Institute of the Shadow Fae Box Set

by C. N. Crawford

  I folded my arms. “It would have been nice to have been offered one.” I shook my head. “Sorry, I’m getting sidetracked.”

  “Are you here to ask about shadow-leaping?” She beamed. “You must have heard I’m very good at it.”

  “Um, not really. I was hoping you knew something about seduction.”

  She stared at me. “Do I seem like the type of person who would know anything about seduction?”

  “Not particularly. Not at all, really. But you’re the only woman here.”

  She cocked her head. “You do know that the knights are forbidden from taking on any lovers.”

  Conceal your true intentions.

  I rolled my eyes. “Of course I know that. It’s just that they’re not forbidden from killing novices. And I thought—if I really need it someday—seducing Ruadan might be a reasonable protection against getting killed by him. You know, getting him to like me.”

  Her features cleared, and she eyed me dubiously. “I’m not sure if that makes sense.”

  “Obviously, it’s not like we can have conversations,” I pointed out. “Seduction is my only defense.”

  This seemed to convince her, and she nodded. “Yes. Of course. It’s not the worst idea in the world.” Her forehead creased as she thought about it. “You know, I don’t think there’s a lot to it. I don’t think you have to do anything fancy. I think men just like naked women. And you’re beautiful. I don’t think it’s more complicated than that.”

  “Really? So … I should get naked?”

  “I believe so. Men like bared breasts, especially.” She frowned at my chest. “And yours are fairly large.”

  “I mean, you’re not wrong, and men definitely like breasts, but….” It couldn’t be that simple, could it? And yet, the more I thought about it, the more I thought this sounded completely accurate. “Okay, thanks.”

  “Sure. I’ll see you tomorrow night for the trial.”

  “Of course.” Unless I managed to seduce the key away from Ruadan before then.

  I found Ruadan in his room, engaging in his favorite, super pro-social activity: knife-sharpening. His blade glinted, and he didn’t even bother to look up at me as I crossed into the room.

  Melusine’s suggestion about bare breasts had seemed totally sensible in her room. But now, as I stood before a fae-demon who’d murdered his last two novices, I couldn’t quite figure out how to just casually throw off my clothes without it being weird. Granted, Ruadan and Bael were fine with being naked, but it wasn’t normal to me. I loved my body and I felt beautiful, but that didn’t mean I’d just casually strip off in front of people.

  I ran my fingertips over my ribs, where I felt one of the ridges of my scars. He’d offered to heal me before, hadn’t he? Maybe that would be a sufficient pretense. The thing was, I didn’t want them healed. I liked myself exactly the way I was, and each scar was a victory. But I’d do anything for Ciara.

  Ciarianna would rise again.

  I glanced in the gleaming reflection of one of his axes. I looked pretty enough, I thought. I pinched my cheeks a little to make them pink.

  Ruadan was still looking down at his knives as he sharpened them. I took a deep breath. I sat at the edge of his bed and pulled off my boots. Then pulled off my dress, dropping it on a pile of my other clothes. The cold fortress air whispered over my skin as I stood in the middle of his room, just in my sheer black bra and knickers.

  Ruadan was still looking down at his knives, pretending I wasn’t in the room at all. I looked down at myself, then traced my fingertips over the ridge of a scar by my hipbone. A hellhound had caught me with an ax. I’d killed him by bashing his skull in with a rock. I was much more at home with that sort of mission than with the sheer bra sort of mission.

  The boobs were sexy. The legacy of death maybe wasn’t so much. But the scars were mine, and I hated to part with them.

  Still, I crossed to Ruadan, and he lifted his gaze. His body went completely rigid at the sight of me. Sharp tendrils of his magic sliced through the air, menacing and ferocious.

  Shadows darkened his eyes. I couldn’t exactly tell if he liked what he saw or if he wanted to murder me in that moment, but either way, I felt completely vulnerable standing before him. The intensity of his gaze hit me like a wave of powerful magic, and my breath caught in my throat.

  I touched one of the scars by my ribs. “You said you could heal me. Can you heal my scars?”

