by Kendal Davis
Headmaster Landon stood before the long tables of fae students. “It is a pleasure to be back with you,” he boomed out, nodding at select faces and gesturing like the entertainer he was. “You may have heard that I was on a research sabbatical last year. It proved to be most rewarding.”
From my seat with the other professors, I saw Ciara’s shoulders square with anger. She tried to catch my eye, but I looked away. The hurt in her face squeezed my heart, but it lasted only for a moment. She concealed the feeling as she was well trained to do. I still knew it was there, though.
Headmaster Landon was walking amongst us. “This year is a momentous one, as it will be the last one for the class that came to us from working the dust storms in the mortal world. They have sullied our honor at Fae Academy long enough.” The table of third-years looked surprised at the venom in his voice.
I could hear murmurs around me as the faculty members digested what he’d said. Madame Gaskin, the head of the air teachers, murmured disagreement under her breath. “They are fine students, no matter where they’ve been. Are we so archaic as to mind their contact with mortals?”
With a sneer, Landon turned to her, having picked up her comment with unusually keen hearing for somebody who had only recently returned to consciousness. “Madame Gaskin, asks whether we are old fashioned.” He turned to the students, ostentatiously playing to them. “Of course we are! Here at Fae Academy, we pride ourselves in upholding tradition. That is why it has always bothered me that Queen Hellebore selected an entire class from the mortal realm.”
I stood to address him, knowing that I shouldn’t, yet unable to stop myself. “The Queen made that choice, not these students. She let it be known that she would choose only from the outreach posts in the human world. Why penalize these students for the hard work it took to get here?”
He shook his head, still playing to the crowd. “The entire class would have been tainted by the presence of the mortal girl, of course. But how much worse it has been for us that they all carry the stink of that place?”
I saw to my dismay that there were some fae students who were nodding their heads in agreement. What a time for him to employ this sort of argument. Had I made an error in letting him leave the cellars? Ciara was no longer trying to catch my gaze. Now she stared resolutely away, her lips set in a line.
When I realized that there were students sending glances of suspicion at Ciara and her friends, I rose to my feet. I had to speak up, if we hoped to keep any peace in the castle this year. It was not that I worried about Ciara getting hurt. Rather, I wanted to avoid a scenario in which she bundled more fae into stasis, or placed the entire castle within a tangled forest of prickly growth. She could not kill them, but she would not suffer to listen to them if they crossed her.
I liked that about her. She was furious with me right now, but I looked forward to taking my beautiful, pink-haired lover into my arms and explaining my actions to her.
I needed to speak to her, alone.
But first, I looked right at Headmaster Landon and contradicted him. “The composition of the class was by the Queen’s decree. It is not yours to question. Do you intend to tell the students that you were the Queen’s lover for centuries?” I hadn’t known I was going to drop that bombshell until I did it.
I saw a flicker of surprise in Ciara’s face. Would my words convince her that I was not allied with Landon?
The Great Hall came alive with chatter. Nobody wanted to be caught talking over the Headmaster, but the news was too significant to ignore.
Landon scowled at me. He raised a hand to quell the noise. “It is true. The Queen and I are old friends. However, she is not well these days. She is surely too ill for us to ask her why she allowed these fae into the Academy, when they are tainted in every way by having assisted mortals.”
The man was playing right into my hands. He reiterated his ideas, his voice becoming louder with each word he spoke against the third-years who filled the benches around one of the long, polished tables. A few of them exchanged confused glances, but most were still and controlled. He was making no friends in their ranks.
Just as Landon was at his most voluble, an unnatural chill set in throughout the Hall. I tried not to hold my breath. The moment that I’d freed him for was coming. I’d risked Ciara’s wrath, but for good reason.
I heard the music that traditionally announced the arrival of the Queen of the fae. It was impossible to identify where it came from, but it filled every corner of the room, of the castle. Landon lifted his head like a hound dog, then turned reflexively to the chair he’d left unoccupied.
It was no longer empty.
Queen Hellebore now sat in the elevated chair that allowed the Headmaster to survey the room with ease. To my surprise, she did not use the glamor that had concealed her the last time she’d been in this room. I had not been here myself, but that visit was the stuff of legend already. Ciara herself had told me how the Queen had allowed only the Eternal Assassins to see her true face. Without her magic, she was ancient and dwindling.
Or that had been the case. Once.
Now, the Queen looked as hale and hearty as any of the young and strapping students who sat before her. How was it that she had transformed from a winkled, failing crone, into this luminous beauty?
She smiled as she watched Landon wondering the same thing.
“Headmaster Landon,” she crooned, the Great Hall now so quiet that we could have heard the movement of a butterfly’s wings. “Have you missed me, my lover?”
He flinched at her use of the term. As I looked more closely at him, though, I saw that his unease was not because she had outed him as her bonded paramour, but that she was doing so from the comfort of her glorious youth.
“This is not the time or the place, my Queen,” he said stiffly. “You seem to have encountered some good fortune recently. My congratulations to you.”
