Tempting the King (Witchling Academy Book 2)

by D. D. Chance

Theirs was a simple “Only when the contract is requested by the High King” response, which certainly made sense. But Lena’s response was more subtle.

  “All contracts with the human realm must be approved by the High King,” the djinn instructor told my cousin. “When they are not, disaster follows.”

  The children sat back, satisfied. Alaric blinked rapidly, then stepped away from the portal, his face flushed with excitement as a new student took his place.

  Lena, however, sat back with a thoughtful nod. I had a feeling I was going to be getting an earful about contracts, but my head was already spinning. The Fomorians could use weapons that the Fae could not—could use them, would use them. We had kept them from our shores for all these long years with Hogan witchcraft…but for the past hundred years, that magical protection had waned.

  What had we done to ourselves? And would I be able to secure a new contract with Belle before the Fomorians and whatever fearsome new weapons they chose to wield returned to destroy us once and for all?

  My gaze returned stonily to the portal window looking out onto the realm. I needed to return to the borders and make sure our enemies weren’t already upon us…and then I needed to find the Hogan contract and secure my people’s safety once and for all.

  Nothing else could matter but that.

  15

  Belle

  “What’s the greatest magic you can have?”

  Alaric’s hand remained waving in the air as he leaned forward in his seat, brimming with excitement. I opened my mouth to answer him, then shut it again, struck by the depth of the question, though I was pretty sure he hadn’t intended it to be all that challenging.

  With the facility of any teacher faced with an unanswerable conundrum, I smiled and turned the question back to him.

  “What would you say is the greatest magic?” I challenged him. “Would it be the magic to heal or to kill? The magic to rule or to serve? The magic to put things together or to break them apart?”

  Alaric wasn’t the only student eager for the answer. The half dozen Fae teenagers leaned forward as if their lives depended on them soaking up the information as quickly as possible. I would have been more flattered about that except for the fact that I knew they expected me to disappear as quickly as I had come, Mary Poppins flying off with her umbrella before her work was truly done.

  I could understand their worry. I felt the same way. Celia had remained in a near-constant state of exhaustion, barely waking long enough to eat or drink, and Aiden had been gone for three days. Another skirmish at another border, he’d assured me, while day blended into night. He hadn’t needed my help for this newest concern. This was a border dispute with a sprawling clan of dwarves who had claimed a good chunk of the realm of the mountain Fae, emboldened by Aiden’s apparent neglect of the area since he’d been crowned king. Now they were demanding the new king fight to prove his worth. Aiden had only learned of the challenge as he’d swept through the borderlands, but now he had taken a full contingent of his warriors to deal with it.

  I shook myself, forcing myself to focus on the question at hand. Alaric was winding his way around to explanation and finally settled.

  “You’ll tell us that the greatest magic is to create, to build. But you have to have both, right? You have to have the magic that breaks things down, or at least the magic that protects what you have built. If you don’t, all the creation in the world won’t help you. Inevitably, someone will come in and take everything you love.”

  The other students nodded, and I gestured for him to continue. “How long has the kingdom of the Fae been at war?”

  Alaric frowned. “We’re not at war,” he said guilelessly. “I mean, you always have to protect your borders, but I wouldn’t call that war.”

  “Wouldn’t you?” Using the magic that Gwendolyn had shared with her students earlier this week, I sketched a portal window in the air. I might not be able to make a traveling portal, but I was becoming a boss of viewing ones. And this portal looked out on a distant view of one of the abandoned castles of Merrigan Cove.

  “After the wraiths were done blasting through this place, they left behind an inferno. The Fae who live here still haven’t been able to get close enough to the smoking ruins to rebuild,” I informed Alaric. “News flash, I’m pretty sure those Fae think we’re at war.”

  “They don’t see the whole picture,” Alaric insisted. “The Fae are warriors, and everybody wants what we have. We have to defend it, but we also have to understand that defense is part of life.”

