Root Rot Academy: Term 2

by Watson, Rhea

“Uh, thanks—”

  “Doing what you did that night for him, for some… vampire,” he sneered, his disgusting husky rumble bulldozing clear through my objections. “It was very admirable for someone so young, and I… I’d like to get to know you a little better.”

  “Oh.” Do not stab him in the eye. Do not throw the coffee in his face. Be cool. It’s not the time. Not the place. Not the day for him to suffer. “Okay.”

  His charcoal-black gaze swept up and down my figure almost… suggestively. “Lovely.”

  Oh.

  Oh gods.

  Was he… hitting on me?

  Just the thought made my skin crawl.

  “Going over lesson plans, are we?” Benedict went for the top parchment on my lap, and at this point I was practically crawling up and over the back of the couch to get away from him. Read the fucking room, asshole.

  “When are we not?” I managed with a forced laugh, which triggered some big guffawing outburst from the warlock. Right in my face. Big ol’ belly howls.

  Fuck me.

  It wasn’t that funny.

  “Exactly,” he said through the chuckles, wiggling his eyebrows like this was the first of many private jokes between us. “Let me get my things… I’ll join you.”

  I’d rather die.

  As soon as he was off the couch, his back to me, I grabbed the coffee and tossed it in the fire. When he drifted to the main table and quickly became entangled in conversation, laughing with a few of the grey-haired warlocks—though nowhere near as obnoxiously as he’d just done with me—I gathered up my things and waited for the opportune moment to get out.

  The second he leaned over, deeply engrossed in his monologue all of a sudden, his full attention elsewhere, I bolted, not looking back until I was out of sight, out of touch…

  And way out of the castle.

  4

  Alecto

  I kept walking until I reached the coast.

  Walking, not running. Benedict would have had no idea where I’d gone, but I refused to run from him. Power walk? Sure. After ditching my stuff in the flat, Bjorn still conked out like a sleeping stone statue, I bailed on the castle. Zipped through the back gate, eyeing the walls that suddenly had barbed wire coils along the top. Followed familiar paths at a steady clip and just kept going, going, going.

  Surprisingly, walking actually helped more than running. Even though I had become a seasoned runner over the last ten years, I was still out of shape, Root Rot’s demanding routine always edging out my runs in the first term. My body still wasn’t conditioned enough for it, and while I could have tried, pushed and then hated myself for failing, I held back.

  By the time I stumbled down a rocky coastline and into the sand, a dark Atlantic lapping at the shore, I still hurt. The highlands were both beautiful and unforgiving, full of scraggly shrubs and thick grasses and hills on hills on hills. No telling how long I’d been walking in all that, but the even drumbeat of my feet on solid ground had, for the first time, kept me out of my head. No longer midafternoon, the barely there sun had wandered across a hazy sky, and when I eventually plopped down in the damp sand, exhausted and sweaty and cold and sore, sunset wasn’t far off.

  Now, a good hour later, darkness slowly descending here at the end of the world, I was mostly just cold. The shimmering gold orb at my side offered light, not heat. It hummed with my magic, ancient and earthbound and comforting, but if it could mysteriously turn into a furnace, that would be awesome.

  I knew the spell to produce a floating fire—quite useful when there was no kindling around.

  Still too chickenshit to use it, unfortunately.

  At least this little guy would eventually light the way home; it would be a pitch-black march through a landscape hungry to snap my ankle at every turn, so that should be fun.

  Sighing, I toed at the sand, legs folded into my chest, arms wrapped around them, and then set my chin in the dip between my knees. The distance from the castle, from him, should have given me room to think, but I’d been thinking for months now. Sifting through the same thoughts, the same scenarios, over and over again. Nothing new. Just the same plans and considerations, the same pros and cons lists. At this point, the thoughts raced by at warp speed, my mind primed to whip through what it had already dissected a thousand times before.

  I just needed to decide what to do with Benedict and commit. Pick a plan and execute.

  But I couldn’t.

  And that pissed me off.

  Left me frustrated and tired and anxious—exhausted. Today, disgust joined the ranks, still totally grossed out that Benedict Hammond knew my coffee order, right down to the vanilla I splashed in at the end.

