by Alex Lidell
“Call it nostalgia,” Han said, finally looking up, his eerily intense blue-gray eyes giving Owalin the shivers. “I used to race horses.”
“And now you race humans.”
“I like sport. You might enjoy trying a hand at it yourself once this is all said and done. It has a different flavor from the usual beasts. But it’s no less an art.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
Han snorted, then pulled himself together, probably remembering the time. Being out too long was not good for an Academy instructor. “I’ve not found any fae on the grounds, though several of the mortals are feistier than I’ve marked in the past.”
“Or more of your ilk?”
Han frowned. “Possible, I suppose, though I’m unaware of other human shifters in Lunos. I don’t like it.”
Neither did Owalin, but at day’s end, he had near a hundred warriors. Even if a fae or two stepped where they didn’t belong, it would make little difference to his plans. Shaking his head, Owalin waved a hand at Han’s human features. “Are you going to stay that way all night?”
“I am,” Han said, putting down his stein. “Shifting isn’t the instinct I need my body to reach for too easily just now. I imagine your true intention is to show off Krum’s latest efforts in filing down the wards? I will take your word that he’s making progress and that I’ll find shifting easier when the time comes.”
“Am I that predictable?” Owalin smiled, then let the mirth drop from his eyes. “It won’t be just shifting you will find easier, Han. When the time comes, I recommend you have full control of your civilized faculties lest the magic sweeps you up right along with your pets.”
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Power of Five Book 7
Prologue
Owalin
Stepping out of the Gloom into what Owalin liked to call his war room, the male stretched his spine and inhaled the hot, slightly moist air. As well as the war room had been decorated, with its thick carpets and gilded porcelain jugs of the best wines, it was still a cave inside a mountain. Instead of windows and towering views, there were earwigs and smoky torchlight. And that had gotten old years ago.
It would change soon, though. To be precise, in nine days. Taking a seat at the head of the polished table, Owalin regarded his gathered lieutenants, forcing himself to nod courteously even to the dimwitted human lord at the table’s end.
“Status?” Owalin asked.
“The Prowess Trials begin in six days,” Han said, walking over to where the Academy map was pinned to a wall for the room to see. The shifter was still in his animal form, his blunt human features irritating Owalin irrationally. “Most of the activity will take place in the newly constructed arena, which is conveniently open to aerial entry and should pose little problem in securing. However, the nature of an ongoing event means knowing which monarchs will be viewing the competition when is unpredictable. Fortunately, the Trials will culminate in a victory ceremony, when all the royals will all be present in the arena to present the medals. ”
Owalin nodded. It was almost too convenient for Han’s personal whims that the best time for the assault was to come after his pets’ game, but there was little reason to fight on this point. Han never made it a secret that racing his pets was important to him, and Owalin didn’t believe in taking away privileges when nothing warranting discipline had occurred.
“Master Zake.” Owalin turned to the grizzled lord at the end of the table stuffing his face full of Owalin’s finest provisions. “Have you people in place to secure positions amidst the staff?”
“The servers’ guild that’s been contracted to assist knows where to place its loyalties,” Zake said, wrinkling his nose as if answering questions was beneath him.
“You will personally supervise them, of course?” Owalin didn’t need to add that this would mean playing the role of servant himself.
Zake’s muddy eyes flashed, the beginnings of a sharp protest crossing his pockmarked features, but one look at the hard faces around the table had him bowing his head. “Of course. Though I don’t understand why we are going through the trouble. Just walk your army out of the dark like you did yourself not minutes ago.”
Owalin took a breath, mastering his voice before speaking. “Access to the Gloom, Lord Zake, is blocked in the mortal world. The small rip in the protective fabric that allows me to cross the threshold extends not far beyond these caves.” Which, you dimwit, is the whole reason we’ve taken up residence here for decades.
