Queen of Fae Academy

by Kendal Davis

  I ended up reappearing in the combat gym, beside Professor Thorn himself. He had resumed his instruction of the other students, and he pretended not to notice my return. Then he sent me a look so black that it almost made me worry. But he and I both knew that the reason he was so displeased with me was that I had bested him in a contest of magic. He had come back to the Academy without me, against his will. Such a manipulation of an unwilling fae with magic required incredible power.

  Now he knew I had it.

  “Ciara. Girl.” It was Thorn, his voice harsh as he prodded me with his foot.

  Oh. I realized that I was on the floor of the gymnasium, crumpled where I’d fallen in exhaustion. I could sense both Rook and Owain tensing with their wish to run to my aid. Wait. I sent them the thought along our bond, hoping they would hear it, and then, even more difficult, heed it.

  The room was quiet now. I’d never seen this cavernous space so still. The only thing I could do was to try to salvage my dignity and leave. “Sorry about that,” I said evenly as I stood and brushed off the seat of my tight black workout pants. I blinked, trying to clear my head. “I don’t even remember falling.”

  “You should go,” Thorn muttered. “I don’t want to know what happened. It is not my department.”

  Rook spoke up, sounding just about ready to step forward and thrash Thorn, even though I was still sending him impassioned mental pleas not to move. “Thorn.” He was rattled, if he was speaking to the strict professor without using the correct honorific. “Thorn, you said that she would join us in a minute. That she was just fine where she was. This doesn’t look fine.”

  I shook my head softly at him. “No, really. I’m alright. I just stayed behind a few minutes after Professor Thorn did. We were in my old city of New Arabia.”

  Owain’s eyes brightened. “That’s where we were working before we came to school.”

  “I remember,” I murmured. He and I were both thinking of the day we’d first met, taking the sky train to begin our first year at the Academy. “You know, I think I might just need to lie down a bit longer.” I was trying to play off my weakness as no big deal, but at the same time, I wasn’t sure that I could keep standing much longer.

  Professor Thorn still avoided my eyes. He merely jerked his chin toward the door. “Yes. Go lie down. I’ll mark you down as sick.” I couldn’t tell whether he was displeased with me for failing my test. He might not even know about that yet. Maybe that’s why he seemed so detached.

  As I left the gym, I beseeched Owain and Rook with my eyes to keep calm. I managed to retain my dignity and not fall again, but it was a close call. If they could keep their heads down and remain in class, they might learn something more about what the Queen expected of her Assassins. Something that would aid us all.

  I slept. Before I collapsed onto my bed in the tower quad room that Evana and I had moved into last year, I set wards of privacy and safety about the room. I wished I could be sure that they would be enough against the Queen herself, if she decided to visit me here. This was her territory, after all. But in the end, my concerns were not enough to keep me awake. My magical efforts of the day had exceeded anything I’d ever tried before, and now I was paying the price.

  While my friends toiled away for the rest of the day under Professor Thorn’s stern tutelage, I remained tucked into my bed. All I knew was that I was safe. There was so much that I didn’t understand yet about the relationship between the mortal world and the fae.

  It was not until the end of the day that I was strong enough to meet with the others in our sitting room. I saw from our tall windows that the light had faded entirely. I’d missed dinner in the Great Hall, but as Thorn had marked me down as ill, I was allowed to have a tray in my room. I was so hungry that I wolfed down my food, trying to formulate the right question at the same time.

  “Can’t you explain it to me, from your own history? I feel like you ought to know more about how it all happened.” I directed my query to Finley, Evana’s steadfast mate.

  “Well, I didn’t mean to suggest that I’m an expert on fae history,” he said modestly. “But what you mortals refer to as the ‘Great Upheaval’ is a bit of a personal interest of mine. Always has been.”

  Rook grinned at his younger cousin. “Finley, whatever information we’re looking for here is not going to be something you read in your history-obsessed studies. No matter how personal all those stories are to you, with your family line.” My fire fae lover cocked his head at me. “What is it we’re looking for exactly?”