She lifted her perfect, unlined face a little higher. “That’s right. I am stronger now than when I was last here. But you are not.” Her eyes flashed as she taunted him.
“That is as it may be,” he answered. “I was just telling the new students about your penchant for the mortal world.” His sharp teeth shone in the candlelight as he jabbed at her in return.
“Oh, Landon,” she sighed, “you know nothing.” She rose from her ornate chair, suddenly bored with the game. “I have no secrets now. I am too powerful to need them.” The Queen walked with a jaunty gait, as she surveyed the students of Fae Academy. “I see you are surprised that I am young again,” she said cheerfully in the direction of Ciara’s table. “Just wait until you see what’s next.”
Landon goggled at her. “This is my school, Hellebore. I’ll thank you to leave before I tell them all what you really are.”
Worry prickled along my back. These two old lovers were beyond rational behavior now. Did Landon really have the gall to follow through on this threat? The world of the fae was based upon the notion that the Queen was one of us.
She was not afraid. Whatever had given her new strength was powerful indeed.
Queen Hellebore stood tall, addressing us all. “It does not matter if the world of the fae knows that I was born a mortal.” The shock in the room was almost palpable. No matter how many times Landon had meant to hint at this truth, he had not truly planned to reveal it.
The Queen glowed with her fire affinity. Energy blazed from her with such fierceness that every soul in the room quieted again.
There had never been a first day of school like this.
With her pale skin lit by the flames that surrounded her, she raised her voice gaily. “I have come to a new understanding of how to lead the fae. I will no longer rely on secrecy. I do not need to conceal the fact that I was once a mortal, just as this foolish girl is now.”
Ciara was on her feet, but we’d all known who the Queen meant before she stood.
Hellebore smiled like a cat who’d got into the cream. “I would like to introduce my new adviso
r to you all. My most trusted man.” She sent a look toward Landon that made him wilt. “He may not share my elemental affinity, but I have learned that such things do not matter for me anymore. His ideas have changed everything for me.”
And as she lifted a smooth, supple hand at the empty space to her side, a man shimmered into existence. I watched attentively, even though I knew what was coming. She did have an unerring instinct for theater.
The man who appeared next to her was just as youthful as Queen Hellebore herself. He, of course, had the look of a true fae naturally about him, where she had to try for it. He looked first at me, then at Ciara, with a coldness that was uncommon in an air fae.
His bright blue eyes were like steel when they met mine. It had been a long time, but perhaps not long enough. I’d hoped never to see him again.
But hopes were never sufficient.
Power was what we needed here, if we wanted to match wits with the most evil of the political factions of the fae. Where the others in the room might think the Queen was a benevolent ruler and rejoice in her rejuvenated magic, Ciara and the other Assassins knew how dangerous our monarch was.
She’d announced to all that she was mortal. She’d allowed her bond with Landon to be known. Whatever the Queen had planned, it was going to move quickly.
I felt my bond with Ciara throbbing with the emotions that tore through her. She recognized the Queen’s advisor. I hadn’t been sure the memories would ever resurface, but I’d sensed recently that they stirred within her.
Her soft lips parted to say his name. “Breze.” That was all she could muster, but her eyes said the rest.
Ciara remembered.
The man who had saved her when I tried to kill her was here. But she could not thank him, for he was the Queen’s man.
And he watched her with the cold, hard resolve of a fae who could claim a bond with her, but who never, ever would.
5
Ciara
It was tempting to shout and accuse, but there was no point. Nobody in the Great Hall knew what to say, or whether to try to pretend nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Even the dullest students, those who did not follow political currents, or who did not possess the curiosity to even wonder what Queen Hellebore truly looked like, were stumped.
I was still standing. I’d been about to shout out something that would stop Hellebore, or at least make her look at me in a new way. She had gone too long in thinking that she would be able to consume my magic. I was not weak. Who did she think she was, to make this plan so openly? I had a few things to say about it.
But instead of opening my mouth, I allowed myself to sink back into my seat. This was not the time.
“Do you know him?” Evana whispered over to me. She’d seen that I’d subsided only because something had shocked me.
“I’m not sure,” I answered. We all knew that wasn’t the truth, though. I could feel my bond with Breze as it knit itself between us. It felt unbreakable, but also full of forbidding and denial.
Rook wrinkled his nose, then ducked his head in case he’d been noticed. “He looks like a real jerk,” he said. “It’s not just that he’s aiding the Queen. Goodness knows, we could be turned in somewhere for that as well. But he actually looks more evil than she is, and I didn’t think that was possible.”
We all kept our eyes averted from those gathered on the dais at the head of the room. Beyond the Queen, the faculty of Fae Academy sat at their table, most looking stunned. It comforted me a bit to see that nobody had known this was going to happen. It wasn’t just me who’d been blindsided by all this.
“At least she won’t call a meeting of the Assassins,” whispered Owain. “Then she’d have to confront the fact that Alder has managed to break free of her.”
“He doesn’t look all that free,” said Rook. “He’s the one who let out Headmaster Landon. I wouldn’t call that being on our side.”
“I don’t even know what the sides are anymore, not one bit.” I rubbed my temples, wishing we could all teleport away from here.
