Power of Fire: An Academy Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance (The Broken Academy)

by Jade Alters

  I hop up from the grass and trudge across the Courtyard to the D Wing dorms. Bodies part to let me through like there’s an invisible shell around me. Along the way, I shake my arm out until every last scale vanishes back under my disguise of normal human skin. My eyes flit over the crowd of Dragons staring from inside the Cafeteria along the way. Among their various looks are shock, astonishment, disgust and suspicion. Only one amongst them sits apart in his look of concern. It tightens my chest to see him stare at me like that, worried, despite what I did to him last night. I can hardly stand it. And yet… And yet I want so badly to take him up on what he’s been offering me since day one.

  The truth is, my emotional defenses are finally whittled low enough to the point that I might admit it. I need help. Lee might annoy me with his constant reference of experience. He might not approve of the motives or methods I’ve committed myself to. But he might just be the only person in the Academy who wants to help me.

  “Lee,” I surrender at long last, just as I cross under the high arches to the dorm halls.

  “Cece,” Lee answers through the Soul of Fire.

  “I’d…understand if you wanted nothing to do with me. But I need…maybe a place? Somewhere to let things out,” I confess, while the walls around my mind are still low. Already, I can feel the disbelief of my usual, composed self, hearing my deflated husk admit it. Disbelief turns to shame when I hear nothing, though I feel the connection between my own ember and Lee’s.

  “I know a place,” Lee answers, just when I thought he never would.

  Lee,

  The Broken Academy, Sierra Nevada Tether Teleporter

  Cece stands a half step behind my heels. She hasn’t actually spoken a word to me, out loud, since I answered her call in the Soul of Fire. Every instinct told me not to. My gut said that whatever it said before was just a stomach ache, compared to what it felt about Cece now. Then she appeared in the Courtyard. Then she unleashed the biggest streak of fire into the sky I’ve ever seen. And the pain that cracked across my brain, when she did it… It didn’t much matter what my gut had to say about Cece Ford anymore. My heart broke for her, so here we are. There’s no choice in whether or not I help her anymore, even if I have to break the rules.

  “Lee,” she finally whispers, as I lay my hand on one of the rich, grainy red doors that marks a Tether of the Academy. It looks just like the one I brought her through. This one, however, doesn’t go back to San Francisco. I barely turn my head over my shoulder to address her. “You won’t get in trouble for this?”

  “Oh, I will. If anyone finds out,” I give her a little smirk. Before she can suggest any sort of adjustment to the plan, I twist the handle and open the way. The room inside is almost identical to one we’ve passed through together before. The same ornate green carpet and mirrored ceiling mark it as an Adjustment Lounge. Cece follows behind me all the way down the long, cool corridor as soon as the door shuts the Academy behind us. At the other end of it is a massive set of gorgeous french doors, along with the only thing that sets this outermost branch aside from the other five Adjustment Lounges. A hanging plaque over the doors which says Sierra Nevada.

  “We’re going to the Dragon Training Ground?” Cece asks. I can’t deny I’m a little impressed - with the shape she’s in, I didn’t figure the girl was picking up anything of value from her classes.

  “You need somewhere to let it out, and the Training Ground is the one place we’re allowed to,” I tell her. I turn around to face her, an exhausted mess of hangups. At the core of her hurt, right now, is her Wing Supervisor. I can’t tell exactly what Serge did to Cece, through the walls of reservation around her heart, but it has something to do with her brother. “I have to be honest, I’m not sure exactly why the Council hasn’t sent for you already, with what happened earlier. But now’s the time to take a risk, if ever. You left your student ID in your room, like I told you?” Cece stiffens her stance to give me a little nod. “Good. Then grab onto me.”

  Cece’s hands wrap around my waist as mine wrap around each of the long golden handles on the french doors. Her head rests on my shoulders. I crack the doors to the light. The Tether Teleporter floods the room with an all-consuming flare of pure white. The next thing we know, Cece and I careen forward over the Earth. We ride a phantasmal slipstream down towards the barren, stony mountain caps.

