Royals of Villain Academy 7: Grim Witchery

by Eva Chase

  What if I never found a way to win? What if this just kept getting worse and worse? They couldn’t really hope to extend their power over the whole world, could they? I didn’t even know how they’d manage to control just this one small town.

  I clung to that idea when we eased back on the stage. The moment my mother stepped away from the other barons, I touched her arm.

  “How are we going to stop them from spreading the word to people outside the town? We’re not ready to take on a whole police force of Naries.”

  My mother gave me a smile that looked amused. “We’re getting there. But for now, while we flex our strength, we’re simply cutting them off from anyone they’d have wanted to call in against us. The blacksuits have set up wards all around the town. They won’t be able to communicate with anyone outside those boundaries or cross them to escape.”

  So, they were stuck just as much as the Nary students on campus were. I held back a wince. As well as I could, I kept my tone conversational. “I’m surprised Declan wasn’t part of this announcement. He is practically baron. He never mentioned to me that this was in the works.”

  My mother’s chuckle came out dry and dark. Her voice came out lower. “Mr. Ashgrave has a ways to go before he can stand up with the rest of us. And an Ashgrave’s opinion isn’t worth much in general.” She looked at me, her gaze abruptly intense. “His mother is the one who called the joymancers in on us all those years ago, you know.”

  I blinked. “What? But—they killed her.”

  “Yes. It wasn’t a very smart move, was it? As if they’d ever see any of us as an ally. But she got off easy. It’s because of her we both lost seventeen years of the life we should have had.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Rory

  In theory, I was eating tortellini in rosé sauce for dinner. In actuality, I was mostly pushing the noodles around on my plate while my stomach contorted into various unpleasant configurations. I hadn’t managed to eat lunch right after the big announcement in town either, but I knew I should get some kind of sustenance into me. I wasn’t going to help anyone if I died of starvation.

  Of course, it wasn’t like I’d managed to help many people in the last few weeks since the fearmancer world had started going even more to hell in the first place.

  I finally convinced my throat to swallow a few mouthfuls, and then I had to stop or I might have puked it all back up again. As I scraped the remainder into the garbage, Cressida came into the dorm. She paused when she saw me and then walked over, stopping by the dining table. I rinsed my plate and set it in the sink with the other dishes the maintenance staff would handle. I wasn’t in the mood to chat, not that Cressida was anyone I’d normally have chatted with anyway.

  It appeared she was in the mood to chat me up, though. When I turned, she tipped her head with an awkward smile, twisting the end of her white-blond French braid between her fingers where she’d tugged it over her shoulder. The pink and purple streaks were starting to fade.

  “Can we talk?” she asked, speaking in an undertone even though no one else was in the common room. “I… I think I’m ready to claim my side of our deal.”

  Our deal. When Lillian and the barons had set me up for Imogen’s murder, I’d only convinced Cressida to provide her witness testimony on my behalf by engaging in a magical pact with her. I owed her a favor of her choice, as long as it was legal and within my power.

  I hadn’t expected her to call in that favor so soon, before I was even baron and could offer a heck of a lot more. What did she think I could do for her right now?

  I didn’t have much choice other than to find out. “In that case, of course,” I said. “Let’s use my room.”

  Cressida stepped into the space gingerly as if she wasn’t sure it was quite safe. I managed to restrain myself from rolling my eyes. She and her friends had done a lot worse to me than I’d ever offered in retaliation. She didn’t seem inclined to sit down, so I propped myself against my desk.

  “We might as well get straight to the point,” I said. “What do you need?”

  She crossed her arms over her chest, keeping them rigid as if holding them back from outright hugging herself. She obviously didn’t enjoy asking for this favor. For a few seconds, I thought she might say, “Never mind,” and walk back out.

  “You were there for the announcement in town,” she said finally. “You know what’s going on.”

  I nodded, doing my best to keep my expression impassive. I could vent to my fellow scions about my true feelings, but I wasn’t going to trust Cressida with them.

  “Well, I…” She shifted her weight. “The blacksuits are recruiting students from the university to help with the policing—to keep an eye out for any Naries in town who try to push back against fearmancer authority. I guess because we’re so close by and we’ve got fewer commitments than the older mages. They’re promising extra credit to people who participate, and it’ll look good with the barons, so my parents want me to be a part of the program.”

  It took me a moment to decipher the unspoken problem. “But you don’t want to.”

  Cressida ducked her head as if my comment had included any judgment. “I just don’t like the idea. It feels… risky, being that public with our magic—not something I could ever take back if things go wrong. And I don’t really want to be fighting with people, having to face off against them if they get combative.”

  “Can’t you tell your parents that?”

  She gave me a narrow look. “Can you tell your mother what you really think about the whole thing? They’ve already put my name in without asking me. If I pull out without a good reason, it’ll look bad.”

  Maybe I hadn’t spelled out my feelings, but my Nary sympathies hadn’t exactly been a secret around campus. I could take her point. Her parents might not be barons, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t crack down hard if they felt she was embarrassing the family.

