by Eva Chase
Sinister Wizardry
Book 3 in the Royals of Villain Academy series
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner without the express written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
First Digital Edition, 2019
Copyright © 2019 Eva Chase
Cover design: Christian Bentulan, Covers by Christian
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-989096-44-4
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-989096-45-1
Created with Vellum
Contents
Free Story!
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Next in the Royals of Villain Academy series
Consort of Secrets excerpt
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Chapter One
Rory
The main Bloodstone residence couldn’t have been more different from the family home I’d done most of my growing up in. I’d heard the building described as a “big foreboding stone mansion,” and that was right on the mark. It loomed over the forested Maine landscape—not so much manor house or castle like the buildings back on campus, but more a fortress of weathered limestone. The windows I could see, narrow and arched, held only darkness. I half expected to catch a glimpse of a medieval warrior standing by one with a crossbow at the ready.
I’d never missed my bright and airy house in California more.
The pang of homesickness and grief echoed through me as I peered through the car window. My hand rose instinctively to the glass dragon charm on the silver chain around my neck—the last remnant from a bracelet made up of years of birthday gifts.
The chauffeur, on staff with the company that had been tending to the Bloodstone properties since my birth parents’ death and my disappearance, drove us past the stretch of mossy stone wall and came up on the wrought-iron gate. Someone had clearly been waiting for us. He didn’t make any movement, but a second later the gate whirred open to admit us.
The chauffeur cleared his throat as he pulled into the property. “Your grandfather—the former baron—left strict instructions for the care of this property before his death. Everyone who’s worked here was carefully vetted. But if you have any concerns about the valuables, there’s a list at the bank of what should be present. Your grandfather packed away the more personal items in a locked room in the basement that no one has touched at all. That’s the third key on the ring they gave you.” He made a sideways nod in my direction.
“Got it,” I said, and touched the side of my purse where I’d tucked that keyring away.
As one of the ruling entities among the fearmancers, my birth family had several properties across the Northeast, but this was the oldest and the largest. I was still getting used to the fact that I’d gone from owning not much more than some clothes and art supplies to having an immense bank account and extensive real estate.
Of course, if I could have reversed the trade and gotten back my real family, I’d have taken that deal in an instant. I didn’t know a lot about my birth family, since I’d only been two when my parents had been killed, but I knew enough to make a few basic judgments. The fearmancer authorities had viciously murdered the people I thought of as Mom and Dad in front of me. The heirs of the other ruling families and a whole lot of the other young fearmancers had made my life hell when I’d first arrived at the fearmancer university to learn how to use my powers.
And just a few days ago, I’d watched one of the few professors who’d seemed to give a damn about me fatally stab himself to cut off the effects of a spell compelling him to attack me. A spell he’d told me had been cast by the older barons as well as “the reapers,” whatever that meant.
The mages who ruled over fearmancer society, the ones I was supposed to rule alongside when I finished my education, had attempted to batter my magic out of me. That was the world I’d been thrown back into—a world where fear meant might, and might ruled over any ideas of human decency. I’d seen enough to realize the joymancers I’d left behind in California weren’t perfect, but at least they didn’t thrive on violence and destruction. Powering your magic through happiness made for very different attitudes than powering it through terror did.
The car pulled to a stop in the curve of the drive just outside the imposing front door. “The staff inside will show you around,” the chauffeur said. “They’ll be glad to have a Bloodstone in residence again. The work’s more fulfilling when there’s someone to appreciate it.” He shot me a quick smile.
“Thank you for the drive.” I bobbed my head in return and eased the car door open. It might be summer now, but the Maine air wafted damp and a little cool around me, the sun partly blotted by thin gray clouds. The clover scent that reached my nose was pleasant enough, at least. I dragged in a deep breath of it and started up the steps.
My mouse familiar dug her claws a little more deeply into the shoulder of my blouse. Her small white head swiveled as she took in our new accommodations, and her dry voice trickled into my head. Plenty of atmosphere, I’ll give it that.
Most mages’ familiars couldn’t outright talk to them, only pass on vague impressions through the magical bond. Deborah wasn’t just a mouse, though. The Enclave that ruled over the joymancers had arranged for the spirit of one of their mages, a woman who’d been dying of cancer, to be placed into the animal’s body.
The opportunity had meant a second life for her—and a way for them to monitor me. The more of the story I’d managed to get out of her, the more it’d become clear that the joymancers had been very worried about my fear-based powers emerging despite the steps they’d taken to suppress them.
