Of Fate and Fortune: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance (Arcane Arts Academy Book 4)

by Elena Lawson

  I blushed some more in the dark.

  How embarrassing.

  I rummaged in the closet until I found a light sweater and a tank top as well as pair of thin white cotton pants that the lady at the store said were perfect for warm weather. They looked comfortable enough—though I knew with my track record that the color white and I didn’t get along. They’d be single use for sure.

  Padding out the door, I heard the hushed voices of the guys downstairs in the kitchen. I didn’t doubt Cal, Adrian, and Draven would be able to hear me from downstairs if they were listening, so I rushed into the bathroom and locked the door behind me.

  I needed just a few minutes to myself. A few girl minutes to wash up, shave my hairy legs, and brush my hair and teeth. And then I could go down and eat and we could figure out—

  That was when it hit me.

  Manifesto.

  I’d forgotten.

  No, not forgotten. I’d fallen asleep. Was it Elias who’d figured it out, or had my unconscious mind? What did it mean? What had they been talking about? Cutting the head off a snake?

  Were they…were they talking about assassinating the Magistrate? Or was I wrong about him, and it was someone else entirely who was to blame for what had been going on? And what had they said about them being close to reconstructing the spell? Oh fuck—could they have been talking about the curses of the sun and moon?

  I halted, glancing up to find my reflection in the mirror. Horror-stricken, with dark circles beneath my eyes and a pale complexion, I realized I hardly seen sunlight since we arrived here. My ghoulish appearance was only intensified by the mane of red curls and snags fanning out around my face like mass of crimson snakes. Hell, it looked like it had begun to dread in a spot or two. I flinched at the girl staring back at me.

  We had a lot of work to do, but first I needed a shower.

  World ending issues or not—there was no way I was going downstairs looking like this.

  19

  The shower did wonders to loosen my taut muscles and worked to dull the thudding in my head. By the time I was ready to go downstairs I hadn’t a clue what time it was—thanks to thoroughly covered windows, but I had to assume it was late and I’d been in the bathroom for at least an hour.

  The tangles in my hair took more than a little work to get out and by the time I was finished, my arms were actually sore from brushing it for so long. The finished product wasn’t half bad, though, and the soft, thin taupe sweater fit me like a glove even though I hadn’t tried it on at the shop before I bought it.

  Looked nice with the white pants, too.

  I assumed not being able to wear white after Labor Day wasn’t a thing in Spain, not that I cared much one way or another.

  “Morning sleepy head,” Adrian said with a cheeky grin as I walked into the kitchen—the room that’d somehow become our informal meeting place. Elias was in a simple white tee and jeans that was such a contrast to the professional attire I usually saw him in at school that I did a double take, having to make certain it was actually him sitting there at the table, head bent over the daily Chronicle. He looked up when I entered and the ghost of a smile pulled his lips up at the edges as he took me in.

  Draven was sipping a mug of coffee again and looking a bit worse for wear. He seemed paler than usual—his pallor almost gray. I knew he wasn’t feeding properly—the blood of whatever small animals he’d found around here in the woods wouldn’t be enough to sustain him, and he couldn’t have gotten away with traveling through an airport with a suitcase full of blood bags. I should have thought this through more.

  But then…there was that darker part of me that knew on some level I’d anticipated it—welcomed it—even. I’d feed him. Later, when there wasn’t such a rapt audience watching us.

  Cal was stuffing his face as usual, eating an enormous stick of meat I was sure was meant for slicing to eat with cheese in huge chomping bites. He rose the stick of meat to me in greeting before taking another bite.

  “What time is it?” I asked no one in particular.

  “About eight,” Elias replied. “You slept the whole day.”

  My brows rose. “You should have woken me up—we have work to—”

  “You needed to sleep,” Cal cut me off, leaving no room for argument. “Now you have.”

  Stubborn mule.

  Draven sauntered over to where I stood and handed me a mug of steaming coffee, made the way I liked it. I thanked him a small smile. I could get used to him doing that. I bit my bottom lip at the thought and put the mug to my lips, taking a long sip that almost burned my tongue—but I didn’t care. The drink did wonders to further dull the ache in my skull.

  “You do something different?” Draven asked, his voice low so the others wouldn’t hear.

  Scrunching my face, I cocked my head as he appraised me, unsure what he meant. “No, why?”

  He nodded as though he’d solved a puzzle. “Your hair,” he said after a minute. “It looks nice like that—without the headband pushing it back.”

  Without realizing it, my hand flew up. He was right. I wasn’t wearing one. And when I thought about it, I realized I wasn’t even sure where I put the damned thing. I felt naked without it suddenly—exposed. But I shrugged it off and thanked him anyway, realizing a little belatedly that Draven had just paid me a compliment that had nothing to with my power or my skill at throwing his knives—not a skill I possessed I found out a little while ago. No, he’d complimented me.

  He might as well have told me he thought I looked…pretty. My face flushed and I rushed to hide it with another hasty sip of coffee and moved away from him and the feelings trying to bore their way into my chest. “So,” I said, perhaps a little too vigorously. “Manifesto…”

  “That’s what we think,” Elias nodded. “From what you said—it fits.”

