by Brea Viragh
“How far away?” And how would I get there?
“Not far. It’s located on the east coast. Massachusetts, if I remember correctly. A few hours if you travel by car.”
It was strange to hear her melodic voice say the word car. “I’ve never heard of such a school.”
“Because it’s hard to hear about Fae dealings when you’re smack dab in the middle of a wolf pack, having to hide your truth,” she replied, her eyes narrowing and her smile revealing sharp white teeth. “Your people are good and kind in many ways, but they can also be wild beasts without the ability to see both sides of an argument. Someday, Tavi, you are going to have to learn. This world is not just black and white. We all exist on a spectrum of shades of gray and you choose where you fall on the spectrum.”
“You of all people should understand. I know those lessons,” I replied bitterly. “Better than most.”
Elfwaite inclined her head in agreement. “In some respects, yes. I will not lie to you. You know this. Your best option in this case is to apply to the halflings school, because it’s the first step toward freedom. They will test you for Fae blood, and if you test positive, you must compete to earn the right to stay. If you do, and you graduate, then you are permitted permanent access to live in the Faerie realm. It is one of the only options for halflings like you. Fight for your freedom, Tavi.”
“They’ll know about my shifter nature,” I argued. Still, the idea had taken root inside of me. A place to escape, not just from my future but from the expectations going along with it. “What am I going to do about my life here?”
It seemed a moot argument at this point. I no longer had a life here, or I wouldn’t after Kendrick came to claim me.
I needed this hope and gathered it close to me. For the first time this evening, I imagined a better life for myself when I’d been taught only to stay in my lane and obey someone more powerful than me.
Elfwaite pointedly cleared her throat. “Your life will change irrevocably whether you apply to the school or not. And if you get accepted, then you would have to hide your wolf. I have a friend who can help, if you decide to go through with it, though her help will come at a price. You must be willing to pay the price.”
“I’m willing to pay,” I insisted quickly. Anything.
Her mouth quirked to the side. “Be sure before you commit to it. You never know what may be required of you. I’d hate to see you give up something you truly love in order to get what you think you want.”
3
I had to formulate a plan to get out of Kendrick’s clutches. Even without talking to him face to face, I felt him around me, felt his influence like invisible fingers tightening around my neck. Or maybe a chain.
I stayed in the park talking with Elfwaite until well after midnight, if the arc of the moon overhead was any indication. Sneaking back home, I kept my feet silent, my breathing even, and my focus on what lay ahead for me.
My fingers curled into fists as I walked through the front door. There was nowhere to run once inside the sprawling two-story mansion. I stared at familiar marble and bronze fixtures, the paintings belonging in a museum rather than on a civilian’s wall. When I looked toward my uncle’s study, my gaze hardened further.
Funny how things could change in such a short time. My life had been altered with my father’s murder and my mother’s public execution at the hands of their enemies. Things seemed to straighten out, and I’d been given a stable place to hide here with Uncle Will, yet now I stood at what felt like a final dead end.
Unless Elfwaite was right about this school.
At least the party was over and the house emptied of guests. From the silence and the slender dark space beneath the office door, I’d guess my uncle had gone off to get drunk with his high-ranking pack buddies at their favorite bar. It was a Friday and Saturday night tradition for them. Five or six males staying out until the sun crept over the horizon sharing stories and dirty jokes over expensive alcohol. I’d learned not to expect him home.
Admittedly, I’d been banking on tradition. I didn’t want to face him again. I didn’t want to hear him tell me again how wrong I was to fight this. Or how I should be grateful for a match at all, let alone a match with a fated mate. A match with Kendrick Grimaldi.
Gag.
Shoulders tense, I took the steps two at a time and pushed through the door to my room. My laptop lay on the desk beneath the windows, surrounded by papers and collectables, odds and ends I knew I needed to organize yet couldn’t bring myself to. Yet.
A glance at the clock told me it was 12:30. Grit and exhaustion had my eyes closing and wanting to stay shut. Even so, I needed to know more. I had to know more about the Fae Academy for Halflings.
Elfwaite had told me about their online application process. Someone had brought the ancient institution into the twenty-first century and made them more accessible to my generation. They were very progressive.
Now if I could find the link to their website…
It was the one thing my friend hadn’t been able to give me. Although she’d seemed to know enough considering she didn’t have access to the internet. The pixie knew more about the world than most humans I’d met.
I lifted the laptop lid and clicked the power button, giving the machine time to wake up. The screen glowed blue in the dim hush of night. I had work to do.
Thirty minutes later I still hadn’t found the right website. There were a few links that seemed promising at the time but led to something either completely different or a blank page asking if I wanted to purchase the domain name.
So yes, someone had updated their online application process, but then made it insanely hard for any normal person to find.
A way to weed out the weak before they even applied?
It took me another thirty minutes to get through enough false starts and leads to fill a ship. I’m never going to find this damned site. Fatigue and frustration went hand in hand, and another glance at the clock assured me it was hours past my bedtime and my birthday was long over.
