Royals of Villain Academy 7: Grim Witchery

by Eva Chase

  It hurts the Naries, I thought but tamped down that sentiment. “No,” I had to admit. “It just seems like too big a coincidence not to be connected somehow.” Maybe it was connected—maybe Baron Killbrook had hoped the attack would be less scrutinized because of the timing. “And I’ll admit I found the initial demonstrations to frighten the Naries kind of… unnerving.”

  My mother hummed to herself. “You’re still developing the right mindset for our society, Persephone. Their response is natural after so many years of having to hold back. It isn’t right that we’ve had to keep our natures under wraps everywhere but in the privacy of our own homes, not even able to fully show our true selves at the school where we’re learning how to best wield that power. I’m sure things will settle down once the new status quo feels less new and more natural.”

  But violence didn’t need to come naturally to fearmancers. I was proof of that. All the scions demonstrated that fact, really, even if it’d taken some of them longer to come around to seeing things that way than others.

  “I just think,” I tried, “if this is the whole change you wanted for the school, considering what happened to Jude, it might be wise to scale back a little and ease people into it more gradually, with clearer standards of behavior. Unless there’s something else you wanted to build from there?”

  “Every piece of our society has an impact on every other,” my mother said, breezing past my question with the vagueness I was coming to expect. “I won’t shame your classmates for following their instincts now that we’ve already gone forward with this new approach. We’ll keep an eye out for other incidents among the fearmancer students and re-evaluate if a worrisome pattern does develop there, I promise you.”

  My heart sank. She made it sound so reasonable, I didn’t know how to ask for more without crossing the line from thoughtful debate to outright resistance. “Okay. I just don’t want to see what happened to Jude happen to others too.” Including the Nary students, not that she cared about them.

  “Your loyalty to your colleagues is commendable.” A wry note entered my mother’s voice, and I wondered as I had before just how much she’d heard about my relationships with the other scions. She reached to the small table beside her chair and lifted a small silver box covered in ornate etchings. “I appreciate you coming to me with your concerns rather than announcing them at the school. And this was good timing regardless. I have a gift for you.”

  “Oh?” I eyed the box with a mix of curiosity and dread. A gift from a baron, even my own birth mother, felt like it could easily be a double-edged sword. I forced myself to sit down on the chair opposite her just as Eloise bustled in with the tea and slices of lemon loaf.

  My mother waited until the manager had ducked out of the room. She held up her hand before I could reach for a plate and murmured over the tray. An uncomfortably intense light came into her eyes as she studied the spread for several long moments. Then she reached for the teapot.

  “We can never be too careful,” she said, a tremor running through her fingers before she grasped the handle. “Our enemies… can strike in ways we never anticipated. And can exist where we never expected. Your experience with Lillian proved that even I haven’t been vigilant enough since I returned.”

  Yes, Lillian. My mother’s best friend from before her imprisonment, one of the leading members of the blacksuits, who’d helped the other barons in their machinations against me. She’d been helping with my mother’s plans too, until I’d “innocently” let one of her crimes against me, which she’d kept hidden from my mother, slip.

  I’d never seen any hostility from the woman toward my mother. From what I’d observed, I doubted Lillian would have plotted against me in any way if she’d known my mother was alive. Even if she hadn’t agreed with my actions and how they were affecting the barons’ goals, she’d have left it to my mother to decide how to deal with me. But having her out of our lives meant one less enemy to my goals that I needed to worry about, so I wasn’t going to let myself feel guilty about severing their friendship.

  My mother poured tea for both of us, and I nibbled at a slice of lemon loaf. It was perfectly sweet-and-sour, but my stomach was balled too tight for me to fully enjoy it. I waited while the baron drank her first sip of tea. When she lowered the cup, she held out the silver box to me.

  “I have to apologize,” she said in an unexpectedly pained tone. “I’ve been so caught up in re-establishing my place here that I barely noticed the dates, and I missed your birthday.”

  The regret in her tone startled me silent. I accepted the box, reining in the urge to stare at her. “It’s okay,” I managed after a moment. “I didn’t know if maybe it wasn’t the sort of thing fearmancers usually make a big deal out of.”

  “Not a ‘big deal,’ perhaps, but it’s an occasion that should be marked. Especially your twentieth.” She nodded toward the box. “That was mine, for the little time I had to make use of it, and my father’s mother’s before me, and her mother’s before her. It’s an honor to pass it on to you.”

  I didn’t know what to do with the twist of emotion her words brought into my chest. I was here scheming about how to best undermine her plans, and she was presenting me with a treasured family heirloom. Rather than try to come up with something else to say, I opened the box.

  A ring was nestled on a cushion inside it: also silver, with glittering flecks of diamonds and sapphires forming a spiral on the wider section at the top. I hesitated, studying it.

  “It’s a conducting piece,” I said. Not one that could hold magic, I didn’t think, like the construct Connar’s parents had placed on him to hold their malicious spell, but one that could channel magical energy into a specific concentrated effect, like the etchings in the paintball area. I didn’t sense any spells on it now. Of course, if my mother wanted to, I had no trouble believing she could cast a spell too subtle for me to detect.

