A Dance with Darkness

by Jenna Wolfhart

  We stood in the expansive lush gardens behind the Academy’s main building. Rolling hills tumbled in the distance, meeting the orange and red colored sky. For a moment, I stared at the dying glimmer of sunlight, wondering at who and what I had suddenly become.

  Bree would love it here, I decided. She’d dive headfirst into training, and she would without a doubt have her eye on one of the fae, hoping he was hers. She’d be a Spring or a Summer, most likely. Nothing about Bree was dark or cold.

  “Alright,” Liam said, clapping his hands as he stood before our little rag-tag group. “Time to get started. Who wants to go first?”

  On the way over, I’d introduced myself to the two other Manhattan recruits. All girls, all wide-eyed, and a little shell-shocked. So, kind of like me. The girl with the fiery hair was named Lila, and a quieter girl with golden eyes was named Sam. She watched the entire group, sizing things up with a quiet kind of intelligence that suggested she wasn’t the kind of person to miss much, even if she never really spoke up.

  “I’ll go first!” Sophia said, her hand shooting high in the air. Finn chuckled from where he watched from the side, and he shook his head. His laugh was such an annoying sound, mostly because I couldn’t get it out of my head once I’d heard it. It was so lyrical, so poetic, almost, like a song that kept repeating over and over again in the most perfect way imaginable.

  But that was stupid.

  It was a laugh, an annoying one at that.

  And he was annoying.

  “Alright, looks like we have our first volunteer.” Liam waved Sophia forward and slid the bow into her hands. It wasn’t the kind of bow that you’d see in any kind of modern hunting shop. Instead, it looked old and weathered, as if made from ancient trees. Hell, it probably had been.

  “There’s the target,” Liam said, pointing at a bulging sack at least a hundred yards away. “You’ve got three shots. Good luck.”

  Sophia wrinkled her nose. “Aren’t you going to show me how to use this thing? I’ve never shot an arrow in my life.”

  “Nope.” He crossed his arms over his chest and stepped back. “The challenge is to see how well you can shoot without any training. That means no demonstrations from me. Yet.”

  She shrugged and slid an arrow into the bow. At first, she fumbled a bit. The arrow slid this way and that, but after a few minutes of wobbly trembling, she finally managed to get it to stick. With a deep breath, she raised the arrow and loosed it in the air.

  And then it sunk into the sack with a heavy thump.

  My mouth dropped open, and Sophia pounded her fist in the air.

  “That was awesome!” She whirled toward me with sparkling eyes, and I couldn’t help but grin back. “Maybe this whole fae thing isn’t so bad after all.”

  Her next two arrows hit the mark, but that wasn’t much of a surprise after the first. Lila went next. She managed to get her first two shots within a couple of feet of the sack, and the third finally hit the edge of the mark. With every second that passed, the more my palms began to sweat. I’d never been particularly good at anything but dancing, and this seemed about as far away from dancing as something could get.

  Up next was Sam. She was a little better than Lila but didn’t reach the same heights as my new roommate, and she huffed and muttered underneath her breath. Clearly, she wasn’t used to not being at the top of the class.

  Finally, it was my turn. Liam stepped forward and slid the bow into my hands. As he gave me an arrow, our fingers brushed. A jolt went through my body from the connection of our skin, like a static shock times ten. I sucked in a sharp breath as his eyes locked onto mine. Those eyes that were as bright and as brilliant as a red-and-gold summer sunset.

  His eyes slightly widened, and his lips curled up into a devilish smile. “Something wrong?”

  I blinked and stepped back, dropping my hand away from his. “No. Of course not. I’ve just never handled a bow and arrow before.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “None of the other Manhattan recruits have either.”

  “Right.” My cheeks burned with embarrassment. He’d clearly caught me sucked in by his impossibly orange-red eyes, and the tremble my body had instinctively made when his hand had brushed mine. And Liam, I was quickly understanding, was the kind of person whose ego relished in even the slightest of compliments.