“The moon’s position during Ostera gave us greater reach for a short period, but even that was limited to sections of the forest.” Krum, Owalin’s chief wardsmith and the oldest of the Night Guard, said in a slow, measured voice. The silver-haired male sat twisting a pair of stone spheres around each other in the palm of his hand, appearing for all the world to be absorbed in his game. “We will only use the Gloom passage to release the caged sclices to entertain the squatters outside the Academy walls. When it’s time.”
Krum’s hypnotic voice tickled the air in the room, making even Owalin’s skin crawl. “Fortunately, unlike the infinitesimal tear in the fabric separating the Light and Gloom from the mortal world, the wards shackling our magic are an entirely different beast. One that can be trapped and bled.”
“Will you be ready to bring the wards down on my command?” Owalin asked Krum.
The corner of Krum’s thin mouth rose, his attention still on his spheres. “Would you like a short test?”
“By all means.”
Krum’s smile widened, then froze. “Were you ever able to locate those wild fae, Han?” he asked. “The ones who ran amok of our patrol on the night of Ostera?”
Han’s jaw tightened. “No.”
“Hmm.” Krum shrugged. “Well, I do hope they are not doing anything stupid just now. Brace yourselves.” With that, the balls in Krum’s hand stopped dead.
1
Lera
“Coal!” I grip the male’s elbow, shamelessly steadying myself against him as a sudden wave of energy rushes through my core. The mortal shackles binding my magic violently spring open, the cords of power escaping with such force that it’s all I can do not to ignite the forest around us in raging wildfire.
The starlit sky seems to spin above me, the rich scents of fern and pine and sticky sap exploding inside my mouth. Strength vibrates in my muscles, surges of life pulsing through me with every heartbeat. My fingers still digging into Coal’s rock-hard forearm, I draw in a breath brimming with life—
And all but choke on the next as the phantom shackles choke my magic once more. Bile rises up my throat, everything inside me clawing at the restraint no matter what my better sense tells me. I don’t care what’s right and wrong just now. I care about nothing but the part of me I just glimpsed and lost all over again. Reaching down into the coil of magic inside me, I throw my will blindly against the shackles. Again. And again. And again.
“Easy, mortal.” A strong arm hooks around my back, and Coal brings me in front of him, his beautifully carved features only inches from mine, his metallic scent drowning out the rustling night. Taking my face between his callused hands, the warrior tips back my head, studying me intensely with piercing blue eyes. “I felt it too, the sudden release of magic. But not anymore. Everything is back to normal now.”
Normal. I force air into my tight lungs, the safety of Coal’s grip on my face returning me to my senses. That shouldn’t have happened. As good as the magic feels, it has no place in the human world. Stars, we came here to prevent this very disaster.
“Does this mean we failed?” I whisper. “Are the wards completely down?”
“Not yet.” Coal runs his hands down my arms, then puts his palm into the small of my back and turns us on the path back to the Academy. “Though I imagine it’s safe to say that we
aren’t the only ones in the mortal world who want to fiddle with the bloody things.”
Looking down from the ridge where Coal and I ventured to survey the small army of campgrounds growing on what were recently sheep fields, I shake my head at the neat rows of tents. Torches and lanterns flicker in every direction, distant shouts and bursts of laughter echoing up the valley. By now, less than a week out from the Prowess Trials, the whole place has transformed from an isolated sleepy town to the makeshift capital of a new world, the Academy’s flag atop the keep tower flapping like a beating heart.
All are in high spirits, impatient for the coming games—and completely unaware of the potential danger lying in wait.
“You know”—I pull aside a prickly branch before it whacks me in the face—“with not so much as a loose sclice in the Great Falls woods for nearly two months now, I actually thought things might be shifting in our favor.”
“I didn’t.”
“Yes, but you just like killing things.”
Coal gives me a menacing look and quickens his pace so I nearly have to jog just to keep up with him. His tall, sculpted body cuts so easily through the night, it’s as if the air moves aside for him, every muscle in his powerful thighs and backside outlined under his tight black pants. If he’s going to make me run back, at least I can enjoy the view.
