“But how?” Fiona asked. “I thought you came in fourth place?”
“Because Mei Li and Teagan tried to poison you, they lost points across all their assessments. So I ended up coming in second, with Mei Li in third and Teagan in fourth.” Darby grinned. “It turns out that Professor Kane strongly suspected Mei Li since the moment he heard your story at the hospital, Fiona. When he assessed her for spirit faerie skills, she was the only one who could cast what they call object illusions, or making an object appear differently than it is. Which is not at all the same as modifying memories—”
“—Shut up, shut up, we don’t want a lecture!” Brielle interrupted. “You got in! Oh my gosh. Congratulations!”
“Oh my gosh, oh my gosh,” Quinn squealed, jumping up. She ran around the table and engulfed Darby in a tight hug. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it.”
“I know,” she said. “We did it. I don’t even know how, but we somehow got me into one of the hardest programs at this school.”
“We?” Fiona asked, her eyes twinkling with a knowing look.
Darby pressed her lips together. “I know. I owe the three of you an apology. I shouldn’t have ever doubted you. If I can’t trust my ladies, who can I trust?”
“Well, we thank you for that,” Brielle said. “I for one am happy to take credit for all of my future queen’s accomplishments.”
Quinn grinned at her. “Proud of you, Darbs. I really am.”
Darby put her hand on Quinn’s, patting it.
The rest of breakfast passed in a blur. People that had treated her like a plague victim earlier that week were suddenly coming up to her table to quietly congratulate her, either on getting into the Botânico Program, or on figuring out who attacked one of her household members, or both.
Many people also wanted to greet Fiona and tell her how sorry they were to hear what had happened. She had missed the entire week of assessments, but luckily the professors of her chosen course work had agreed to admit her as an extra student in each of their classes on a trial basis, even if they didn’t technically have a spot open. If, at the end of the trial, she was able to keep up with the coursework and seemed like a good fit for each class, the professor would let her continue with it.
After an hour of meeting other students, Darby needed to go back to her household to start packing. They were leaving that evening, and though she didn’t have to pack everything with her, as she would be coming back in a short month, she still needed to bring home her necessities.
On the way through the hallways, Griffin at her side, she saw Flynn ahead. She didn’t know what to do—on the one hand, he had danced with her the night before, so wasn’t completely repelled by her. On the other hand, she had just gotten his sister kicked out of the Botânico Program.
To her surprise, he approached her and Griffin. He opened his mouth, then shut it again, then took a deep breath, then opened it again. No words came out.
“What is it?” she asked sharply. “If you think I’m going to apologize for what happened to your—”
“No,” he spit out, seemingly finding his words. He cleared his throat. “I had no idea either of them were capable of that. I’ve spoken to both of them and it was truly just a prank. They didn’t intend to cause you or anyone in your household serious illness. Mei Li even confessed to casting an illusion over you during your earth faerie assessments.”
“Really?” She eyed him skeptically. “Truly just a prank, huh? You saw what Mei Li did to me with the vines. Even after all that, you believe them?”
“They’ve accepted their punishments from the Dean and know that the next incident will have them both expelled.”
“I could have my father file a complaint and get them expelled immediately.”
He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry for my sister’s actions toward you. I won’t let it happen again. I understand the consequences. And I hope you do too. You know that if your father were to do that, there would be serious repercussions from the mogwai clan. Mei is one of the family’s stars.”
She didn’t know how to respond to that. On the one hand, he apologized. She hadn’t expected him to apologize at all. It might have been easier if he had come at her yelling.
On the other hand, it seemed like they were at an impasse. Neither could make a move to take the other down, at least not yet.
No, might would not win this war between them. Only politics could, and for that, she’d have to play the long game.
She inhaled slowly, then exhaled, calming her speeding heartbeat. “It’s a shame our families are at war.”
He nodded several times, his nervousness turning into hardness. “Yes, it is. And given our mutual subject interests, I imagine we’ll be seeing quite a bit of each other at the start of term.”
“This isn’t the part where you offer a truce, is it?”
He shook his head. “We both know that can’t happen.”
“Right. Power or death.”
“But perhaps an agreement,” he continued. “That we will stop this pettiness and back and forth that will get us all expelled sooner or later.”
She eyed him warily. She didn’t know that she could do that, or even that it was in her best interest. But she did know the right answer to say in the moment.
“Sure,” she said. “An agreement.”
“Alright,” he said, seeming to accept her word. “I’ll see you around, then.” He didn’t say goodbye, but rather continued down the hallway, as if they had never spoken at all.
She sighed, continuing on in the opposite direction with Griffin.
“That was interesting,” he said, so uncharacteristically that she looked at him.
“What he said?”
Griffin shrugged. “He seems torn over what to do about you.”
“I’m sure it’s complicated for him. My parents killed his to take his throne, and now they’re giving it to me.”