  I kept the dismay from my face and merely nodded. These Fae were not a peaceable people, but how could I judge? I was human, and we often created wars where peace would do, the agitation of the human condition preventing us from staying content in our lives and in our spaces. Why should I expect the Fae to be different?

  “Then it would seem you have answered your own question. The greatest magic is the magic that assures the best long-term result. Safety in the moment that allows success over time. Magic that saves your own skin may be simple, even messy and crude, but if it allows you to fight another day, or perhaps more importantly, to think another day, it surges to the fore in importance. Magic that guides an outcome, that persuades and cajoles a group of people or their leaders, this magic is far more subtle, but it’s equally necessary.”

  This was only the truth, but it struck me far more powerfully than it did my students, who were dutifully taking notes but not necessarily processing the information yet. I pushed on. “And magic that helps you kill or destroy has its purpose too. Handled correctly, your casualties are at a minimum, but your impact is great.”

  Alaric nodded excitedly, happy to return to the subject of war. “So you kill only a few people—” he began.

  I interrupted him. “Or you kill none at all,” I suggested, but the subtlety was lost on him.

  He nodded quickly. “But you do it in such a way that it causes maximum damage,” he continued. “You strike at the heart, at the most important targets, quickly and efficiently, and then you get out.”

  I pursed my lips, suddenly feeling out of my depth. This was the type of thinking that typically found its place in the courses Magnus taught. I could understand why, and yet I could see the danger in that. How many generations of kings had been taught the politics of magical force by a warrior instead of a witch? Then again, I was here to teach magic to kings, not presidents or prime ministers. The image that humans had of the Fae was borderline mocking, at least when they talked of this venerable race as if they were little sprites bouncing from flower petal to raindrop. I knew differently. I knew they were warriors.

  But how were these particular warriors being taught?

  I considered Alaric and the others with new interest. “As members of the high family, what’s your obligation to serve in battle? Do you all have to fight?”

  “Depends on the king,” a young male as blond as Alaric was dark answered. He’d been mustered in from one of the secondary tiers of nobles, but was treated the same in the hierarchy of the high family, at least when it came to his magical instruction.

  “Before King Aiden took the throne, King Merrick required all able-bodied sons to report for service in his army, though he kept us to secondary use unless the need was great. And even then, he only moved forward the nobles he considered exceptionally good at fighting or exceptionally expendable. King Aiden has not been in power long enough to establish his own rules, other than the use of his own army, who he has trained himself. It’s been enough. As Alaric says, there are battles, almost constant battles, but they don’t touch the interior of the country much. They are mostly all the shorelines, which is the province of the ocean Fae.”

  “And because we are in power, our families have the strongest magic,” Alaric put in, and there was no doubting the pride in his voice.

  I settled back against the desk, my lips twisting softly. “And do you see any problem with that?”

  Alaric frowned, but a new voice
broke in.

  “Jealousy,” a young female Fae said. “Say you are a member of the forest Fae or the valley Fae. They’re not naturally warlike—they’ve never had to be. They have lived in plenty throughout their existence. But what if they developed a taste for battle? Or what if the mountain Fae got tired of their riches and isolation and wanted to return to power? They would see that we have something that no one else does, magic. They might covet it for themselves.”

  She turned with cool eyes to me. “They might covet you and all you know.”

  “Or someone like me,” I agreed.

  “But that would require open borders,” another student put in. “Which we don’t allow. This isn’t the monster realm. A human witch can’t stumble into the realm of the high Fae on her own.”

  There was rumbled agreement all around, and I moved on. “Okay, so what’s the greatest magic you’ve learned so far since the academy opened?” I challenged.

  “Perception magic,” Alaric said without hesitation. “It’s not about the momentary illusion. It’s about truly getting someone to believe you. If you can get someone to believe in you, it’s everything.”