  Not that I was complimenting him.

  Sucking in a deep breath, I forced my gaze away from the Summer fae and fumbled to fit the arrow into the slot thingy. I mean, who was I kidding? I didn’t know any of the terms for a bow and arrow. So, a slot thingy it was.

  “By the way,” Liam suddenly spoke up, his lips only inches from my ear. In the few seconds I’d had my attention turned away from him, he’d snuck up on me, and the cloying scent of summer rain and sunflowers swarmed into my nostrils. “Whoever loses this first test gets Watch Duty tonight. Which means you’ll get very little sleep, and you’ll become intimately acquainted with what goes bump in the night.” He gave me a wink. “And there are many things that go bump in the night, including me. Good luck.”

  Chapter Ten

  Needless to say, I sucked. My first arrow went flying off into another origin’s section of the garden. I blamed it on Liam. It almost felt like he’d purposely been trying to make me screw up my shot by distracting me with his annoying manliness. And, annoyingly, it had worked. I was too distracted to focus on launching one of these things. Plus, the bow was a lot heavier than it looked, and my arms trembled as I tried to hold it steady.

  The next two arrows didn’t fare much better. They stayed in our lane, but they were about as far from the sack as I could get. It was as if my arms and hands were playing a different game than everyone else: get the arrow as far from the target as possible.

  Liam was still lurking over my shoulder when I was done. He’d been standing like that the entire time I’d been attempting the shots. I’d felt his breath whispering across my neck, and I heard the laugh I swore that no one could hear but me.

  When I lowered the bow, I whirled on him, my own eyes as fiery as his. “You did that on purpose. You wanted to see me fail, so you made me lose.”

  His grin widened. “I did nothing of the sort. And, don’t forget, I’m one of your instructors. You need to show me the proper respect. Otherwise…” His eyes sparkled. “I might have to add some more punishment on top of your Watch Duty.”

  My mouth dropped open, and anger curled in my stomach. “Oh, so is that how things work around here? Women mates get punished if they don’t obey their men?”

  “Oh, you’re not my mate yet, darling.” His voice was deep and dark as he curled a finger underneath my chin. “But I see that fire in you. Maybe you will end up mine.”

  “Sorry about what happened out there,” Sophia said as we strolled back into our shared apartment. I only had an hour to “unpack” and settle in before I had to meet up with the other losers who had been assigned Watch Duty for the night. All the changelings who had come in last in their groups were suckered into a long night of watching the dark forest for any sign of dangerous creatures. Since we sucked so bad at the whole bow and arrow thing, we weren’t there to fight. Instead, we would waste away our sleeping hours by keeping watch.

  I shrugged and slumped down on the bed in Sophia’s room, watching her unzip the first of three massive suitcases. A twinge went through my gut. I wished I had a chance to pack my things. Instead, I was here with nothing from my past, except Mom’s necklace which dangled from my neck. Nothing else to remind me of who I really was.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Sophia. It’s not like you cursed me to be terrible at being a fae.” I sighed and looked around me. Compared to hers, my room would be brutally empty. No clothes. No signs of life. “And I could really use a shower and a fresh change of clothes.”

  “Maybe if I’d been worse, it’d be me keeping watch tonight instead of you.” She pulled a black t-shirt from the depths of her bag. “Want to wear this? It’s sufficiently guard-like
, and we’re about the same size.”

  I lifted my eyes from the floor. “Really? You wouldn’t mind?”

  “Nope, not at all.” She tossed me the shirt with a smile. “Until the fae manage to round up some clothes for you, feel free to wear anything of mine. We’ve got to stick together, right?”

  I let out a relived sigh and nodded. “We’ve got to stick to together.”

  When I returned to the gym an hour later, I expected Liam to be waiting to greet me with that egotistic smile of his. He’d been the one who had assigned me Watch Duty, after all. Instead, it was Rourke, the Autumn fae. The weird one who, I had to admit, made me feel a little nervous. There was something so unnerving about him. He was quiet and cool, his lips pressed together in a firm line. Next to Finn’s boisterous nature and Liam’s fiery flirting, Rourke just seemed…

  Chilling.