  Lee,

  Sierra Nevada Academy Training Ground

  The light of the Tether withdraws from around us like liquid mirrors being sucked back up a straw. When the last shard is gone, Cece hugs me from behind on the plateau of a rocky expanse. Beige hills speckled with chutes of emerald forest roll out in front of us. They fold back behind us. In an instant, the entire reality of our worlds have changed. Gone are the homey, dark wood and stone halls of the Academy. Gone is the Broken Academy completely, when we look up, hidden behind a massive illusory curtain. The arid Training Ground is everything for miles, for all intents and purposes, forever.

  I slide my fingers over Cece’s arms to coax her into letting go. I spin around to plant my hands on her shoulders. The sensation startles her awake from a trance. Cece’s eyes climb up to mine, which seems to be twice as steep a distance now than ever before.

  “Do what you’re going to do,” I urge her, and take a step back. She crosses one arm over the other with the innocence of a child. I’ve never seen a person undergo such a transformation in so short a time, from the girl in the Courtyard to this one.

  “That’s not going to…set off any alarms or anything?” Cece asks. I can feel that the worry in her eyes is not for herself.

  “If anything sets off an alarm, it was your show in the Courtyard,” I can’t help but chuckle. She’s worried now? “But here we are. I wouldn’t worry. I’m cleared to use the Training Ground whenever, and you didn’t bring your ID. As far as anyone watching is concerned, it’s me down here stretching my wings.”

  “I can…” Cece mumbles, just beginning to understand. She opens an idle palm to a nearby shrub. It’s isolated, so if it was to, say, catch fire, it wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen. Cece’s fingers tremble towards it.

  “Cece. I’m telling you to cut loose here and now, before you do it somewhere you’re not supposed to again,” I urge her, “Do it!” Cece’s palm flexes open with a little yell of focus. Flame jumps up between every leaf of the shrub in her sights. “You call that cutting loose?” I dare her. I spin around with an arm out to show her it’s alright. A snake of fire slithers across the dry clay at my will, rises towards the sky, then sizzles out. “Come on!”

  Cece closes her fist at the shrub. She screams. Anything that once was a plant there is atomized instantly. The earth jumps up with a flaming shockwave that could have been confused for a mine detonation. I twitch back an inch from the boom. When the surprise leaves me, though, it’s quickly replaced by a smirk.

  “Is that all you can do?” I ask Cece. I thrust both palms into the air to challenge her with a dual flamethrower. Cece answers by angling her own arms at her sides. A cry climbs her throat as flame pours from between her scaly fingers. She spins as the inferno spills over, surrounding herself with a vortex of thick flame. When the heat cools and the mountain wind scatters the flame from around her, she’s left panting in the center of a charred black circle of earth. Her lips take the slightest curl of a smile.

  “I…want to fly,” Cece confesses.

  “I wish getting you to do that was as easy as telling you to, but…that’s a little more advanced,” I sigh, hands on my hips. I’m only disappointed until the simple, obvious solution drops itself on my head. “So, in the meantime…” I mutter as I stroll towards her. Maroon scales overtake my skin. Claws cut through my hands. Wings snap open on my back just before I sweep beneath Cece. She rolls over on my back with a gasp. Her arms clasp around my draconic neck just before I lift off. Her little chuckles as we shoot higher and higher into the sky fill my soul with music.

  I unfurl my canvas sails high over the Si
erra Nevadas. I take Cece on an adrenaline-pumping ride of rises, dives and loops that put our flight together the night we met to shame. She yelps and laughs with every sharp jerk that threatens to throw her off. She lays her cheek against the warm scales of my back as we pass through the vapor blanket of a cloud.

  “Scream!” I tell her, through the Soul of Fire.

  “Wha-wha-what?” Cece laughs.

