Royals of Villain Academy 5: Corrupt Alchemy

by Eva Chase

  Her smile hadn’t faltered, but I still didn’t like the idea of welcoming her into the closest thing to a private space I had on campus. While she was only Lillian’s assistant… that still meant she was an assistant to a woman who’d conspired against me and murdered an innocent student. Lillian wouldn’t have picked her if she hadn’t thought their morals aligned well enough—and that Maggie was sharp enough to take care of whatever Lillian needed taken care of.

  “Sure,” I said. The common room was hardly private, so I stepped right out and tilted my head toward the main door. “We could take a walk?” I doubted anyone much would be hanging around on the green or the fields in this gloomy weather.

  Maggie’s expression tightened for a second, but she turned without a protest. “That works.”

  She studied me as we headed down the stairs. “You seem to have recovered quickly.”

  An ache lingered in my joints, and I wouldn’t have wanted to sprint anywhere anytime soon, but I could walk steadily enough, if that was what she meant. “The worst of the effect doesn’t take too long to wear off, thankfully,” I said. Had she expected me to still be wobbling on my feet hours later?

  She hummed to herself and didn’t say anything else. When we stepped out onto the green, the damp wind licked through her dark hair and tossed my own into my face. I shoved the strands behind my ears as well as I could, wishing I’d brought an elastic.

  As I’d expected, the green was empty except for a few students hustling between the Tower and Killbrook Hall. Maggie veered past Ashgrave Hall toward the wider field beyond. I kept pace with her, waiting for her to get started on whatever she’d come here to talk about.

  “Before the spell was cut off,” she said, just loud enough for me to hear, “you said you hadn’t sensed anything definite on the other end. Now that your thoughts have had more time to settle, have you remembered anything more than that?”

  I couldn’t be completely sure that the faint impression I’d gotten had been my mother. I definitely hadn’t sensed any other presence. “No,” I said. “Sorry.”

  “What about your awareness of the magic? Do you remember anything changing about it beforehand—in a way that didn’t happen during the first ceremony?”

  “No,” I said again. The only thing that had changed was how willing I’d been to continue acting as a conduit. Why had Maggie come all the way out to campus to rehash the same things Lillian had asked me in the moment? If the blacksuits had just wanted to double-check, wouldn’t she have simply called me?

  The young woman looked at me then, with an intentness I hadn’t seen from her before. “You must be pretty disappointed that our chance at locating your mother was foiled.”

  I wasn’t going to get into my tangled emotions on that subject. “Lillian said we’d be able to try again soon,” I said. “I’m trying not to dwell on it. I didn’t even know she might still be alive until a few days ago.”

  Her tone turned casual. “But it’d be such a good thing, wouldn’t it, if we could bring her back? You wouldn’t have to be pushed right into the barony—you’d have someone in the family to guide you.”

  That wasn’t what I’d have thought the main benefit would be, especially considering my mother had no idea what had been going on in the barony over the last nearly two decades. Having someone who might stand up for me to the other barons was more my priority—if I could count on Baron Bloodstone for that.

  I eyed Maggie but couldn’t read any definite intent, friendly or malicious. “Yeah,” I said, because I might as well be agreeable about it. “Mostly I just don’t want her stuck in some prison dealing with whatever else they’ve been doing to her for any longer.”

  “Well, who knows how they’ve been treating her. You seem to have come out all right.”

  I shot her a sharper glance then, my spine prickling, but she kept up the same soft smile. “I hadn’t done anything they could blame me for yet,” I said. “They could lie to me about who I was so I wouldn’t know there was any reason to fight about it. It can’t have been anywhere near as easy for her.”

  I couldn’t tell whether the answer satisfied Maggie. She nodded and pulled out her phone to check something. “At this point, we expect our best chance for making another try will be Tuesday morning. Lillian or I will be in touch to confirm beforehand.”