  “You need a good reason, then.” I rubbed my mouth, my gaze sliding away from her as I considered. What reason could I give her that the blacksuits would see as valid rather than wishy-washy—that she couldn’t simply come up with on her own? It wasn’t as if we had any pre-existing friendship or professional partnership I could point to the way Malcolm often used “scion business” as an excuse.

  “I just want you to get me out of it, one way or another. Without making me or my family look any less loyal. Can you handle that? I did get you out of a murder charge.”

  I couldn’t stop myself from glowering at her then. “A murder I hadn’t actually committed anyway. Give me some time to think about it. I don’t want to promise anything if I can’t come up with a good strategy. When I have an idea I think will work, I’ll let you know, and you can decide if it’s worth completing the deal for.”

  “That’s fair.” She bobbed her head a little awkwardly and slipped out of the room.

  Leaving me with yet another conundrum to work out. I flopped down on my bed and grimaced at the ceiling. If I could take care of the favor I owed Cressida this way, it’d be to my benefit. Get it over with so it wasn’t hanging over me any longer. We weren’t currently connected, but the request didn’t have to come from me. Maybe I could arrange for one of the teachers to say they needed her for some special project? Although I didn’t love the idea of having to rely on another party to see the deal through.

  Malcolm’s “scion business” tactic worked because people accepted that anything we were working on as a pentacle automatically trumped just about any other responsibility. What could trump serving the blacksuits—and by extension the barons—in their new program of intimidation and dominance? They hadn’t specifically asked for Cressida, so the alternate responsibility didn’t need to be that overwhelmingly larger…

  An idea tickled up through my mind. Here at school, being a scion did trump just about anything else. So should anything that worked to our benefit. Cressida might not have any direct association with us now, but considering the chaos the campus ha
d been thrown into lately, we could create new connections without anyone seeing them as resistance—even though the people we brought together might become part of a resistance down the road.

  If this worked, I’d be making progress on two of my biggest problems in one.

  A jolt of eager energy propelled me off the bed. Before I set down anything definite, I’d need to get permission from a higher authority, but the school authorities would serve just fine. And to bolster my case, I really should bring along another scion.

  I grabbed my phone, my head spinning with the threads of the plan quickly snapping into place.

  Jude let out a light huff as we reached the staff wing of Killbrook Hall. “So, this is my new lot in life,” he said in a self-deprecating tone. “Poster boy for patheticness.”

  I nudged him with my elbow. “You’re not pathetic. You just happen to have direct experience with the dangers we can face as scions. Experience that’s public knowledge, unlike the crap the rest of us have dealt with.”

  “Hmm. Well, if this plan of yours lets us stick it to the barons, that’ll make it worthwhile.”

  His demeanor was easy-going enough, but I didn’t sense the playful energy that was so typical of him. He was still struggling with his casting, so much that he hadn’t returned to any of his magical classes yet. Even if he didn’t want to talk about it other than to joke, I could tell the loss was weighing on him more as time passed.

  I took his hand and squeezed it, and he returned the gesture with a fond smile. “Just to be clear, I don’t mind pitching in when you call on me,” he said. “At least I’m doing something useful, one way or another.”

  “Just to be clear too, how much I want to spend time with you has nothing to do with how ‘useful’ you are.”

  “I know, Fire Queen.” He swung our joined hands between us. “That’s why you’re my favorite.”

  I didn’t think any of the other scions cared all that much about Jude’s usefulness either, but maybe he was simply mocking himself again. I didn’t have time to press the subject when we were just coming up to the headmistress’s door.

  Ms. Grimsworth answered a few seconds after my knock, but her face was clearly weary, a few stray strands drifting loose from her usually neat coil of hair. “Miss Bloodstone, Mr. Killbrook,” she said with a nod, gesturing us in.

  “I’m glad you could see us so quickly,” I said. “What with, well, everything that’s been going on here and around campus, I feel like the step we’d like to take is fairly urgent.”

  She eyed us as she took her seat behind her expansive desk. I settled into one of the firm armchairs across from her, Jude doing the same.

  “What exactly is this step?” the headmistress asked.

  I had to choose my words carefully here. I motioned between Jude and me with a broad enough sweep to encompass the scions who weren’t with us as well. “The five of us feel that in light of the recent attack and the increased hostile magical activity in the area in general, it’d make sense for us to recruit some of our classmates as a sort of protective force. The Scions’ Guard. To give us increased security on campus.”

  “I definitely wouldn’t want any of my fellow scions to find themselves in as precarious a position as I did,” Jude put in. “And I’d really prefer not to find myself facing anything similar.”

  Ms. Grimsworth hummed to herself, tapping a pen against the edge of her desk. “And what exactly do you envision this ‘Guard’ doing? How many students would be involved? How large a responsibility would it be?”

  “Nothing that should interfere with their studies,” I said quickly. “A lot of the time they wouldn’t even need to be directly with us. We’d each pick four or five people we trust to have our best interests at heart, and expect them to keep an extra watch for any activity on campus that could affect us, to be prepared to help defend us if any dangerous situations arise in classes we share, and we’d call on one or a few of them to join us if we were venturing somewhere we felt we needed extra protectors.”

