by Louise Rose
Contents
Description
Quote
Prologue
Chapter 1
Ivy Archaic
Chapter 2
Ivy Archaic
Chapter 3
Ivy Archaic
Chapter 4
Ivy Archaic
Chapter 5
Ivy Archaic
Chapter 6
Ivy Archaic
Chapter 7
Ivy Archaic
Chapter 8
Archer Knight
Chapter 9
Ivy Archaic
Chapter 10
Ivy Archaic
Chapter 11
Ivy Archaic
Chapter 12
Declan Dauphin
Chapter 13
Ivy Archaic
Chapter 14
Ivy Archaic
Chapter 15
Ivy Archaic
Chapter 16
Ivy Archaic
Chapter 17
Ivy Archaic
Chapter 18
Ivy Archaic
Chapter 19
Ivy Archaic
Chapter 20
Ivy Archaic
Chapter 21
Ivy Archaic
Chapter 22
Ivy Archaic
Chapter 23
Ivy Archaic
Chapter 24
Ivy Archaic
Chapter 25
Ivy Archaic
Chapter 26
Ivy Archaic
Chapter 27
Ivy Archaic
Chapter 28
Ivy Archaic
Chapter 29
Ivy Archaic
Chapter 30
Ivy Archaic
Epilogue
Afterword
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Take My Crown Copyright © 2020 by Louise Rose (Midnight Publishing Limited)
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
The author acknowledges the trademark owners of various products, brands, and/or stores referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
Edited by
Cover design by Olivia Pro Design
Title Treatment by Daqri Combs.
Photography by Regina Wamba
Created with Vellum
Description
They might be the elite of King Academy, but I am here for my own damn crown and I will do whatever it takes to get it.
Like in all the pretty pictures, King Town looks perfect. But underneath the cracks, that a painting can never altogether hide, lies and sins rule the town with the Academy right in the middle of it.
Kidnapped and forced from my latest foster home into the dangerous world of King Academy and the games they play, I find out I’m from here and now there is no escaping this world.
I’m born to play the same games they do.
Four houses rule this small gated town, and they always have done, poisoning the waters with their sins and darkness. And their heirs?
Well, they think they rule everything and everyone. They use their money and good looks to charm the academy into calling them their kings.
But I’m not falling for that bullshit.
Romeo Navarre, Archer Knight and Declan Dauphin may think they own the academy, own the town, and get everything they want…but then they have just met me.
They will soon find out I’m not falling for the sexy boys of King Academy.
Recommend for 18+ readers due to content. This is a full-length book and the first of five books in this series.
Release dates-
Take My Crown- July 10th
Take My Place- August 10th
Take My Throne- September 10th
Be My Traitor- October 10th
Be My Heart- November 10th
Quote
"From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate." -Socrates.
Prologue
Ten years ago…
“When you’re older, little dove, you will love four men.”
Mum’s smooth, calm voice whispers to me as I try to drift off to sleep in her arms. Her peppermint and tulips perfume comforts me, the familiar smell reminding me I am safe and loved. My pink fluffy blanket is wrapped around us, keeping us warm while a storm rages outside. Rain pounds against the windows while flashes of lightning sporadically light up the shadows in my room.
“Why four?” I ask around a yawn.
“The first is a knight who will be a mistake, but everyone needs those to help their heart blossom.” Mum counted them off on her fingers. “The second is your first true love, but it won’t last because the prince is promised to someone else. The third is a joker who never should have been more than a friend…” Her voice trails off, a look of sadness briefly crossing her face.
I don’t know if I like this story. Mum usually tells me fairy tales about princes and princesses, brave women who save kingdoms from bad men, weaving a world of fantasy for me to escape into. This seems a little too… real.
I play with a strand of mum’s soft, blonde hair, enjoying the feel between my fingers. “And the fourth?”
“That’s the man you’ll do anything for, the man you’d die for if it protected him. He’s the king who’ll steal your soul, wrap it in an ivy called love and never let you go,” she smiles, lightly caressing my cheek with the back of her hand.
In that moment my mind is made up. I don’t want a prince, or a knight, or a joker. I want to love a king.
“Is that why my name is Ivy, mummy?” I ask. “Am I the princess in the story?”
She drops a gentle kiss onto my forehead. “No. You’re the queen in the story and no one will ever take that from you. Queens don’t need kings, but a king always needs his queen.”
It is the last story she ever tells me.
Chapter One
Ivy Archaic
“Take me away,
Make me pay,
‘Cos you chase the grey away,
You’re the one who makes me smile,
Even when I want to run a mile,
I’m always running, always-
I… I… I… Ugh!”
