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

by Jade Alters

  Choices

  Cece

  There are times, when I first open my eyes in the morning, that I think I’ll see that mirror-walled room with the blue torches. The Dalshak family’s illusory prison. I won’t set foot in the Library, at least for now. Bryant is more than happy to bring books to the Courtyard for me. It’s not that I fear Serge now - it’s actually more the opposite. I want him close, to wrap me in a trick should his family come back to finish what they started. It’s nice to have him back there, anyway. Lee checks in on me almost daily, even if we don’t see one another, to make sure I haven’t been whisked away. Our entanglement with Horace’s “new” Council ended so abruptly, and without consequence, that it never really ended for any of us.

  That day we fought together, like one strange, violently powerful family, we waited in the Library for a full hour. Well, I slept while Lee, Serge and Bryant kept watch. I was shocked when I woke to find us just exactly where we were when I’d fallen asleep. The Dalshaks let us be. The rest of the Council of Six never came. It was like nothing had happened at all. Not until today, almost a full week later. It’s a long, lonely walk for me to the Dragonlord’s office.

  I fear passing Magister Horace, or one of his brothers, on the way. The boys and I decided against going to the Council with news of the Dalshaks’ and VampKing Lucidous’ betrayal, with little to no evidence to support the claim, so for all I know, they could be sitting pretty thirty feet ahead of me down the long Administrative Office hallway like nothing’s changed.

  I fear a blindside from Darius around every corner. I spared him in the heat of the moment, but it was more for spite than mercy. I didn’t want to give Horace what he wanted. I didn’t want to betray the Academy that gave me control of my life. I hate Darius no less. My hands still clench at the thought of his throat between them. Especially after the way he took it upon himself to grant me amnesty for Jason’s death.

  Before I know it, troubled thoughts have carried me all the way to her door. I lift my knuckles to Dragonlord Thise’s lava-warmed door. I jump when it swings in on its own. I find the Dragonlord waiting for me, leaning on the edge of her desk.

  “Come in,” she bids me, with an odd gloss over her eyes. At my first step inside, she raises her hand, which shuts the door behind me. Thise immediately departs her desk to trudge straight for me. Her arms pump in intense little swings, so rigid I wince for a slap when she reaches me. I’m doubly stricken when she throws her arms around me. “Stupid girl! Why didn’t you come to me right away?”

  “Wha-wha-what?” I whimper as the strength flees my knees. Arms straight down at my sides, I let her crush me a little in a tight embrace.

  “A full week since the attack and you haven’t told a soul? Do you have any idea the danger you’re in, with no one knowing the Dalshaks came for you?”

  “I…I didn’t,” I try to tell her, but it just won’t come out.

  “Don’t ever withhold something like that from me again. Do you understand me, Cece?” Thise asks. I shut my eyes tight to cage the tears that threaten to bead out, but a few inevitably escape their prison.

  “I understand,” I whisper.

  “Good,” Thise says, and lets me go. She rounds her desk to sit. “Not everyone in your little…band,” she struggles with a word for my three-man romance battalion as much as I do, “Has quite the grit you do. I saw everything that happened in a nightmare, from Lee.”

  “I just- we didn’t want to make unprovable claims about Council members,” I try to explain.

  “I see that, but you don’t have to prove much. Not when it comes to Magister Horace. He vanished the day after the attack. As far as I can tell, him, his brothers and his wife have all left the Academy. Serge is the only remaining Dalshak here,” Thise tells me.

  “He turned on them. He saved me and Darius,” I jump in. Though our lips haven’t touched yet, since our reconciliation in battle, I feel I owe it to him to make sure the Council knows.

  “Yes, he did. A sort of courage I never expected from him… I suspect you had a hand in it,” Thise smirks, “Darius Jecks, however, has also gone missing. After everything Lee told me, when I called him in here, I doubt he’s with the Dalshaks. He could be operating remotely for the VampKing, or he might be a pawn tossed away to rot.”

  “Politics,” I snort. Thise’s face, however, remains serious.

  “You spared him. After everything he put you through, you spared his life. That’s no small feat, Cece,” Thise says. I wish I felt even half the pride I hear in her voice.

  “It’s something, alright,” I grumble. Now it’s Thise’s turn to snort.

  “You certainly are something else,” she tells me. The phrase sends a tingling wave of warmth down through my chest. A very different feeling illuminates the words from her lips than the cold ones that killed Jason. “Now, one part of your assessment, at least, was entirely accurate. We can’t go making unprovable accusations. We need infallible evidence before we bring the VampKing’s association with this new Council to the attention of our own. For now, I’ll ask the same of you that I did Lee, Serge and Bryant. Silence, until we learn more.”