  A long moment passed, and he eyed me with that eerie stillness. Then, he shifted and started writing on his piece of paper.

  I will heal your new wounds. Not the old ones.

  “Why?”

  Because they don’t need to be healed.

  He was right. The wounds from the King of Mammon were still raw, and they hurt whenever I coughed or sat up too fast. The rest were just superficial. They didn’t need to be healed.

  “Fine.”

  He held out a hand to me, beckoning me closer, and I closed the distance between us.

  As I stood in front of him, he brushed his fingertips over the wound on my abdomen. He curled one hand around me and it rested on my lower back. With the other, he traced over my skin around the cut. I stared as dark magic curled from his fingertips over my skin, snaking over the reddened marks. I was acutely aware of the fact that, with him sitting down and me standing up, my breasts were about level with his head. I couldn’t quite pinpoint it, but something about the studied intensity with which Ruadan ignored my breasts suggested to me that he was actually completely focused on them. Melusine had been right.

  The dull ache in my abdomen subsided completely.

  The other new wound marred my hip, and I tugged down the side of my knickers to expose it. His hand on my back tensed, his other reaching for my hip. Before he touched my skin, his hand tightened into a fist, as if he were restraining himself. I was definitely having an effect on him.

  I’m not sure what compelled me to do it, but I took another step forward, then slid into his lap.

  Being this close to him, heat built within me. Now, his eyes were locked on mine as he traced his fingertips over my hip, inside my knickers. His magic stroked my body.

  Then, as soon as he’d healed my second scar, he pulled his hand away from me, and he straightened.

  I understood that was my cue to get off his lap. Fine. Boobs or not, seduction was not part of my skill set. But I was certain he’d felt something, and I was making some progress to getting closer to his chest.

  I crossed back to my dress and pulled it on over my head. “So, are you going to teach me to shadow-jump?”

  No key yet. But I could learn a new skill while I was at it. After I stole from the Seneschal, shadow-leaping might come in very handy.

  Chapter 20

  By Ruadan’s side, I walked down a cobbled road in East London. To our left, an overground train line loomed over a dark park. Apparently, this is where I was supposed to practice shadow-leaping.

  Ruadan wore not one, but two swords strapped to his back, doubling his intimidation factor. As we’d moved through the streets of East London, terrified humans had fled from our path.

  We crossed into the grassy park, and a flicker of movement caught my eye. It took me a moment to register that I was staring at a man’s naked arse, thrusting into the earth. When he looked back at us, terror paled his features, and he scrambled to stand and pull up his trousers.

  “Uncle Darrell?” I whispered under my breath.

  Ruadan must have heard me, because he turned to raise his eyebrows at me. I stared at Uncle Darrell, who was now sprinting across the park away from us. For a moment, I contemplated telling Ruadan that if he ever wanted to commune with the earth, he needed to bury the whole ballsack, not just the shaft. But I thought better of it as soon as I remembered that he had no sense of humor whatsoever.

  Moonlight silvered the park, and mist curled around a few sparse trees. Under the elevated train track, shadows pooled in dark arches. Something about this place ga
ve me the shivers, and I wanted to fill the silence.

  “I’ve been here before,” I said. “There’s magic in this place.”

  We moved along a cobbled road that cut into the park. Dandelions dappled overgrown grasses. To our right stood brick walls that might be two centuries old. To our left, a rickety wooden house on stilts loomed over the train tracks—maybe a switching station at one time, long since abandoned. A small city farm stood on one side of the fields, complete with vegetable patches, chickens, goats, and a pig.

  Acrid smoke rose from a burning car, probably stolen, abandoned in one of the Victorian train arches. “Not all magic comes from the gods or from spells,” I said. “This is the magic of things that don’t belong together. This is the magic of weird, forgotten places. Farms, burnt cars. Dandelions. Goats.” I pointed to a tree, where sneakers dangled from the branches. Some crazy person had tied them there. “Shoes hanging like fruit from the boughs. See what I mean?”

  Ruadan’s eyes slid to me, and I thought I saw a sparkle of curiosity, but he was probably wondering if I’d lost my mind.

  “I know,” I said. “We have shadow-leaping to practice.”