  That was all she’d come for, apparently. I watched her head back toward the parking lot, uneasiness still jittering through my nerves. None of the blacksuits had suggested the ceremony’s failure was my fault. Did Maggie suspect after watching from the sidelines?

  How deep shit would I be in if I threw off the next one and someone realized it for sure?

  I didn’t really want to keep throwing things off, did I? I’d just panicked in the moment. And now maybe the blacksuits would have a little more time to adjust to the knowledge and approach the problem logically rather than tackling it with vengeance at the forefront of their minds.

  The wind lifted again, tickling goose bumps up my arms, but I felt too restless to go back to my dorm just yet. I ambled on across the field to the rippling lake.

  The waves hissed against the dock’s supports as I walked onto it, the weathered boards creaking softly under my feet. I sat down at the end where all I could see was water and trees, as if the campus behind me and the world it represented didn’t even exist.

  Today the world of water and trees was a little cold for my tastes, though. I sat there for a few minutes and then got up to head back to the buildings. When I turned, I froze at the sight of Malcolm just reaching the foot of the dock.

  He stopped too, looking abruptly hesitant for just an instant before his usual cool confidence smoothed over his expression. In the dim daylight, his hair looked more bronze than gold. He ran his hand over it as he waited for me to approach.

  “I saw you on your way down here,” he said when I reached him. “You missed the meeting—is everything okay?”

  I spread my arms as if to present myself. “I made it back.”

  Standing in front of him, I didn’t totally know how to act. The memory of the last time I’d seen him and the welcome contrast of him being able to stand at all sent a pang through me, but at the same time seeing him like this made it a lot easier to flash back to the many moments since I’d come to Blood U when he’d treated me like an enemy. That history hadn’t disappeared no matter how many other sides to him I was aware of now. Still, I decided to add, “I’m glad you did too.”

  “I told you I’d be fine.” His tone was nonchalant, but he smiled with a warmth that tugged up other kinds of memories—the crash of his lips, the press of his body against mine.

  He glanced around. “There are a couple things I wanted to tell you—but maybe we should get out of the weather? We could…” He trailed off as his gaze settled on the boathouse.

  My first instinct was to balk, but I pushed past it. If I was going to be friends or anything more with Malcolm, being in that space with him alone again would be the best possible test of how ready I was.

  “That works,” I said. “Just to talk.”

  His lips twitched at my emphasis. “You don’t have to worry about that.”

  It was a very different atmosphere anyway, walking into the boathouse out of the gloom rather than a hot clear day, fully dressed rather than in a bikini—and without days of pent-up sexual desire roiling around inside me. With the walls sheltering us from the wind, it was warmer if not drier, and Malcolm’s flick of the light switch cast the space with an amber glow.

  I picked an overturned bucket to sit on, far from where we’d had our summer encounter. Malcolm grabbed a small stepladder off the wall and unfolded it to use as a stool. He set it a few feet away from me, leaving plenty of distance.

  “I should have told you when you came to see me, but I wasn’t really concentrating all that well right then.” He made a face. “After you were arrested, I started poking around in my dad’s business, trying to see what I could find out about how
he might be involved. He’s pretty careful, so I didn’t get very far, but I did come across some evidence that he’d been following your schedule at school for one reason or another.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me.” But it wasn’t all that incriminating either. I paused and then said, because I’d meant to acknowledge this during the scion meeting anyway, “I know he and the other older barons are behind the various attempts to hurt me, Malcolm. Not in any way I can prove, but my mentor died so he could warn me about them. If you find anything that I could bring to the blacksuits… or whoever the right authorities would be… I can use that, but I don’t need any more convincing.”

  He paused for a moment as that information sank in, but he didn’t look particularly surprised by it. “All right,” he said. “Just so you know, I don’t need more convincing either. And I’ll keep watching for whatever I can make out of his plans. That was the other thing—he was talking to one of the blacksuits after your trial, a woman named Ravenguard—something about a new development she was pursuing but from the sounds of things hadn’t totally filled him in on yet.”

