Royals of Villain Academy 4: Horrid Charms

by Eva Chase

  “Oh, no? So you haven’t forgotten that you can’t have her if you still want to be baron.”

  “Of course not.” That fact weighed on me every time I looked at Rory.

  “The girl is a threat to the stability of the pentacle and your mother’s work there,” my father said darkly. “You know we want to see her beaten down, not wooed.”

  “I thought you were taking care of that aspect yourselves now.”

  That tossed-out comment might have been too careless. My mother’s gaze sharpened. “What exactly do you mean by that?”

  If she knew that Rory had found out about the barons’ involvement, they’d pull out all the stops to utterly crush her before the hearing even happened. My pulse hiccupped.

  “I understand the barons are all refusing to support her in challenging the charges against her,” I said, fumbling for an answer she’d believe. “Normally you’d stand by a fellow baron.”

  “She’s not baron yet.” My mother sucked in a sharp breath. “Has she been speaking against the rest of the pentacle, then?”

  Shit. “No,” I said quickly. “Jude mentioned that his father said something along those lines.” And hopefully I hadn’t just landed my friend in a heap of trouble too. I might have the physical strength and the magical power to more than hold my own among my peers, but I’d never been known for quick wits. I couldn’t match my mother in verbal sparring. How the hell could I get through this confrontation without turning it into a catastrophe?

  The answer came to me in a rare flash of brilliance—so brilliant that I hesitated as I turned the idea over in my head to make sure I wasn’t tricking myself. But no, that should work to get my parents off my back and protect Rory from their prodding. And the strategy was simple enough that it only required one lie.

  I adjusted my stance, cocking my head to one side. “I thought you’d be happy about the progress I’ve made. I’m in the perfect position, don’t you think?”

  My mother raised her eyebrows. “The perfect position for what?”

  “To find out what Rory is thinking about, how she plans to fight the charges—what she decides to do afterward. To undermine the decisions that would put her in a better position to oppose you. She trusts me now. She’ll listen to me. I can get a lot more mileage out of that than bullying her.”

  A slow, cruel smile crept across my mother’s face. I had to restrain a shudder at the sight of it. She glanced at my father. “Look at our heir, coming into his own. I was starting to think I wouldn’t see the day.”

  The implied criticism in those words would have stung more if I’d actually wanted to live up to their example. With everything I knew about them, after everything they’d put me through, I was happy to be charting my own path.

  I would have felt satisfied that the gambit had worked so well if my mother hadn’t turned to me a moment later with a calculating gleam in her eyes. I’d learned a long time ago to be on guard whenever I saw that expression on her face.

  “You can do something for us right away, then,” she said, raising her chin. “Put a worm in your new girlfriend’s ear.”

  I hadn’t bargained on having my bluff called this quickly. But maybe I could still work around her request. “What kind of worm?” I asked.

  She ambled a little ways into the clearing and then back toward me, the strength in her movements turning the stroll into more of a prowl. “The barons have discussed lending our support to Bloodstone’s cause, if she concedes to our very reasonable requirements. Baron Nightwood will be coming to put the proposal to her tomorrow. It would be in everyone’s favor, including hers—and yours—if she accepts the deal. So use this influence you’ve gained to advise her in the right direction. That shouldn’t be too difficult for you, should it?”

  The slight edge in her voice told me she hadn’t totally meant her praise about me coming into my own. She might believe I’d seduced Rory with malicious intentions, but she wasn’t confident I could follow through. She knew I wasn’t a skilled schemer just as well as I did.

  “Encourage her to take the deal?” I said. “I should be able to manage that. She doesn’t want to have to go through with the hearing as it is.” That much was true but vague enough that I couldn’t see it hurting Rory any for me to have said it.

  My mother’s smile grew. “Excellent. Let’s see how well your powers of persuasion—magical and otherwise—have grown. And here I was thinking you might need a little more motivation to really find your footing as scion.”