  Ruadan pulled the glowing lumen stone from his pocket. Then, he stepped closer and clasped it around the back of my neck. His piney scent enveloped me.

  As soon as the clasp shut, I felt that overwhelming rush of magical power. Darkness swam in my mind, but I managed to clamp down on my most disturbing thoughts.

  Still, energy flooded me, and the coldness of the shadow void spilled through my veins and tendons like ink, freezing my bones. I stared up into Ruadan’s cold, violet eyes. He didn’t need a lumen stone at all, because this magic was part of him, as innate to him as walking was to me.

  I tried channeling the magic, tried using the stones beneath me to ground it. And yet try as I might, it seemed as if a frozen void had opened up within my chest. An unending pit of ice. I’d mastered the power before, but now, my muscles started to seize up.

  As soon as Ruadan put his hands on my waist, some of the panic began to subside.

  I stared into his eyes, and I found the magic of night glimmering there.

  Moonlight sculpted the perfect planes of his face. It unnerved me to have the full power of his gaze on me, but it excited me, too.

  “Are you going to have to touch me every time I wear this lumen stone?” Sometimes I had a bad habit of nervously filling silence with chatter. “Because it might get weird when we’re trying to fight the incubi and you have to keep sticking your hand up my dress.”

  No answer, of course. The coldness deepened within my chest.

  Shut up, Arianna. Shut up.

  I breathed in deeply, focusing on channeling the freezing magic throughout my body. Slowly, I started to absorb it and to disperse it more evenly.

  Ruadan’s eyes flared with silver. Once again, something was passing between us—an electrical charge, a pulsing, sexual energy. An intense ache burned through my body. He was definitely an incubus, and the heat of his sensual magic melted the coldness of the shadows within me.

  He let out a low growl, fingers tightening on me. Then, with a move both quick and rough, he pulled me closer. He thrust his fingers into my hair and once more pulled my head back. His gaze pierced me.

  This time, he crushed his lips against mine, and lust arced through me. His kiss was carnal, demanding. Heat shot through my belly as I responded to its unflinching ferocity. I opened my mouth, my tongue sliding against his.

  The kiss deepened, growing wilder, and I ached for him. His grip on me tightened. Something about the intensity of the kiss made me feel like I was an answer to a question he’d been asking all his life.

  His magic stroked my skin, licking between my legs, and hot ecstasy spiraled through me. I had no idea what was happening anymore, or how words worked, or what we were doing in the park. I just wanted more from him, wanted his tongue to swirl over my body…. Heat ignited in me, so powerful that it warmed the frigid pit in my chest. When he nipped my lower lip, my knees went weak, and I think I moaned.

  But just as soon as it had begun, he pulled away from me. Of course, kissing was forbidden to a Shadow Fae. My breath was hitching in my throat, and I tried to slow my breathing even as my legs trembled.

  He released his grip on me, and he took a step back, shadows snaking around him. Lust still flooded me. Definitely an incubus. I touched my lips, stunned that he’d kissed me at all.

  My heart thundered against my ribs. Play it off cool, Arianna. Play it off cool.

  “Not a big deal.” I actually said those words out loud. “Just a kiss, whatever.”

  Like I said. When I was nervous, I tended to chatter.

  If it was a tactic to help me control the magic, the kiss had worked. The coldness of the shadow magic no longer overwhelmed me. It surged along my skin, swirling through my muscles—an electric, crackling power. But I controlled it. The heat generated by Ruadan’s lust magic had definitely countered the iciness of the shadow magic.

  I looked down at my hands, at the soft wisps of dark magic that spiraled from my fingertips.

  “You’re an incubus, right?” I asked.

  One nod confirmed my theory.

  As an incubus, Ruadan controlled magic through sexual energy. That meant he could draw power from sexual energy, channel magic—heal from it, even. It also meant that he’d known exactly how turned on I’d been around him, which was slightly mortifying. Particularly since I had no idea whatsoever what he was thinking or feeling.

  I folded my arms. “I thought incubi were supposed to enjoy themselves. You don’t speak, don’t drink alcohol, don’t have lovers because the Institute won’t allow it. You must be very conflicted.”

