by Louise Rose
“A masked ball?” That sounded like my idea of Hell. I have been planning on spending my eighteenth at the local pub with Katy, enjoying my first legal taste of alcohol. “Who would I invite to a ball? I barely know anyone in this town and I’m not exactly Miss Popularity.”
“Oh, you don’t need to worry about the guest list.” My father waves away my concerns. “I’ll make sure everyone who needs to be is invited. You just have to focus on making it the best eighteenth birthday party a girl can want. We need to show the other houses Ivy Archaic has arrived.”
“So it’s my party, but I don’t get a say in who’s invited?"
“My girl learns fast.” My father has an air of smugness about him. “This is why I want you to be sure you choose a present you really want. That’s for you. The party is for everyone else. This is our opportunity to remind everyone that House Archaic is on the rise. We have to make the right impression on the right people. I’ll have Isabella coach you in advance to make sure you don’t do anything foolish.”
With that, our conversation appears to be at an end. My father pulls out his phone and starts talking in some language I can’t identify, let alone speak. So, I gazed glumly out the window for the remainder of the journey until we get home and I am able to escape to my room.
All in all, day one wasn’t too bad.
Chapter Seven
Ivy Archaic
My first class the next morning is music with Mr Metcalf, the one bright thing about my life right now. I didn’t want to risk bringing in my precious new Gibson just in case someone like Ally decides to have an ‘accident.’ While I was sure my father would just buy me a replacement, I don’t think I will ever get into the mentality of spending money for the sake of it. Besides, guitars are like children. You look after them your whole life. I don’t want anything bad to happen to my baby.
Despite the tour of the Academy the day before, I get hopelessly lost looking for the music department, so I am fifteen minutes late by the time I find the right classroom. I burst through the door, apologising profusely, only to have half the class turn round and angrily shush me.
Blushing, I slip into a chair at the back of the room, while the boy who is at the front continues to sing, seemingly not noticing the interruption. His voice is amazing, husky and sexy, but with the kind of control that spoke of years of vocal training. It is kind of like a mash up between Shawn Mendes, Harry Styles, and Hozier. It helped that he has the looks to match; long, shaggy brown hair and big brown eyes that are so dark they are almost black. The guy has star quality all right.
I don’t recognise the song he is singing, but it is beautiful; soulful and haunting. It makes my heart ache to hear it and as the final few notes die away, the whole class sits in stunned silence for a moment, held captive by the spell of his music.
“Well done, Declan.” The teacher finally speaks. “I love how you take on board the notes I gave you after your last composition. Your song writing ability is coming along nicely, but I would like to see you push yourself even further. I think the next assignment will do just that. You may go back to your seat.”
Girls are practically swooning as Declan picks up his guitar and comes to sit next to me at the back.
“Hi,” he whispers to me and I turn to see his face super close to mine. His brown eyes almost have streaks of green and blue in them, like a paintbrush has lightly skimmed those colours across his eyes. “Good to see a new face to brighten up the place.”
I am about to reply when Mr Metcalf calls my name.
“And our disruptive newcomer must be Ivy Archaic.”
I feel my face go an even deeper red than before as everyone turns in their seats to stare at me.
“Y-yes. That’s me,” I say, clearing my throat. “Sorry. I got lost.”
“Well, see that it doesn’t happen again.” He tuts disapprovingly. “We have a lot to get through and if you’re late again, I will request you leave the class so as not to disturb the more dedicated students. Be more organised in the future.”
“Yes, sir.” I slide down in my chair, wishing the ground would open up and swallow me whole as some of the other students laugh at my misfortune.
“Now, it is my understanding that you have already done some study for this course. Is that right, Ivy?” he asks.
“Yes,” I reply. “I was doing an online course before I came to the Academy.”
“Hmmm.” It is clear Mr Metcalf is less than impressed by the concept of online tuition. “I think you’ll find my standards are a little more rigorous than some internet teachers. I warn you now, if you cannot keep up, you’ll need to transfer to an easier subject. I don’t tolerate any slacking off in my class. So I think it best that you show me what you’ve got. If you’re not good enough to be here, it’s better we all know now so we don’t waste anyone’s time, wouldn’t you agree?”
“I guess.” I was beginning to regret not choosing art.
“So come on up. We’ve been working on original compositions. I would like to hear something of yours.”
“But I didn’t bring my guitar,” I confess.
“You can borrow mine,” Declan offers, holding it out to me with curious eyes. “Show me what you got, new girl.”
“There you go, Miss Archaic. You have no excuse. Let’s see whether you are good enough to be one of my students.”
Taking Declan’s guitar with a grateful smile, I make my way to the front of the class and sit where he had been sitting. I strum a couple of random chords to get a feel for his instrument while I debate what to sing. Something tells me this is the toughest audience I would ever face and right now all of my songs seem utterly inadequate.
“Come on, Ivy. We haven’t got all day,” barks Mr Metcalf. “There’s the door if you’d prefer to give up now.”