“And yet, he doesn’t completely loathe you,” Griffin noted. “And you don’t completely loathe him.”
“No, I don’t. I think he’s a good person. And at the same time, he’s right. There’s one throne and two of us.”
“We will beat him,” Griffin said. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
She nodded. “You’re a loyal bodyguard. Thank you for everything you’ve done for me this week.”
He gave her a small smile, but she could see a hint of more in his eyes. She thought about what her ladies-in-waiting had said, about him being in love with her.
As she looked at him, she didn’t dare ask.
Could she have feelings for him too?
She didn’t know. All she knew was that with all her new classes, plus spy school, plus dealing with the Cormacs and Ming Mei Li, she was in for an interesting first year at Alanza.
THE END
About Solo Storm
Solo Storm is USA Today bestselling author and writer of YA/NA luxe fantasy—pretty girls in flowing dresses with privilege and power. She’s best known for her young adult urban fantasy and paranormal romance series, Waters Dark and Deep.
Learn more about her upcoming series, Faerie Princess Spy Academy, and pre-order next book after this one, at:
http://solostormbooks.com/faerieprincessspyacademy
Louder Than Worlds
A Soul Painters Bonus Novella
Angela Kulig
Ari might be an Oracle, but even she didn’t see this coming.
Darkness looms just out of her grasp, field trips, kidnappings, Heralds of the Apocalypse... This lifetime has become such a drag.
Louder Than Worlds: A Soul Painters Novella © Copyright 2019 Angela Kulig
Copyright notice: All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
1
The thing about being all-knowing was, you tended to miss things. It was angering, and awful, and, unfortunately for Ari, entirely unavoidable. If you opened every book in the library, laid each one on the floor end to end, and tried to look at them all at once, you would have a vague idea of what it was like inside of her mind for a second. You could glimpse the volume, but it would be impossible to understand the depth of that chaos. Because it wasn't one library's worth of books, it was every page from every book that had ever been written, and every page from every book that would be written in the future. Five minutes from the moment you were viewing, or five hundred years, and not being able to understand at first glance if it was past, present, or future.
It was maddening, even when she was the only being left who was capable of sifting through time in her mind’s eye. Because, at times, she didn't know of which point in time to look. She reached for one moment in her mind and cast it aside, labeling it as irrelevant—but she always worried that, maybe, she was never as certain as she should be. That perhaps that specific moment would be important, but she wasn't yet looking at it from the right angle.
That happened sometimes.
Arabella, the last Oracle, stood inside a pyramid made of wire and glass. She raised her arms toward the sun outside the pyramid's tip, like a bird in a cage with two clipped wings and felt similarly deficient.
The air smelled like heavy summer rain and ripe fruit. There was a cement walking path below her feet, aged by hand to make it look far older than it was, but still as smooth as a new penny. Butterflies were everywhere, in floating cloud-like clusters above a sea of heads, but that was the point of a place like this. Entertainment thinly veiled as education.
Out of the corner of her eye, Ari would glimpse a blotch of red or blue, but mostly, the wings that fluttered just out of reach were yellow and orange, lined in black, like someone had drawn them with a fat pencil and a heavy hand, then inked them in with chiseled-tipped alcohol markers or acrylic. Something too dark to be watercolor, but something not entirely substantial, either.
Time lapsed. Seconds seemed to warp themselves into decades as Ari flipped page after page from book after book. She'd wanted this, to go someplace new, to be someplace different, but nothing was working, and the visions came to her slower and slower, until she wasn't sure if she was seeing anything at all but what was happening right in front of her.
Marx stood just far enough from Ari that she couldn't say he was hovering, even though he was. She couldn't see him, but she knew he was there just the same. Marx knew her inside turmoil well enough to know when to give her space, and she relished it. They were really good at being them, at least Ari had that going for her.
That thought reminded her of another: a boy with dark hair and sad eyes. Of course, he was just a boy like Ari, herself, was just a girl. It was the way of their existence. Nothing was ever as it seemed, and that was the whole trouble with everything.
She'd let him down. She'd let them all down. Never in this lifetime, or in any other, had she fixated on any one thing so long and still not been able to understand it. Dropping her hands to the side, Ari shuffled over to a bench that had just been vacated by school children on a field trip. Her school, Bayside, an Academy for particular art students, as well as many others. You could separate the Bayside students from the others by their smudged fingers and lack of crisp school uniforms. Ari doubted anyone at Bayside could even spell the word khaki, much less owned a pair. All of Ari’s classmates, except her and Marx, sat in clusters of two and three, clutching charcoals and pastels, trying to get the light right on their replicas of the vines that had been artistically draped upon their surroundings.
Nothing grew like that in the wild. In rainforests, there were places where climbing plants grew so thick and wound themselves along the side of each tree, they strangled the ones in the back. Yet, there were other places where they grew so thin, they looked like a lousy comb-over of sickly-looking threads.