No wonder I wanted to throw the computer out the window. Good thing Uncle Will wouldn’t expect me to rise early. He probably wouldn’t be out of bed before noon either.
Then I thought of my “fated mate.” I thought of the lustful sneer on Kendrick’s face the one and only time I’d seen him, and all of the nasty things I’d heard regarding his temperament. I could deal with the sleepiness if it meant an out from a lifetime with him.
I clicked around with whatever combination of words I could think of to find the website.
And got a hit right when I was about to call it quits.
“It can’t be…” I muttered, leaning closer and blinking blurry eyes to read the text.
Probably not. The longer I looked at the page, the more it seemed like a joke. A silly thing, similar to the Harry Potter sorting hat quiz online. Probably fiction and a waste of my time.
But I clicked anyway, the way I had every other site before this one.
The Fae Academy for Halflings. Along with an address in Massachusetts.
A light came on inside of me.
Another click gave me a full page containing a brief history of the place including pictures of the old castle. It rose three stories high with turrets in an antiquated style one rarely saw anymore. Old stone and mortar with quintessential English ivy suffocating parts of the walls. Old wavy glass reflected light from the sun burning overhead when the pictures were taken.
It seems like a nice place, I thought, leaning closer still. A place where I could escape. If it was real.
In that respect, it didn’t matter what the school looked like. It only mattered if they accepted me.
The castle housing the academy was located on fifty acres set well back from the road. It made for more privacy, certainly, and if there were many Fae located in the same place, then they more than likely had magic to protect them from prying eyes.
Though my eyes burned, I read through the process of enrollment
and graduation, including how to earn permanent residency.
And then I clicked the button to enroll. Now or never.
The questions seemed ridiculous at first, like pictures of treasure chests and a space for me to answer which one I would choose and why. There were questions asking about Fae weaknesses and strengths with options where none of them appeared to line up with usual lore. An example:
Faebane—deadly poison, delicious tea, or party favor.
Which should I choose?
Those questions were most likely intended to weed out the real submissions from the fake ones. Except I was half Fae and I still didn’t know the answer.
Anxiety roiled beneath my ribs. Maybe I should put this off until I could get some sleep. Wait until I had a clearer head—
Kendrick Grimaldi.
Yeah, nope. No time to waste.
Besides the strange multiple-choice questions, the rest of the application read like an online quiz and I finished it easily. There was a space for me to fill in my information toward the end of the enrollment, along with a blank space for me to write about why I wanted to go to the academy.
I paused, biting my thumbnail. I couldn’t tell the truth or they would never accept me.
They won’t accept you anyway. They will never let some nobody in.
The voice inside my head would not stop with the negative self-talk, no matter how hard I tried to silence it. Despite the screaming, the constant subconscious repetition I would not be good enough and I’d be forced to marry a monster, I filled out the rest of the form. I should have waited to finish until I had a clearer head.
I did it anyway.
What was the harm? Either they accepted me or they didn’t. Either they provided the out I desperately needed…or not.
“What are you doing still up?”
I jumped at the voice and swung around to see my uncle’s large frame filling the doorway. Scrambling to close my laptop before he could see the screen, I turned to face him and gathered a simple if tired smile onto my face. “I couldn’t sleep,” I told him through a yawn I didn’t have to fake. “Thought I would play around on the internet for a while to try and relax.”
“Maybe it’s a good thing you’re awake. I’d like to talk to you. I want to apologize for earlier,” he continued, butter-smooth and surprisingly not drunk.
Then he lost his balance a bit stepping forward over the threshold. Okay, maybe not sloppy drunk but definitely tipsy.
I curled my lip. “You do?”
“Of course.” He sounded surprised. “You’re my niece, and you know how much I care about you. You do know, don’t you?”
William walked to the bed and took a seat facing me, nearly missing the edge and grappling to right his balance before he slid to the floor.
“I’m not so sure anymore. The latest bombshell you dropped on me raised a few questions.” My spine stiffened with his nearness. At the stench of liquor on his breath.
His brows narrowed but he didn’t say anything for the longest time. “I should have spoken to you beforehand, it’s true. I thought you would be happy with the news. A match is a good thing, especially for a half-shifter like you. We’ve kept your true heritage under wraps for long enough. It’s time for you to get your happy ending.”
A low, incredulous laugh. “I should be happy to be used as a pawn for pack relations? You must not know me well, Uncle Will, if you think a marriage would make me happy. This is terrible news.”
“Why would you say it’s terrible news? You don’t trust me to want the best for you? This is the best thing we could ask for,” Will insisted.
“For you, maybe. But Kendrick Grimaldi is a beast.” Didn’t Uncle Will understand what lurked beneath the man’s surface? It wasn’t a kind heart.
He shot to his feet and lost his balance before settling back down and righting himself, like invisible hands clapping him on the arms to keep him from falling over.
“A man who is doing what he needs to do for the welfare of his subjects is not a beast,” Will ground out, becoming frustrated with me. “You should know. Some would say you should be grateful for me finding you and taking you in once your father died. Offering you the chance to live comfortably.”