  I turned my head to the side, cheek on my knees, and closed my eyes with a shudder. He had tried to touch me. Stroke a curl, maybe eventually tuck it behind my ear.

  Or… I dunno, grab it?

  Ugh. My gut roiled at the thought, and I swallowed down the flood of bile, his peppermint breath carrying on the next gentle gust that swept across the empty beach.

  He wanted to know me.

  Groaning, I sat up and stretched my legs out, jeans rigid from the November chill, my massive black wool coat peppered with sand and dry grass bits and the odd thorn that had hung on for the ride. Scrubbing at my cheeks, then massaging up to my forehead, my skull, all my curls wild and free as black water crashed along the shoreline, I stared out to a shadowy horizon, water and sky eventually merging into darkness.

  What the fuck do I do about Benedict Hammond?

  Seduce and destroy? He wanted to know me anyway, so maybe—

  I’d vomit. The first time I had to kiss him, embrace him, stroke my hand up his thigh, I’d hurl. That was out. As much as I wanted to be that girl, to pretend I could throw on any mask and get the job done, I just wasn’t.

  Not yet, anyway.

  Maybe time would force my hand.

  Maybe—

  A voice suddenly rose above the waves.

  A high, clear soprano, sweet as a tinkling bell and gentle as a spring mist.

  Frowning, I twisted around to scan the slope at the cusp of the beach. The same rocks and brambles and darkening sky stared back—but no source of that voice. So hauntingly beautiful, its melody blanketed me, sank into my skin and settled in my bones.

  Siren song.

  My heart skipped a beat, and I whipped around when I realized I’d been looking the wrong way. A song so lovely, so pure and enchanting, all the way up here—in a land where fae portals dotted the coast, selkie lived in abundance, and siren clans called home… I needed to look to the sea.

  And there she was, perched on a rock like this was a fairy tale, gorgeous from tip to tail. Shamrock-green hair trailed down her back, slick from the water, her skin a creamy ivory and stamped with shells. Bare breasts, full and weighted. A taut torso met her scaly tail, green and blue, shimmering in the sunset, beautiful.

  Dangerous, too.

  Sirens sang to lure their prey, to coax unwitting humans into their arms so they could drag them down and consume every last morsel.

  Fortunately, their song had no sway on supers or shifters. It was just a pretty melody, wordless and lovely. As breathtaking as she was perched on that black rock, all sharp edges and cruel angles hoisting her above the water, she must have been young—inexperienced. Why else would she continue to sing at me? I tipped my head to the side and smiled, willing her to realize I wouldn’t come, that I only appreciated her song.

  That it didn’t call to my heart.

  Move on to easier prey, girl.

  Not that I encouraged the active hunting of humans, but not every supernatural society felt the same, nor did they obey our laws. Sirens were wilder than shifters in that regard, throwing caution to the wind, separate from the rest of us in their underwater societies.

  She wanted to eat me. Feast on the flesh of this lone land-dweller seated halfway up the beach. She risked a lot choosing a rock so close to shore—exposure, capture.

&
nbsp; Maybe she was starving.

  Hardly a thriving human population up here—

  A splash interrupted both my train of thought and her song. It erupted at the base of the siren’s rock, water jutting up and sprinkling her tail. We both frowned at each other—and then a rock pelted her in the face.

  Hard.

  A rock from the shoreline, bam, right in the forehead, splitting her flawless skin and unleashing a spray of dark green blood. Instantly, the siren went from breathtaking to monstrous, her mouth elongating in a shriek, spear-like teeth exposed, her eyes flashing to pure black. Little angry fins popped out of her neck, flailing rigidly, and she leapt into the water with a snarl, gone in a flash.

  Who the hell had…? I guided the floating orb aside with my wand, scowling down the beach, and then exhaled a long, irritated huff when I spotted the culprit.

  Of course.

  Gavriel stood about a foot out of the ocean’s reach, the water charging up the sand and retreating just before it grazed his feet. Garbed in black from head to toe, he reminded me of Jack for a moment with a formfitting dress shirt, in pants with an ironed line cutting down the front, then a pair of leather oxfords hardly made for the beach.

