by D. D. Chance
Magnus the djinn lay pinned beneath the rubble of that portal frame, barely moving.
“By the Light,” Niall barked, and my team moved forward, while I turned in a slow circle. The one portal missing was the one to the mountain king’s castle. With a sharp gesture, I brought it to life once more, unsurprised to see roiling winds and battering snow and little else.
“Mistress Belle—she’s gone,” Magnus groaned. “It’s worse this time. The academy survived a full month when her great-grandmother left, but we won’t last the week. You must bring her back or gather all the magic you can. It is already leaching away.”
Not one of my warriors responded, their faces resolute as they pulled more debris free from the trapped djinn.
“She went through here?” I asked, my voice hard as a rock. She hadn’t intended this, I couldn’t believe she’d intended this. But what did I truly know of Belle Hogan? I knew she was my mate, but I wouldn’t be the first king to be betrayed by a witch. I also knew she’d fled the academy without my permission, despite me asking her to stay here. And then she’d shown up again, incredibly powerful, wielding both her magic and an ultimatum. But who had told her that such an ultimatum would work? Who would have known such a thing?
We’d left the mountain Fae alone for too long, I suddenly understood. And they had neatly orchestrated a killing blow.
“She did enter that portal,” Magnus said, confirming my own dire conclusion—but then he complicated the matter further. “Not by choice. A fell wind exploded from it when you left for Jewel Point. Almost as if your departure had triggered the opening of the other into the academy. She was caught up in that crosswind while I was thrust back. I saw her get pulled in. She didn’t leap. She was taken. And then the portal collapsed over me as I tried to follow.”
“How long ago?” I asked, but Magnus shook his head.
“Not long, but long enough. Something gravely dangerous has happened.”
“Niall, Marta. With me,” I snapped, and together, we leapt through the new portal.
We landed in a castle devastated by neglect. Wind howled through windows that had long ago been knocked out, its roaring force disturbing piles of debris and animal leavings, even bones, though it was impossible to tell who had died within these walls. The place was icy cold, and two pedestals lay on their sides beside the entryway of the room, shattered.
As the wind whistled and shrieked around the castle’s turrets, another cry rose up, a long and cold feminine laugh.
“This way,” Marta shouted. She’d already moved to the door. We followed her, running down a long corridor as barren as the room we’d left. What once had been a tall, majestic window beckoned at the far end, doubtless showing a magnificent vista or what was left of it, given this storm. The window was miraculously intact, and just short of it, a room lay to the right, as desolate and empty as the rest of the castle we’d seen thus far, but for one distinct difference.
A Fae lay huddled in the center of the room, decrepit, covered in rags, a silver bolt pinning him to a large block of stone. He glanced up when he saw us, and I stopped short to see his haggard face, his crazed eyes.
“They had my family,” he groaned. “Their torture I could take, but they had my family.”
“Where?” I demanded, hardening my heart against his plight. The Fae stared at me with paralyzed fear, and I understood his dilemma. “I will save your family if they’re still alive,” I promised him. “You have my word as High King.”
The Fae grimaced, and I realized he was a Laram, a lesser Fae. “I swear to you,” I said quietly, and whatever magic Belle had accorded me rose just enough to reach this man in his hysteria.
Tears streaked down his face. “Wherever she calls home, they will lie in wait. They’ll take her and use the magic she’s built within her to their own ends. They are much stronger than they were once upon a time. And they have grown restless with their own world. They have made bargains with dire enemies they believe they can control. They may be right.”
I didn’t have time for the mutterings of a madman. “Where did Belle go?”
“To her tavern,” he said. “But it’s too late. If you’re here, then she is gone and the contract is broken. Oh…” He gestured weakly. “She took the illusion of the emerald-encrusted crown and steel shackles, believing them to be the remnants of her great-grandmother, believing that because it was the illusion I helped maintain. Instead, she has been betrayed. Those artifacts will draw every ounce of her magic from her and funnel it to the coven she spurned.”