  “This may be your first evening at Otherworld Academy, but we don’t ease recruits in slowly here.” Rourke strode to the wall and took four binoculars off a wooden shelf before passing them out to each of us. “Each night, recruits assist with Watch Duty, an essential task for ensuring the safety of this Academy. And while you may feel this is a punishment for losing your challenge, it’s an integral part of your training. You should consider it a privilege to guard this place.”

  A guy with fair reddish hair next to me scoffed and crossed his arms across the kind of chest that could only be built from hours spent in a gym. “Right. A privilege. Then, why didn’t you give it to the so-called ‘winners’ of today’s challenge?”

  Rourke turned to the guy and stared, his eyes glittering with a ferocity that almost made me gasp. I was certainly glad he wasn’t looking at me like that.

  “Griff, is it? From Wales?” Rourke said quietly. “Their time will come. You need to focus on your own training. Be appreciative of this opportunity.”

  “Well, we should at least get some kind of weapon,” said Griff. “What good are we going to do just wandering around with some binoculars?”

  “No weapons yet,” Rourke said. “You aren’t ready. If you see anything out of the ordinary, you’ll sound the alarm, and the instructors will take care of the issue.”

  Griff snorted, and I frowned. I knew I should keep my mouth shut. Rourke was more than a little intimidating, but I also had questions that he needed to answer.

  “So, all we’re doing is standing around keeping watch with these?” I lifted the binoculars.

  His glittering eyes turned my way. “Yes, Norah. That’s why it’s called Watch Duty.”

  My cheeks flamed. I was glad I wasn’t an Autumn Court fae. I couldn’t imagine spending the rest of my life with this guy by my side, his eerie unnerving way of speaking, those golden eyes that I swore felt as though could see past my skin and into my soul.

  Not that I could imagine spending the rest of my life with any of them. I mean, we’d just met. Yeah, they were all insanely gorgeous in their otherworldly way they had, and I had a feeling they looked amazing with their shirts off, too. But it was just too bizarre, imagining that one of them would end up my lifelong mate.

  And that I would somehow end up thrilled about it.

  “So, what are we watching out for anyway?” another one of the changelings asked, a girl with dark wavy hair that curled around her pixie face. “Are there actually things out there we need to be worried about?”

  Rourke’s lips curled into a devious smile. “Oh yes. Why do you think it’s a requirement for all changelings to be trained once they return to Otherworld? You’re in the land of the fae now, and not all creatures of this realm are like us.” He waved at himself, and his words sent a chill down my spine. I couldn’t help but think of the wolf monsters who had killed Bree. Was he talking about those? Or were there more things out there? Things that were even worse?

  As if reading my mind, he flicked his eyes my way and nodded. “There are many types of dangerous creatures in Otherworld, Norah. You’ll begin to learn more about them tomorrow when classes begin. For now, all you need to know is to keep an eye out for anything with fangs and fur. If you spot one, sound the alarm.”

  At first, my palms were almost too sweaty for me to keep my grip on the binoculars, but after two uneventful hours where there was nothing but buzzing crickets and endless dark, glittering skies, I began to relax.

  Rourke had given each of us a small squat watch tower in the corners of the Academy grounds, so I didn’t even have anyone to keep me company for the six hours that darkness would permeate the skies. Once Watch Duty was over, we’d have just enough time to go back inside for an hour’s nap and a shower before classes began for the day.

  A privilege, my ass.

  A soft cool breeze whispered across the back of my neck, and my body stiffened instinctively. Not because of anything I saw or heard but because I felt something nearby me. Something dark and dangerous and cold.

  “Norah,” came a shiver of ice from behind me. “All quiet on the northwestern side?”

  It was just Rourke, though that knowledge did little to calm my nerves. My pulse began to throb in my veins, bouncing dangerously quick in my neck.