Deprived of killing sclices and other nastiness, the male has been channeling his pent-up frustration into correcting what he declared a deficiency in my training. “Now that I remember what you are, there is no reason to coddle you in the ring,” he’d informed me two months ago before launching into a new morning torment routine that has the other cadets keeping their distance from me, lest some of Coal’s inventiveness splashes their way. “Plus, the more time you spend in Shade’s company, the better. So, I’m doing us all a favor.”
Even these nightly patrols—with little else to occupy us—have become training opportunities, Coal stopping us in random moonlit clearings for near-silent sparring sessions. They usually start with me being pinned to the ground with no warning, furiously trying to free myself—and sometimes end with my back on the ground or against a tree, racing just as breathlessly to wrap my legs around Coal’s naked waist and fit him inside me.
The bond’s magic may be muted here in the mortal world, but the mating instinct feels just as strong—sometimes overwhelming now that Coal has his memories back. Tree bark or desk lamp or bedframe be damned.
By the time Coal and I return to the library, Arisha and Gavriel have the place littered with books, maps, and notes. So far, we have all the hundreds of temporary staff camps marked on a chart, along with schedules of soon-to-arrive royals. The pot of red ink we’ve prepared to mark places of recent blight activity stands untouched, and it has for months.
“Tell me you two killed something today,” Arisha says, her back to the door as she juggles a journal in one hand and Minion—the two-pound kitten she found last week in the newly built arena’s scaffolding—in the other.
I shake my head. “No.”
Sticking his furry little orange head over Arisha’s shoulder, Minion hisses at Coal and me, showing a tiny mouth full of needle-sharp teeth.
“The night is young,” Coal tells the cat darkly.
Arisha turns, cuddling the vicious little feline as she glares at Coal, her wire-rimmed glasses askance over her narrowed blue eyes. Her freckles stand out more starkly now on her pale face after too many hours spent inside, deep in research—morning training being the one exception. Arisha may have expected Coal, upon learning the truth, to look the other way whenever she decided physical training wasn’t the best use of her time—but he disabused her of that notion with one raised brow and a great deal of running.
The warrior crosses his large arms over his chest, the sheer power exuding from him filling the room. Even with my amulet dulling my senses, his metallic musk makes my skin prickle, my body longing for the feel of his—as it seems to do approximately every few hours.
“I liked him better when he didn’t know he was a bloody legendary fae warrior,” Arisha tells me. “And that amount wasn’t much to begin with.”
“Good. There is little to like.” Grabbing one of her braids, Coal moves her out of his way as he takes a chair across from Gavriel. “When wards erode naturally, does it look like a steady decline or flashes of on-and-off activity?”
Gavriel takes off his glasses, cleaning them against the lapel of his robe. “Steady. Wards turning on and off is purposeful activity.” Despite an utter lack of progress in finding a way to mend the shattering wards, the man still knows more about how they function than any of the rest of us. “Might I hope you are asking out of academic curiosity?”
“That one has as much academic curiosity as I have coordination,” Arisha mutters.
“There was a moment today when we had full access to our magic,” I say, joining the others at the table as I recount the event, the Guild members’ faces getting progressively darker with each word. “Could it have been a glitch or something like the opposite of Ostera?”
Dislodging Minion, Arisha walks to the celestial reference text, her mouth moving through complex calculations before she shakes her head. “No. And even if there was a lunar influence, it would be nothing this stark.”
“So someone—let’s presume it was the Night Guard—pried the wards open on purpose?” I say. “But why now, and why only for a moment?”
“It stinks of a bloody mouse trap,” says Coal. “The Prowess Trials at the Academy to gather the royals, a sudden lack of Mors rodents to keep the prey from spooking, and now the magic jaws poised to snap shut.” The male growls his frustration, slamming his hand down on a side table.
Minion, crouching low on Arisha’s shoulder, hisses.