  Jude leaned back in his seat, stretching out his legs. “It’d be to their benefit too. They’d get the prestige of being chosen by a scion and proving their worth to us and our families. It’d help us decide who we might want to continue working with in future.”

  The headmistress’s gaze stayed contemplative. “Is this your initiative or your parents’ idea?”

  “Our parents don’t even know we’re thinking about this,” I said. “There’s no need to involve them when they’re so busy handling this huge transition. I’m sure they’ll appreciate us making our own preparations. We just wanted to get official approval from you before we got started, since we’ll be organizing the Guard on campus.”

  “Much appreciated,” Ms. Grimsworth said, her cool voice turning wry. She glanced toward the window, knitting her brow for a moment before returning her attention to us. “Well, I can’t see any reason why it should be a problem for you to go ahead with this ‘Guard’ of yours. I expect you’ll have many takers. I assume you’ll be looking for students whose values align with your own, as well as having strong abilities.”

  Something about the question set my nerves on alert, but I didn’t get a hostile vibe from her. No, it made me remember seeing her on the first day when the new group of Nary students had arrived, frowning as she led them through their tour.

  She’d never expressed any definite feelings about the Naries one way or the other, but she knew perfectly well from watching my actions here at the university what my values had always been.

  “That would make the most sense, I think,” I said tentatively, watching her expression.

  Her lips formed a thin smile. “Then I expect they should be a very welcome addition to student life. Certainly, if the need arises for you to have allies on your side for any reason, I’ll be glad to see you so prepared.”

  “As will we,” Jude said with a grin, getting up. He gave Ms. Grimsworth a half-hearted salute.

  I rose too, still wondering if I was imagining the implications I thought I was picking up in her words.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  Ms. Grimsworth held out her hand to shake mine. As she gripped my fingers, she held my gaze with a glint in hers. “I look forward to seeing a call for order at a time like this, however small it starts out.”

  That comment and the intentness of her gaze convinced me. I walked out of her office with a tickle of nervous elation running through me.

  The headmistress wasn’t just okay with us recruiting students to support us. If I was right, she’d be perfectly happy to see us use those allies to push back against the barons’ plans when we had the chance.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Rory

  I did already have a few allies on campus, even if they weren’t ones I could draw into our Scions’ Guard. When Professor Razeden had a break in between Desensitization sessions, I went down to the basement of Nightwood Tower to consult with him.

  “I can see why you’d make this move,” he said, knowing but discreet, after I’d explained about the group we were assembling. “Is there some way you feel I can help?”

  “That’s why I’m here. I was hoping…” I looked down at my hands, clasped together in my lap where I was sitting on the bench across from him. “I realize there are certain expectations of confidentiality, so I wouldn’t ask you to tell me exactly what you’ve seen from any specific student. But it would be really helpful if you can think of anyone whose sessions have shown signs of distrusting the barons or the new policies. And I’d like to give you a list of people we’re considering, so you can tell me if you’ve seen anything that would make you think any of them might be hostile toward the scions or particularly happy about how things have been going.”

  Razeden considered me. “You’re looking not just to find guards but people who might campaign on your side.”

  That was a polite way of putting it. I gave him a tight smile. “Something like that. I’m sure you can understand wh
y. No one wants to stand up to the barons when they think they’re alone. If we can get a bunch of people who recognize how harmful these steps could be for not just the Naries but the fearmancers too, maybe we can get my mother and the other barons to listen.”

  I thought the professor’s expression turned skeptical, but he didn’t voice any of those doubts. I doubted whether the barons would really listen too. But we had to start there, and if speaking up as a group didn’t work, then we’d see what we could do with whatever leverage we had by then.

  “I’ll need to go over my notes, but I can come up with a list of my recommendations based on what I’ve seen in the sessions,” he said. “And I can check over your list for any reasons to be concerned. If I have them for you tomorrow morning, would that be a reasonable timeframe?”

  “That would be amazing,” I said, getting up. After the meeting with Ms. Grimsworth yesterday, the other scions and I had gotten started organizing our Guard right away, but we hadn’t wanted to rush when it came to deciding who to trust. We only had a few people officially on board so far.

  I handed Razeden the list I’d written of our candidates, and he tucked it into his pocket. “Come by around nine, and we’ll have time to discuss it.”

  I headed back to Ashgrave Hall with raised spirits. The sight of a couple of juniors harassing a Nary student who was scurrying to her dorm made my stomach twist, but maybe things wouldn’t have to stay like that for very much longer. There was strength in numbers, and we were building those numbers now.

  Just inside the door, I headed down a flight of stairs of the main basement. Malcolm had managed to talk maintenance into giving us scions another room down below, and we’d spent a good part of yesterday evening redistributing the supply boxes that had been stacked there into the other rooms along the dim hall. The room was still pretty bare, but it held a couple sofas and several armchairs at one end and a large mat I suspected Connar had “borrowed” from the fitness center at the other. One side for talking, one side for action. This was going to be the Scions’ Guard headquarters for the time being.