The warden watched with half-closed eyes, his breathing labored. “Stop gloating,” he said. “We did as you said, now we can make the transfer and get rid of her. One less mouth to feed.”
I glared at him. He oversaw this hellhole, after all.
The woman who had spoken up, the one who seemed official, sniffed. “She got far, but I don’t know if it says anything important about her,” she said.
McGryth leaned forward, bracing a powerful forearm on his knee. He was in the prime of life, his hair pulled back and his muscles rippling. His image had been imprinted in my mind from the first time I had ever seen him. I would never forget what he looked like. His nose had been broken so many times it drooped. Once at my own hands, as it turned out.
Somehow he had decided to be my advocate in this situation. Advocate for what, I hated to think, since if there was one thing for sure, he didn’t have my best interests at heart.
Then again, some would say I didn’t have enough sense to have them at heart myself.
“She was twice chained and drugged and still made it to the trees. If she had actually managed to climb that tree, we’d have had trouble finding her, Goya,” McGryth pointed out.
My head felt stuffy, but I nodded, admitting the wisdom of his words. He smirked at me.
“But you were drugged, weren’t you?” the woman, Goya, cut in.
I wasn’t the only one tired of hearing McGryth’s voice.
“We already said we’d take her. We would have taken a couple more except that they died. Whatever. We have some coming from other prisons, though none is as reputable as this prison or this prisoner.” Goya looked me over as she said it.
“We’re going to have to dress you up a bit,” she said, addressing me directly now. “Give you some clothes. We don’t want anybody to know where you came from. That would defeat the whole purpose.”
“They’ll know,” said the warden.
Goya turned fierce eyes on him. The warden went back to coughing.
I stared hard at her. What in all the dark places of Whessellond was she talking about? Dress me up as what?
“Over my dead body,” I managed to say. I could hear just fine, but it was still difficult to speak, and my words were a bit slurred. I hated that.
“That can be arranged. We can put you back where we found you and leave you there. That was the original plan,” said the warden, the opportunity to issue a threat reviving him from his stupor.
My mind wasn’t working as fast as I wanted it to, but he seemed to be saying that I had a way out of here. That was foolish of them. If they let me out I would get away. They couldn’t drug me all the time, could they? At that thought, I decided what I was going to do.
I surprised them all, even McGryth, by taking the empty seat. The guards tried to stop me, but Goya waved them off.
I squared my shoulders to her and put my hands demurely in my lap. Then I smiled.
Goya looked repulsed.
Good.
“What would you like me to do?” I asked.
It was insane. I felt as though I wasn’t thinking objectively. But if it weren’t me doing it, it would be somebody else. They did in fact want me to be a sacrifice.
There wasn’t much for me to consider.
I was basically a sacrifice anyway, so why not?
If I made it through the year at the academy, and then the next three, I would get my freedom. I just had to keep myself alive.
And kind of act as bait, a ruse to keep the killer away from the ones the government courtiers actually cared about.
I didn’t mind. I’d had drag-out fights before and survived. I could survive them again.
I tried to negotiate so that I didn’t actually have to do the homework, but they wouldn’t agree. They wanted me to play the part to the hilt.
A long-lost noblewoman.
They wanted me to join organizations and teams, to stick my neck out and be heard as an honorable voice in society. Well, try as I might, nobody had ever actually ignored me, so that wouldn’t be too hard. Then again, joining an organization and actually enjoying it was going to be somewhat difficult. I wasn’t a joiner.
Reluctantly, they had told me that the killer had been dubbed the Shadow for obvious reasons. They mentioned that charming tidbit only after I’d agreed to do as they asked.
“You need to take her to a bath. She isn’t getting in the chariot like that,” said Goya. “Do you know how to ride a unicorn?” she asked, turning to me.
I stared at her, open-mouthed. It was the nobility who rode the flying beasts, but why they needed to ride winged creatures when they themselves were winged, I had no idea.
“How are you going to get around that, by the way?” I asked Goya. “I can’t play the part of a noblewoman if I can’t fly.”
Her smile sent chills down my spine.
“As a matter of fact, we have a way around that for you. It seems to be a lucky coincidence that you’re a bastard daughter. We plan on freeing your magical wings.”
I stared at her. Then I stared some more. “What?”
“You have magic wings. All the noble born fae do. They’ve been tied to those magical bracelets we’ve wrapped around you that have kept you prisoner. You are very strong magically, if not mentally. We don’t know exactly where you’ve come from, but that anonymity will serve our purposes. You can’t be that important. All anybody has to know is that you do have the wings, even if you don’t use them. Some of the others don’t use theirs either. Fear of heights, inability to learn the difficult twists and turns to maneuver in the air, whatever. The power that rages inside the nobility is difficult to control. Those who do control it end up as powerful warriors for his majesty.”
“As warriors, how did they end up going to the academy? It’s the most boring place I’ve ever heard of,” I said.
That was the truth. You learned stupid subjects like philosophy and ancient history.
What had I gotten myself into?