  A low growl told me it was time to drop the subject.

  With a few deep breaths, I managed to master some of my overwhelming desire, but that kiss had knocked the ground out from under me. I’d been about twenty seconds away from stripping my clothes off right here in this park—even after I’d seen what Uncle Darrell had done to defile the poor earth.

  I glanced at my fingertips, transfixed by the smoky magic that curled from them.

  To my surprise, Ruadan reached out and lifted my chin so that I was meeting his startling gaze. Then, he pointed to the farm—at a goat pen, in fact.

  “Okay. You want me to jump into the goat pen?” Magic sizzled over my skin. Maybe Bael had been right, and Ruadan was an excellent mentor in his own weird, slightly insane way. After all, I now possessed powerful magic, and I was about to learn how to use it.

  And yet…. “Before I jump into the goat pen, can we talk about the thing where you murdered two of your novices? Is that right, or was it just a rumor?”

  When he started writing on the piece of paper again, I fully expected it to come back with some kind of denial.

  Instead, what he handed back to me was simply the word:

  Executed.

  No other explanation. No excuses or context. Just a stark reminder of what was at stake here. If I failed to impress the Shadow Fae, I’d be executed. If I stole from them and ran off with the key, I’d be executed.

  And yet if I didn’t, Ciara would die.

  While I was mulling over this shitty predicament, Ruadan touched my arm. He pointed once more at the farm, urging me to jump.

  “Right. To the goat pen.” I stared across the field, at the goats, unable to conceive how I could just shift myself over there. Bael had said that I would be jumping from one shadow to another by connecting to the shadow’s darkness. Since it was nighttime, shadows surrounded us, but I wasn’t exactly sure how to meld with them.

  All I knew was that the first step would be to move away from Ruadan, whose masculine scent was distracting me.

  I took a few steps away from him, breathing in the night air. I picked through the scents of burning rubber and leather from the car, the chicken coop, the grass, the pigpen, the goat fur, the old chicken bones someone had left out nearby … the dozen
s of other smells. I tuned in just to that burnt air smell. That was the smell of shadow magic.

  I stared at the uneven wood of the goat pen, my gaze locked in on the pool of darkness in one corner.

  Magic crackled over me, and coldness spilled through my blood. I let my mind go blank, filling with shadows. Mentally, I felt myself meld with the darkest corner of the pen. Then, I leapt.

  I slammed into a wooden gate post and fell back on my arse in the mud.

  The goat brayed. With a jolt, I realized the fucker was running for me, his bell ringing. As I jumped to my feet, he head-butted me, and I fell back again. A goat hoof trampled on my hand. For a fraction of a second, I considered punching him, but there was definitely something morally dubious about punching a goat in the face.

  As I struggled to stand with the goat smashing into me, knocking me off balance, my gaze flicked back to the park. I let my mind fill with shadows, my sights locked on the dark point beneath an apple tree. I communed with that shadow, and the darkness within me connected to it. In the next moment, I was there, free from my goaty attacker.

  Then, I focused on Ruadan. In the night, he appeared like a pool of ink, two vibrant violet eyes peering out from a void. Like a black hole, the Wraith sucked in light and trapped it within his sphere.

  I tuned into his shadows, to the dizzying, icy power within them, and I jumped. I slammed into Ruadan, and it was like hitting a brick wall. I stumbled back, but this time, I managed to regain my balance.

  I crossed my arms, glaring at him. “Did you know that goat would attack?”

  Seriously. No idea why I kept asking him questions at this point.

  Ruadan reached behind his back, drawing his two longswords. He handed one to me.

  I grasped it by the hilt. I was much more comfortable with the sword than I was leaping around goats. But I was pretty sure I knew what Ruadan wanted me to do.

  “You want me to fight you while we’re shadow-leaping, right?” I asked.

  Ruadan nodded.

  I had to admit, the idea of mastering this skill was thrilling. This would be an astounding advantage in a fight against someone who couldn’t use it. Only problem was, it depended on me having access to a lumen stone. Baleros didn’t have one, and I was guessing they weren’t easy to come by.