  Something in her tone turned my blood cold. “More motivation?”

  She nodded casually and rested her hand on my father’s arm. “We’ve worried that you’ve been held back by qualms about the past. You won your position fair and square. There’s no shame in how it happened. But maybe it would be easier for you to focus on where you are now if the last traces of that past were gone. We’ve been looking into facilities that take people like Holden when it’s no longer ideal for them to remain at home.”

  Every particle in my body stiffened in resistance. “I don’t think that should be necessary,” I said carefully. To my relief, my voice came out steady, even though my heart was thudding. “I barely think about Holden anymore as it is.”

  Please, let them not know about my periodic visits to my brother’s quarters in the Stormhurst home. Please, let this be only a threat they don’t see the need to follow through on. Lord only knew what would happen to Holden if they decided to cut him off from the family completely.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” my mother said. “In that case, I suppose there isn’t any rush. It’s an option we can keep on the table if it seems necessary in future.” She nodded in satisfaction. “I’m so glad we could have this talk.”

  I wished I could feel half as pleased with it. As we set off back toward campus, the full impact of the threat sank in.

  I’d bought myself a little time with Rory—but how long would I need to pretend to be double-crossing her to ensure my brother’s safety? And what would happen to all of us if I couldn’t pull the ploy off convincingly enough?

  Chapter Fourteen

  Rory

  The only thing worse than having to get up for an early class after a fantastic date was having that class with your most disapproving teacher. I showed up for the Physicality workshop with a minute to spare and my clothes and hair pretty well in order considering I’d only woken up half an hour ago, but Professor Viceport followed my trek to the last remaining worktable with a look of disdain. She might not have been eager to see me convicted of murder, but she still didn’t exactly like me.

  She cleared her throat to begin class, but a guy farther down the same row as me raised his hand in the air with a question. One of Viceport’s eyebrows arched, but she nodded to him. “Yes?”

  “I was trying to fix something in my dorm this morning using a Physicality spell,” the guy said, “but I had to stop because the feeb who’s—”

  “I’d prefer we stay above base slang in this class,” Viceport interrupted. “You mean a Nary dormmate of yours?”

  The guy gave a brief grimace that could have been in embarrassment at a misstep or annoyance that he wasn’t allowed to use the insult—it was hard to tell. “Yes. Exactly. Because he was hanging out in the common room, I had to stop. It got me wondering about why we try so hard to keep our powers secret from the—from the Naries in the first place. I know all the stuff everyone says about caution and so on, but we’re way more powerful than they are. Would it really be so awful if they knew that?”

  Viceport offered a considering nod, leaning her slimly elegant frame back against her desk. “An interesting question, Mr. Cutbridge. Somewhat beyond the usual scope of my teaching, but certainly relevant to every area of magic. We can take a little time to discuss it.”

  My back stiffened at his name. Cutbridge. There’d been a Cutbridge on Professor Banefield’s list of the barons and their allies. Could it have been this guy, even though those notes had gone back years and
he didn’t look any older than me? Probably not, but almost definitely a relative—his dad or grandfather or an uncle… even an older cousin.

  Which didn’t mean my classmate necessarily had nefarious intentions, but his use of the derogatory term for Naries and his general attitude had already raised my hackles.

  Professor Viceport glanced around the room. “Can anyone share their understanding of our policy of discretion?”

  At the back of the room, Victory raised her hand. My long-time nemesis hadn’t spoken to me—had barely looked at me—since Malcolm had told her off a couple weeks ago, but her presence still made my skin twitch warily.

  “We have more freedom if we don’t have to navigate Nary rules or expectations about magic,” she said in a pert voice. With the teachers, she was always on her best behavior. “Our powers allow us to work around them pretty easily, and if they knew about us, it’d just cause a whole lot of extra stress.”