Chapter Four
To my surprise, McGryth did not go with us on our journey. He left me to ride away with the soldiers and bureaucrats who had shown up to collect prisoners.
“How did I get so lucky as not to have you coming along?” I asked him before we left.
“I know you think you’re the most important thing in the world, but there are actually other pressing matters I have to tend to,” he told me.
“I find that hard to believe.”
He grinned. “Don’t run away from this place where you’re going,” he advised. His expression was hard to read, but I thought he looked more serious than usual. “I realize that you don’t care about anything but yourself. I accept that. But this place could turn out to be good for you. It could turn out to be everything. So it would be best if you took care. I realize that you want to be on your own, but your training at Noble Fae Academy could turn out to be vital to the kingdom’s survival.”
I had no idea what any of that meant, but I wasn’t going to say so. I was loath to admit that there was anything I didn’t know.
Instead I stepped back and said, “If I want to leave, I will.”
“I don’t doubt that.” He looked at one of the guards accompanying us.
I glared at the guard, but his expression didn’t change. Unlike McGryth’s, his eyes were not filled with mockery.
“We’re heading for one of the mountain ranges,” the guard explained, “the highest one of all. You’ll die of exposure before you get out of there. It’s a microclimate, much different from here. Very special place. Nobody has ever escaped. That’s why we thought it was safe.”
Snatches of conversation I had heard earlier helped me understand what he meant. They had thought it was safe until the string of murders, and the fact that no one could get in or out meant that somebody who was already there was betraying them, somebody they thought they could trust.
I didn’t know what that was like. Trust. I had trusted nobody since Julia. But I felt confident that
I was making the right decision in letting them take me to the academy.
“Let’s get the show on the road before she changes her mind,” Goya said, looking me up and down. “Have you ever ridden a unicorn before?” she asked again. I had never answered the first time.
I was tempted to lie, but why bother? I shook my head, and she nodded. “Hopefully you’re a fast study. If you aren’t, I’m not sure we can catch you if you plummet to earth.”
“What about my wings?” I asked.
“Your wings are magic. They come from the wellspring within. The cuffs will have to be dealt with first, and then it’ll remain to be seen what becomes of your wings. We will deal with all that when you get there. It’s going to prove more difficult than I had originally thought,” she said.
She glanced at a woman who was apparently coming with us, someone I recognized as a healer. They had been in whispered discussions for the past hour, glancing my way the entire time. It annoyed the crap out of me.
I walked up to one of the great gray unicorns and extended my hand, palm up, as I knew I was supposed to. The unicorn merely stared at it, looking as if he was very tempted to bite it off. Unicorns, I knew, were not sweet beasts. The horn at the center of a unicorn’s head could be used as a weapon, and their rippling muscles spoke of the immense power they could bring to bear when roused.
I held my ground. My hand wasn’t the worst thing I could lose, and it wasn’t the worst thing I would have lost.
The unicorn appeared impressed by my bravery in the face of sharp teeth. All eyes were on us as he lowered his head only slightly. With trembling fingers I reached out and brushed his mane, gasping at the softness. I had never felt anything so gentle in my life.
He gave me a look as if to say I shouldn’t be surprised.
“For someone who can’t talk, you certainly say an awful lot,” I muttered.
My palms were sweating as the great steed glared at me, but my hesitation was cut short when a pair of rough hands took hold under my arms and lifted me up. I kicked out viciously but missed, and ended up plopped onto the back of my ride.
By the time I turned to glare at the guard, he was already walking away.
The unicorn shifted his back and stepped, as if he was uncomfortable with my weight. I couldn’t imagine why, given that of everyone there I was the smallest. Hadn’t anyone ridden him before?
Other fae started getting on their mounts. I glanced around, suddenly surprised by the number of warriors surrounding us. It wasn’t just the bureaucrats who had shown up, there were now at least ten soldiers preparing to ride with us.
With me.
“Not only do we not want you to escape, we have to make it look like you’re important,” said Goya, reading my mind.
“I see,” I said. “Part of my cover story.”
“The long lost, with wings bound. Yes, that’s your cover story. Some fae might figure out the truth. We just have to hope it’s not the right fae,” she said.
Right. Because I was caught. Now, as a convicted criminal, I was being sent to the Noble Fae Academy. Not just a rehabilitation program, though. Instead, a chance to be murdered.
I told myself I wouldn’t be at the stupid academy long enough to get killed, so I didn’t care what McGryth said. If I saw a chance to leave, I’d take it. I had never had any trouble leaving anywhere until I was taken to the Dungeon of Black Stone.
And then we were in the air. Spiraling upward without meaning to, I screamed. The unicorn had a mind of its own.
We raced into the clouds faster than I could possibly have imagined.
I glanced back only once. For a moment I could see McGryth’s face disappearing into a tiny speck, and then he was gone.
Twilight was just setting in, and for a while it felt as though we were even with the sun. I had never seen anything so beautiful, and I was certain I never would again. Maybe this was it. This was the best my life was going to be, and all that mattered.