  “We?” I echo.

  “Oh yes, Cece. You’re a part of the bigger game now, for better or worse. A game I intend to win,” Thise smirks.

  Cece,

  The Broken Academy, D Wing

  “Your boyfriend was just here looking for you,” Stephanie teases the second I come through the door to our room later in the afternoon.

  “Which one?” River joins in from her desk under her bed. The two immediately collapse into hilarity.

  “Nice. Take you the whole morning to put that routine together?” I tease back with the slightest of chuckles. My conversation with the Dragonlord wore me thin, so I turn and flop flat on my back, on my bed. I wait for them to clarify, or respond, until eventually I’m forced to surrender with a sigh. “Fine… Well, which one was it, actually?” Stephanie and River crack up all over again.

  “Tall, dark and crackled,” River tells me. Bryant.

  “He’s my Mystical History partner.” I try to dispel any mixed feelings on the matter from both my roommates and myself. I still can’t quite shake the feeling of my lips on his, though, like kissing a feeling statue.

  “Drop the schoolgirl act, Stephanie told me you kissed him already,” River waves me off, “Well, unless he’s into that.”

  “Would you shut… Ugh,” I almost rise to her challenge, but let my tired head thump down on my pillow instead. Stephanie floats over me, a wispy blue lantern.

  “Actually, though, Cece…. What are you going to do about the boys? You can’t lead all three of them on.”

  “I’m not leading them on… I…I like all three of them, for really different reasons. And I never promised anyone anything,” I raise in retort. When my lips first opened, it was more to get myself out of the choice, for now. But the more I hear my own words, the more they make a certain amount of sense.

  “That’s that, then,” River shocks me with her aid. “If you never came to any kind of exclusivity arrangement with any of them… You’re not breaking any rules, right? I mean - do they hate each other?”

  “No,” I remark, only realizing how insanely lucky that makes me just as I say it. In point of fact, they fought together like brothers the night my life was at stake.

  “Then, there you go. Choice made. Don’t choose,” River suggests with a shrug.

  “Hm,” I cross my arms in consideration of it. If choosing one means losing the others… By God, River has a point. Serge’s ambition, buried under layers of restraint. Lee’s boundless protectiveness and encouragement. Bryant’s supernatural ability to make me laugh in every attempt to be human. Missing anyone now would be like missing a piece of myself. And I suspect I’ll need all three, if I want to make it through the “bigger game”.

  “I’m not sure you two are better off getting along, anymore,” Stephanie sighs into a little chuckle. Then she floats down to
my side, before River or I can offer any sort of counterpoint. With great effort, Stephanie forms shimmering blue arms, legs and even a full, faceless head of light. She puts an ethereal, substanceless hand on my shoulder. “I have a present for you, Cece. Since it’s the end of your first term and you, well…survived.” At that, the three of us laugh, but somehow I can tell in Stephanie’s flat blue face, that it’s a loaded gift.

  “What is it?”

  “An opportunity…to heal, maybe? I’m not sure how much you’re going to like it. I just… I wanted to offer it now, since I could. But if you’re not ready, we can wait,” Stephanie tells me.

  “Steph…what is it?”

  “A chance to say goodbye,” Stephanie says. I don’t need to ask who she means. Given the context, it makes perfect sense. I can’t say I never thought of it before, what with her ability to transcend planes. I just never thought…it would actually happen. River takes a slow turn back to her desk, to avert her eyes in respect of my choice.

  “I…” I choke. It all flashes through my head again. Cake for breakfast. The bar. Tips for girls. The alley. Darius Jecks. The fire… The horror on his innocent face. I breathe in every particle of air my sinking chest can hold. “I’d like that.” Stephanie nods and sends a wave of blue light from her projected hand over my whole body. My eyes flutter against my will. When they open, I’m somewhere else.

  Cece,

  The Blue Plane

  It looks almost exactly like our room. The only real difference is that everything has darkened a shade, has a slight blue tint, and the window lets in a searing white light, rather than the orange of the sun. River sits facing away from us at her desk. With all the blue and lack of movement, even breathing, she appears frozen. Stephanie’s hand lowers from my shoulder, and I feel I can move again, though it feels slower than usual.

  “Hey, sis.” I never thought I’d hear that voice again. At the first sound of it, I whimper. He’s right on the other side of me. Tears froth over and cries fight their way from my throat long before I finish turning to see him in slow motion.

  “Jason!” I scream out all the mourning I didn’t get to unleash at a funeral. I throw my arms around his neck, the way that was stolen from me by the heat of my own fire. I squeeze him as tight as the constraints of this place I hardly understand will allow. Apparently still enough to make him uncomfortable.