  “I wish I knew.” I frowned, rubbing my temples. “There’s just something I don’t understand about what they’re all doing there. What it is that the fae accomplish in their work.”

  “Well, we all know that,” said Owain. “I mean, we were all in management positions there before we came to school. Although that is kind of odd, isn’t it?” He looked thoughtful as he added the last words.

  “I wasn’t,” interjected Finley. “It was only your class that all came from working in the mortal world.” He politely did not mention the stigma that surrounded all of us for that.

  “What is Breze doing there?” I wondered aloud. “He told me that he is in charge of all fae operations. I think for all the mortal world, not just New Arabia. Have none of you ever met him before?”

  Lily rose from her seat on the couch, shaking her head. “I don’t have any more free time to devote to this, Ciara, so if you could just stop fainting in class, that would be a big help.” She brushed her long, blonde hair back, over her shoulders. It shone, perfectly smooth, against the dark shirt of her school uniform. Even though we all loved the way our fae-made clothes fit here at the Academy, hers were somehow always crisper and cleaner than mine.

  “Well, it would be a big help to me, that’s true.” I snickered.

  Lily literally growled at me. “That’s funny. But what I want to know is which of you reported to the office that I still had a single room here in this suite? I know one of you snitched at the end of last year, and now I’ve gotten a note that somebody is supposed to be moving in with me.”

  “I thought that wasn’t happening after all,” sighed Evana. “You’ve complained enough about it, I figured the administrative office took pity on you.”

  “Nope. I heard from Professor Thorn this evening that he was supposed to pass the news on to me. He said to get ready for company.”

  “I’ll bet he did,” giggled Evana. “Did he pull you aside in person, just for that?”

  Lily’s lips curved upwards. “Yes. So that might make it worth it.” Then she tore her mind away from the mental picture of Professor Thorn in his workout gear, and frowned again. “Nope. Even getting noticed by Thorn isn’t enough to make me forget that having a roommate stinks.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Evana and I said in unison. Then we laughed, for we spent the night together seldom these days. I usually had my guys with me, and she bunked in with Finley. For reasons that I’d never actually heard, Finley had his own room. A single bedroom was a prize indeed, but Evana’s love for her air fae mate went well beyond that.

  After that, the party dissolved, with Lily stomping to her room, presumably to try to rearrange her things. I wasn’t sure if her plan would be to make space for the new girl, or to block her out completely by building barriers with possessions. Finley and Evana left, arm in arm, smiling about trying some of the new combat grips from today’s lessons.

  I looked from Owain to Rook, wishing I had the nerve to tell them what I suspected about

  Breze. I wanted the tall man with the bright blue eyes so much that I could hardly breathe. It would not be helpful to me right now to have to face the truth about him.

  But Rook was still thinking about it. He moved to sit next to me, stroking my hair gently as I leaned against his chest. “What did you mean, that there’s more to learn about why the fae are there in New Arabia? I can assure you, the work we did was nothing but routine weather spells and that sort of thing. We d
idn’t even have to be graduates of the Academy to do it. I mean, you’re right about one thing; I’m not sure it made much difference to the environment.”

  Owain shrugged when I looked at him, confirming that he had had the same experience. “Maybe we should ask Finley what he wanted to say, after all,” he said. “When Rook isn’t there to put the brakes on his youthful cousin’s enthusiasm.”

  “Hey, he just needs a little friendly suppression,” laughed Rook. “Don’t want him to think he’s in charge of anything just yet.”

  I was about to ask him what he meant, when a knock came at the door. It was Alder, of course. I’d been waiting all evening for him to seek me out. Ever since I’d woken up from my restorative sleep, I’d wished I could see him and try to resolve our differences. It was nothing but a misunderstanding.