“When?” I demanded.
He shrugged. “It’s happening even now.”
I turned and struck a portal to life, but I couldn’t enter Belle’s tavern directly from the Fae realm, not with the wards she had in place. I could only open a window to it, having been there. And I watched in horror as the flames leapt and curled around her precious bar, the gleaming tables, as three women dressed in heavy silver robes stood and watched with patent satisfaction.
My heart twisted.
“Is she dead?” I murmured, but even as I watched, I heard the shriek of fury. A door in the back of the tavern burst open. Belle emerged, her eyes shining with almost maniacal energy. She couldn’t stop this blaze, I knew, and to my surprise she didn’t try. Instead, she made a beeline for the bar where liquor bottles stood as silent sentinels, the taps for ale jutting out from gleaming brass surfaces. She leapt up onto the counter, ducking beneath the cabinets, then flung herself at the wall. I heard the sound of glass shattering, and then, swiveling the portal window, saw an opening to a realm that wasn’t my own—open plains, a sullen sky, a dark and murky forest at its fringe.
The witches screamed in outrage, but Belle was no longer there. She had escaped—and not to flee these women and disappear into another pocket of her own realm. She hadn’t left by the front door. She’d left by a portal into the monster realm.
“Oh,” the Laram beside me gasped as the room suddenly lightened, illusion restoring its glamour. There were books, there was warmth, and though he still lay pinned, the Laram sobbed with real relief. “Oh, thank the light, she’s not dead,” he groaned.
The Hogan witch’s magic had returned to the Fae realm, I knew immediately, at least in some distant form. I wasn’t going to let it get away again.
Was Belle trying to find me, or merely to escape the terror of those three women who had set her tavern ablaze? I didn’t know and I no longer cared. She was back in my world, and I would find her.
“I will find you,” I muttered. “You are mine.”
Thank you so much for reading TEACHING THE KING! If you are ready to continue the adventure with Belle and Aiden, be sure to check out TEMPTING THE KING, book 2 in the Witchling Academy series. If you’re curious to see what happens to Belle after she jumps out of the fire she finds herself in, I’ve included a sneak peek of the first chapter starting on the next page!
In the meantime, please visit me on Facebook to say hello!
Sneak Peak: TEMPTING THE KING
CHAPTER 1 ~ Belle
Fire was everywhere. Racing over the carefully polished tabletops, snaking down the gleaming bar, dancing hungrily toward the rows of bottles and shiny taps that held full kegs of beer. It wasn’t the first time a Hogan residence would burn, its timbers charring to blackened husks, glass exploding…but it might well be the last.
I threw my arm over my mouth, struggling to breathe. This sucked.
The magic of the White Crane Tavern ran so deep that every crack and crevice hissed under the spectral fire. The bar had endured several small kitchen fires over the years, and more than its share of drunken brawls. But this blaze took me all the way back to when I was very small, with the shocking sight of the smoldering husk of my great-grandmother’s cabin, little more than smoking ruins by the time the elder coven had finished with it. Those memories flashed hard and sure through me, and—
Wait a minute. That couldn’t be right. We’d sold my great-grandmother�
�s cabin—right? We’d used the money from that sale to fund the tavern renovations…
Right?
I shook my head hard, trying to focus. My memories weren’t cooperating—probably due to all the smoke inhalation—but either way, I couldn’t stick around to figure out the truth now. After a lifetime of hiding, I’d been discovered by the coven of the White Mountains, and they’d come to claim their prize.
“Stop!” Deanna Mackleway’s voice commanded.
I paid no attention. With her curling red hair and dancing green eyes, that imperious bitch of a witch had stood in the middle of the White Crane not twelve hours earlier, by the reckoning of regular time, whining to me about the obligations and rules my family was bound to follow. Now she wielded her ring-heavy hands like the weapons they were, magic crackling from her fingertips, trying to pin me down as I darted toward the bar.
Fortunately, Hogan witches knew how to run.