  “Think about whatever it was that made you so angry, in the Courtyard. Then throw your head back and scream it out. All of it, as hard and loud as you can!” I urge her. Cece trusts the urgency in my tone. She tightens her grasp around the joints of my shoulder blades and wings. She lets her head down, eyes closed. She thinks about whatever it is, behind that wall of emotion, until her temple twinges. Then she bucks her head back.

  The sound. Even in my true form, it puts a chill under my scales. I can hear the scream tear and scratch at her throat as it booms out over the mountains, into the sky. It superheats the air over us until a momentous flower of fire swirls out from within Cece’s throat. The petals swirl up and out in bloom, inscribing its wicked shape in the sky long after her breath finally runs out. Cece’s head drops. She drapes over my shoulders, steam leaking from between her fanged lips.

  Cece teeters between sleep and awareness until I glide us safely back down near where we left from. I spin around to grab her the second we touch down, even as I transform back to my human disguise. She’s a little shaky, but manages to stand with my help as the fluorescent blue light flickers out behind her eyes. She’s so close, she has no idea - especially for one who only just Awakened.

  “How do you feel?” I ask her, “Better?” Cece gives me a slow, weak nod. Then she falls forward into me. Her head tilts back, her smirk an inch away from mine. I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t help it. We’ve been this close before. I shouldn’t have then, either, and I didn’t. And I regret it. I lean down and graze my lips against hers. Cece doesn’t pull away. After a second of sharing radiant warmth through our skin, she even rises up on her toes to slide her lips towards mine.

  She opens my mouth with her own, just the slightest bit. Just a slit, for her tongue to slip inside with mine. I feel her body melt into my waiting arms. Cece plants little kisses across every ridge of my lips, then lets her head down to my neck. I kiss the top of her head several times, waiting for her to come back, but she doesn’t. It takes me a minute to realize she’s staring down into my chest.

  “I…I was just with Serge, last night,” Cece whispers.

  “Oh,” falls out of my mouth before I can help it. It’s more from surprise than anything else. It makes the fact that her anger stems from Serge and her brother all the more confusing.

  “I-I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have… you helped me, and-”

  “Cece, relax,” I hum. The deep tone from the instrument of my chest against her head quiets her almost instantly. “You forget that we’re connected. I can feel that you’re hurting, and I can feel that you don’t want to take advantage of me. But…the thing is that our connection doesn’t go away, no matter who you sleep with. So what, you got romantic with Serge? That doesn’t mean anything about the connection we share, right now.” Cece tucks her head under my chin.

  “Lee…thank you,” she whispers.

  “Yeah,” I whisper back. Two embers swirl around one another in the Soul of Fire, orange and blue. I hold onto Cece as long as she needs in the mountain breeze. For now, for both of us, it’s enough. It’s exactly what we both needed.

  Academy Life

  Cece, The Broken Academy

  The next few weeks take on a shape almost like what I imagine most people at a University call normal. Hell, compared to my first weeks at the Academy, it almost seems normal to me. In spending almost no time around Serge, I manage to avoid crossing paths with Darius. That, coupled with regular practice sessions with Lee, actually keeps my temper, well, tempered. For the most part.

  It’s not just Dragon transformation we practice either. There are some fireworks between us, of both the literal and figurative variety. I can’t deny it’s nice to be intimate with someone without having to actually be with them. A little practice in dreams at night has made me quite adept at walling off my own personal corner of the Soul of Fire, inside of which only Lee and I can see. And feel. There, we don’t have to hold back. Not even while we’re both in class. I can rock Lee and the bed back and forth across an inferno of passion without much more than crossing my legs as I climax back in the physical world. We meet in person, in his room, every few nights just to shake things up.