  “Fair enough,” I said, though I didn’t agree at all. Perception magic was deception magic, and that eventually would come back to bite you in the ass. But that wasn’t something I was about to explain in a sound bite. Alaric would need to learn it for himself. “Are there any others?”

  “Building magic,” the blond young male said. “Creating the blocks of potential to help people see they have a strong foundation, and that the path is not as difficult as they expected. Build people up, and they will be your strength.”

  The class argued back and forth, but in the end, there were easily a half dozen candidates for the greatest magic, and I nodded, more pleased than I would have expected.

  There was so much to teach them, and here I had books, I had lessons, I had magic. I could feel a brand-new power flowing through me and believed in my heart of hearts I could wield it without fear.

  It still wasn’t home, but what was home anymore? Not here, but not the burned-out shell of my tavern either. There, I had helped monsters, terrified women, but here…Aiden was here.

  Of course, Aiden had let me go too. Like all the kings of the Fae had let their witches go. So what was I really trading? The chance to actually help people who needed me, who were desperate for my assistance, the safety I provided, the hope of real freedom, for…what, teaching a one-percenter Fae family how to make themselves even more powerful? And after a lifetime of doing that, I’d be dropped off to make a life again back in my bar?

  Was that really the choice I was looking at? Was I that big a fool to think any of this life here in the Fae realm was real?

  I gritted my teeth and kept going.

  “And now we take on a new—”

  The cut came without warning, a slice across my midsection, quick and hot. I slammed both hands to my gut, but of course, there was nothing there. I wasn’t the one who had been attacked.

  Aiden.

  But that wasn’t the word I said aloud.

  “Jorgen,” I snapped urgently, and the djinn flowed into the room as if he’d been standing outside the door the whole time. He nodded to me, knowing everything as he always did. I strode past him into the hallway, staggering to the side as a second knife thrust buried itself right next to my kidney. Magnus, the warrior djinn, stepped out from another room, his brows shooting up at my obvious distress.

  “Can I go to Aiden—in battle?” I gasped. “Do we have portals attuned to the king of the Fae?”

  “We do. I’ll take you.” He swept me off my feet, ignoring my cry as the pain inside me twisted. He set off at a run.

  16

  Aiden

  I heard the satisfied grunt of my attacker even as his slash hit home, his sword plunging deep into my abdomen. After two straight days of hunting these assholes in their caverns and across the rocky outcroppings of terrain unfamiliar to my warriors, we’d grown impatient. We would lure them out with easy pickings.

  I wasn’t about to risk any of my people with this plan. It was one thing for me to be stuck full of holes—I healed the fastest. But I was tired of waiting to go home.

  The thrust of steel had barely finished plunging down when another violation came, a second attacker. Good. But as I surged up to my feet to strike at my attackers again, a bright light flashed, followed by an almost inarticulate scream. A wave of cold fury swept across the narrow cliffside path, and falling bodies thudded to the trail below me—not so far below that they were killed outright, at least if their groans were any indication. But enough to clear the path I was on.

  That same cold gale then rushed over me, and I squinted blearily in confusion at the wild-haired, trembling figure who knelt before me and placed her hands on my stomach, her movements so quick, it seemed almost like a dream.

  Belle Hogan spoke the words of healing with a power that brooked no resistance.

  And though I hadn’t planned for this, I didn’t stop her. Couldn’t stop her, as the pain that followed hard upon her hands made me throw my head back and bite out a curse. An icy river blasted through my belly, across my chest, down my legs. Seeking out not only this grave wound, but every slight my body had endured in the last few days, even those I thought I’d already healed.

  “What did you do?” Belle hissed with genuine anger as I braced my legs wide. She stood, but her hands still glowed with heat as she lifted them, seeking out every last injury. “How could you have let them get that close, and where in the hell is everyone else?”

  I coughed a pained laugh. “If you mean my people, right now they’re doubtlessly keeping their distance to let you do your work. You’re a little scary.”

