My stomach loudly rumbled, giving away my hunger. “You can calm down with your menacing display of magic.” I pushed myself up, sitting upright. “You’re already dressed like a medieval undertaker. The shadows are just intimidation overkill.”
The wind rustled through the nearby leaves.
“Back to your silence, then. Even though you killed Baleros and completed your task.” I pushed a lock of sodden lavender hair out of my eyes. “Did you know that dinosaur porn exists?”
So quiet it was almost inaudible, I heard a low growl rumble from Ruadan’s chest, and the sound trembled through my gut.
The silence stretched on. Then, as I looked up at Ruadan, a wild roar rent the air. My body tensed, as a burst of flame cut across the sky. The dragon had found me, and he was dive-bombing again, unleashing his fire.
Ruadan unsheathed the sword on his back, whirling to face the dragon. An intense pulse of icy magic burst through the air, and violet magic danced over his sword.
As the dragon raced for us—only twenty feet away now—shadow-magic exploded from Ruadan’s sword. It slammed into the dragon’s chest, and ice frosted the creature’s scales. Instantly, the dragon’s flames were snuffed out. As it screeched to a stop on the pavement, Ruadan leapt. He swung his blade, and it carved into the dragon’s neck. Blood arced into the air.
The dragon’s head rolled onto the pavement, his dark eyes wide. The creature’s body shuddered, then slumped to the ground with a loud thud. The two detached pieces—head and body—shifted back into their human form one final time.
When Ruadan turned back to me, cold fury had darkened his eyes. I couldn’t say he looked particularly happy to see me.
I stood, my teeth chattering. I crossed my arms, wishing I’d worn something other than white for my little river swim. My dress looked completely transparent, and I felt vulnerable enough standing in front of Ruadan.
Ruadan crossed to a plane tree, just behind the dragon shifter’s headless corpse. To my surprise, he knelt before the tree. He lifted his sword, and plunged it into the soil that surrounded the tree’s base. He bowed his head, as if in prayer. His body glowed with violet light, and I breathed in his scent—apples and pine. It was a strangely seductive smell, one that curled around my shivering body, warming me from the inside out.
It took me a moment to figure out what he was doing, until I cast my mind back to Grand Master Savus’s little history lesson. The Shadow Fae didn’t think of themselves as assassins. They viewed themselves as servants of the old fae gods—gods who demanded sacrifices. In Ruadan’s mind, the dragon’s death had been a sacrifice—blood to feed the soil of those older than even the fae.
When he rose, the coldness in his eyes sent a shiver up my spine. They had gone completely dark.
Shadows in an incubus’s eyes meant one of two things: he was turned on, or he wanted to kill someone. And unless I was way off about Ruadan’s tastes, I didn’t imagine that dragon decapitation got him in the mood.
I cleared my throat. “You said you’d find me, and now you have. Well done. Your tracking abilities are without parallel.”
His silence never failed to unnerve me, and his low growl slid through my bones. As his eyes pierced me, a gust of wind toyed with his hair. His tightly coiled body language was that of an animal about to attack its prey.
I heaved a sigh. “How I’ve missed your sparkling personality.” I touched the lumen stone at my neck. “I thought you could speak again, now that you killed Baleros.”
Blood-chilling stillness from the Wraith. I was starting to get the impression he was annoyed that I’d been using the lumen stone to burgle gold.
“Look, I’m staying with my human friend, Ciara,” I said. “She and I needed to eat. You said you’d be back for me, and that I wasn’t finished at the Institute. But I had no idea when that would be. We spent a month in Scotland, unemployed and starving. I managed to find a bar job for one week, but my boss thought he could withhold my paycheck until I showed him my boobs. Naturally, I was forced to throw him through a window, after which point my employment was unceremoniously terminated. Which was absurd, frankly. Humans are so sensitive about scrapes and bruises.”
The only sound around us was the rushing of the river behind me. The lethal look in Ruadan’s eyes promised violence. Somehow, that was my cue to continue.
