Tempting the King (Witchling Academy Book 2)

by D. D. Chance

  “What’s wrong with your voice?” Celia asked, peering at me. I blinked up to see both Niall and Aiden staring at me with alarm.

  I frowned. “What do you mean? Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “Your voice shifted. Got deeper, harsher, the more you remembered.” Aiden braced one hand on a muscled thigh, scowling. “There’s something dangerous about that book of magic. It shouldn’t be in the monster realm, not even in the Riven District. Especially not the Riven District. How long has it been there?”

  He asked the question of Celia, but she spread her hands. “Look, I don’t know if you maybe didn’t pick up on this, but I’m not exactly dealt in to card games at the high table, any high table. I’ve been in the Riven District for maybe five years, and the people I know who have been there a lot longer never spoke of a time before the warden was the warden. He’s just—there. His power is absolute. Nobody talked much about him making magic, but—”

  “He can’t make that magic either, though, can he?” Niall asked abruptly. “He was surprised when you reacted to the book, Belle. He can’t read it.”

  Aiden considered that. “A powerful book of magic no one could read, held by a creature I’ve never encountered, who rules the monster realm—or at least a section of it. That’s a danger I hadn’t planned on. It’s also a danger that will require far more than needs magic to solve. There is much to learn.”

  I bit my lip. The unspoken inference was clear. There was much to learn, and more magic I needed to teach to Aiden and his warriors to fight whatever this new challenge was. But my mind kept straying to the gleaming silver characters beneath the roiling filth of the lizard warden’s book. Maybe I had more to learn too.

  “We’ve got to get back to the academy,” I said. “If this book of magic has been in the monster realm for a long time, Jorgen will have heard of it.”

  “If this book of magic has been in the monster realm for longer than a hundred years, Jorgen should have warned us about it,” Aiden corrected darkly. “Don’t think I won’t be asking him that very question.”

  12

  Aiden

  The cat and Belle slept like the dead, their shivering bodies finally stilling beneath the heavy blankets as Niall stoked the fire higher. He and I spoke in cloaked language, pitched beyond the capacity of human ears. More needs magic, Belle would say, but discretion on this score was definitely required.

  “We can’t trust her,” Niall said with grim finality, casting a dark glance toward Celia. “She has lied to survive for so long that whatever knowledge she has, it’s warped and twisted, like a thief’s.”

  “But she knows something,” I countered. “She’s seen more than she understands. She’s human, I’m sure of it. A human who has been convinced of a complicated illusion that she is a part of the monster realm, protected and hidden.”

  Niall reached the same conclusion I did at the same time, which was why we always fought so well together.

  “But not hidden anymore, not protected anymore by her own people. Not for these past five years. Why?”

  “I don’t know. But we’re going to have to take her with us until we figure it out.”

  Niall shook his head. “I’m not going to be her babysitter. She bites.” He tightened his lips and drilled me with his gaze. “Belle is dangerous too, in this state. Her magic is growing in ways we can’t predict. You know that, right?”

  I sighed. “We need dangerous, though,” I argued, though my words were quiet. Seeing Belle with the book held by a creature far too close to a Fomorian for comfort, seeing how she reacted to it, could almost read it, changed things.

  There were other books of magic locked away in her academy, I suspected. Books Jorgen had hinted at. Magic that hadn’t been used since the great war between realms, that had resulted in the Fomorians being banished to their underworld prison. With the Fomorians surging up again, if this book that was so repulsive to Belle contained Fomorian magic—and she could read it—then we needed to see what other books the academy might contain.

  I sighed. “We’ve allowed too much knowledge to slip away from us, allowed the divisions of the Fae to make us weak.”

  “Have we, now?” Niall poked a finger toward Celia. “We’ve got a human in our midst who shouldn’t have lived as long as she did in the monster realm. She got here because she was escaping her own realm the same way scores of women have since the Hogans fled the Fae. Good for them for helping their own find the freedom they all seem so damned intent on grasping, but why did so many of them need to flee? What is this coven that has forced them into such desperate action?”