“The royals will be sitting ducks, and the bloody reality is that no matter what we do, we can’t keep an eye on all of them at once,” says Coal. “It will be a bloody massacre before we even get to the scene of battle.”
I rub my eyes with the heels of my hands. Coal is right. Without knowing how and when the attack will come, we can’t position ourselves to stop it—and telling this to Sage is more likely to get us thrown out of the Academy as anything else, where our ability to do something will drop to a heroic zero. The headmaster’s precious Prowess team and their parents are going nowhere.
I freeze.
Precious Prowess team. The eye of this whole blasted storm.
The fragments of an idea start forming in my mind. “Maybe Coal and I are only two people,” I say slowly, the fragments knitting tighter together, sending dread spiraling into my gut. “But I think I know how to get us into a better defensive position.”
2
Lera
“MEAWRRR!” With a battle cry that far exceeds his tiny body, Minion leaps off the arena scaffolding, bounces off Coal, and lands in Arisha’s arms.
Coal and I step away in unison, into the shadow of the towering bleachers.
In the brightly shining sun that makes my underclothes stick to my skin, the new arena looms over the Academy’s vast central courtyard, an oval monstrosity of soaring wooden struts, canvas-walled changing rooms for each team’s athletes, and a tall white-tented platform on one side where Sage and his most honored guests will watch the ceremonies. And, in just a few days’ time, the students’ final exams.
Where before the massive structure only annoyed me, now it makes my breath come short. The plan I hatched last night feels like an absurd dream this afternoon, presided over by this abomination of wood, canvas, and steel.
The grandiose stadium is just one of many changes to sweep over Great Falls, transforming the Academy grounds from a somber, orderly fortress to…whatever this is. The smells of sawdust and ovens working overtime permeate everything now, drowning out summer grass and nodding flowers. And as if the construction sounds and constant buzz of voices weren’t disrupting enough, we have to build in extra time to get from the dining hall back to the library, whe
re we’re headed now for a postlunch Guild meeting, as we can’t simply cut across the grass anymore.
No corner of the Academy has been left untouched. Every spare room of the keep is being set up into suites for the soon-to-come royals, and most of the east practice rings have been disassembled to create a separate riding arena for the equine events. Their brightly painted jumping fences are already in place. Colorful flags representing every kingdom, the Prowess Trials, and the Academy itself hang from seemingly every surface and tree limb, the ribbons catching on branches as often as fluttering in the wind. The snap snap snap of standards is so voluminous to my immortal hearing that it feels like an invasion of tiny drummers has settled into every nook and cranny.
The Prowess Trials, I’ve learned, divide into three disciplines: control, combat, and constitution. Control, by far the premier tier of the competition, has athletes of Tye’s caliber navigating their bodies through spectacular, and seemingly incompatible-with-life, feats. Far below that, combat includes the swordsmanship, horseback riding, and archery competitions, while constitution includes the more basic running, jumping, and lifting events.
“There you are, Minion.” Arisha nuzzles the orange-striped kitten, who rubs his ears against her with pious love. “I was so worried.”
Coal rubs the three long bloody lines on the back of his hand. “ I thought Sh…Ruffle was taking care of…that,” he mutters to me with a glower, as if I have anything whatsoever to do with the fur ball. “What kind of self-respecting wolf is unable to get rid of a two-pound threat?”
Cuddled in Arisha’s arms, Minion turns his head and yawns at Coal, leisurely extending the razor-sharp claws of his front paws.
“It’s not Ruffle’s fau…” My words trail off at the sight of a lithe red-haired male exiting the keep. My whole body tightens painfully, as it always does now when I see Tye. With his fast healing and faster talking, my reporting him to Shade led only to a ten-day rest from his training regimen. Not long enough to get him pulled from the team, but plenty long enough to have him—and all the Prowess athletes—declare me their arch nemesis. “He is never going to forgive me, is he?”