I throw my pen down on the paper, watching it bounce a few times before flying off the desk. I have been working on this song all day and I still can’t figure out how the chorus should go. Music is my usual escape from the world, but for some reason, I can’t get into the zone.
Running my fingers through my long, wavy brown hair, I stare out the window at the nicer houses on the other side of the road. They are those fancy new builds with super eco everything and fake grass in their gardens to boot. I wonder for a single moment if they look at this side of the road at the old cottage I live in. It needs a new roof and the grass outside grows every single day. I bet they look over and think: ‘the grass is definitely not greener on the other side’.
“Ivy!”
I put my guitar to one side, the sound of my foster mum Katy’s voice giving me a welcome excuse to walk away from a song which simply isn’t working and my thoughts on rich people's houses.
“It lives!” Katy deadpans as I walk into the small kitchen. She is chopping onions and the smell instantly makes my eyes water.
“Yeah, yeah.” I roll my eyes.
Katy is all right as foster parents go, and I should know. I have had more than my fair share of them and most I pretend I don’t remember for my own sanity. In the three years I have lived with her, she has treated me like family, which is a refreshing change compared to the ones who are in it for the monthly paycheque. Still, I am counting down the days until I can escape the system and strike out on my own. As soon as I finish school, I’m outta here. I don’t care if I have to work dead-end jobs and study my butt off at college, I won’t force Katy to keep me when she can foster another kid and actually get paid. This place is sweet, and another kid deserves her love.
And her fantastic cooking skills.
“It’s okay,” Katy says. “I enjoy hearing you play your guitar. But I’m going to need you to pop to the shop for me. I’m making cauliflower cheese and I realized I haven’t got enough milk.”
“Oops.”
“Yeah, I know,” Katy laughs. “You’d think I would’ve checked before I started grating the cheese. There’s a ten-pound note in my purse, bring me back the receipt and change. And if you’d like to get yourself a little something while you’re there, feel free. Just don’t go nuts, okay?”
“Sure thing, Katy.”
After taking the money from her purse, I head out and look up at the cloudy skies above. Knowing my luck, it’s going to pour down before I get back from the shop. I can get a coat, but what’s a little rain?
“Love you, Ivy!” I hear my foster mum call as I leave.
“Love you too, Katy!” I yell back.
The sun peeking out of the dark skies shines down on my skin as I walk down the road toward Sketchy’s, the nearest corner shop. We lived in one of those downmarket suburbs where the terraced houses all look the same, with a tiny scrap of land in the front. Every now and then, I have to walk past a house where the owner has made an effort to plant a few flowers in the front garden, but their meagre attempts can’t cover up the fact that this is a rough area where most people are more concerned about clinging to what little they had than keeping up with the Joneses. The new builds opposite our houses are built by a clueless contractor who doesn't know how bad the area is. Yet, they somehow still sold the houses, judging by the signs outside.
Sketchy’s is a ten-minute walk away and the fresh air seems to fire up my creative thoughts. As I walk, I play with different combinations of lyrics in my mind. I’m pretty certain I will come up with something which can fix the problems with the song.
At last, I reach the shop and check my phone, seeing it’s a few minutes from five pm when the shop closes. Heading over to the chiller cabinet, I pick up a couple of pints of milk. Then I crossed to the magazine stand, looking for the latest edition of Kerrung! I can’t see it, so instead I pick up a couple packs of gum before heading over to the counter to pay.
“Morning, Ivy.” Mrs Singh greets me from behind the counter. “And how are you doing this fine day?”
“Not too bad,” I reply. “Katy’s making her infamous cauliflower cheese for dinner…”
“Can you squeeze in another mouth to feed?”
I grin and shake my head. Everyone loves Katy’s cooking and I’ve always wondered why she doesn't try to do anything professional with her skills.
“Just remember that if you get hungry, there’s always a place for you at my table,” Mrs Singh tells me.
“Thanks, Mrs Singh,” I smile, taking the change she gave me. Hating the pity in her eyes which is like a knife to my soul. I’m always the foster kid of the town. The kid who lost her mum, no dad or family and now is getting too old to be considered the cute foster kid. I’m now the lost teenager, I see it in their eyes. When I finally leave, I’m leaving my past and the foster kid title with it. I put the milk in my rucksack, popping a stick of gum into my mouth and head back outside.
Humming the tune I have been working on, my fingers instinctively form the shape of the chords I would be playing if I had my guitar in hand. Yes, I think I might have finally figured out where I am going wrong. I need to switch the D minor for an F sliding to a G and then it should work.
I’m so caught up in thought that I don’t hear the motorbike roaring up behind me until it’s practically on top of me, the heat from the engine blowing against my lower legs. I can feel the vibration of the bike on the concrete under my feet.