  Something in Niall’s words poked at me, a truth I couldn’t quite grasp. I rubbed a hand over my forehead, feeling the headache coming on, the way it did whenever I thought about humans. They were free to rule themselves as they saw fit, but the witches of the human realm once had held great power, choosing to work with or against the Fae at their will.

  Now it seemed that power had soured, striking fear into the very initiates who should be keeping it strong. The fear these rogue witches had of their own leadership seemed to be well-founded, if the smoking ruins of Belle’s tavern were any indication.

  “It’s not for us to solve the problems of humans,” I pointed out.

  Niall nodded readily enough. “But what if those problems aren’t strictly human problems? What if there’s more connection between the realms than we think?”

  I followed his gaze to the lump that was Celia. “You truly think she knows more than she’s letting on?”

  He shrugged. “I think she knows more than she thinks she does, but not about this question particularly. However, she’s seen things, heard things. And if she’s not the only human who’s made her way into the monster realm, hiding out of fear or for some other reason, we need to be aware of that.”

  “She won’t want to stay with us,” I pointed out, but he scoffed with a laugh.

  “I picked up on that, but she’s also one to know the value of a bargain, particularly once she remembers who she’s made the bargain with—not some scrub of a Laram, but with the high Fae. That changes things, and she’ll know that. Or if she doesn’t, she’ll figure it out soon enough.”

  “But eventually—she’ll need to go home. Wherever home is. We can’t allow her to learn too much, or we’ll have to wipe her memories. Jorgen and Cyril both have given me those spells already. They stretch back as far as the original contract with the first Hogan witch.” I scowled, remembering the words that had seemed burned into my mind the moment I had first read them. I pushed the thought away. I never wanted Belle to forget me…ever.

  Niall pursed his lips, eyeing the twin heaps of blankets. “I’ve been thinking about that too. I’m betting she left the human realm voluntarily and ran into trouble here. Because who would have left her purposely in the Riven District? No one. That place was a cesspool. Even if she’s untrained, she’s got some magical ability to her. She’s maybe a full-on witch, even if she doesn’t remember being one. Hard to say.”

  I lifted a hand, waving him to stillness as Celia’s pile of blankets moved. Her head popped up, and she surveyed the room quickly, taking in our now apparently slumbering forms. Her expression softened briefly as it rested on Niall, then returned to one of determination. She nodded to herself, then rose gracefully to her feet. Niall and I exchanged a quick glance, his eyes going wide with surprise and interest.

  Celia moved quickly, stealthily, over to the fire, leaning over to skim her hands lightly over the collection of knives drying there. Then she slipped Niall’s work knife into her pocket as we watched in fascination.

  “She can’t use that to hurt either one of us. Do you think she knows?” Niall asked in my mind as we watched her straighten, then glance to the doorway of the cave.

  “I think she’s leaving,” Niall muttered as the slip of a girl moved toward the opening of the cave. “Only she can’t. We’re not done with her yet.”

  I slanted him a
n amused glance, then sobered as my gaze extended to the second lump of blankets, where Belle slept. Was she too quiet? For a second, I thought maybe she had escaped, but then I saw the blankets moving, caught a wisp of her dark hair emerging from beneath them. Freedom. What was with these humans and their need to escape? Or was it solely the female of their kind? Had they found nothing worth belonging to in their young lives that they could trust?

  Either way, it seemed that Celia was making her move.

  “We go?” Niall asked, so quietly only I could hear him.

  I nodded, answering every bit as quietly. “Break the news to her very—”

  “Good, you’re up,” Niall announced sharply, making Celia jump nearly out of her skin. He rolled to his feet in a quick movement, and I stood. I turned to the sleepy-eyed Belle, who still didn’t have her bearings. She didn’t object when I pulled her into my arms, though, the blankets, bowls, and fire dissolving around us. I turned and didn’t miss Celia’s quick check of the knife at her waist, but of course, that wasn’t magic. That was Niall’s own weapon.