I couldn’t reply to her telepathically, unfortunately, and saying much to her out loud wasn’t a good idea in front of witnesses. The fearmancers had no idea I’d brought one of their enemies into their midst in mouse form, and if they found out, I had no doubt Deborah’s second life would be cut much shorter than her first had.
The door to the mansion opened just as I reached the top step. A middle-aged woman beamed at me. She welcomed me in with a sweep of her arm, her black hair, piled high on her head, gleaming with a purple tint.
“Welcome home, Miss Bloodstone,” she said in a measured but friendly voice. “I’m Eloise, the house manager. I’ll see to it that everything remains in order during your stay.”
“Thanks,” I said, and then anything I might have added was lost with my breath as I took in the vast front hall on the other side of the doorway.
A brocade rug covered the tiled floor, and another ran up the grand staircase ahead of me. Oil paintings with gilded frames hung on the walls between mahogany side tables with porcelain vases and bejeweled boxes. A young woman in a maid uniform was just setting a bouquet of lilies into one of the vases. A faint perfume drifted off them. The space was airier than I’d have expected from its imposing exterior.
I must have spent a lot of time here in the first two years of my life. I didn’t have the faintest memory of any of it. Eloise had welcomed me home, but this didn’t feel like home at all, more like a well-kept museum dedicated to strangers. What did any of this tell me about my birth parents other than they’d had old-money aesthetic tastes like most other fearmancers seemed to?
Maybe I’d get a better sense of them going through these “personal” items my grandfather Bloodstone had apparently stashed away.
The shifting of Deborah’s body on my shoulder reminded me of one thing I needed to have “in order” from the start. I caught the house manager’s eye and motioned to the mouse.
“This is my familiar,” I said. “I’d like to give her free run of the property while we’re here. All the staff need to know to be careful of her.”
If Eloise thought it was strange for a fearmancer to have a mouse for a familiar rather than the predatory animals that most preferred, she didn’t let it show. “Absolutely, I’ll make that exceptionally clear to everyone on staff.”
She led me through the ground floor, which included a sitting room, a music room, a ballroom, a parlor, a dining room that could have accommodated fifty people, and then the kitchen, which was unexpectedly open and modern-looking compared to the rest of the furnishings, if still at least a decade out of date. My grandfather Bloodstone would still have lived here until his death, presumably. I guessed the family had appreciated modern amenities over style where it mattered most.
A skinny man with angular limbs and a round head that made me think of a grasshopper was perched on a stool by one of the gleaming counters. He hopped up at our arrival.
“This is Claude, your chef,” Eloise said.
The man offered me a little bow. “At your service. Perhaps you could tell me what you’d be interested in having for your meals today? We have enough ingredients on hand to manage a simple lunch, but if you wanted anything more complicated—for dinner as well—it would be good to know ahead of time so I can get everything I need.”
My mind went blank. I’d known a lot of my classmates had family chefs preparing and sending their school meals, but I’d been managing to feed myself just fine, and I’d assumed it’d be the same here. “I, um… I hadn’t given it much thought. I’m not very picky. Would it be a problem if I said you can make whatever you think would taste good?”
He blinked, and then the corners of his mouth curled upward. “It would be my pleasure. If you do think of anything in particular you’d like during your time here, don’t hesitate to make a request, of course.”
I wasn’t sure how long I was going to be here. Bloodstone University—or Villain Academy, as the joymancers called it, which was a pretty accurate nickname—was closed for two weeks, but then it would open again for an optional summer term. I’d gathered that only the senior students attended, and usually only the stronger talents among those, to compete in some sort of special project.
I didn’t like the idea of spending any more time on campus, surrounded by peers who mostly saw me as either a tool or a target, but I’d accomplish a lot more there than I could here. My mentor, Professor Banefield, had given me a key just before he’d died, one that mattered a lot more to me than any on the ring in my purse. He’d seemed to think it would lead me to something that would help me against my enemies.
My hand came to rest on my purse, where I’d stashed that key too. I needed to figure out what the hell it opened… and I also needed to continue finding out everything I could about the school so I’d be able to see through my plan to bring the place down.