“So, we came back to London,” I went on. “I mean, it’s not like we could hide from the Shadow Fae, anyway. You know how to find me. Rufus wouldn’t hire us back. Do you know where we’ve been living?” I took a step closer, working up a bit of a temper. “In one of those burnt-out cars under the arches by that goat pen. That’s right. Just off the park where Uncle Darrell makes sweet, sweet love to the earth—a sight that has greeted me every morning for the past three weeks. That image will be forever burned into my mind, the dawn light ruddying his arse cheeks as he thrusts gamely into the soil. I blame you for this memory.”
I took another step closer, now jabbing him in the chest, which felt like poking a brick wall. “Before you wafted into my life in a puff of smoke, I had a job. I had a flat.” I cocked my head. “I know. I know. I didn’t have a fancy rock bed or black stones glittering in my walls like you have, but I had crisp packets on my floor. They were my crisp packets. My flat. My life. Now, I’m out of a job, out of a place to live. I’ve got no money. Do you know what I had for breakfast this morning? A half-eaten Egg McMuffin that a janitor threw out at Liverpool Street station. I’m starving, and so is Ciara.”
I lifted the lumen stone. “But at least you left me with this. So what’s the best way to get a shitload of money in one go? Shadow-leaping into a dragon-shifter’s flat. One bar of gold, and Ciara and I are set for decades. You can hardly fault me for that. It was perfectly reasonable.”
Ruadan loomed over me. His magic seemed to suck in the light from all around us, and flecks of starlight glinted in his eyes. It was hard to forget that he was a demigod—a god of the night.
He held out a black-gloved hand.
“Of course you want the gold. Because it’s not enough to take my job, my flat, and my vaguely functioning life. You also have to take the gold bar that’s rightfully mine by virtue of burglary.”
“It belongs to the Institute.”
“Interesting. So you can speak.”
He held out his hand to me. “The gold.”
“Fine.” I jammed my hand into my sodden backpack. I’d find another, more subtle way to steal if I had to. “The Institute are a bunch of thieves, you know that?” Perhaps this wasn’t the best night to go around accusing others of thievery, but irritation was simmering and I hadn’t thought of a better insult. “You’re the Mafia, just with swords and a pretense of sacrifice.”
“I don’t think you’ve fully absorbed the seriousness of your situation.”
I blinked, still irritated. “No, I haven’t absorbed anything whatsoever. Do you know why? Because you just stand there staring at me with your magic whipping all over the place and no words coming out of your mouth.” I jabbed him in the torso again, my finger crooking at the steel in his chest. “If you want me to absorb things, you can tell them to me in words. I will accept writing on paper. Am I on the kill list now, or am I coming back to the Institute?”
He pivoted, already stalking off into the shadows. “You’re coming with me.”
Of course, that wasn’t as many details as I’d hoped for, and I couldn’t say the timing was ideal.
“Now?” I hurried after him, gripping the straps of my backpack. I pulled off my headlamp, which had broken underwater. “Where are we going?”
“The Institute. You’re returning.”
“I live with my friend Ciara now.” I was giving too much away here. I was letting Ruadan know exactly how to get to me—the same way Baleros had. “I look after Ciara. She’s waiting for me to come home with some kind of food. If she stays on her own, she’s vulnerable. Honestly, we were just getting our lives back together.”
; A sweep of his eyes up and down my body gave me a hint of what he was thinking. Something along the lines of, What do you mean you are getting your life together? You look like a drowned Victorian prostitute and you live in a burnt car.
Or, I may have been projecting my own internal thoughts onto him. Hard to say.
He pivoted. “Let’s not forget the reality of your situation. You stole from the Institute. You stabbed me—”
“I did apologize. In written form, and I believe verbally. You really need to move on.”
“You failed to kill an enemy of the Institute when you had the chance. You used the Institute’s lumen stone to steal gold from a dragon. Do you know what Grand Master Savus would do to you if he knew about that?”
“Decapitation with an iron sword?” He talked about that a lot.
“Worse.” Shadows thickened around us, and the temperature dropped. My breath misted in front of my face at the chill in the air.