  “We go now,” Niall announced, as if this was part of the plan all along. I expected Celia to go along with it, but she stepped back.

  “Not me. I got you out of the Riven District. Well, arguably, you got me out, but I gave you the path. I don’t owe you anything else.”

  “You don’t,” Niall said cheerfully. “But you leave now, you leave without the gold. We have need of your services still, and you haven’t fulfilled the contract.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “I don’t need your gold, then. I thought I did, but I don’t.”

  “Maybe you do and maybe you don’t,” Niall said. “But we can work it all out on the way.”

  She frowned. “On the way where?” she began, then gaped as I sketched open the portal back to the realm of the high Fae. “Wait. You have portal magic?”

  “King Aiden does, clearly,” Niall agreed. “And you’re going through it.”

  Without giving her a chance to argue, he swept forward, wrapping his arms around her and launching them both through the portal.

  13

  Belle

  I sat alone in my great-grandmother’s most traditional-looking classroom, which I used as an office. There was a board beside my teacher’s desk that I suspected had looked like a chalkboard during her time, but now was gleaming white, with markers in every color of the rainbow lining the tray at its bottom. I’d already tried the markers, and they were little more than batons that guided my thoughts into perfect representation on the board. This thing would make millions of dollars back in the human realm, if magic worked the same way there.

  It didn’t. I looked up from what passed as coffee in the Fae realm, sweetened with heavy cream, and stared out over the tree line. From this vantage point, I could see the far-off lake glinting in the distance beyond the trees, but not my great-grandmother’s private idyll, the cabin she had stolen the very wood from to make her haven in upstate Vermont. How frightened she must have been, willing to go back into a world where she would be persecuted, hunted, shamed, and isolated, all for a chance at freedom. How much she must have hated her life here.

  I wanted to believe that there was some more romantic explanation for everything, that somehow she had sacrificed her position here for love of her king or the people she taught, anything like that. Especially given my weirdly confusing feelings for Aiden, I really wanted to believe that. It would make me feel like less of a traitor to my grandmother’s and mother’s dreams and aspirations for me. Neither of them would have been thrilled to learn I was falling for the head of the family that had enslaved us.

  But life wasn’t about other people’s opinions, I supposed.

  Thump!

  I jerked my gaze up, blinking in confusion at the ceiling—only to widen my eyes in alarm as the first heavy thump was followed by a flurry of scratching, thrashing noises coming from the room above me—where Celia was supposedly sleeping.

  Thump!

  Bolting out of my chair, I practically impaled myself on the corner of my desk in my rush to get around it. I flew out the door and down the hallway, taking the staircase at the corridor’s end two steps at a time and wheeling around the hairpin turn to reach the attic of the Witchling Academy. By the time I flung open the door of Celia’s room, my lungs were heaving—but my breath stalled in my throat at what I saw.

  Celia was fighting her blankets like they were a living thing, her legs caught in the twisting covers as her upper body flashed between her catlike form and her human form, her eyes going wilder with each shift.

  “Celia—” I raced forward, barely managing not to eat a face full of claw as I crashed into her cat form’s chest and thrust her back toward the bed. She shifted into human form long enough for me to wrench the sweat-soaked blankets off her, but I had to survive two more rounds of shifting before she collapsed back onto the mattress, her arms and legs going limp. She barely had enough of a shirt left to cover her, and I shrugged her shaking body out of it, bunching up the damp material and throwing it to the side. When I turned back to her, though—I gaped.

  “Where—where did you get that?”

  My question wasn’t destined to be answered, as Celia writhed and mewled with pain, flinging her arms over her eyes as if the waning daylight was too strong for her. But despite her obvious distress, it wasn’t her flailing body that had riveted my attention—but the glittering pale blue stone that hung from her neck, suspended on a strand of cheap gold.