We rode and rode, on through dusk and then the dark of night. I had hoped to keep an eye on the terrain so I’d have some idea of where we were and where we were going, but besides the darkness, we had soon climbed above a thick cloud cover. I knew we were heading into colder territory, that much was certain. The wind was biting, so much so that I clamped my jaws together in an effort to ward off the cold.
We were heading away from the mountains where I had grown up, and toward a range of even higher ones. I had never known there could be taller mountains in the world than my home range, and it amazed me to see them. The mountains I had lived in were so high that it had taken me days to get down from the peaks after my clan was slaughtered.
What looked like trained soldiers had done that. And the clan hadn’t done anything to provoke them. We were just part of the mountain world. All of us. We hadn’t been planning an uprising or anything else that should have made the powers feel threatened.
And yet we had been eliminated, unforgivingly and ruthlessly. We hadn’t been expecting anything like it, and when it came, it happened so fast that we had no time to prepare.
Of course we’d had lookouts, everyone did, because you never knew. But that hadn’t mattered. The soldiers were more secretive and capable than we could possibly have prepared for.
They had eliminated us for a reason, a reason I still couldn’t figure out. Maybe if I kept my head down for a while at this academy, I would find out why.
And I would find out who.
I desperately wanted to know what had happened to make them come after my clan. If it wasn’t me, and whoever my family had been, then who or what had provoked them?
So lost in thought was I that I forgot to pay attention to anyone around me. It wasn’t until the healer was flying exactly abreast with me that I woke up from my reverie and took notice.
She smiled and pointed downward. When I shook my head to indicate that I didn’t know what she meant, she pointed downward again. But then we all started to descend, and she stopped trying to signal anything. She did, however, stay with me as we spiraled to the earth.
My ears popped and my chest hurt from breathing the cold air. I kept an eye on the ground but had very little control over the great unicorn. He had a mind of his own, and he wasn’t about to listen to a new rider.
When we landed, I went flying off the unicorn and slammed into a bush. Coughing, with my arms scraped and my skin shredded, I pulled myself upright in the dim pre-dawn light. Several of the guards were laughing in my direction.
“Did nobody tell her the landing would be hard?” one of them asked.
“It’s not as if she’s inclined to listen to anything anyway,” said another.
They shook their heads as I crawled forward, but the healer came up and offered me a pot of something that looked greenish. I shook my head. No thanks. I wasn’t going to drink that and get poisoned.
The healer responded to my refusal by kneeling down in front of me and offering me her old hands. Despite the fact that they were wrinkled, they looked so soft that I couldn’t help myself. When I reached out to touch them, she smiled.
“You have chains on you. I’ve seen them before, but never this strong. Somebody was very afraid of freeing your power. The chains will be difficult to remove, but they do help with our story. Your strength is what you will have to rely on this year,” she said softly.
I stared at her, willing her to understand. Her smile grew.
“I know that’s what you’ve been relying on anyway,” she said. “I also know that you have to have patience. With your magic. With who you are. This type of strength unchained will have built up over the years, to the point where it could prove to be destructive for a while. I know that you also have experience with destruction.” She squeezed my hands gently. “We have faith in you.”
“Who is we?” I asked. She glanced over her shoulder as if she was afraid someone would overhear her. Was she traveling with fae she didn’t trust?
She answered very softly. “Those of u
s who still believe that the old times can come again. Those of us who believe that this kingdom can be saved from our allies and from threats from abroad, and can return to its glory days as part of the Trifecta. Every long-running dream.
“I’m hoping this will be a change, and that a thaw is coming. But what happens at the academy this year is crucial. In fact, it’s all that matters. If you do not survive the year along with the prince, I think the kingdom will fall with you,” she said.
I was about to ask her one of any number of questions when a guard yelled for her to get away from me.
“She’s fine. Let’s go. We still have more riding to do,” he snarled.
The healer departed immediately. I found myself shaking. I didn’t want to be responsible for the fate of myself alone, never mind an entire kingdom.
I told myself that the healer was probably just high on the same potion she had tried to hand me. Good thing I hadn’t taken it.
I pushed my hands off my knees and headed back to the unicorn. I was in no mood for him to be difficult, and for the first time since we had set eyes on each other, he appeared to understand that.
I nodded my head at him once. Good. Then I hauled myself up onto his back, and the next instant we took off.
This time I was more ready for the jolt and rush of air. I wound my hand into the unicorn’s mane and held on. A unicorn’s mane, and the healer’s hands. Links to the real world, living creatures that I could touch.
Locked in that cell, I had waited a long time for that to happen. But for now I tried not to think about it, or about what was ahead. I knew what I was getting into with this academy.
At least kind of.
Didn’t I?
The healer knew something too. And instead of being worried, she appeared to relish it, to want me to be more untethered than I even wanted to be. But from my point of view there were reasons to keep a low profile. At the academy, apparently, if you stuck your neck out you were murdered.
Noble Fae Academy: Year One Page 3