Bloodstone University taught young fearmancers to turn into the sadistic murderers so many of the adults were. Deborah had told me the joymancers had been trying to put a stop to those teachings for years, but the wards had stopped them from even locating the university. If I could bring them the information they needed to tackle that part of fearmancer society, they’d have to see that my magic didn’t mean I’d turn out as cruel as my heritage would suggest. I’d get vengeance for Mom and Dad and for Professor Banefield, and I’d be able to return to my real home.
And with my enemies ramping up their efforts to take me down, I might not have much time left to accomplish that.
Upstairs, Eloise showed me to the master bedroom, my childhood bedroom, and several guest rooms. Even my birth parents’ most private space didn’t give much sense of who they’d been as people. A framed photograph of the two of them hung on the wall—the woman dark-haired and eyed like me with an elegant bearing, the man a little lighter in coloring and slightly awkward in his tallness—but everything else was more posh, old-fashioned furniture and antiques.
The room with the crib had been stripped of all but a few well-preserved stuffed animals and basic furniture. I tried to imagine the man and woman from the photograph moving through this space, tending to and playing with a younger version of me. No memories stirred. I couldn’t even bring them to life in my mind.
Both places left my skin prickling with discomfort. I picked a guest bedroom somewhat at random and told Eloise, “I think I’ll sleep in here. I don’t want to disturb my parents’ room yet.”
She nodded as if she understood. I reached for my purse again, thinking of the chauffeur’s comment about other rooms I hadn’t yet seen. “I was told there’s a storage room in the basement with the things my grandfather wanted to keep particularly secure. Can you show me where that is?”
If I was going to unravel any mysteries within my former home, I might as well get started now.
“Of course,” Eloise said. “Right this way.”
Chapter Two
Rory
The Bloodstones certainly had a lot of things they wanted to hide away, Deborah remarked from where she was perched on my knee.
I sighed and shoved aside the plastic bin I’d been sorting through. “I’m not sure it’s so much hiding as normal security. Even regular Naries don’t want people they don’t know digging through their financial records.”
That was mostly what I’d found in the basement storage room across the last two days—bins and bins of receipts and invoices and statements, most of which didn’t look especially significant to me. I’d looked at every bit of paper in those things, though, and there were dozens more boxes in the large room around me. It was brightly lit, at least, with beaming florescent bulbs across the ceiling, but the artificial brightness and the extra layer of chill in the air didn’t let me forget I was underground.
Looking at the stacks I still hadn’t touched, my heart sank. I forced myself to reach for another box.
This one was on the smaller side, and the contents jostled in a way that didn’t sound at all papery when I lifted it. Maybe I’d get a change of pace. I set it on the floor, popped off the lid, and froze.
I’d unearthed a box of baby memorabilia. A tiny gold-cast shoe sat right at the top—the rich people equivalent of bronzing? Underneath it lay lacy dresses that couldn’t have fit any child older than an infant, a board book that appeared to have teeth marks around the edge, a plastic bag with a lock of dark brown hair… My hair, obviously.
My chest clenched. My birth parents had kept all this stuff after I’d grown into a toddler. I couldn’t have asked for clearer evidence that whatever they’d been like, whatever fearmancer horrors they’d been party to, they’d seen me as more than a necessary heir. They’d loved me.
I didn’t know what to do with that knowledge, especially with it staring me in the face so blatantly.
Lorelei? Deborah said tentatively.
Before I could find the wherewithal
to answer her, footsteps tapped down the hall outside the storage room. They paused before they reached the doorway, respectful of the private nature of the room. Eloise’s voice carried to me.
“Miss Bloodstone, there’s someone here to see you. A Lillian Ravenguard from the blacksuits. She says she’s hoping the two of you can have a word.”
Someone from the blacksuits? My body went rigid. The blacksuits were the fearmancer version of law enforcement. It’d been blacksuits who’d stormed into Mom and Dad’s house and killed them in front of me. What did this woman want to talk to me about now?
The obvious answer came to me a second later: Professor Banefield’s murder. If they’d even figured out it was a murder and not simply a delusion brought on by a natural illness. I didn’t trust these people not to be under the barons’ thumbs, but maybe I’d learn something useful from her. I got up, scooping Deborah into my hand.
“Okay, I’ll come up,” I said. “You can let her in.”
“I’ll show her to the sitting room.”
I think I’d better keep my distance from this guest of yours, my familiar said as Eloise bustled off. We don’t know how finely honed her skills are. I’ll find a covert place to watch from.
“Good thinking,” I said. A blacksuit was a lot more likely to ask questions about my familiar than my family’s hired staff was.
