Queen of Fae Academy

by Kendal Davis

  The Headmaster of Fae Academy hung on her every word. He had once tried to double cross her, but there was no sign of any impulse such as that now. He truly loved her. “My Queen, I stand with you always. When I was bound in the cellars, I thought of nothing but you.” Too late, he realized his error in reminding her that Ciara had beaten him in combat.

  The Queen raised a hand to acknowledge his words, but she did not bother to look at him.

  “And Breze?” She looked at Alder consideringly for a moment, but dismissed him as an option when she saw his face. Instead, she moved closer to the tall air fae at her side, simpering at him. “Breze, are you still my right hand man?” Her hand stroked his arm.

  Next to me, Ciara tensed. She would never beg him, but I could feel her desperate longing for their bond to be fulfilled.

  Breze stood even taller than before, his features shifting into a mask that shared nothing. “My Queen, I can testify as a sworn witness that I saw Landon, here, with the weapon in his hands. That is the most I can do for you now.”

  She raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Do you think you can be free of me? That will never happen.”

  Breze shook his head, his eyes cold as he looked down at her. “I cannot. I know that. But I know what you’ve done, and who you really are. Let that be enough between us.”

  “We know she’s a mortal,” I interjected.

  Ciara jutted out her chin. Breze’s refusal to soften towards her had hurt. “Everybody knows that now,” she said. “It’s public knowledge at school. That was clever, Hellebore. Putting it out there like that. Secrets have no power when they are in the light, right?”

  Breze raised his eyes from the floor to try to catch Ciara’s gaze, but she didn’t see it.

  Hellebore’s pink lips stretched into a wily smile. “You are correct, girl. But don’t get ahead of yourself. I gifted you with your powers twenty-two years ago so that I could take them for myself. That’s all you are. You’re the Tithe, the piece of meat that your people offer me so that I can incubate more power for myself.”

  Ciara glowered. “Well, when you put it like that, Hellebore, it only makes you sound like more of an asshole. Honestly. That’s something I didn’t expect about the fae. The huge egos.” Without needing to look, her hands reached out from her sides and lightly made contact with me, Owain, and Alder. “I mean, most of the present company excluded, of course.” Now, somehow, she was laughing.

  It displeased the Queen.

  “How can you be so young as to take a moment like this as a joke?” The ethereal blonde ruler was obviously somebody who hated to be laughed at.

  Ciara sidestepped the question. “You’ll never get my powers, no matter how entitled you think you are to them. I’m a person. Not an incubator. They’re mine.”

  Landon again tried to engage the Queen’s former regard for him. “Hellebore, how amusing. The girl thinks that mortals count as people.” She still did not look at him, so he subsided, glancing away as if he’d heard something.

  In a moment, we all did.

  The administration of the school did not include any troops. The Academy was a peaceful place. But when the Queen had sent a private signal to the fire faculty members, taking advantage of the ease with which she could communicate with those who shared her elemental affinity, she’d also called in her own personal troops.

  Fae soldiers, such as they were, strode into the room and surrounded us. There were only eight guards, all dressed in the steel gray uniforms that the Queen had favored for centuries. Ciara’s power was such that she could have fought them all and won without even breaking a sweat. I saw that she was considering such a move.

  “Don’t do it,” I whispered to her. “That’s just what she wants. You’ll never be able to live amongst the fae again if you take a life.” We both looked at the golden bracelet, still in Landon’s hands.

  “I will when I kill her,” Ciara answered, looking across at the Queen with hatred.

  “The girl has brought a weapon into the school,” declared Hellebore to her troops and the faculty members, whose number was increasing as more arrived. “This artifact is a deeply offensive thing, forbidden amongst honest folk for thousands of years.”

  Landon held it up without speaking. He still wasn’t sure which way the chips would fall.

  But I was.

  The Queen went on as Ciara listened with fire in her eyes. “This mortal student, to whom the Academy has offered all possible charity, has acted heinously in owning such a thing. It has allowed Headmaster Landon to move in haste, destroying his rival in a killing rage.”