Taking a deep breath, I close my eyes and let my fingers run over the strings in a complicated melody. This is a song which always got a good reaction whenever I performed it–it sounds way more impressive than it actually is. Years of practise means it is very easy to play, but to the untrained ear, it sounds like I was pretty damn good.
The complex accompaniment is offset by a relatively simple tune which showcases the best of my vocal ability. I don’t have the biggest range, but I know how to work with what I had.
Swaying, I lost myself in words which had been inspired by the fear I felt knowing I wouldn’t be in the care system for much longer and would have to take responsibility for my own life. Most people thought I was singing about a boy who’d broken my heart, but it’s about me.
“You say we should fly away
When my heart tells me I should stay
And now I’m on my own, pretending I’m alright.
You say I will be okay.
That I will always find the best way,
And I suppose that you are right.
Now I’m on my own tonight.”
When I finish, I wince as I open my eyes, bracing myself for Mr Metcalf’s reaction.
“Not bad,” he conceded. “Perhaps you have some promise tucked away underneath all that pretension.”
“Pretension?” I try to stay respectful to a teacher who is clearly looking for any excuse to throw me out of his class, but I had just laid my soul bare to a room full of hostile strangers and this is his reaction? “I wrote that song from my heart.”
“And that’s exactly the attitude you need to move past,” Mr Metcalf states. “When we create music, we are expressing our soul, yes, but all too often we allow our emotions to cloud our judgement. We fool ourselves that because something has meaning to us, it therefore has meaning to our listeners. This is not always the case. I’m going to give you the same advice I gave Declan a moment ago. Push yourself outside your comfort zone. You can go a lot deeper than those superficial lyrics and you’re going to need to if you want to excel. You may return to your seat.”
Grateful to be out of the spotlight, I head back to my seat, handing back Declan’s guitar w
ith a whispered thank you.
“Now then,” says Mr Metcalf. “For your next composition assignment, I want you to find a partner. You’re going to work together to create a piece of music. It can be a song or purely instrumental in any style of your choosing, whether that be classical or contemporary. But I want it to be completely collaborative, the pair of you working together to bring out the best in each other. I am familiar enough with all your styles to be able to identify if one of you slacks off, with the exception of Miss Archaic, but I’m sure as Head Girl we can trust her to respect the requirements of the assignment.
“What you are aiming for is to deliver something which is greater than the sum of its parts, the pair of you working to both your strengths to create something neither of you can come up with alone. You will spend the rest of this lesson planning out your ideas and then your homework will be to finish the composition. I leave it to you to decide who you’d like to work with.”
Great. Just what I need–having to work with one of these stuck-up preppy snobs. I am going to be the last one picked, just like in PE class yesterday. Not that throwing a ball between two people really needed much skill, nor was it enjoyable.
“Hey, Declan. Want to team up?” I roll my eyes as a blonde girl turns in her chair and drapes herself over his desk in a way which just happened to thrust her rather ample bosom in his general direction.
“No, thanks. I thought I would work with Ivy this time.”
My eyebrows shoot up when I hear Declan say my name. “Seriously?”
“I never kid about something as serious as music,” Declan tells me. “You need to ignore anything Metcalf says. That song of yours is dope. I think we’ll write something amazing together–if you’re up for it.”
“Sure.”
I smile sweetly at the blonde girl who looks like she has just sucked on a lemon as she turns away to find someone else to team up with.
Declan shuffles his chair along, pulling out a notebook and placing it on the table so I can see his notes. As he moves, I notice the Head Boy badge pinned to his jumper, right underneath ‘House Dauphin’ – the people my father claimed ambushed him and gave him that impressive scar.
“Dauphin?” I ask innocently. “Are you actually part of that family or are you just Head Boy?”
“I’m a Dauphin through and through. The Dauphin heir,” Declan says. “Which means you’ve probably heard terrible things about me.”
“Not you specifically,” I answer honestly.
“Look, there’s a history between our houses and you’ve probably only heard one side of the story,” he says. “But there’s always more going on than meets the eye when it comes to House politics. Who knows? Maybe our generation can be the one to heal the rift between our families.”
“Maybe,” I murmur. At the moment, I’m not going to take anyone’s word at face value, but Declan certainly seemed sincere and meant what he said. Possibly. It’s hard to trust the sexy music dude.
“In fact, that can be the theme for our song,” he suggested. “It would fit the brief of doing something which is better than either of us can achieve on our own.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” I nod, as Declan starts scribbling down some notes.
I lose track of time as we start to bounce ideas off each other. I can’t believe my luck in getting the Dauphin Head Boy as my partner on this project. He had a really interesting approach to lyric writing, freestyling and recording himself so that he had a record of those moments of genius which flowed out. I am more of a sit and agonise over every single word kind of writer, so his way of doing things gave us a foundation to build upon while I work on tweaking and improving things.
“All right, everyone.” Mr Metcalf claps his hands to get our attention. “I hope you enjoyed working with each other.”
“Yes, sir,” everyone choruses, some more enthusiastically than others. Declan and I exchange a grin. We really had had fun together.
“Glad to hear it,” Mr Metcalf says. “Because you’re going to be partnered together for the rest of the term. I expect you to support your partner and work together to improve both your grades. If one of you fails, you both fail. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I guess we’re going to be having some homework dates then,” Declan says.