  His hair as wild as mine, thick and luscious, the silver highlights in all the rich dark brown catching the fading light like whitecaps on the water. Smirking, he turned away from the rocky perch, but as soon as that grey gaze settled on me, his mirth flatlined to nothing, his pinched brow mirroring mine.

  Neither of us were thrilled to see the other, apparently.

  While I hadn’t seen him since Samhain, I’d heard he was still somewhere around the castle, not the type to take vacations. Until now, I hadn’t wondered if he was avoiding me, but the longer he stood there, both of us locked in the glaring match that could last until the end of time, I half expected him to wheel around and storm up the beach without saying a word.

  Instead, he scrunched his dress shirtsleeves up to his elbows, then shoved his hands in his pockets and meandered my way.

  Took his sweet-ass time, too, plodding along through the sand, until eventually he plopped down next to me, never once asking if I wanted company.

  I didn’t.

  But I didn’t have it in me to tell him to fuck off, either.

  As snippy as we’d been that night, Gavriel and I were a team on Samhain. We saved Bjorn together, and that kind of, sort of, maybe made me dislike him a little less after the theft incident in the greenhouse.

  Still hot as sin, of course, which didn’t help matters, my body tingling with interest, perking up at the closeness and shaking off the cold. But hot didn’t override douchebag—not anymore, at least.

  And definitely not when I was sober.

  At the next whoosh of the bitter breeze, I drew my knees to my chest again, teeth on the verge of chattering. Out of the corner of my eye, Gavriel nudged at the floating light orb.

  “Right. Why the fuck isn’t this thing on fire?” he demanded, voice all rough and scratchy, oddly thick when it usually dripped like velvet. “Freezing my tits off out here…”

  “Okay. Dramatic.” I held up a hand to silence him when his head snapped my way, mouth open and ready to argue. “It’s not that cold.”

  Rolling his eyes, Gavriel snatched the orb with both hands, and when he released it, it burst into purple fae fire. Heart in my throat, I scrambled away from the flames, only to have Gavriel scoff and shake his head.

  “Relax. She doesn’t bite.”

  Asshole. Scowling, I inched closer, drawn to the warmth and the fact that this fire looked nothing like the stuff that haunted my nightmares.

  “What are you even doing out here?” Both of us bathed in magenta, I stretched my legs out again, then crossed them, rearranging the baggy wool jacket so that it covered as much of me as it could. Gavriel, meanwhile, drew his legs up, arms wrapped around his bent knees, that lean jaw set in a scowl.

  “There’s a portal to the Otherworld in a cave up the way,” he muttered, tipping his cheek toward the floating fire like a cat rolling into a sunbeam. After a beat of awkward silence, his narrowed gaze slid to me. “What are you doing here?”

  Facing the choppy waters ahead, I shrugged. “Thinking.”

  “Thought I smelled smoke—”

  Too far away to smack, I flicked a bit of sand at him, which the fae repelled with a thigh block and a lukewarm chuckle. In the quiet that followed, I let the annoyance of his sudden appearance on my beach of solitude fade away. The longer he watched the water, the tide sweeping up and down, back and forth, the hardness seemed to ease out of him, too. Still all angular and lean and subtle fae sexuality, Gavriel softened just a little on the other side of the purple flames.

  “Were you going home for the holiday?” I asked, and just like that, he closed up—turned into a diamond right before my eyes. “Or… coming back?”

  Jaw clenched again, he fidgeted with his sleeves, dragging them down his muscly forearms before ripping them back up. “No.”

  “Oh.”

  When the hovering flames drifted too close to me, carrying on the wind, I steered them out in front of us, all the while hoping he missed the way my wand trembled, palms slick with nervous sweat.

  “I… like to visit the portal sometimes,” Gavriel admitted, totally oblivious to my discomfort as he glanced down the beach toward the rockier sections, hills rising in the distance. “Just to feel home… To feel true fae magic again.”