  Landon’s face fell. Still mute, he stared down at the bracelet that still encircled his knuckles. After a paused, he said woodenly. “Yes. I killed Professor Thermophilus with it.”

  “No, you didn’t!” shouted Rook. He was not one to stop and think things through. “We found you here with the weapon in your hands, but…” He ceased talking when he understood that he’d just become one of the Queen’s witnesses.

  Breze spoke just as robotically as Landon. “We found him standing over the body.”

  Hellebore nodded with satisfaction. “Still my man.” She sent a look of scorn over to Ciara.

  “So what’s next?” asked my pink-haired mortal, not bothering to turn toward Breze. The pang of pain that I felt move through her at the thought of him was quickly hidden by her strong will.

  The Queen cackled, her laughter wreathing up to the ceiling, just like the tendrils of smoke she’d used to announce her presence. She had been our Queen for so long that we could perhaps excuse her tricks and think of them as classic rather than old-fashioned.

  “Well, let’s look at what’s needed here. There will be a trial, after much study of the facts. We have two witnesses, so Landon must be detained. Sorry, dear,” she said to him without an ounce of real regret. “And what does that mean for the school?”

  Ciara stiffened. “No. Not that.”

  “Yes, I can’t help but notice that Fae Academy is in need of a Headmaster. Do you not all see what we should do?” The Queen turned around in a circle, addressing the crowd that now surrounded us. All the staff members were downstairs now, and what looked like half the student body. The wide doorway of the Great Hall was filled with fae trying to catch a glimpse of the commotion that had woken them.

  “No.” I added my voice to Ciara’s.

  “No.” Rook did as well, as he began to understand what was about to happen.

  Alder did not speak, but his hands glowed green with power that he was gathering in case he needed it.

  It made no difference in the end.

  Hellebore was our Queen. She had trained the fae to listen to her. She was beautiful, appealing, and strong in her powers. She was not one of us, but we had forgotten what that meant.

  “I will be the Headmaster of Fae Academy,” Hellebore announced with pride. “I will lead this school of ours through the next year, through this most crucial juncture.”

  “You’re a mortal,” said Ciara icily.

  “And who better to oversee the graduation of the class I prepared for you, dear? I assembled a cohort of fae who had worked in your land, who would understand your strange ways and not judge you as a country bumpkin. They have tried to welcome you as a peer the best they could.” Hellebore was skillfully gathering the support of the onlookers.

  Ciara swiveled around, seeing the change in the vibe of the room. More than almost anything else, the fae assembled here loved the school. Appealing to their wish to save it was the best choice Hellebore could possibly have made.

  “I will live here, at the Academy. My man will as well,” Hellebore said lightly, marking Breze as her own once again.

  Breze stood next to the Queen but I wasn’t sure that he was touching her at all. The man was imposing as hell, taller than the rest of us, and apparently capable of anything. But his hands did not gravitate to Hellebore as mine did to Ciara. He did not speak. He might have been trying to catch Ciara’
s attention again, but she refused to notice.

  In the strange, frozen moment, we all wondered if Ciara would defy the Queen. But she did not. I was proud of her for her self restraint. The confrontation was coming, but tonight was not the night.

  Queen Hellebore tried one last time to get a rise out of her. “I know you like butting heads with your Headmaster here at school. Right, mortal girl?” She let a smile spread slowly across her face, showing her teeth but no warmth at all in her eyes. She was mind-bogglingly beautiful, but I would have stabbed her before accepting one kiss. “Well, I’m the Headmaster of Fae Academy now, bitch.”

  Hellebore vanished, leaving the rest of us to make our way back to our beds in bleary exhaustion.

  15

  Ciara

  I knocked gently at Alder’s office door. There was no reason to be nervous. True, we still hadn’t been able to really relax with each other out of bed, not since the beginning of term, but it didn’t have to mean all that much. When I noticed that I was holding my breath, I let it out slowly. I knocked again.