I leapt up onto one of the chairs of the table closest to the bar, raced across the table, and jumped again, this time to the fire-engulfed bar. With a frenzied glance, I took in the gleaming brass, the dozens of survivor photos and letters hanging behind the cabinets—all refugees the Hogans had helped, once upon a time, the only remaining evidence of our connection now curling and withering in the scorching heat. I winced as I heard the first bottle shatter.
Shit. The booze was catching fire.
Only the cheap stuff was on display out here, but the fire would eventually root out the other stashes. Would the outside world even notice the blaze before it was too late? Probably not. Hell, it might already be too late. Heat swelled around me, a suffocating wall, and I felt the pull of the coven witches at my clothes and hair, their magic reaching for me, seeking to yank me back, to keep me in my place.
I twisted toward them, flinging off their hold and staring my enemies full in the face. There was only one I recognized, besides Deanna—Cassandra Montebatten, the head of the coven of the White Mountains. Well, hey, at least I’d merited the VIP treatment.
But I had powers too, dammit. I had magic. Whether I liked it or not, I had returned to the realm of the Fae to teach the High King, and now wore the emerald crown and steel shackles of my service. With those magical weapons pressing against my forehead and clamped around my wrists, I could manifest whatever power I needed—and right now, I freaking needed to escape.
I channeled every bit of my terror into that thought as I whirled back and trained my gaze on the portal mirror above the bar. I’d never tried to successfully opened this portal before. Humans and monsters alike had leapt from the monster realm into my bar using this path, but the way back had never been open to me, even when I’d wanted to use it as another place to hide a rogue witch on the run. The portal had always remained stubbornly closed.
It damned well had better open now.
“Open!” I screeched for good measure as I launched myself at the mirror. I crashed into the glass, hearing it explode all around me.
For one heart-wrenching second, I thought I’d smacked straight into the wall behind the bar. I braced myself to drop back into the roaring fire soaked in booze and shattered glass, well on my way to roasting to death.
Instead, I hurtled into open space.
A second choking breath later, I sprawled onto the floor of another tavern, this one filled with roaring, stomping dwarves, most of them engaged in an all-out brawl. No one seemed to notice me cannonballing into their midst until I rolled to a stop and hauled myself upright, spilling awkwardly into the nearest knot of fighters.
“Clumsy shifter—tha’s no way to fight!” The closest combatant, a burly bruiser with waggling jowls and about six missing teeth, accosted me drunkenly, ham-hock fists swinging. I ducked, leaning low to shove him forward and use his bulk as a human battering ram. Having run a tavern most of my life, I’d been in my share of bar fights. I wasn’t a big woman, so I rarely relied on fighting with my fists to save myself. The place wards at the White Crane had always been enough to bolster my own magic—and again, now I had the emerald crown, the silver shackles. I was full-on certified as the teaching witch of the Fae, magical bling most definitely included. I could fight, dammit. And I would win.
Another trio of dwarves staggered into me from the side, paying me no mind as they punched and swore at each other, by all indications happy to be along for the ride. But with another glance around the place, I hesitated to use my magic right away. Did anyone use overt magic in the monster realm? Could the witches of the White Mountains find me if I started popping off spells? I didn’t know, and couldn’t risk making the wrong move.
I also didn’t want to die, which meant I needed to get out of here as fast as possible. The dwarves that came to my bar from the monster realm liked only one thing more than drinking, and that was fighting. They weren’t quitters either. This brawl could go on for a long time.
“Over here!”
I’d managed to crawl ten feet across the room when I lifted my head and saw a tawny-haired young woman with unnaturally large eyes and a wide smile, gesturing to me excitedly. A shifter? Maybe. Not one of the noble Akari, the giant snow leopards of the monster realm, but some distant cousin. There was something familiar about her, I decided, making me think I’d seen her kind before. Beneath her mane of curly hair, pulled up in a loose topknot, she wore a black apron, dark clothes, and what looked to be sensible shoes. Barmaid, had to be. She also continued gesturing frantically at me. I scrambled forward, lunging her way to let her pull me behind the bar.