“You’ve dropped something.”
It takes a moment for me to realise the biker is talking to me. I frown, wondering what the hell I just dropped. I turn around, searching the empty footpath before finally looking at the stranger on a bike.
“Where?”
I can’t see the face of the biker because he keeps the mirrored visor of his helmet down. Clad in black leather from head to toe, he gives off a bad boy vibe for miles. I can’t help but wonder what he looks like underneath it all. Is the leather padded or he is just that muscular? The sidecar attached to his bike on the other side of him takes a little away from the edgy look he had going on, but I don’t care. Boys are not my game right now. I can date when I’m older and hopefully wiser.
I tell myself that…but my body harshly disagrees and misses sex. We are in a permanent disagreement which I’m sure “she” will win. Damn teenage hormones.
“Are you Ivy Archaic?”
I frown. Now that’s more than a little creepy. Thankfully my hormones fuck off real quick and the fact I’m alone in an empty street with a man on a bike who knows my name lets fear take over. “Who wants to know?”
Leaving the engine running, he kicks the bike stand down and gets off.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
“Someone wants to meet you,” he says, his gravelly and somewhat sexy under different circumstances voice makes that statement sound unappealing.
“I’m good. Don’t want to meet anyone right now. So, see ya!” I turn to run as fast as I can even before all my words have left my mouth.
Without warning, he grabs me around the waist and throws me over his shoulder like I weigh nothing more than a bag of sugar. My rucksack falls to the ground, as he heads back to his bike.
“Hey!” I scream, flailing around, trying to kick or punch him, anything to make him let me go but the guy is built like a damn rock and every hit does nothing more than hurt my own hands and knees.
“Fight me and it’ll go very badly for you,” he warns, as he dumps me in the sidecar. I growl at him, shoving his hands away from me as I try to escape the damn sidecar, but he is too quick. In seconds he has handcuffs all ready and waiting. Quickly he snaps them around my wrists, tying me to metal loops in the sidecar so it is impossible for me to get away.
Deftly, he jumps back on his bike, looking around quickly. I wonder what the hell he was going to do if anyone saw him. Fear lodges in my throat when I spot the gun in his back pocket. I’m so screwed. Screaming won’t help me escape a lunatic on a bike with a fucking gun.
Revving up the engine, he speeds away too quickly for me to react.
I twist my head, looking back in the hope that someone had seen me being kidnapped, but all I can see is the milk oozing out of my abandoned rucksack like a puddle of blood, sweeping down the street into the road.
Fuck.
Chapter Two
Ivy Archaic
The mysterious biker zooms off in the opposite direction of Katy’s house and that doesn’t surprise me, but every minute we get further away, the more I start to panic. If I don’t get help now, I’m screwed.
Up ahead, I can see a family out for a walk. I had to get their attention, knowing if he gets us out of the town and into the country lanes, there won’t be another chance.
Opening my mouth, I inhaled deeply, ready to scream at the top of my lungs but a leather-covered hand clams tightly over my mouth but the bike never slows down. I follow the hand to my kidnapper, wishing I could see his face, see if he is as cruel as he sounds.
“I will tell you this once, and fair warning, you don’t want to piss me off,” he warns, his loud voice coming to me from
speakers in the sidecar. “My orders are to bring you back alive and I don’t fail at anything. Scream and I will make sure those people never speak a word about you. Try to escape and I will kill anyone in my way to get to you. Your life is over, Ivy Archaic, and for now, you belong to me.”
“I belong to fucking no one,” I spit back the second he lets my mouth go, the anger in voice hazing over the fear pounding through my body. I don’t know if he heard me, he doesn’t react if he did. All I know is that I believe him and I won’t get anyone innocent killed for me.
I slump back in my seat, defeated. For now. If my kidnapper thinks he has beaten my fighting spirit out of me, he has another thing coming. I just have to bide my time. There is bound to be another opportunity for me to get help and I’m going to be ready to take it.
We wind through backstreets and roads next to a few motorways. I guess the biker is trying to avoid any cameras so no one would be able to trace our journey. If he had bothered to ask, I would have told him not to bother. I have run away from plenty of foster homes in the past. I had a history with the police, and the older I got, the less they seemed to care about bringing me back. Now I’m almost 18, there is no way they are going to waste time looking for me.
Gradually, the tired council houses give way to more expensive properties. My curiosity piqued, I start to pay more attention to where we were going. We seem to be heading into the posh side of town, which seems to be a weird place to go. Surely any kidnapper worth their salt would take me to some abandoned warehouse somewhere or an old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. Okay, maybe I have watched a few too many Hollywood movies, but it still seemed strange that we seemed to be going in the direction of where the rich people lived.