  “Yeah, but we’re letting that policy restrict us too,” the Cutbridge guy said. “Families aren’t supposed to have more than two kids so our society doesn’t get too big to stay hidden. We’re always having to keep a look out and disguise or hold off on using magic if we’re anywhere outside fearmancer properties.”

  “Both of those points are true,” Viceport said. “It’s very rare that there’s one obvious right way of handling a societal issue. What usually happens is we decide on what causes the fewest problems for the greatest number of people, and staying hidden has accomplished that goal so far. If we were to start using magic openly, how do you think the much larger Nary population would respond?”

  “They’d be scared,” the girl behind me said. “They’d think we’re monsters or mutants or something like that.”

  “Yeah,” the guy beside her piped up. “They’d try to… to exterminate us or at least imprison us to make sure we couldn’t hurt them.”

  “I’m pretty sure we’d come out of that fight on top,” Cutbridge said. “I mean… we do have magic.”

  “But why have some big war at all?” Victory asked. “And then, what, we’d have to be constantly watching our backs afterward in case they tried to attack us again?”

  Cutbridge shrugged. “We could convince them it’s in their best interests to let us do our thing. Then we’d be the ones in charge, calling the shots. We wouldn’t have to hide from anyone.”

  Professor Viceport gave him a wry smile. “I’m not sure the scenario you’re proposing would be all that simple to achieve. And many of us have no interest in ruling over the entire population of Naries. Let them live their lives, and we live ours, governing our own. If the barons felt we’d be better off otherwise, I’m sure they’d propose as much.”

  Her gaze slid to me for just a second, as if she thought I might contribute some political comment. I was still getting used to being a fearmancer—I wasn’t really qualified to weigh in on global issues just yet.

  “Well, I think it’d be amazing,” Cutbridge said, apparently needing to get the last word, and then let the subject drop so Viceport could get on with the actual class. I made a mental note to pay extra attention to what he was up to around campus.

  The workshop was almost over when Viceport’s phone pinged with an alert. She took a brief glance at it, and her mouth tightened.

  “Miss Bloodstone,” she said, shooting me a narrow glance with no effort at all to keep the message private. “Ms. Grimsworth would like to see you once class is out.”

  Why would the headmistress want to see me right now? I fumbled my final conjuring a little in my distraction, which didn’t win me any points with the professor. As soon as she dismissed us, I hurried over to Killbrook Hall.

  Ms. Grimsworth had generally been a supportive if distant figure since I’d arrived on campus. I hadn’t seen any reason to consider her an outright enemy. So I wasn’t feeling that nervous until she answered her office door and I saw it wasn’t just the two of us.

  Malcolm’s dad, Baron Nightwood, was standing by the other side of her desk, his arms folded over his chest. Seeing him was just as disorienting as the first time. He looked so much like his son, only a little tighter in the face and grayer in the hair with age.

  The last—and first—time I’d talked to him, he’d frozen me in place and made it clear he intended to make me regret any disrespect. And since then, of course, I’d found out he was part of, if not the leader of, the plot to crush me into subservience. If I were making a list of people I least wanted to talk to, he’d be right at the top.

  I gave him a slight dip of my head as I came in, figuring a minor show of respect couldn’t hurt anything, anyway. I was hardly in a position to do battle with the most powerful fearmancer in the country, as the thin weight of the silver cuffs on my wrists gave extra evidence to.

  “Thank you for coming so quickly, Miss Bloodstone,” Ms. Grimsworth said. “Baron Nightwood wished to have a conference with you, and I’m lending him the use of my office.” Her tone gave away no sign of whether she liked the idea of this meeting. She turned to the baron. “Naturally, the room is fully warded to ensure all conversation within stays private.”

  “I’d expect nothing less,” Baron Nightwood said.

  He waited until she’d disappeared into her private quarters before sinking into her chair behind the desk. I wavered on my feet, not sure whether I should sit too or keep standing there awkwardly. At least standing I could more easily make a run for the door if I felt the need to flee.