  He was right, it did fit. And I felt a fool for not realizing it myself sooner. I’d been too exhausted and wired to think straight.

  “Why masks?” Cal interjected. “You said they were all wearing cloaks and silver masks and that the masks changed their voices? Why do that if they’re all working toward the same goal?”

  A goal I had to assume was in line with my father’s. To undo what Cyprian did and free the Vocari and Enduran races from the curses tying them to the whims of the sun and moon. To undo what Alchemist ancestors did.

  And maybe to work towards the other goals my father had—like living in harmony with the mortals—telling them the truth of our existence so we might make a true home on these foreign lands.

  Maybe. But I still didn’t totally agree with that idea.

  If there was anything to be learned from sci-fi and urban fantasy movies, it was that humanity and the supernatural did not mix. They almost always ended with one race trying to annihilate the other—characters like Bella Swan being the exception to the rule, of course.

  The three of us were quiet as we considered Cal’s question. It was a valid one, but I’d admit, not one I’d really thought about. It seemed fairly obvious, actually. “Anonymity,” I ventured, moving to lean against the center island facing them all, with only Draven still at my back.

  “The masks are the only way to enter the chamber—a witch couldn’t even portal there because of all the bindstone in the walls. And the masks and cloaks hide their identities—even from each other. It’s brilliant, actually. If any of them were ever captured by the Arcane Authorities—”

  “They wouldn’t be able to give names,” Draven interrupted, and I turned to find him wearing an expression that spoke of begrudging admiration of the idea. Leave it to him to find something to be commended in the idea of keeping secrets from someone torturing you.

  Elias nodded his agreement, slipping a hand over his hair in a way that makes my own hands itch to touch it. It looked so soft and—I cleared my throat. Now is not the time, Harper. “Not even under a truth spell,” he added. “They can’t tell someone something they don’t know.”

  “Crafty fu
ckers,” Adrian mused under his breath and I let out a small chuckle at the comment.

  That they were…

  “I need to go back,” I said after a beat of silence. “I have to figure out what exactly they’re planning—what they know. They said that they were close to reconstructing the spell—we have to assume they meant Cyprian’s curse…” I trailed off, a weight settling in my gut. “And if they are able to do that—”

  “They could put an end to all vampire kind,” Draven breathed, putting the pieces together in his mind.

  Adrian punched a fist down against the table. “They aren’t killing our kind,” he growled, his eyes blazing yellow. “We’re few enough as it is.”

  “No,” I agreed with them. “They aren’t. We won’t let them,” I told them. “I won’t let them.”

  Feeling confident, I decided to tell them what I’d suspected since the very first time I saw Atticus Sterling with the Magistrate in the academy. “It’s the Magistrate,” I hissed. “I know it in my bones. I can’t explain it, but—”

  “I think you’re right,” Elias stopped me from floundering to form an explanation I didn’t have. “I ran into Donovan leaving the council chamber once at the Department. And I saw him writing on a spelled parchment once.”

  Only council members had access to that magic…

  I’d seen one once in the chamber of the council member who took pity on me and sent me to Arcane Arts Academy instead of stripping my powers or sending me to Kalzir, and another time on the headmaster’s desk.

  Donovan wouldn’t have access to one unless he was on the council, himself…or unless he was consorting with someone higher up—like the Magistrate.

  “Think about it,” Elias urged the others, and I turned to find them wearing equally skeptical expressions. “Atticus killed Harper’s father on orders from someplace higher up…and we have to assume the reason why he was killed had to do with what he’d learned—and what he planned to do with it.”

  It was all coming together in my mind now. “Maybe the testing they were doing,” I said as delicately as I could, watching Cal, Adrian, and Draven wince in turn, grimacing at my reference to what was done to their people. “Well, maybe it was for research—maybe they were trying to find a way to force the curse to finish its course.”

  Not for the first time, my stomach turned at the knowledge that both Adrian and Cal had been injected with whatever potion they thought would induce the completion of the original curses—if that was in fact what they were doing…

  At least they hadn’t succeeded if it was.

  “And if that wasn’t what they were doing, maybe they were trying to take matters into their own hands,” Draven supplied. “To find a way to poison us in such a way that would eradicate our species for good,” he spat.

  I could hardly believe what we were saying. It all seemed so horrifying. Disgusting.

  But it was fact. There were people of varying opinions among the alchemist race. There were those who wanted peace among the immortal races—those who felt guilt about what our ancestors had done to oppress—and try to eradicate—them. And there were others—like the Magistrate, and I suspected much of the council, who viewed the other races as monsters.

  Vermin to be exterminated.

  Now more so even than before the curse was laid upon them. Because now they had become the beasts Cyprian and much of our ancestors had viewed them as. Lesser beings. Good only for working the lands and obeying orders.

  If we were right—and I knew in my bones that we were—then those antiquated ideals had somehow survived the last thousand or so years and were still prominent enough today for those in a place of power in our immortal society to want to finish what Cyprian started.

  “Now, that makes sense,” Cal said dejectedly, responding to Draven’s comment.