  I blinked back at him. That… was unexpected. He caught me staring almost immediately, no doubt taking my shocked expression for something it wasn’t. Something crueler. His silvery eyes thinned to defensive slits.

  “What?”

  “That’s just… kind of nice,” I told him, still thrown by his reasoning—by the notion that beneath the snark and sass and general assholery, Gavriel might just be a man with actual feelings. “And sad.”

  A fae who missed home.

  Who felt out of place here.

  Lonely. Maybe even a little lost.

  Something I should have recognized sooner, because, hello, kindred spirits.

  Gavriel studied me briefly, then flipped me off, turning his glare on the water.

  “No, I didn’t mean…” I floundered a little, searching for the right words and sighing as I smoothed my curls away from my face. “I’m seriously not being a dick about it. You just… You’re not a very genuine person most of the time.”

  I mean, was his shit attitude supposed to be a secret?

  He chuckled coolly. “What an incredibly rude thing to say.”

  “Well—” I shrugged when he faced me, still battling with my hair, the wind deciding this was the moment to really screw with me. “—that’s your vibe and you know it.”

  The fae’s brows shot up, lips twisting into a snide grin. “You want to know your vibe?”

  “Nope,” I said curtly. Wrangling as many curls as I could into one hand, I tugged up my jacket collar and tried to stuff them under. “Not even a little.”

  I braced for a venomous comeback.

  Nothing.

  Huh. Strange.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I caught him staring at the water again, all quiet and pensive, distant and hard. Even the magenta glow highlighting the attractive lines of his face did nothing to soften him, all traces of that oozing fae sexuality I had come to expect from Gavriel gone.

  Maybe his visits to the portal between my world and his weren’t for pleasure. Maybe that had been a lie, one of many he told on a daily basis, to hide the real reason.

  Because the truth made him vulnerable.

  Maybe he and I—

  “So, we’re alone out here.”

  Gods. I bit back a smirk, fully aware of where this was headed. “Yup.”

  “Want to fuck?” And there it was. He wiggled his eyebrows when I glared in his direction, the corners of his mouth kicked up to reveal just a hint of the fae I thought I had all figured out before today. “Warm you right to the cor
e, fury.”

  “No.”

  I mean, I could have gone for a tumble in the sand, no one around for miles to catch us. It probably would have been all brooding and angsty, rough, a battle to the very end—until he trapped my wrists above my head, pinned them to the sand, and pounded me into oblivion.

  Unfortunately, my conversation with Jack hadn’t just triggered the depraved warm and fuzzies that had always been there—it got me thinking about my coping mechanisms. Over the years, I had absolutely used liquor and sex to distract myself, to forget the horrors of my past, the murky possibilities of the future, the end of a legacy—the Corwin name eventually dying with me, a witch who desperately craved to be the center of someone’s whole world but was too stubborn to let anyone below the surface.

  I liked sex. Even if I wasn’t using it to forget, I liked all of it. The physical sensations. The wild abandonment, losing yourself to the moment—in another person. Nothing beat a good climax, but all things considered, screwing around with Gavriel, a fae who could and had made me feel shit about myself when it was all over, probably wasn’t the healthiest thing to do.

  Plus, you know, the theft and him thinking he was smarter than me—blah, blah, blah, it wasn’t always about him. I had to consider myself, too, my self-worth, my self-esteem, my feelings when all was said and done.

  “Smoke?”

  I flinched when his voice cut through the racing thoughts, that lofty fae accent quieting the storm, all rich and seductive as he offered what looked like a hand-rolled cigarette. I scowled down at it for a moment, then turned my fury on him.

  “Are those my herbs?”

  “Partially,” he admitted, arm still outstretched between us. “No telling what’s in the blend at this point, but this one’s really chill. Mostly lemon—like a palate cleanser between courses.”

  For a man who clearly enjoyed smoking, his pipe a permanent fixture after meals, he sounded pretty bitter as he explained the nuances.

  What the hell had happened at that portal?

  Was this pretty playboy more layered than I gave him credit for?

  A part of me wanted to pry, to push and wheedle because he seemed vulnerable enough to share something that he normally wouldn’t.