, ice-encrusted leaves crunching underneath our boots. Soon, we’d reach the cliffs, where we’d use our newly-purchased, gold-plated trowels to unearth beatleycarnes.
I snuggled deeper into my down coat with my mitten-clad fingers knotted inside my pockets. The braided ties of my hat bounced on my chest as I half-jogged beside Patty.
“Cloven said I’m close to learning how to draw in the right colored threads.” When I could consistently do that, I’d achieve a Level Two Unraveler skapti. Only three more levels to go after that. With each tiny step forward, my desperation grew. It was common for wizards to take a lifetime to reach Level Five, if they ever got there. Most were satisfied working magic at a Level Three.
Not me. A bespelling like Donovan’s could only be permanently broken by a Level Five Unraveler.
“It’s cool that you’re getting closer,” Patty said. “After you draw in the right threads, you send them toward Donovan and shout unravel, and his bespelling breaks?”
My sigh chugged out of me. “Unfortunately, no.”
“But you unraveled the nightlace bespelling.”
I still had no clue how I’d done it. “Cloven said Levels are fluid. Meaning I might be able to somehow send out a Level Three spell one day then struggle to use a Level Two the next. He thinks I was able to tap Level Four power when I faced the nightlace. That my emotions drove the unraveling.”
“It was a fluke?”
“Yup. I tried with Alys right after unraveling the vines, but it didn’t work. Cloven told me plant bespellings are temporary and easier to break. With people, they lasted forever. Once I figure out how to draw black threads in, I have to learn how to load them correctly in my moonstone.” My fingers slid along the knife I wore strapped to my thigh. I’d connected to a moonstone, the stone at the top of the pack, during Stone Selection. The Academy jeweler had set it in a rune-scripted blade. Others’ stones had been mounted in pendants, bracelets, or, in Patty’s case, a ruby in the bronze ring she wore on her right middle finger.
Stepping ahead of me, Patty pushed back a branch and waited for me and Moira to pass before catching up to stride beside me again. “Storing Unraveler power isn’t as simple as other skaptis, then. Bummer.”
“White for Bespellers, black for Unravelers.”
That was the magical rule. Other wizards could pull in whatever color they wanted, though cooler colors like blue and green were more difficult to draw in than hot. We stored thread power in our stones then fed the magic back out with a command that would enhance our skapti. But Unravelers couldn’t use white and Bespellers couldn’t use black.
“I have to braid multiple black strands into one thread to store them,” I said. And that was the only guidance Cloven could offer. Braiding threads meant I’d reach Level Three, and he didn’t know how to get me to that Level because the braids were unique to Unravelers. If only the last Master Unraveler hadn’t died long ago, taking any chance of my reaching Level Five to the grave with them. “I’m going to do it. Somehow.” No denying the sag of my shoulders, however.
“I’m sorry.” Patty rubbed my arm.
“This way, students,” Professor Grim yelled, his harsh voice jolting me out of my slump. While our boots stomped on the ground, he drifted above the path. Sticks and brittle leaves caught on the ends of his shredded gray robe, skittering behind him like autumn-colored mice.
Goosebumps peppered my skin, but we were safe in the forest now that Alys had been arrested. With luck, the Seekers had sent her to Demon’s Gate Penitentiary, a prison located in the fae world where underage wizards rotted for the rest of their days. A fitting punishment for someone who’d killed two outlings and almost me before she’d been captured.
We emerged from the path and stopped at the base of the forbidding Cliffs of Navarrene. They stretched above us into the darkness, a mass of jagged granite peppered with scraggly bushes. The path we needed to take to reach the cave switchbacked across the face, seeking the top.
Professor Grim set a mean pace, worthy of the gym classes I remembered from when I was a kid living with my mom and going to human school. As I caught my breath, I stomped my feet, hoping to warm them up and bring back sensation.
I took our bag of tools from Patty; my turn to carry. We’d purchased our supplies at the Academy’s hardware store, and they included a sack knitted from yarn spun from sketar witch hair, the trowel, and the pièce de résistance, a glass jar blown by a half-turned werewolf, outside, during a hurricane.
One of these days, I wanted to watch that werewolf in action.
As for the sketar hair sack, I’d have to ask Ester how they obtained witch hair, because I couldn’t imagine anyone challenging my half-troll guardian to obtain some. She’d let me live with her after Mom dumped me on the front steps of Crystal Wing Academy when I was ten. I’d returned to the Academy at seventeen. She’d run a tight house.
“Beatleycarne lardlets have special magical properties,” Professor Grim screamed in lecture mode.
“Yeah, slime,” I whispered to Patty, and she giggled.
I stepped in behind her on the hard-packed dirt trail snaking up the cliff, our tool bag clunked against my leg, my breath coming in short pants already.
“You’re going to love this creature,” Patty tos
sed in a singsong voice over her shoulder. “After we extract the lardlets, we’ll return the beatleycarnes to their original home in the cave. No hauling them back to the greenhouse lab where they’ll go hungry.” She grinned. “Which means no rescue attempts in the night.”
Our first class project had been to capture dandybucklions and milk their anti-venom. Professor Grim had planned to confine them in the lab indefinitely after that, starving them to keep them compliant while he conducted further experiments. Like I’d allow that to happen? Patty, Bryce, and I had freed the bucklions. In thanks, they’d helped me defeat the nightlace.
“As you’ve learned by studying your textbooks prior to class,” Professor Grim shouted. “Lardlets can only be harvested in December, when the full moon is in eclipse. We won’t have this chance again for years.”
We reached a level stone platform and crossed it, stopping outside a ten-foot-tall oval cave entrance. Arctic wind barreled down the cliffside, stealing our heat and making us cluster together like sheep in a storm. Behind us, the moon shone brightly. Soon, a slice of gray would creep across it, engulfing the light.
“Before we enter the cave,” Professor Grim said. “You’ll need to place your jars in a circle. Please do so and remove the lids.”
After, we gathered around our teacher again, and he waved his sickle toward the cave opening. “Onward, students! We haven’t much time.”
Shuffling forward, we were swallowed by a long, arched stone tunnel. We bumped into each other, and hysterical laughter erupted behind me and Patty. Bryce hooted.
Unable to see a thing, I was tempted to use power to generate my finger glow light but colors blooming ahead told me we’d almost reached our destination.
“Without lardlets,” Grim shouted. “There would be no Serum.”
Serum was used by Seekers to force wizards to spill everything from what they ate for dinner to intentional misuses of magic. A combination of the police, the CIA, and a SWAT Team, Seekers were controlled by the Council, serving as the law enforcement body of the Sídhe. Many were centaurs, though my friend, Tria, had a Seeker skapti and was studying to be one, too.
Crystal Wing Academy- The Complete Series Page 48