My stomach clenches with excitement. Suddenly, things are looking up.
Chapter Eight
Archer Knight
Walking into the deadbeat bar, I find the rich assholes I am looking for right away. You can't miss them in this shitty place with broken chairs lining the floor around creaky tables. The bar itself looks clean enough, but no one has painted anything in here in a long time. I eye a talking fish statue on the wall that is playing some shitty music.
This place is shitty and crazy. Nice fucking mix.
The assholes I'm meeting are wearing high-end designer clothes, expensive watches and they actually look clean unlike half the people in this place who stare at them like fucking gods have walked into their bar.
They are close.
We are kings instead.
Declan looks back at me like he can sense my arrival as I walk over and take the stool in the middle of him and Romeo Navarre. We never talk like this, the whole thing is ridiculously awkward but now more than ever we need to meet up.
This conversation has been coming for a long time.
"One beer," I tell the middle-aged bartender with a white long beard and a tattoo on his left cheek. He eyes my thousand-pound designer leather jacket like it's a piece of shit compared to his very worn down one on his shoulders.
"Coming up," he grumbles back, looking disgusted with his new customers.
I might end up liking this place after all.
"Why this dive?" I eventually ask, stretching my arms out in front of me.
"No one will recognise us here," Romeo answers. "Now to business, I want Ivy Archaic. So. Back. The. Fuck. Off."
"Make me, pretty boy," I sneer. "She won't be another notch on your belt."
"We will see," he answers with a cocky grin. I humourlessly laugh before grabbing the collar of his jacket and slamming his face onto the bar. He kicks me hard in the chest, making me stumble and lose my grip, my ass nearly slipping off the seat.
"Calm it down or you all need to fucking leave," the bartender shouts as I straighten up and Romeo climbs up off the bar.
"Why don't we let Ivy choose who she wants?" Declan suggests, looking too pristine as he picks his whiskey tumbler up and downs it in one go. "Now, why don't we figure out where she has been all this time?"
"What do you mean?" Romeo asks, clicking his fingers at the bartender for another drink as he places my beer on the side. I drop a few hundred pounds in cash on the bar for the trouble and pick up my drink, taking a long sip as I look at Romeo. Turns out he is as fucking stupid as his face looks.
Declan laughs. "No fucking way was that hellcat in some posh boarding school all this time."
"Do you think she scratches?" Romeo jests. "Because I could get on board with that."
"I will punch you if you don't shut the fuck up," I warn him and he smirks.
Fucking hate this guy.
Declan clears his throat and steps close to me with a knowing grin. I might not like these fuckers, but we grew up together as kids. Our parents want us to get along, therefore we all went to the same schools and were forced to interact with each other. Eventually we drifted apart, girls and parties being the main distractions. "A little birdy told me you drove her into our little town. Now, are you so sure you don't know anything?"
"I never said I didn't know anything."
"What does Solomon have over your family that is worth helping him with her?" Declan asks me curiously, no judgement in his voice. I narrow my eyes though. The Dauphins do have ears everywhere, it seems.
"I'm going to warn you two just this once, and next time it won't be pretty. Stay away from Ivy," I snap, slamming my glass on the bar
and walking away before I start a house war by trying to kill these two.
"If you think you can control a girl like Ivy Archaic, you're mad," Romeo calls after me. "She is too wild for you!"
I shake my head, gritting my teeth as I go outside and breathe in the cold crisp air. I don't waste much time getting on my bike and driving the fuck out of here.
Ivy Archaic was meant to be mine, and Romeo is right.
She is wild.
But fucking hell, I'm going to enjoy taming her.
Chapter Nine
Ivy Archaic
“Hey, Ivy.” Milly practically skips over to me when she sees me walk into the common room. I can’t help but admire the way she now wears her long hair down and a single braid hangs on the one side. “How are your classes this morning?”
“It’s official. I hate politics.” I dump my bag on one of the sofas and slump down next to it. “My father will never let me drop it, though. We spent an entire two hours debating whether the result of the Brexit referendum is valid or whether there needed to be a larger majority to trigger the process. It is soooo boring. Like, who cares? It’s not like I’m going to be allowed to leave my father’s house ever, let alone live abroad.”
“You shouldn’t speak about your father like that. He’s only doing his best.” Milly’s response surprised me, but then she doesn’t know the truth about my complicated family history. I can hardly tell her I didn’t know my dad from Adam until he hired her asshole brother to kidnap my stupid ass and drag me here.
“Yeah, well, if his best means I have to suffer through more classes like this morning I can do without it, thanks.”
“Look.” Milly dropped down on the sofa next to me. “I know we’ve only known each other a couple days and I’m not exactly top of the class when it comes to the Academy, but if there’s one thing I do know about, it’s what it’s like being a daughter of one of the most powerful men in King Town. Your father sent you away to that boarding school to keep you safe and only brought you back to make sure you can build the connections you need for when you take over his business. As his only heir, as well as being a girl, he’s got to take extra special care of you.”