  Alder opened the door, but he did not step back to let me in. Instead, he stood in the doorway, his huge frame filling it. Every sense I had tingled from being so near to him.

  “Ciara,” he said quietly. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

  It was first thing in the morning after the insanity of Fae Academy’s only murder case ever. Of course he had been.

  I schooled myself not to show that his lukewarm welcome hurt my feelings. He knew anyway, of course. Our bond was still there, strong as ever, despite the fact that we had been together so little since returning from the school holidays.

  The earth fae gave me a searching look, then stepped backward into his office. As a professor, he had his own study. What was unusual was that it was located in a wing that nobody else used. The discipline of earth magic had been missing from Fae Academy for a long time, so long that nobody had been willing to even discuss it when I started as a first-year student.

  I took a seat before Alder did. I collapsed into the blue plush armchair where I had curled up so many other mornings as I studied here. As the only people anywhere with earth magic, we had been working together for the last year. Our tutoring sessions had always been rewarding for me, sometimes in a carnal way, other times not.

  “I can’t believe she did that.” It was all I could think of to say.

  Alder sat in his chair opposite mine, waving his hand to conjure a tea tray on the table in front of us. He knew my favorite cinnamon pastries, of course, and brought a warm plate of them to settle on the tray as well.

  He spoke carefully. “The Queen has come back? Is that what you mean? There was no other way this was ever going to play out.”

  I cocked my head at him. Did he think we were being monitored? “Every other office in this wing is empty. Nobody could hear what you say.” I waited a beat, but he didn’t answer. “Do you really not care about what happened? Hellebore killed a fae. We’ll never see Thermophilus again.”

  Alder’s green eyes darkened. “Of course I care. Carola Thermophilus and I were old friends, despite being of different elemental affinities.” I blinked at hearing him use her first name.

  Something about it set my temper alight. “You seem to have a lot of questionable ‘old friends,’ though, so I’m not sure how much meaning that has.” I tensed to stand up, but then regretted having spoken so harshly to him.

  “That’s a fair point,” said Alder. “You find yourself always wondering if I’m on your side. Right?”

  Astonished that he would put it so baldly, I settled back into my seat. “I’ve never heard you recognize that out loud before. That I’m not sure I can trust you. Of course, it’s always been the thing that comes between us.”

  “It is a logical problem. Certainly. But I hope you will allow yourself to feel the elemental bond between us and trust it. Even when you cannot trust me.”

  “That doesn’t sound all that hopeful,” I griped.

  He was insistent, though. “That will be the thing that gets you through what is coming. Trust the magic. Rely on your powers. When you reach your full strength, that will be the only thing that matters.”

  His intensity embarrassed me. “Well, I won’t have a chance to do that if Breze continues to be exactly who he is.” Alder could feel as well as I that the other man was willfully refusing to embrace our connection.

  Alder chuckled, an incongruous sound when we were both so stressed. “We are all nothing more than who we are. Hellebore as well. I did not mean to poke fun at you when I said that it was obvious she would come here. It’s the truth. We did not expect it yet, but there’s no denying that the confrontation must happen.”

  I made a face at him. “I know. But she keeps Breze on a short leash, doesn’t she?”

  Alder’s jaw tightened. “I’m not sure which of them is holding the leash. They may each think that they are. In the end, I suspect that you’ll be the one to decide.” He passed me a second pastry, not needing to ask if I wanted it. “There will be no breakfast in the Great Hall this morning. All of the faculty members have received word that large gatherings are to be suspended indefinitely.”

  “Good. Nobody wants to go back in there, not after last night.”

  “But I must warn you that the school feeling is against you. There are some who are saying that the weapon was yours, and that you staged this to pay back Headmaster Landon for disliking you.”

  “That’s nonsense,” I dismissed the idea.

  “Now that Hellebore is here, you will feel a shift in the school. She is skilled in persuading people to listen to her. She has had much practice.”