  I knew that was ludicrous. My worries were anything but small. I wanted to know why Alder had restored Headmaster Landon to the helm of the school. More than that, I wanted to ask him why he had tried to kill me before I ever came to Fae Academy.

  He was here.

  I lifted a hand and used a spell to swing the door open. It cost me nothing in strength, even after the day I’d had. From the corner of my eye, I noticed Owain and Rook exchanging glances. They’d seen my powers building recently, but those changes paled in comparison to what I’d gained by stretching my expectations of myself today.

  Alder strode in, his green eyes full of concern for me. “I wanted to give you space to recover, but it was so hard to wait.”

  I stood to greet him, wishing the lump in my throat would go away. “We need to talk. About a lot of things.”

  He glanced at the others. “Do you want it to be just the two of us?”

  They hardly had time to bristle before I waved the idea away. “No, of course not. Let’s all go into my room. It’s where we’ve been comfortable before.” My cheeks flamed with the unspoken reference to the times we’d lost all sleep together, the strong hands of my men pleasing me all night long. They had been a team. My team.

  Now everything felt more awkward than I would have thought possible.

  I sat gingerly on the edge of my bed, achingly aware that I’d never felt this strained with any of my mates before. I wished we could go back to the days that I felt I knew them. Suddenly, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever truly known Alder. I drew a long breath, then asked him straight out. “Tell me about the memory that surfaced for me. Why did it suddenly come to my mind, that night I was at the club with Rook?”

  Alder sat in a chair across from me, while the two other men remained standing. They looked uneasy, but also too interested to look away.

  My green-eyed man of the trees looked right at me, not appearing to hide anything. “I wish I’d told you. I did try to explain to you that I was there, in the Tithe’s mansion, inhabiting the form of your new butler.”

  “You did. But you left out a few things, didn’t you?” I was cool.

  “I did,” he said unhappily. “When I was there, I was working for Queen Hellebore. I was an air fae in that life, just like Breze is still. Remember, I told you that we were once best friends.”

  “What I remember is that you stabbed me. You tried to kill me, and Breze saved me.”

  “That’s right,” Alder said simply. “Although it was your own power that healed you in the end.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” My fingertips were at my temples again. I needed to gather my men to me so I could find my missing bracelet. It was the only thing I had that could defeat an immortal fae. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to take down Breze or bed him, though.

  Alder reached out and took my hands in his. The contact made me gasp with desire. No matter how distant we might feel at this moment, we were still bonded. “I was an Eternal Assassin. I’d been instructed to take your life before you ever came to the land of the fae. Breze was there as a free agent, I suppose. I don’t really know who he works for.”

  “Hellebore, obviously,” I sniffed, remembering the way she’d gushed over him at the welcome dinner in the Great Hall.

  “I don’t think so,” Alder answered. “But you’ve got a big part of the story wrong. He didn’t save you. He merely watched you save yourself with your own magic. He might have made it look as if he was doing something, but it was all you.”

  Neither Rook nor Owain looked surprised.

  “It can’t be. That was before I even came to school. There’s no way that I had the skill to defeat you.”

  “You were untrained, but you did heal the wound I gave you. That was how I knew you were the one that was going to change our world.” He brought my hands to his lips and kissed them in turn. Then he began to massage the inside of my wrists, as if in a promise to rub away the Queen’s mark in time. “I didn’t even know you then, but it was easy to see the magic that surrounded you.”

  I couldn’t think any more. I couldn’t hold back, not even to ask him why he’d freed Headmaster Landon. The thoughts swirled in my mind, turning into mush as he stroked my skin.

  “Maybe we should go to bed,” suggested Owain with a smile.

  “There will be more time for more questions in the morning,” said Rook. “And strategizing.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. If the two worlds that I inhabited were going to end right now, late on a school night, there might not be much I could do to plan ahead for that.

  Better to allow myself to relax. To feel the touch of my three men. With no words, just a smile, I stood and began to remove my clothes. They did not need any other invitation to begin helping me with that task.