  “Alright, alright, what, are you trying to kill me again?” Jason chokes, even while he hugs me back.

  “You asshole!” I laugh and cough at the same time. I let him about an inch out of my arms, but I don’t dare let go. I won’t let him slip away again. Beautiful is the only way to describe my brother, just now. His skin shimmers softly, the same way Stephanie’s body does. His eyes have never been bluer. His hair is swept back in perfect little tufts. His smile is perfect happiness, despite where he is. “Jason… I’m, I’m...I’m so-”

  “Don’t you dare,” Jason whispers. “Don’t you dare apologize to me. I’m sorry that Mom and Dad didn’t stand by you.”

  “No, they…” I try to sniffle through the hysteria. No matter how much I despise what they did, I can’t speak hate to my brother now. Not here. “They didn’t…”

  “That’s right, they didn’t. They didn’t try to forgive you. They didn’t try to look when you went missing, and they didn’t look before then either, when it was so much more important. They should have been looking all along, for a place like this. Since the first time you set a fire, they should have been trying to help you, not stifle you,” Jason rattles off, just barely keeping the tears down himself. It’s like he’s trying to squeeze it all in, before…the white light brightens in our window.

  “Wait,” I realize, “You… You saw…everything?”

  “Since the alley. I’ve been with you, sis. I wish I could say I always will be, but I can’t shake the feeling that this was the last thing I had to do. Stephanie told me. Something was keeping me here. But now I see…” Jason smiles, while two shining tears streak down his cheeks.

  “Are you kidding me? After you just got here? You’re going to split and leave me? Stay. I need you, I-”

  “No. You don’t. Not anymore, Cece. You have everything you need, at last. At last…you’re becoming what you always were, under all the bullshit. Beautiful,” Jason tells me. His frame starts to loosen, the lines of his face blurring and flickering out to wisps of blue.

  “Jason… I love you. You were the only one. You… I should have told you more,” I cry, more like a child than when I was one, “Please stay. So I can say it more.”

  “Come on, sis. I saw what you did with that guy, Darius. We both know you’re not that selfish,” Jason tells me. “Make up for all the times you wished you told me, with the ones you have around you now. I love you too.”

  I try to reach for Jason, but my arms move too slow. By the time my hand grasps where he just was, he’s dissolved to sapphire stardust. His essence is whisked away on an invisible wind, coating the entire room with a phantasmal glimmer before it swirls out the window. Into the light.

  “Jason!” I scream. A blink unleashes a deluge of tears, and dispels the blue shade from the room all around me. I find that I can move at full speed again, in the Realm of the living, only when I slide off my bed to collapse on the floor. I make it halfway there before arms swoop in to catch me. River holds me up while Stephanie swirls around me like a hazy blue blanket. “I love you… I love you.” I whimper, to those I can’t see, and those I can. I bury my head in River’s hair. “I…love you.”

  Power of Magic (Broken Academy Book II)

  There’s going to be a war.

  Between the Broken Academy and my family, the Kyrie.

  I need to see the capability of the academy.

  I’m here to infiltrate.

  My every move is calculated.

  Every new friendship, each love interest.

  It’s all planned out.

  I’ve been taught to think of magic as my duty.

  Not as a gift.

  But I’m getting derailed.

  The family I love and trust is starting to betray me.

  Their operations affecting people that I care about.

  The pressure has intensified.

  And I’m left with a choice.

  With a question about magic.

  Is it a gift or a duty?

  The answer to this question will either make me or break me.

  [POWER OF MAGIC]

  (Find out what’s happening next at the Academy in Book II: Power of Magic)

  Power of Blood (Broken Academy III)

  Magician. Dragon. Demon.

  I have three lovers and roommates at the Broken Academy.

  Together we’ve joined the Academy Security Task Force.

  I thought I was prepared to take on the world.

  Little did I know that my personal life would come crashing down.

  Adding a vampire to my list of lovers wasn’t part of the plan.

  Bart has arrived.

  And he knows a secret that would decide the fate of the Academy.

  The stakes are high and I’ve got a decision to make.

  A decision so critical that it might lead to destruction.

  And if I’m not careful, then I may as well accept defeat now.

  [Power of Blood]

  (Find out what’s happening in Broken Academy III : Power of Blood)

  Also by Jade Alters

  You might also be interested in some of my other collections :

  Mates & Magic

  The Sharing Spell

  The Spell’s Price

  The Descendants

  Shared by the Four

  Desired by Four

  Fate of Three

  Fated Shifter Mates

  Mated to Team Shadow

  Mated to the Clan

  Mated to the Pack

  Protected by the Pack

  Claimed by the Pack

  r />   Jade Alters, Power of Fire: An Academy Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance (The Broken Academy)