  I wanted to hug him. “But not you, Alder. You may have been sworn to her once, but you aren’t now.”

  This time, it was he who stood. He towered over me, his broad shoulders blocking out the light. When he offered me a powerful but gentle hand, I took it with a smile, popping the last of my sweet roll into my mouth. Alder embraced me, his arms holding me close to him. I rested my head on his hard chest, wishing I could stay longer.

  “I only came to see you for a minute, you know. My course schedule has me in the gym with Professor Thorn in just a few minutes. Combat is all I study anymore.” I didn’t add that it wasn’t working out very well, at least not if my teacher’s goal was for me to be a competent assassin.

  It was time to admit it.

  I wasn’t going to kill anybody. No matter how much I’d stretched to call Hellebore’s bluff, I didn’t have it in me.

  So why did the whole school think I’d been involved in last night’s little scene?

  Alder held me tightly for another moment, then put a finger under my chin to lift my gaze to his. “It won’t be the same today, you know. Hellebore is here to keep you on your toes. She’ll make changes.”

  “I guess I’ll find out at breakfast if there’s a change to my schedule,” I said, not wanting to borrow trouble. “Oh, wait, if that’s not on, then I’ll just go to the gymnasium and see.”

  Alder’s kiss was still on my lips when I arrived in Professor Thorn’s domain. He passed his eyes right over me, making no comment about my failed attempt to destroy the mortal child yesterday. Without speaking to any of us, he merely passed out new course schedules. Then he turned on his heel and went into his office. From the glass front of the room, where it overlooked the gym floor itself, we could see him looking idly through papers.

  “So, that means no more advanced combat classes?” Rook sounded sorry to have to accept the change.

  “No, wait.” Owain had unfolded his paper. “That’s not quite right. No more special workouts with Thorn, not for any of us. But it looks like Ciara’s favorite royal nemesis is teaching a class in the ‘Theory of Combat,’ whatever that means.”

  “Looks like you’re already late for it,” sang Lily as she stood from her own mat and waved her hand in a spell to change her regular school clothes into her tight black workout suit.

  �
�What are you doing?” I asked, wishing I didn’t need information so badly that I had to talk to her. “Owain’s right. I guess we all have class with the Queen this morning.” I ran a hand through my long hair, sighing with apprehension. “Super fun.”

  Lily, however, was moving in the other direction. “I don’t,” she called out as she walked away. “I’ve got an hour as Thorn’s teaching assistant.” She grinned wickedly as she left.

  “I wondered why she was changing her clothes, when there’s no workout,” Evana said. “I guess she knows that the way to Thorn’s heart will be the sight of her ass in tight, black fabric.”

  “Isn’t that the case for us all?” Finley smirked as he came up, slipping a hand around Evana’s waist.

  None of the other guys disagreed.

  “Fine,” I answered. “Let’s all stay focused on that image, rather than wondering what the Queen has planned for us this morning. If I know her, she’s going to be doing more accusing and manipulating than real teaching. That’s what Alder thinks, too.”

  “You won’t give up on him, will you?” said Owain approvingly. “Good. He’s a sandpit of secrets, sure, but he’s your mate. We all three of us are, and we’ll stand by you no matter what.”

  When we walked into the small classroom that Hellebore had chosen for our seminar, it became clear that the Queen herself had made the same assessment of my friend group. Rook and Owain were there, perhaps to hold me up as she took shots at me. Finley was not there, but Evana was. And in the back of the tiny room sat Alder, pretending to go over his own papers, but still clearly among the summoned.

  Queen Hellebore perched on the edge of a desk, everything about her perfectly alluring. Her blue eyes were bright and her long hair was glossy. She bore no resemblance to the wizened crone that she had been when we first met. Or, rather, the first time I remembered meeting her.

  I walked to her, unwilling to show an ounce of fear. “This schedule updating situation is a bit of a problem at Fae Academy these days, isn’t it?” I waved the paper at her. “I feel like I might start having nightmares about not knowing which class I’m supposed to be in.”