  “It appears you’ve found yourself in something of a quandary,” the baron said, leaning back in the chair in a casual pose. His expression was contemplative but not hostile. “Have you made much progress toward building a defensive case for your hearing?”

  As if I intended to discuss my progress with him of all people. “I’ve gained some ground,” I said vaguely. The truth was I still wasn’t sure I had a hope in hell of getting through the hearing unsanctioned, especially with him and the other barons pulling the strings behind the scenes, but I wasn’t going to admit that.

  The baron hummed to himself as if he could guess what I wasn’t saying. “It does seem to be a rather complicated situation. Unfortunate that you’ve made so many enemies in your short time here that someone would go to such lengths to besmirch you, assuming that’s your story.” Even though it was just the two of us, and he knew I was innocent as well as I did, he worked a clear note of skepticism into his voice.

  I fought to keep my teeth from gritting. “I didn’t kill anyone.”

  “The other barons and I don’t much care whether you did or not,” Baron Nightwood said. “The Wakeburn girl was no one of consequence. Your carelessness, if you were responsible, is a separate matter. Our main concern is for the pentacle. So, I’ve come in my official capacity to extend an offer of support.”

  I controlled my reaction as well as I could, but I was pretty sure my eyes bulged. “I—what?” Hadn’t Baron Killbrook just dismissed Jude’s request for help? There had to be a catch.

  And here it came. Baron Nightwood smiled coolly at me. “We’re willing to intercede on your behalf to ensure the hearing is decided in your favor. However, in consideration of those efforts and in light of your potentially reckless conduct, we would expect you to make some concessions to us in return.”

  Of course they would. I finally let myself sink into the chair across from him. “And what concessions would those be?”

  “Nothing all that involved. As is reasonable regardless of the charges, given how new you are to the community, we’d ask that you pick one of the three of us established barons as an advisor, established by official contract, for the next five years. Your decisions as baron would need to be discussed and agreed on with that advisor.”

  How very convenient for them. They wouldn’t be able to force me into a ruling I didn’t want, but I wouldn’t be able to outright object to or present proposals of my own unless they approved. Fuck that.

  “And?” I prompted, because he had said “conc
essions,” plural.

  He nodded to my arms. “And you would continue to wear those cuffs for the next year, with the monitoring of your magical usage handled by us.”

  So they’d also be able to keep track of every spell I cast, even those I was using to protect myself. My stomach knotted.

  “It isn’t very much compared to what you’ll face if you’re judged guilty of the murder of a magical peer,” Baron Nightwood said without any apparent concern. “But if we’re going to intervene, we have to begin proceedings now. So I’ll need your answer before I leave.”

  My pulse stuttered. They were really putting the pressure on. I looked down at my hands, willing my mind to focus despite the whirling of my thoughts.

  What he’d said was true. Giving one of the barons veto power and letting them monitor my magic for a set period of time was a hell of a lot better than the fate Declan had described, where they might take over my thoughts and actions completely. I didn’t have much of a defense yet. What if I gambled and said no, and then I lost? Wouldn’t it be smarter to take the safe route?

  But every part of me balked at the idea of giving in. They’d set me up in this situation, and now they were going to play savior?

  Why would they be making this offer at all if they were sure I couldn’t prove my innocence?

  I grasped onto that thought with a surge of resolve. They weren’t sure. That was the only explanation. They were worried I’d come out of this scenario without any sanctions placed, free to keep doing things my way, so they were willing to take a lesser advantage to ensure they won something.

  They’d orchestrated the trap. If they thought there might be a way out… I had to believe there was too. I still had a week to find it.

  I raised my head and looked Baron Nightwood straight in the eyes. “Thank you, but if I’m going to be judged innocent at the hearing, I’d prefer it to be because I proved I actually am.”

  A hint of surprise flickered across the baron’s face. He hadn’t really expected I’d decline.