Too ironically, my wish was granted, although not at all how I’d imagined it. Queen Hellebore was speaking again. At first, I’d tried to tune her out, as long as she wasn’t coming after me, but I couldn’t manage it. “This is the first night of the commencing term at the Academy,” she was saying in her clear, newly youthful voice. “We cannot expect that the secret societies will be ready to make their selections from the new class of students. That would be impossible. But I do wish to meet with some of the school’s famous organizations before I leave. If I leave, that is,” she smiled portentously.
I gripped my hands together in my lap. I knew where she was going with this. She was about to call a meeting of the secret society that had chosen me, and that I’d no other option but to join. I hated everything about her.
Owain reached over to me and took my hand. “You broke Alder free of the Eternal Assassins. Remember that.” His words were honest and unflinching. “There’s got to be a way to get all of us out from under her thumb.”
The Queen had vanished now, teleporting to wherever she planned to ambush us.
I turned to Owain, wishing I had better answers. “I had to kill Alder to cleanse him of the Queen’s taint,” I hissed. “I don’t plan to do that for all of us.”
Rook shrugged. “Would it work? Could the power of the golden bracelet take more than one fae life at a time?”
“I’ll never get so deep into this mess as to try,” I grumbled. “If anybody’s going to be killed, then it should be the Queen.”
As of course it would, my voice fell into a sudden hush in the large room, so that for some reason I sounded as if I were shouting. All heads turned to look at me, with reactions ranging from confusion to hatred.
Fine. No matter how strong I was in my fae magic, I was always a mortal to them.
Always an outsider.
And now I was a person who had openly stated that I wanted to kill their leader. This wasn’t looking good.
Headmaster Landon was trying his best to pretend that his interaction with the Queen had resulted in a victory for him. Most of the fae were so confused at all of this that any reassurance would tide them over. Landon gave us the usual instructions on teleporting to the location that we’d receive in our minds. When the secret societies met, a meeting place was shown to only those who had any business there.
For me and my friends, such business was not recreation or study, but killing.
I didn’t even look at the others. I knew they would be there, or at least most of them. Finley belonged to another group, about which I had a few guesses. I thought he might have been chosen by the weather manipulators. As an air fae, he would be a good match there, and it was a respectable group. But I would never know for sure.
And Alder would teleport to his rooms, as the first-years did. He must be the only faculty member with no club affiliation at all. He was no longer an Eternal Assassin. I had cleared the Queen’s four-petaled mark from his wrist when I used my magic to kill him.
I did as I had to.
I visualised the lowest cellar room, noting that it was the same one in which we’d met before, and I teleported myself there. The chill of transporting gathered in my belly, but I held my shoulders back and tried to ignore it. When I took my seat at the long conference table, I saw no surprises in the other attendees.
Rook and Owain sat with a space between them saved for me, while Lily and Evana were across from them. Our physical education teacher, Professor Thorn, was there, as well as Headmaster Landon. He had relinquished his seat of power to the Queen, as she was the ultimate head of the Assassins.
She looked at me with a thoughtful gleam in her eye. “Ciara, we meet again.”
I couldn’t help smiling at the cliche. “Yes, we do. And you look like you’ve found a fountain of youth since I last saw you. We all thought you might just fall apart into a pile of ashes and bones from being so old. Too bad that didn’t happen.”
&
nbsp; The others were all listening, but with varying levels of perplexity on their faces.
“Ciara, there is no need for rudeness,” she admonished me as if I were a child. “I’ve returned to the Academy because I want something from you.”
“Of course you do.” Something in my temper snapped. She’d come for a confrontation, and I was going to give it to her.
I pushed my chair back, moving it against the stone floor of the below-ground meeting room. The furnishings were sparse, but still of the best quality, just as they had been when I stored the vine-wrapped Headmaster here for a year and a half.
I was going to need some serious answers from Alder on the question of why he had released the abhorrent man. Alder was the only person who could have unraveled those earth spells. There was no doubt at all that he had done it. He hadn’t even tried to hide it; instead he’d stood by Landon’s side. There had to be more to the story that I knew so far.
Hellebore inclined her head graciously to me. “Are you planning to do something exciting now?” A wistfulness in her voice reminded me that for a woman who had lived as long as she had, variety was perhaps not in great supply.
Oh, why not?
Whatever I’d been doing up until now wasn’t having the desired effect. She was stronger than ever.
Well, so was I.
Instead of attempting to leave, or letting them run the show, I hoisted my feet up onto the shining table. My ankle boots were black, with long, black laces. I loved the way the roughness of the boots complimented my plaid skirt, giving me a little bit of a King’s Road edge.
Cultivating an air of insolence, I let my gaze track around the table, meeting everybody’s eyes without fear.
“Here’s what I’ve been wondering,” I said briskly. “I’ve been regretting my membership in this stupid club since I joined. The whole thing doesn’t even make sense. We’re supposed to be so honored, and we’ve been chosen because we’re the most powerful mages in the school. But we never do anything, not really. There aren’t any activities.”