  When she jerked away from me, clearly surprised, I continued. “If you mean the dwarves I’d sought to draw out with this gambit, if they’re smart, they’re back in their caves, which sort of defeats the whole purpose of this campaign. I’m supposed to be proving myself to them.”

  Even as I delivered that grim announcement, a cry went up, a new engagement beneath us. Belle’s retribution against my attackers had drawn the attention of the dwarves enough that they had betrayed the opening to their mountain lair. Finally, we were getting somewhere.

  That didn’t address the issue of the trembling woman in front of me.

  “What were you thinking?” I asked her, my anger surfacing as the pain receded. “Belle, you can’t show up every time I get injured. I’m the High King of the high Fae.”

  “And I am your witch,” she spat back. “If you want me to stand around and feel sliced up into tiny little pieces, then that’s something else we’ll need to renegotiate, because I begin to understand why my ancestors hated you idiot kings so much if this is what you put them through.”

  I blinked, thoroughly confused. “What are you talking about?”

  “I felt it,” she snapped. Her hands dropped to her belly. “Especially this last hit. It was like a poker of white-hot fire shoved deep into my gut. You did that on purpose? You invited an attack from these dwarves as what, some kind of lure? What is wrong with you people?”

  I stared at her, horror-struck. “Belle. You cannot tell me that every battle experience I endure is visited upon you. That cannot be possible.”

  “Well, it is,” she said, looking decidedly haggard beneath her flushed skin. “There was something screwed up with your right shoulder yesterday too. Something seriously bad.”

  I winced. “I went over the side of the cliff with my attacker. He fared worse.”

  “I’m sure he did,” she said drily. “And the day before that?” She waved a hand vaguely to her leg, and I grimaced. The stripe of skin laid open by the dwarf captain’s sword had slowed me down, no question. There had been more iron in that blade than usual.

  “You didn’t come then,” I challenged her. “What made that different?” It wasn’t a fair question, but I was curious nonetheless.

  �
��It wasn’t your guts,” she snapped back. “I know you heal, Aiden. But gut wounds sap your internal power. I wanted to be sure you healed quickly enough.”

  She glanced around the empty trail, clearly unimpressed. “Had I known you were doing all this for fun, I just would have opened a bottle of wine and been done with it.”

  She rocked back on her heels, but I held up a hand, stopping her for a second. “I’ll return to the academy this night,” I said. “We will talk.”

  “Or maybe I don’t leave you,” she said, her face turning mulish. “I was sent here to teach you, oh High King, as well as your family. Instructing your precious clan could take weeks, months, years. They don’t know what they don’t know, and each new layer invites new discovery, new possibilities. But what’s the point of teaching them if I’m not also teaching you? My work will never be done. It’s only been a few days, but if this pattern continues, I could grow old and die in that academy and have taught only a thimbleful of what’s possible. And for what? For you to die on me anyway? Which would leave me where, exactly? Oh, right. Gone.”

  Her accusation made my guts clench in a way that had nothing to do with a dwarfish blade. It had been a hundred years since my family had been graced with a Hogan witch, and here I was, making mine miserable.

  “Then stay,” I said, surprising both of us. “Don’t leave my side. We’ll go to the castle of the mountain king and find the contract struck between your people and the Fae. We will understand the truth of it.”

  Belle straightened, but no delight rushed into her gaze, only wariness. Something else I’d taught my witch in only a few days: distrust. What kind of leader was I?

  “King Aiden.”

  The shout was eager, almost surprised, and I shifted to the edge of the cliff trail, looking down to see Niall grinning up at me.

  He nodded to Belle, not even looking a little surprised at her presence. Had they felt it far below where they were fighting? Knowing Niall, he would have been happy for the advantage in battle, any advantage. Any boon to take him closer to the victory in the shortest amount of time. The only thing that exceeded Niall’s taste for fighting was his taste for having won the fight.