“I should be grateful you acted like family?” I questioned.
He wanted to speak more on the subject. I could see it in his eyes, in the way his shoulders tensed and he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. Instead, he came out with “I hope I didn’t ruin your birthday party. Although I suppose now your birthday is over, and I’ve lost the opportunity to make it up to you on the day of. I’m truly sorry, Tavi.”
“I know you are.” I played along with the apology and abrupt turn of conversation, because both reeked of a maneuver.
Uncle Will wanted to keep me willing and compliant, a bargaining chip with the Grimaldi pack. An apology was the first step toward smoothing the way and keeping me biddable if not happy.
I inclined my head so he didn’t see the way my lips narrowed. The way everything inside of me went cold at this play he’d made. “I accept your apology. Thank you. And I am grateful for everything you’ve done for me.”
I thought about the admissions process I’d just gone through, about the Fae Academy for Halflings. Come what may, Uncle Will and I were stuck with each other until I could figure out an exit strategy.
I might as well play along.
“You and Kendrick will be happy,” Will said too softly. “And once you get to know him, you’ll see it isn’t a mistake and it isn’t a power play. But if you try to fight me again, if you purposely blow this match, then certain things will have to change and not necessarily for the better.”
His words dropped like stones in my gut. I opened my mouth to argue further, then nodded my head. “I understand. Just give me some time to adjust to the idea, okay?”
We ended the night with a loose hug and a request on his part for me to stop fiddling around on the computer and get to bed. I obliged.
A week passed and Friday loomed large. Although I checked my email twenty times a day, I still hadn’t heard anything from the academy. Did I expect to?
Maybe. Yes.
I knew it was a long shot to be accepted, but I still held out hope. Elfwaite had assured me they accept anyone with Fae blood who applied and the true culling came later in the semester. That didn’t seem to be the case for me. Or perhaps I’d gotten a little impatient.
Still, no one had reached out to me to test my blood. And after another four days of waiting without an answer, I began to panic.
It meant I needed to have a Plan B in place. And more than likely a C, D, and E. I tried to push the niggling bite of panic aside, but the low-level anxiety stayed with me, every hour of every day. I needed to talk to Elfwaite again, so I donned my jogging clothes and prepared to leave.
But just as I reached the stair landing, Uncle Will pushed through the front door with his briefcase in hand, kicking the door closed and using his free hand to loosen his tie. “Where are you heading?” he asked when he saw me.
I continued down the stairs. “I’m going for a run in the park. The same thing I do every afternoon when I’m not working for you,” I said lightly.
“Not today, you’re not.” He watched me, scrutinized my every move, saw the flare of my nostrils at his words. “Go back upstairs and change out of those shorts. I need you to put on a dress.”
My stomach sank. “Why?”
He sighed. “Please don’t question me today, Tavi. Do not question me. I’ve had a long afternoon of meetings and this tension in my neck is threatening to morph into a hell of a headache.”
“Uncle Will, tell me what’s going on,” I insisted.
“Cook!” Will called out instead. Pointedly ignoring me. “Cook, where are you?”
He dropped the briefcase on the entryway console and then looked up at me. At the concern clearly written across my face.
“Tavi, the dress.” He snapped his fingers. “No
w. We have very important guests arriving in an hour and I need you to look your best. Kendrick Grimaldi is coming for dinner and he can’t wait to officially meet you.”
Did my stomach merely sink before? Now it spiraled into a bottomless abyss.
4
Lungs aching, I took the stairs two at a time and slammed the door to my room behind me. I leaned against the wall, trying to breathe, trying to get my heart to quiet against the cold pit opening up in my belly. Nothing seemed to help. The space around me blurred and my mind spun in circles.
I kicked at the wall and bit back a scream of pain when my toes collided the wrong way.
Kendrick Grimaldi would be here in an hour. An hour until I had the rest of my freedom yanked from me. And I was expected to get dressed, to do my hair and makeup, or else risk punishment? Severe punishment, if the look on Uncle Will’s face had been any indication.
My chest hurt. Is this what a panic attack feels like? Like a rabid animal clawing through muscle and bone to reach the heart?
I should run. I should pack a bag and climb out my window, down the portcullis and out onto the street. My running shoes were laced. It would be easy—
Kendrick couldn’t possibly cart me off tonight. Could he? I was ninety percent sure of it. Uncle Will had muttered something about the two of them needing to discuss business, or so I thought I’d heard when I was fleeing upstairs. Business about the match, no doubt, working out the details. The reminder did nothing to soothe my racing heart because there was still ten percent of uncertainty to consider.
I steeled myself for a fight. I had no choice tonight. I’d play the part to the best of my ability, get through this, and make sure the two of us were never alone together. I would do whatever I had to do to keep up appearances while I made my escape plan.
As much as I loathed the idea of being in the same room as a criminal, I shed my jogging clothes in favor of a sheer silk dress. One of the nicest pieces I owned and once loved and would never look at the same after tonight.