He took another step closer, and I shivered. “If you anger Grand Master Savus any further, the Shadow Fae will exalt you.”
My eyebrows shot up. “Exalt? That doesn’t sound bad. Exalt is a good thing, right?”
He shook his head. “In English, yes. I was using the Ancient Fae word. It’s an execution method involving evisceration with burning iron instruments.”
I winced. So I wasn’t on the kill list, but it didn’t sound like the situation was wonderful.
I let out a long, slow breath. Best not to piss him off more than I already had. “I get it. I’m sorry. I just had some responsibilities to take care of.” Namely, Ciara. I didn’t want to bang on about her though, in case I found the Institute using her as leverage, just as Baleros had.
His dark eyes lightened to violet once more, and his features softened, just a little. He stared at me for an uncomfortably long time before responding again. “I will send someone to collect your human.”
He really did have a way with words.
He stalked off again, and I picked up my pace to follow after him.
“What happened to the trials after I left the Institute?”
“Training.”
“For two months?” I asked, incredulous. I let out a sigh. “I guess it makes sense. Savus clearly has a favorite, doesn’t he? He wants Maddan to win. Too bad extra training won’t help that idiot.”
Silence.
“I take it my return to the Institute won’t be a warm welcome.”
Silence.
“Can I kill Maddan during one of the trials?”
“Savus would likely exalt you if you did.”
“That’s the bad kind of exalting, right?”
“He’d send every Shadow Fae from every institute in the world after you.” Ruadan’s rich voice rumbled through my gut. “Not to mention his mist army.”
I grimaced. “I heard about the mist army. Melusine said he acquired it by killing the last Grand Master.”
“Yes. And the point is, Maddan’s death would cost the Institute millions of pounds per year.”
I frowned. “Seems that no matter what I do, Savus wants to kill me. Why is he allowing me back into the Institute at all?”
“Because the Old Gods demand it. Choosing new Shadow Fae is their role. It’s up to the Grand Master to interpret their desires.”
As we moved closer to the Institute, my breath caught at the sight of the gleaming spires, light beaming into the night sky.
I quirked a smile. I imagined it would really piss off some of the fae nobility if the Old Gods favored a gutter fae ex-gladiator like me.
Chapter 34
Trailing behind Ruadan, I crossed the threshold into a vaulted chamber within the Institute. Here, the ceiling arched high above us like the spine of a great beast. Floral vines climbed the stone, and moonlight shone in through peaked windows. I’d never been in this room before.
It was 3:30 in the morning, and the entire Institute had shown up to watch my return. A long stone aisle led to Grand Master Savus’s throne, where the regal fae sat, a spindly silver crown gleaming on his head. A heavy mist curled around him, spooling from his fingertips. Guards flanked him on either side, each gripping an iron axe. My chest tightened at the sight of them.
The throne jutted from a stone floor, the back of it peaked like a second crown, glittering with dark jewels.
The other Shadow Fae lined the aisle. Aengus shot me a sharp look, his emerald eyes piercing—perhaps a bit irritated that I’d stabbed his friend.
But it wasn’t just the knights in attendance. The two remaining novices stood there as well.
Maddan—that prick—was wearing a gold crown over his autumn leaves and ginger hair. Lest anyone forget, he was a prince. He’d royally screwed up our last mission, stabbed me with a reaping dagger, and attempted to send me to the void, but that was fine. His father was a king, after all, and he had a pretty crown.
Given that Ruadan was characteristically silent all the way over here, I had no idea what I was in store for now. I only knew that the smug look on Maddan’s face meant it wouldn’t be pretty.
I followed a few paces behind Ruadan, crossing closer to Grand Master Savus. A phantom wind whispered through the hall, bringing up goosebumps on my skin.
In fact, the only friendly face in this hall was Melusine’s. She flicked a strand of blue hair out of her eyes, and flashed me a wary smile. She actually looked nervous for me. Also not a great sign.
When we were just five feet from the throne, Ruadan abruptly stopped.