  I knew that stone. I knew that necklace.

  I knew the face of the woman the Hogan witches had given it to.

  “Celia.” As she convulsed again, I grabbed her wrists and yanked her arms down hard, bringing the young woman halfway off the bed. “Where did you get that necklace?”

  “What?” Her wide cat eyes locked on to mine, feral with fear, but I didn’t let her shrink away from me.

  “Where did you get the necklace? Who gave it to you?”

  “It’s mine! Get back with that fire—go away!” she snarled, jerking back from me, but I was in no mood to give any quarter. I let her pull me onto the bed and straddled her completely as I pressed her arms down. My face was so close to hers, I could smell the fear wafting off her skin, but too bad.

  “Who gave that necklace to you, honey? You’re a witch. Or the daughter of a witch, at least. Maybe a witch my family helped, once upon a time?”

  “You—what?” She convulsed again, and then all the fight seemed to bleed out of her. She collapsed back on the bed, tears leaking from her eyes as her arms went limp. I released her arms and wasn’t surprised when her right hand stole to her neck, cradling the small aquamarine against her throat.

  “My mom gave me this,” she whispered. “She said it would keep me safe, give me the ability to—to keep hidden. She couldn’t keep me at home with her mate on the prowl, couldn’t keep me safe. But she could give me this, and it would give me strength, help me shift into a better and stronger cat, make me fast. And then—and then—”

  She broke off, and jerked her gaze up to mine, her eyes wide with fear. “They came with fire! It was everywhere—the walls, the ceilings. I couldn’t find Mom, I couldn’t let them know I was there. I raced through a doorway and ended up in the Riven District. I haven’t taken it off since.”

  “Celia.” Frustrated that she was reverting back to the lie of her Seline upbringing, I spoke more harshly than I wanted to, but I circled her wrists with my hands again as she started shuddering. “Honey, that necklace—it’s a warding necklace, nothing more. It’s supposed to keep you safe. That’s all it is.”

  “No! You’re wrong. I can’t take it off—ever!” Celia turned away from me, burrowing into the pillow, and she looked so forlorn, I could think of nothing more to do but find another blanket and cover her with it, speaking words of healing until the young woman, with her mass of tawny hair, finally slept. All the while, I stared at her arm bent tight against her, imagined her fist tight ar
ound the aquamarine.

  I knew that stone, dammit. I remembered the image of the woman who’d worn it. It was one of the more beautiful photos on the bank of cabinets at the White Crane. A rogue witch in a flannel shirt and ripped jeans, her crazy jumble of thick, tousled golden blonde hair cascading around a pretty face. That face had featured wide catlike eyes and a broad smile, grinning in triumph as she stepped into the broom closet at the back of the bar.

  The date on the photo had been 1997.

  I’d last seen it curling into ash as fire raged through the tavern.

  “Oh, Celia,” I whispered, brushing her tawny hair back from a face still glistening with tears and perspiration. “What happened to your mama—to both of you? Why had she needed to cast a spell so strong, you’d forget everything you ever knew?”

  But Celia had no more answers for me. Not today, maybe not ever.

  Slowly, as if I had somehow aged a thousand years in the last half hour, I made my way back down the stairs of the Witchling Academy to my office. In a daze, I stumbled back to my desk, slumping back into my chair and pulling open another book of magic, my thoughts a million miles and an entire realm away.

  I’d never found a follow-up letter from the flannel-clad witch on the back of my bar cabinets. We only had that one photo—the woman it depicted so like Celia, I couldn’t believe it’d taken me this long to make the connection. How had her mother ended up in the monster realm, for the goddess’s sake, instead of safely in the human realm, far away from the clan of the White Mountains? Who else had we helped—or thought we’d helped—only to have them end up alone and abandoned, the precious Hogan jewels around their necks giving them just enough magic to…to…