  “Yep, no sign of murderous wolves,” I said after swallowing hard. “That’s what I’m looking for, right? More of those wolves that killed Bree?”

  “Yes and no.” He stepped up beside me and peered out across the thick forest. “Redcaps are sometimes attracted to this place due to the presence of the Winter fae who reside here, but there are more creatures than Redcaps to worry about. Many of them are much, much more dangerous.”

  My heart tripped in my chest, and I glanced up at him, horrified by his words. “More dangerous than Redcaps? But they…they…”

  “You’re right to be afraid.” He nodded. “And that’s why you’re here. You need to learn how to fight.”

  A pause. “Obviously, I never knew anything like this place could be real, but in my imagination, I would have assumed a faerie world to be a lot different than this.”

  He raised his eyebrows and cast me a strange smile. “And how did you imagine it, Norah? All puffy clouds and rainbows? Dancing and merriment? Everyone holding hands and singing songs?”

  “Well…yeah, actually,” I said, heat creeping into my cheeks. He made it sound so stupid when he put it like that, but it was what I’d imagined when I’d thought of faeries. “I never would have thought it was a place full of dangerous creatures who went around murdering people.”

  His eyes flashed, and something in his expression darkened. “There is much to love about Otherworld, but there is also much to hate. At one time, our world focused more on those things you imagined. The merriment, the dancing, the songs. We do still have that now, though not nearly as often as we used to. Otherworld is changing. Ever since we split our Courts, a darkness has begun to creep in. With it comes more violent attacks and much more danger.”

  Frowning, I glanced up at him. His eyes were locked on something in the distance, and his jaw clenched tight. Every part of his body was stiff and straight, radiating with pure tension. I thought back to my conversation with Finn on the way into the Academy. Four Courts. Four rulers. When there had once been only a Queen.

  “You don’t seem particularly happy about the division of the Courts,” I finally said. “I thought it was the Autumn fae who led the revolution.”

  He leaned forward, his fingers tightening on the bannister of the watch tower. “It wasn’t a revolution, Norah. It was…” He stopped short and sucked in a sharp breath through his flared nostrils. “It matters not. But you see those storm clouds on the horizon?”

  Rourke shifted behind me, took my hand in his, and pointed my finger toward a dark shape beyond the furthest edge of the forest. His touch was cold and electric, and it was my body’s turn to go tense. Why was he touching me? Why could I feel the caress of his breath on my skin? A whirlwind of scents enveloped me: crackling leaves, rotting wood, and deep damp earth. In my chest, my heart began to shake.

 
“See it just there?” he asked in a low whisper with his lips only inches from my ear.

  Swallowing hard, I ripped my gaze from where his fingers were curled around my hand and followed the line. “Yep, I see it. There it is.”

  He let go, but I still stood frozen in place with my hand outstretched before me. I was losing it. Something about these fae guys had a strange effect on me, one that couldn’t be normal. Every single one of them was either irritating, annoying, or kind of weird, but they were all really getting under my skin. I mean, I was practically a trembling mess when Rourke had barely touched me. Not to mention the way that Finn had made me want to punch and kiss him at the same time. And Liam, with his deliciously fiery eyes.

  No, I wasn’t having these thoughts. Not about these fae. It was just some kind of magical allure they carried around with them. That was the only logical explanation.

  Rourke had begun speaking again while I’d been distracted by my ridiculous reaction to his touch, and I only tuned back into his words in time to add another terror to the increasingly-growing list of things to worry about in Otherworld.

  “Those storm clouds were never there before, particularly not during the Summer season, as we are now,” he said with a deep frown. “But they’ve been increasing these years past. Sometimes, the storms are quite violent. We don’t know what’s causing them, but I believe it has something to do with what we did all those years ago. Otherworld was stable, and now it no longer is.”

  A pause as I mulled over his words. “Finn told me it was traitorous to question the new ruling situation.”