  Ah. I could guess what that had been about. I bit my lip, wavering about whether I should tell him. But the other guys already knew, and how could we really work together as a pentacle of scions if we were still keeping one member partly in the dark? Malcolm was proving his loyalty to us—and to me—over his father all over again just by telling me this.

  “She was probably talking about the same thing that got me called away earlier today,” I said. “That’s Lillian Ravenguard—she was apparently one of my mother’s closest friends when they were younger. And… she’s found evidence that my mother is still alive, in joymancer custody. They faked the murder and took her when they took me. I’ve been helping them with their spells as well as I can while they try to narrow down her location.”

  Malcolm’s eyes widened. “Are you fucking kidding me? All this time, the joymancers made everyone think—they’ve kept her locked up somewhere— For fuck’s sake. The bastards.”

  “Yeah,” I said, but my hand instinctively rose to my dragon charm. My one piece of solid evidence that some joymancers had been willing to treat a fearmancer like a human being.

  Malcolm’s gaze snagged on my necklace. His eyes darkened.

  “How can you still wear that?” he demanded. “After everything they did to you, after what they’ve done to your mother, after everything I told you about how they harass us—you still want to wear some joymancer memento as if you’re more loyal to them than us?”

  My fingers closed tighter around the charm, careful not to activate the illusion-detecting spell unnecessarily. My shoulders stiffened, but I managed to keep my voice steady if tight. “This isn’t a memento of the joymancers. I’ve got no loyalty to them. It’s a memento of my parents, the only ones I got to know—the ones who protected me from how at least some of the other joymancers wanted to treat me. If that isn’t love, then I don’t know what is. When I got here, that bracelet was the only thing I had left that they gave me. And now this charm is the only piece of that I still have. So yes, unless you manage to force me into breaking this too, I’m fucking well going to keep wearing it.”

  Despite my best efforts, my voice broke over those last words. My eyes had gone hot. I gritted my teeth against the threatening tears.

  Malcolm went rigid on his seat. His mouth twisted, and all at once he was shifting forward, his knees hitting the floorboards, his head bowing so the fringe of his hair brushed my own knees.

  “That’s two times in the last week now I’ve seen you close to crying,” he said roughly. “At least the first time it was for me instead of because of me. Maybe I’ll just keep bowing down and see if that stops me from getting my head up my ass. I didn’t know—and I didn’t know because I never bothered to ask—and that’s been my problem the whole time, huh? So, here you go, I’m on my knees, like I said I should be.”

  The grief for my parents and the horror of remembering the time he’d magically persuaded me into smashing the charm bracelet formed a lump in my constricting throat. “I didn’t ask you to,” I said.

  He looked up at me, still on the floor before me, his gaze so fathomless I couldn’t tear my eyes away. “Maybe you should. Maybe you should start asking for a whole lot more than you have.”

  I swallowed hard. “It’s done now. It happened, and it was awful… but it’s over. I’m not going to hold it over your head forever. You brought it up.”

  His chuckle came out raw. “Fair. I just— Fuck, Rory, everything in me is screaming to destroy the asshole who put you through the agony I could see on your face… but the asshole is me.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I think you’ve been doing a pretty good job of destroying that asshole since you got started on it, even if it’s been kind of a slow process.”

  “Rory…” His hand slid up my leg, and mine reached down to grasp his fingers. At my tug, he eased up over me, leaning close. The heat of his body flooded me even though there were still inches between us. And there was that familiar clang of desire, more than I was totally sure I wanted to let out.

  He brushed his fingers over my cheek. “Tell me I can kiss you.”

  It was a question more than a command. A direct counterpoint to the way he’d barged in and simply claimed my mouth that time before. My throat unlocked.

  “Kiss me,” I said quietly.