“They’ll wear out soon, but you weren’t here when we barred the doors,” she shouted. “Somebody’s gonna notice that. You need to leave. I’m Celia, by the way!” She grinned, pumping my hand in a move that seemed very, very human. “Welcome to the Riven District.”
“Thanks,” I managed, peering at her more closely. Was she a shifter? Human? Or something totally different? Another roar from the brawlers made me jump. I didn’t have time to work out Celia’s species right now.
“Door’s that way.” Celia pointed, but as I swung around, I flinched. Something was coming through the door—no, something was about to come through it, something foul, knocking Celia back on her ass. My ability to see the near-term future of the person right in front of me was apparently fully operational in the monster realm—definitely a plus. But as a result, I knew there was no way we could exit through the front door.
I waved a hand toward the back of the bar. “Another way out?” I shouted above the din.
Celia frowned at me. “Sure, but what’s wrong with…”
A huge explosion rocked the bar. Billowing black sooty smoke boiled through the door Celia had wanted me to take. She staggered back, landing on her ass exactly as I’d seen in my vision, then she scrambled up in a rush. I glimpsed a hint of metal, a flash of gold at her neck, then she was on me, her eyes wide as she grabbed my arm.
“You’ve got the sight,” she said, excitedly. “But you don’t have the stink of human on you. How is that possible? What are you?”
It didn’t seem like a great time to declare my species, especially since she’d branded the lot of us as carrying a stench. “I’ll explain later,” I offered instead, in turn whispering a spell of protection that—miraculously—coalesced into an honest-to-goddess bubble, translucent to my eye, but invisible to anyone else. Apparently, my spellcasting had leveled up already with my work with the king. I’d take it. “We should be okay to get out safely now. But where?”
Celia grimaced. “Side door, but good luck getting all the way—hey!”
I grabbed her hand and pulled her tight to me, the three feet of space afforded me with my bubble of protection more than enough to get us through the crowd. We pushed on, eventually reaching the side door, which Celia unlocked and shoved open, even as a giant white cockatoo-like creature flew up from a shadowy alcove by the door, screeching and bellowing in abject outrage, loud enough to make my heart stutter.
“Emergency exit,” Celia announced,
flipping the bird the bird. “Get over it, Seamus.” And we were through.
The noise from the bar brawl spilled out into the street but didn’t seem to affect anyone outside the establishment. We were in some sort of a small town, a collection of shops and buildings as short and wide as the dwarves in Celia’s tavern.
I’d never seen this part of the monster realm before, in all the time I had spent looking through the portal as I’d washed dishes behind the bar of the White Crane. Peering into the monster realm, I’d dreamed of a life far away from Boston. A place I could be free. A place I could work real magic. But the reality wasn’t anything like I’d imagined… Mainly because it stank like wet dog and stale beer.
Straight-up Boston all over again.
Celia pulled me close against the wall. “You are human,” she decided. “And you’ve got magic too. Real magic. That makes you a witch. Who dumped you here?”
“I did.” I grimaced as I pulled my tunic away from my body, taking in the charred fabric, the reek of smoke. If she’d figured out I was human, though, it seemed like time for some emergency name dropping. “Right now, I work for the High King of the Fae.”
“Yeah? Well, I’m not sure what that’ll get you. None of the Laram ever come here—and, again, the whole human thing. That’s not good.” Celia tapped her lips as I grimaced. There were two problems with her reaction. Thing one, the Laram were the lesser Fae, not the higher. She’d never heard of the high Fae? How was that possible? And thing two, Celia felt a whole hell of a lot like a human to me, not just a shifter in her human-ish form. Who was she to judge?
Before I could poke back at her, she continued, her eyes narrowing thoughtfully. “You know, if you’re a witch, maybe you could sell your services. We just lost our last wizard in the realm, and we’ve never had a human witch who lasted long in the district. They taste too good.”
I blinked at her. “Um, where am I again, exactly?”