Savus’s eyes flashed, and he leaned forward. “Kneel.” Venom laced his voice.
Baleros had enforced his authority in exactly the same way, in grand public displays. The sharp reminder of Baleros had my blood racing. That man loved nothing more than making a spectacle of his authority. Inwardly, my mind was raging. For just a moment, I envisioned myself ripping the spray deodorant and lighter out of my bug-out bag and greeting Grand Master Savus with a makeshift flamethrower.
But in a room full of Shadow Fae, the glory of that moment would not last long, and I suppressed the impulse. Most importantly, I needed to stay alive to make sure Ciara got fed. After all, Ruadan had promised someone would fetch my human, hadn’t he?
My stomach rumbled as I knelt on the cold stone floor. I was freezing in my soaked dress.
“Novice.” Savus’s deep voice rang off the high ceilings. “I wanted to run your body full of iron nails, or perhaps give you some time in the iron maiden. We haven’t exalted anyone in a while, and I was beginning to miss the spectacle of it.”
My chest tightened. I hadn’t expected hugs and margaritas, but this was a little bleaker than I’d anticipated.
“But your mentor persuaded me not to,” he continued. “He explained that you went temporarily insane from the reaping dagger.” For just a moment, his pale gaze flicked to Maddan. “And of course, your proximity to all the incubus magic drove you mad, and you found yourself wandering the streets of London, trying to satiate your lust—until Ruadan found you again.”
That was what Ruadan had told them? I shot the Wraith a sharp look, but the shadows around him had thickened so intensely that I could hardly see him. Just his violet eyes in clouds of dark magic.
“Your mentor,” Savus went on, “failed to control you.”
For just a moment, I felt a twinge of guilt for getting Ruadan in trouble, before reminding myself that I did not care.
“More importantly,” Savus’s voice boomed over the hall, “you have made me question if allowing female novices was a mistake. Or perhaps allowing those of your social class. Maybe our predecessors had a good reason for excluding your kind.” Ice laced his voice.
He was talking to me, but staring at Ruadan. Why? Did Savus have a problem with mongrels like us? I didn’t entirely understand what the situation was, but given the tension crackling between the two male fae, I was starting to get the distinct impression that they were not on the same page.
Savus’s gaze slid back to me, and he tapped h
is fingertips together.
“Because it seems that the Old Gods have favored you so far, we have removed you from the kill list. I put the trials on hold while you were away, communing with the Old Gods to divine their will. It seems they wanted your return. Assuming no one else stabs you with a reaping dagger, perhaps your skills could be of value to the Old Gods. If you can win the next three trials, I will continue to assume they favor you. If you fail any of the trials, then you will die a slow and painful death. Unfortunately, you have missed a bit of training. Oh well.”
Maddan’s eyes were fixed straight ahead, but his face was beaming. He was looking forward to my “slow and painful death.” On my knees, I felt a hot flash of fury when I looked at him. He was a prince, and that meant he could get away with anything.
“However, the Institute does not tolerate insubordination. If you defy us, at some point, the favor of the Old Gods will turn against you. I had warned all the novices that you could not lose the lumen stone, or you would be executed with an iron axe. You chose to steal it from us.” Something in his smile reminded me of a cat eyeing its prey. “I can hardly let you just waltz back in here to rejoin our ranks, can I?”
The stone floor bit into my knees as I knelt, and my fingers curled into fists. I wanted to say that I’d never asked for any of this. During the years when supernaturals were ferried off to the magical realms, I’d been locked in a cage. I’d emerged into a world where I was breaking the law just by existing.
Savus leaned back in his throne. “It’s clear to me that you must be punished. Your new lodgings will be in the Palatial Room. If you are able to win every trial, we will reconsider your value, and perhaps you will even find a place here, after serving your penance. However, I find it hard to believe the Old Gods will favor you for long.”
The Palatial Room? That didn’t sound awful, but based on the delighted look on Maddan’s face, I had to wonder what it meant.
Institute of the Shadow Fae Box Set Page 20