She'd lived in the rainforest once, not that long ago—all things considered. It had been a fantastic place to hide, for a time. Filled to the brim with man-eating beasts, and even attractive foliage that could end your life.
Plus, it had been filled with the most darling natives who taught her to make poison darts from the venom of frogs… as if she hadn't already known.
Ari was only thinking of frogs and secret hideouts, trying not to think of the other students at all, but she caught their voices—not the words they’d spoken—and then they filled her head with graduations, aspirations, lives, and death. Ari could see all that in an instant but couldn't find the one thing she'd spent all year looking for.
Bits of laughter from the afternoon crowd pulled her from the haze she'd forced herself into.
It was like she'd somehow hidden it, even from herself. As if she'd burned every book of the girl she was searching for—as if she hadn't existed! When just the memory of her haunted them like a ghost. Ari knew she shouldn't be looking for her, she knew they'd made a deal in their last life, but something had gone wrong. It must have, even if she couldn't yet pull the thread from her mind. It would be there because everything else was.
And on the subject of haunting, her own boy still lurked just outside of her sight. Ari could feel his dark eyes on her, the love of her many lives, her protector, her soul mate. He knew exactly when she needed him close, and he was now fidgeting worse than Ari.
She couldn't decide at that moment if she wanted him nearer or even further away, and it seemed as though he couldn't settle, either. Anger pulsed from her every pore. Ari pushed a strand of white-blond hair behind her ear as if that nuisance had been the source of all her frustrations. As if anything was ever that simple. Her hair just kept falling back into her face and sticking to her sweat-slicked skin. The humidity clung to everything, just like Ari's sour mood. She needed a haircut, but she couldn't seem to remember even that, her head was such a mess.
But pandemonium, for her, was typical.
Marx appeared by her side then. Slow and silent, like a shadow pulled further back to the body that was casting it, when the sun shrank back into the sky. He dipped his head to give her a sly smile, the only kind he had, before reaching out his hand to give her something clasped tightly in his palm.
It was a simple black band made of a thin braid. Nothing special, but to Ari, it may as well have been made of gold.
"Why do you have a ponytail holder?" she asked. The bit of wonder in her voice was a testament to just how hard it was to truly shock an Oracle.
She picked it up from Marx's palm with a smile as thanks and pulled her air-dampened hair into a short ponytail, with a few elegant flips of her wrist. Marx couldn't have needed it for his own hair. He had it, only in case she needed it.
Marx's hair was coal black, the color that stains your skin when you handle charcoal. It was maybe two shades darker than his vibrant skin and cropped short to his head. It smelled of spice and paint thinner that he'd tried to wash out in the ocean, even though he hadn't been to the beach in months. He wasn't close enough for her to smell it, but she knew that scent like she knew how it felt to run her hands up his arms, or how the angles of his face looked at twilight.
"You don't need to be all-seeing to notice you need a haircut, babe," Marx joked.
A sly smile made a second appearance.
That was ridiculous. Ari knew he couldn’t care less as to the length of her hair. Her heart told her what
their words wouldn't, and the thought touched her. He was probably the only one in the universe who still could.
"It's yours, anyway, you gave it to me before you cut off all your hair last time—when you got tired of it being blue." Marx rose to his feet, but he didn't wander back to where he'd been standing guard, which was an old habit. He stayed close, but achingly, not close enough to touch.
"That was two years ago," Ari said, thinking back to those days as no mortal could. "You kept it that long?"
"I keep everything you give me," Marx said, eyes stark and severe. "I keep your secrets, too."
2
Maybe it was because everything was so fake inside the glass pyramid of their school, but it was so good at pretending to be real. Like the fake boulders standing among living trees. When people acted like that, they were the ones you knew you had to watch. Marx stood, back straight, eyes narrowed, looking for the source of rocks weighing at his stomach but knowing he wouldn't find it.
Marx wasn't even sure it existed. If you lived enough lives and were aware of them, you learned to trust your gut. Marx's gut was screaming “hell no” right then, but he didn't know why. It made him want to grab Ari and hide her somewhere safe. Somewhere at the edge of the earth. It wouldn't be the first time, and regrettably, it probably wouldn't be the last.
But they were out of practice with hiding. There had been dark years, many stretches of them, where going underground was all they could do. Countless reincarnations cut short. They'd been starved out, burned at the stake, decapitated—they'd probably died in worse situations, but Ari wouldn't have reminded him.
The mere idea of what he didn't know made Marx shiver, even in the hot and humid glass box he was stuck in. The whole school was there, and they weren't the only ones. Faces he couldn't place, and motives he couldn't guess made Marx nervous. While some of the public-school kids looked like punks, none of them posed any danger. Marx was six foot one and pushing two-hundred pounds. He hadn't seen one yet brave enough to even look at him.
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