  He crossed that last gap to bring his lips to mine. A thrill shot through me even though this was nothing like the kisses we’d exchanged here before. Or maybe because of that. He was pouring himself into the moment in a way he hadn’t been able to in his broken state when I’d come to his bedroom, but with a careful tenderness that told me he’d have jerked back the second he caught any sign of anxiety from me.

  Earning back the trust he’d shattered, one step at a time.

  I traced the line of his jaw as I kissed him back, and a pleased sound emanated from his chest, but he pulled away a few seconds later. “I’m not going to ask for more just yet,” he said. “Let’s leave this moment on a high note.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. But as I got up to follow him out of the boathouse, my chest twanged with the realization that my feelings for the Nightwood scion had somehow gotten even more tangled than they’d been before.

  Chapter Twelve

  Rory

  The expected message from Lillian came around eight o’clock Monday night, just as Declan and I were leaving the restaurant where he’d taken me to dinner. I peered at my phone in the yellow glow of the streetlamps.

  Second attempt tomorrow morning. Be ready for pick-up at 10am.

  My heart sank and skipped a beat at the same time. I was going to have to face the exact same dilemma I had yesterday—but it might end with concrete information about where my birth mother was now.

  “Everything okay?” Declan asked, watching me.

  “We’re doing another ceremony to try to locate my mother tomorrow,” I said, tucking the phone back into my purse. Earlier today, I’d filled him and the other scions in on the progress Lillian had made so far.

  He studied my expression. “And you’re still uneasy about that.”

  I made a vague gesture as we walked down the street to where he’d parked his car. The sweetness of the chocolate cake I’d had for dessert was starting to turn bitter in my mouth. “I just have no idea what’s going to happen once we find her… but I’m pretty sure it’s going to be brutal. And I’m the deciding factor in whether they get that information.”

  “Do you want to walk together and talk it through?” Declan asked.

  “That’s not exactly the most romantic way to spend a date.”

  The corner of his mouth quirked upward. “Well, maybe after you’ve gotten it off your chest, you’ll find it easier to focus on the romantic side again.”

  He might have had a point there. My gaze slid over the other figures ambling along the street in couples and small clusters, and my s
kin tightened. We’d driven out to a town about an hour away from campus so we could have this date—our first real date—with much less chance of our classmates running into us. But the thought of discussing a subject this fraught with so many people around, even Naries, made me itchy.

  “Not here,” I said. “If we could get out of town…”

  “There’s a place with some hiking trails between here and campus. I doubt anyone will be making much use of them at this time of night.”

  “That sounds perfect.” Off in the middle of nowhere, with no need to worry about anyone overhearing or anyone even noticing us.

  The spot was only a ten-minute drive outside the town. Declan pulled off onto a gravel drive that led to a small, empty parking lot dotted with weeds. Obviously these paths didn’t get a whole lot of use even during the day.

  The leaves on the scattered trees rustled as we got out. The air was still damp, only a thin sheen of moonlight penetrating the clouds that hadn’t let up since yesterday. Declan retrieved a flashlight from his glove compartment that he turned into a little lantern with a couple of clicks. He nodded to the dirt path that veered away from the parking lot between the trees.

  We walked for the first few minutes without speaking, no sound except the leaves and the rasp of our shoes over the ground. Now and then a creature scurried off into the brush with a faint tingle of fear that I absorbed.

  It was strange thinking that I used to get most of my magical fuel from walks like this, dribs and drabs wafting from the local wildlife. Now enough power churned behind my sternum that I never worried I’d deplete it, mainly thanks to the fears my mere presence had started to spark in my classmates.

  If they were that scared of me simply based on my family name, how afraid should I be of my mother, knowing what most of the other barons were like?

  When my nerves had totally settled with the sense of being alone and away from observation, I dragged in a breath. “The blacksuits are going to go break my mother out. There’s no way they won’t. There’s really no other option. But I don’t see how that can happen without tons of people getting hurt along the way. I can’t imagine them even trying to negotiate first.” Not that I had much faith the joymancers would have gone along with a negotiation anyway.