  I hated that I shared a heritage with such loathsome minds. That I shared a race with those who would see other races destroyed.

  I felt sick just to think of it.

  “When the Vocari and Endurans rose up against what was left of the Alchemists on Emeris after the war on Meloran—the rest of our kind was forced to flee or risk being killed or enslaved, ourselves,” Elias said in a low voice, his knowledge of history far superior to any of ours. I knew little of the war on Meloran—the Fae continent—only that a large portent of our kind went to fight in it—given a promise of staking a claim on new lands. None returned to Emeris—leaving the remainder of our people without enough alchemist troops to protect them when the uprising came.

  It was all so confusing to try to comprehend, and I wasn’t even sure if what I knew was correct—my head so filled with information from the last several months at the academy that I wasn’t sure where or how all of it fit together anymore. Just a jumble of information, potion ingredients, and bits of sigils and maps.

  “That sort of solidified our race’s hatred for yours,” Elias said with his gaze downcast. “But it’s truly only a small group who still blames your kind for the things we did to ourselves…”

  “Ha!” Adrian hissed. “Did you miss the headlines on that thing?” He added, nodding to the open Arcane Chronicle still sitting on the table in front of Elias.

  I shoved off the counter and went over to have a look for myself.

  Parents outraged after deaths at Academy.

  Community urging Council to take Action!

  Skimming the contents, I felt perplexed at what I read. “But this is blaming the other races for what happened,” I said, incredulous. “Don’t they know it was Donovan who killed them?”

  “They haven’t released that information yet.”

  But…the Arcane Authorities had told Granger they were launching a full-scale investigation into him, hadn’t they?

  “That’s bullshit!” I shouted, unable to contain the sudden burst of fury heating the blood in my veins. My hand curled into talons at my sides. “They can’t do that.”

  Draven raised his brows, a sarcastic look on his face. “I think they just did.”

  Fucking assholes.

  I knew eventually they would be forced to tell the truth—but in the meantime they were getting what they wanted, I realized…

  They were planting the seeds of distrust—of hatred—towards the other races that would need to be able to justify what they did if they succeeded in committing mass genocide.

  I gasped. “Do you think that’s why Donovan put puncture wounds that looked like bite marks in their bodies?”

  Elias’ lips parted.

  “Are you saying Donovan killed them just to stir shit up—to rally supporters to the Magistrate’s cause?” Cal asked, his brow wrinkling in confusion.

  I shook my head—then nodded. Unsure what exactly I was trying to say. “Yes—well, no. I mean I think he used the puncture marks for that reason, but I also think he needed their blood…”

  “The blood of the pure…” Draven caught on. “That’s what it says on the parchment.”

  Dawning broke over Elias’ face. “And it would make sense for fucking supremacist assholes like Donovan and the Magistrate to believe what was meant by that was the blood of alchemists! Our blood.”

  Something in my chest cinched and my breath caught. “Oh my god, Elias,” I breathed. “What if they were right?”

  “That’s ridiculous—”

  “No, think about it,” I urged him, manic now, my hands fluttering. “The man in the chamber said they were close to reconstructing the spell used to create the curse—”

  “We think that’s what he was talking about—” Adrian interrupted and I hushed him sharply.

  “What if they needed alchemist blood to complete the rite? The blood of the pure…” I racked my brain, trying to make them understand the connection I saw. “Cyprian was the one who created the curse. He would have considered alchemists to be the only ones pure of blood, too! He spilled his own blood to create the whole damned thing! I saw it,” I said, staring hardly at Elias. “You saw it, too,” I adde
d, remembering he was there for the origin spell, as well.

  His eyes darkened.

  “If they have the blood, maybe all they’re missing now is what we have.”

  All eyes went to piece of parchment on the center island. The one that held the secrets of the curse’s construction, and perhaps, it’s undoing, too.

  Maybe all they were missing was the recipe. Donovan had it—which means others with the same goal had likely seen it…

  How long did we have until they figured it out? Until they put all the pieces back together and finished Cyprian’s dark work once and for all?

  20

  “It’s not up to you!” I all but shouted at them. We were back in the library and it was well past the middle of the night. “I have to go back there—this is the best chance we have to figure all of this out. They know way more than we do. This is how I’m going to keep us all safe,” I hissed, hefting the mask up as though it were a weapon to be wielded.

  Elias shook his head and I watched as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Harper, please. If those people figure out who you are—”

  “They will have no way to find me,” I finished for him. “This entire place is protected—as long as I remain on the grounds of La Casa Rosa, I can’t be tracked.”

  His lips sealed into a thin line.

  I didn’t want to fight—truly, I didn’t. But they had to understand that dangerous or not, this was our best chance to find the answers we’d been looking for. Manifesto wanted the same things we did, didn’t they?

  “Maybe I could even give them the parchment,” I added, seeing the sense in it as I had the thought. “They said they wanted to undo what was done before—what if they are working to undo the curse just like my father was? Just like we want to?”

  Draven inclined his head, considering, but then something in his icy gaze hardened. “But they were talking about an assassination. Killing someone to produce the end they want—and we don’t even know for certain that they’re trying to undo the curse Cyprian laid—”