  Maybe I let Lee’s hardy physique and his hips pushing me against a wall get to me, because before I know it, I’m even sitting with him at lunch. With other Dragons. What changed in me I can’t quite put my finger on. It’s so gradual, I can’t tell if there’s a real change at all. Somewhere between being with Serge, Lee and screaming fire into the sky, I’ve started to feel a little bit like what I’ve always been. A Dragon. It rolls off my tongue, rather than sticking to it.

  But for every small comfort that grows with my acceptance into the Dragon flock, so too does a little crack across the back of my mind. A missing sliver that used to be filled by Serge. Nothing about my romps with Lee, on the Sierra Nevada Training Grounds or in bed, leaves me unsatisfied. Yet…I miss Serge. He fulfilled the darkest part of my urges. My temptation to push the envelope. My ambition to push through every barrier set for my own good. Now that I can’t have him again, I realize how intoxicating that brief window was when I did.

  Serge has found a way to avoid me throughout all of D Wing, the cafeteria included. The only time we cross paths now is when we have to, in Mystical History. Serge and I flit eyes at one another a few times throughout the class, but never for more than an accidental second at a time. Mostly, we play the game of planning our looks when the other is occupied. All the while, the presence of Darius a few rows away looms like a specter between us. I can hardly blame Serge for keeping his distance, when I consider the situation I put us in. I drove a wedge of distrust between him and a friend, one I didn’t realize he was so close to. But this friend did kill my brother, so we agree to disagree in unbearable silence.

  It helps that there hasn’t been a single incident of room damage since I repainted the ceiling. Apparently all River and I needed was a weird night of cuddling to catalyze a less homicidal relationship. It’s not like we stay up all night talking boys, but she at least doesn’t scream or growl every time she enters the room to find me there already. We even exchange pleasantries every once in a while when we pass one another. I’ve also gotten rather used to walking in on her pacing the room as some manner of mortally dangerous creature. Lions, antelopes, falcons, scorpions - I’ve seen her in a spectrum of bizarre shapes and walked right around them in mutual respect.

  Neutral as we are, it’s not like I’m wanting for female company. Stephanie makes a resurgence after a recent breakthrough in one of her classes, more talkative than ever. Being that she doesn’t actually need to sleep, I’ve lost quite a bit myself entertaining her with the antics of a living, Dragon girl. Stephanie thinks I need to mend bridges with Serge, even if not a romantic one. I wonder if one exists that we could cross, back to one another, as friends or otherwise. I do agree with her that being at such tense odds with our Wing Supervisor is less than ideal. I also wonder if Serge has anything to do with the fact that the Council never intervened after my attempt on Darius’ life, once Stephanie tells me the truth of his family name. I can’t believe Serge never mentioned his father was the Magister of the Council of Six.

  Whether or not I care to admit it, I wake up one morning to find the Broken Academy has become everything Dragonlord Thise promised. A second chance. A home. Suddenly, the faces around me are inseparable from the idea. Lee and the Dragons. Stephanie. Thise. Serge, I hope, eventually. Hell, even River. When I think about waking up in a world with them in it, I don’t miss the one that threw me away so much anymore. I don’t pictu
re Jason’s death every day anymore, or even the vengeful hellfire I still promise to bring on his killer.

  Not the least of the things replacing hate in my head is anticipation for my Basic Transformation exam next week. That, and my project partner for Mystical History.

  Bryant,

  The Broken Academy, Grand Library

  The Library has always been one of the few places in the Academy I can definitively say I like. The aroma of crisp pages. Climbing towers of shelves, each packed tight with inked wisdom, generations old. No matter how many times I visit this place, I always feel like the answers I seek are just one bookshelf higher than where I’ve reached before. My father. My home Realm. I haven’t the slightest idea if it’ll fill the void I once clogged with murder, but I have to try. Of course, just now, I’m not here for pleasure. I have an assignment and, as fate would have it, the only human I’ve ever taken an interest in as my partner. Well, not exactly human. She’s the reason I have stacks upon stacks of tomes from the twisting, multi-level maze of information all around me.