  She smiled at my comment in recognition. “Yes. It has a protective function as well as being pretty to look at. Not enough to win a battle on its own, but if you’re ever attacked, it might be enough to turn the outcome in your favor. Try it—just be careful where you aim.”

  I picked up the ring without putting it on and tipped the end of the spiral toward the lemon loaf. I couldn’t read the exact purpose of the spell from the design, but it gave me a physicality vibe, which would make sense for protection. Concentrating on the pattern, I rolled a couple of syllables off my tongue that gave me a sense of propelling an attacker back.

  The ring quivered, and the gemstones sparked. A scythe of energy whipped off the ring and cut straight through the loaf, splitting the cake neatly in two as if I’d slashed it with a razor. When I leaned forward, I made out a scratch across the plate beneath it where the spell had scored that too.

  Okay, then. Not something I’d want to activate by accident. But I couldn’t deny that given the challenges I’d faced so far, it might end up coming in handy.

  “Thank you,” I said. There was nothing for it but to slide the ring onto one of my fingers. I tested a couple and found it fit my right ring finger perfectly. As I eased it on, I paid attention to my mental shields, but not even a whisper of magical effect touched me. As far as I could tell, the ring was nothing more than what she’d said it was.

  A gift, not a trap.

  When I looked up, my mother was smiling at me, small but bright.

  “It’s been a long and difficult road for both of us,” she said. “But we’re Bloodstones, and we sustain. I may not intend to coddle you, Persephone, but I want you to know I’m proud of how you’ve pulled yourself together despite your circumstances. You’ve got every bit as much strength as I could have wished for in my heir.”

  A pinch of guilt bit into my gut as I made myself smile back at her. Yes, I was strong—and I was going forward with every intention of turning that strength against the woman who’d just praised me for it.

  Chapter Six

  Rory

  “There yo
u go,” Professor Viceport said with an encouraging clap of her hands. “You’re picking it up.”

  I made a face at the ball of light that was glowing between my hands. It was bright orange and warm enough to heat my palms, but… “I was trying to conjure flames,” I admitted.

  “Ah.” Viceport let out a dry chuckle. The light breeze in the Casting Grounds licked over my face and ruffled her wispy blond pixie cut. “Well, it’s fairly close in form and function. Getting the exact details right is the hardest aspect of personal casting words.”

  No kidding. I’d been doing pretty well with more generic spells where all I needed was a fairly vague force, like the bolts of energy I’d shot at the shooting range targets—or at my mother’s car—but creating a more specific effect still eluded me most of the time. I’d already attempted to shape a rock into a dragon that’d come out looking more like a lumpy-backed horse and to cast an illusion changing the color of the grass that had ended up sallow brown instead of yellow.

  I dismissed the light with a sigh and a wave of my hand. We’d been practicing for almost an hour, and my head was starting to ache from the intense concentration.

  “You know,” Viceport said, “most of the students here develop their casting vocabulary over the course of a year or more. It’s unusual to make the leap from literal words to personal ones in a matter of days. Your progress has actually been quite swift.”

  Even though I was frustrated that I wasn’t making the leap faster, knowing that did make me feel better. Especially coming from my current mentor, who wasn’t generally liberal with her praise. For most of my time at Blood U, she’d been actively hostile toward me, which I’d only recently learned was because of a horrible clash between my family and hers back when she and my mother were both attending the university—a clash that had left Viceport’s older sister dead.

  The professor had come to see that I wasn’t looking to follow in my mother’s footsteps, though. The tentative new understanding we’d reached had included her giving me this extra help to make up for the months when she’d barely mentored me at all.

  I swiped my hand across my forehead, where a hint of sweat had started to form. “I’ve been practicing as much as I can. I just don’t want to hold back my practice of the other skills because my wording isn’t up to snuff yet.”

  “That’s absolutely fair, and that’s why separate practice for this element of your magic is a wise idea.” Viceport studied me. “Time for a break?”

  “I think I could at least use a rest before I jump into more.” I paused and reached into my purse. “There was something else I wanted to talk to you about, though.”

  I drew out the ring my mother had given me yesterday. The sunlight steaming into the broad clearing caught on the spiral of gemstones. I’d taken it off as soon as I’d left the Bloodstone property, but if there wasn’t anything about it that’d be harmful to me, I wouldn’t mind benefitting from that small extra bit of protection.

  Viceport’s eyebrows rose. “I haven’t seen many pieces like that. It’s quite a powerful conducting pattern—and the styling looks quite old.”

  “It’s a family heirloom. My mother passed it on to me.” I held it out to the professor. “I’d just like to be sure there isn’t any magic contained in it that could act on me… just in case. I’ve already checked it over myself, but I figured it’d be good to get a professional second opinion.”

  Viceport plucked the ring gingerly from my hand and turned it between her fingers. She murmured a few casting words, rubbed her thumb over the spiral, and exhaled, her shoulders relaxing. “I can’t sense any magic imbued in it. I feel comfortable saying you’re safe wearing it.” Her tone turned wry. “Anyone you might get into a dispute with, perhaps not so much.”