  When I was naked in their arms, I’d be able to think better.

  12

  Rook

  I woke first, the still of the night giving me no clue to what had broken into my sleep. I was in Ciara’s bed, my legs tangled around hers. Her right arm was draped over Owain’s chest, and her head was snuggled against Alder’s. From where I lay, I could see through the wide window of Ciara’s tower bedroom. The moon was high and bright. Across the roof of the castle, dark shadows played as clouds shifted in the sky.

  “What is it?” Ciara spoke sleepily. I hadn’t meant to, but I’d woken her by shifting my position.

  “It’s all right,” I whispered, not wanting to alert the others. “Something made me wake up, but I don’t know what. I thought I heard something downstairs.”

  I could almost see her teasing grin, even though the room was dim. “Maybe we woke up the rest of the school with our rowdiness earlier.” Her toes traced a line along my leg, moving upwards.

  Alder spoke without opening his eyes. “Shall we do it again?” His hand moved along her breasts, toying with her nipples.

  But something was different for her now. Instead of covering his lips with hers, as she’d done so wantonly just a few hours ago, Ciara climbed over Alder to leave the bed. As she did, I watched her long legs and the curves of her naked skin. As always, she riveted my attention.

  “Wait a second,” grumbled Owain, awake now. “I hope you’re not going any farther than the other bed. We can all move over there.” He lifted himself up onto an elbow.

  I was standing now, too, pulling Ciara against me. “Stay. Come on. If we go downstairs in the night, we’ll be looking for trouble. And then we’re sure to find it.” I bent my head to kiss her neck in reassurance. My hands were at her waist, wishing I could keep her here. I knew in my heart that she was too distracted.

  “Not trouble. The bracelet. I have to find it,” she choked. “I think I waited too long.”

  Alder alone seemed to know what she meant. “You took the bracelet with you to the mortal world, didn’t you? I could sense it in your pocket when we were in Breze’s office.”

  “Well if you could, then Breze could too. When he sent me back here, he spun it out of my control somehow. Without it, I’m defenseless.”

  Well all exchanged glances, nobody wanting to take on her comment. Finally, I did. “Ciara, you’re the last person in the w
orld anybody would say had no defenses. Your powers are stronger now than those of a hundred fae.”

  “But I am not truly strong against the fae,” she said shakily. “I have all this power, yes, but I am mortal. You can’t imagine what it’s like. I am vulnerable in a way you can’t understand. The bracelet is my only tool that can kill an eternal being.” She had leaned away from me to snag her clothes from the top of her tall dresser. She dressed in a hurry, pulling her unruly pink hair into a ponytail.

  Alder had dressed, too, nodding firmly at her. “I think I know what’s happened. It did occur to me that that might be the ending to yesterday’s adventure. Tell me what you heard. What it was that woke you up.” He glared at me and Owain until we, too, gathered up our clothes.

  It looked like we were going on a midnight field trip within the Academy after all.

  I didn’t want to mention it, but the excursion was so badly against the rules that if we were caught, we’d be expelled. Not even the nice sort of being asked to leave, where a student’s parents came and helped them pack. No, it would be the immediate blinking out of teleportation home that was reserved for the worst transgressions at school.

  Ciara bit her lip. “It was like a voice, but it can’t have been, because you’d all have heard it.”

  “It was a magical cry, sent to you along the vibrations of the bracelet,” mused Alder, a spark of understanding lighting in his eyes. “You have a bond with it that none of us do.” He refrained from adding that his closest interaction with the bauble had been when Ciara had used it to kill him.

  “So let’s go see,” I said. “If somebody’s used that thing inside the castle, then it might mean there’s a fae who needs our help right now.”

  “Or that somebody is beyond help,” added Alder darkly.

  As it turned out, they were both right.

  The four of us made our way from Ciara’s suite to the empty hallway. There was no sound from Lily’s room; apparently she’d worn herself out rearranging her furniture into a barricade.