  “That seems to be the idea.” When she handed it back, I hesitated a moment longer and then slid it onto my finger. The metal warmed quickly as it hugged my skin. Even though the ring reminded me of all the vicious aspects of my Bloodstone heritage, having that extra power at my disposal was a little comforting.

  “You haven’t faced any aggression yourself in recent days, have you?” Viceport asked. “No attempted assaults or more subtle attempts to strike out at you?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing like what happened to Jude, and nothing on a smaller scale either beyond what I’ve been used to here.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. There was— I wasn’t sure whether it was even worth mentioning, because it may be simply a psychological attempt to unnerve you rather than a real threat, but…” Viceport frowned. “Yesterday I received a few text messages from an unfamiliar number asking for any incriminating information I might have about your actions or plans.”

  A chill tickled over my skin. I hadn’t gotten any more strange messages since the vague threat when I’d been at the shooting range, but I couldn’t imagine the incidents were unconnected. “That’s all they said?”

  “I tried to press for more information about who they were and why they were asking about you, but they didn’t respond. I suppose they realized that I wasn’t going to offer them anything, and I haven’t heard from them since.”

  Someone had decided to make it their personal mission to ruin me, one way or another. Despite their earlier insinuations, they obviously didn’t know all that much if they were going to my mentor to ask for more dirt. Still, I didn’t like the impression that I was being monitored from afar. Could it even be my mother, testing the waters to find out what I might be doing when I wasn’t around her?

  “Thanks for telling me,” I said. “I’ll keep an eye out for any signs of trouble. If anyone contacts you again, you’ll let me know?”

  “Absolutely.” Viceport nudged her rectangular glasses farther up her nose. “Do you think you’re up for a few more spells before our time here is up?”

  I was about to take her up on the suggestion when my phone chimed. After the conversation we’d just had, my pulse stuttered as I dug it out. But the text was from a totally familiar source—Declan.

  He’d texted all of us scions just as he had the other night when he’d realized Jude was in danger. This time, the message brought much happier news. The doctors have woken Jude up, and the infirmary let me know he’s okay to have visitors now. I’m heading right over.

  My heart leapt in a totally different way. I’m on my way too, I wrote, and looked up at Viceport.

  “Jude’s awake.”

  Before I needed to add anything, she nodded and made a shooing gesture. “Of course. Go see him. I’m glad to hear his recovery is on track.”

  It took all my self-control not to dash through the woods back to campus. I strode along the path as quickly as I could without making a total spectacle of myself and let myself speed up to a casual lope when I reached the field. As I came around the Stormhurst Building, Declan, Malcolm, and Connar were just coming down from the green. I stopped by the front door to wait for them to reach me, shifting my weight impatiently.

  “Did the infirmary staff say anything else about how he’s doing?” I asked Declan as we all pushed inside.

  The main hall held the sharp scent of chlorine from the university’s pool. We had to pass both that and the gyms, our steps tapping loudly on the wooden floors, before we reached the health center. A couple of students coming out of a change room caught sight of us, four of the five scions as a determined pack, and darted by, hugging close to the wall with flickers of anxiety that tickled into my chest.

  “The woman who contacted me said he was asking to see us, so he’s at least well enough to be making demands,” Declan said with a tight smile. I suspected he blamed himself for not getting to Jude sooner—he hadn’t realized right away that the other guy needed help when he’d gotten the odd call. And the Ashgrave scion had a habit of seeing himself as responsible for everyone and everything that mattered to him.

  “Jude’s made of tough stuff,” Malcolm said firmly. “He’ll bounce back. I’m just looking forward to when we crush the assho
le who did that to him.”

  So was I. Maybe I didn’t approve of violence as a general principle, but the thought of turning my new ring on Baron Killbrook and dealing a little of the pain he’d caused back had a certain satisfaction.

  A couple blacksuits were stationed outside the infirmary doors. I didn’t know whether Jude’s supposed father had felt he needed to keep up the paternal act enough to request protection for his “son” or whether their presence had been Ms. Grimsworth’s initiative, but I appreciated it all the same.

  They looked us over but obviously knew well enough who we were. We marched into the bright, white-walled space, and one of the medical staff beckoned for us to follow her past the reception desk.

  Jude had a room to himself with a narrow bed against one wall, just enough space remaining for all four of us to come around beside it. He was sitting up, propped against a pillow, poking at a bowl of soup, but as soon as he saw us he grinned and set his lunch on the side table.

  “Quite the welcoming party,” he said in his usual breezy tone. “I haven’t been gone that long, unless the doctor lied to me.”

  He could joke around all he wanted, but a few faint bruises still dappled his forehead and neck that the staff hadn’t been able to fully heal. And I remembered far too well how horribly broken he’d looked when we’d reached him in the field. My throat closed up. When I reached the bed, I kept moving, sinking onto the edge and leaning over to wrap my arms around him, careful of any lingering injuries.

  “Hey,” Jude said softly into my hair, returning the embrace. His voice stayed light, but he gripped me harder than I’d dared to squeeze him, as if he were afraid of letting me go again.