by Kendal Davis
Spirit of Fae Academy
A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance
Kendal Davis
Ardor Fantasy Press
Contents
1. Ciara
2. Rook
3. Ciara
4. Owain
5. Ciara
6. Rook
7. Ciara
8. Owain
9. Ciara
10. Alder
11. Ciara
12. Rook
13. Ciara
14. Owain
15. Ciara
16. Alder
17. Ciara
18. Alder
19. Ciara
20. Ciara
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Text Copyright © 2020 Kendal Davis
All Rights Reserved
Cover design by Melody Simmons
Created with Vellum
1
Ciara
The room around us was still. If Evana’s parents had known that we were about to teleport back to Fae Academy, they would be bustling around us, trying to help. That was why we hadn’t told them. Instead, we’d left a note in the dining room before we slipped upstairs.
Evana’s mother was convinced that we weren’t leaving for our second year at school until tomorrow. She’d been fussing for a week about whether we had the right things, or if we’d packed our trunks correctly. It would be better for all of us if she didn’t have to be involved in the actual moment we were leaving. Evana insisted it was true, and she knew her mother better than I did.
Still, it was hard to shake the feeling that I was behaving ungratefully.
“Evana, is it really all right for us to duck out of here like this?” Now I was the one stressing out about whether I had remembered everything. I looked around my best friend’s pretty bedroom, full of the afternoon sunlight that filtered through the branches of the tall evergreen tree outside.
“Of course it is.” She made a little face at me, but she was as relaxed as I’d ever seen her. Whatever she was thinking about our return to the Academy, it wasn’t that she should wait for her parents. “I know my mom thinks we’re staying another night, but she won’t mind. We wrote them a note, didn’t we?” Her bright eyes were full of fun. For a moment, I thought she was going to wink at me, but she held herself back. Evana liked to think she was a more serious type than that.
“Sorry, I know I’ve asked that a few times, now.” I didn’t need her to point out that I’d been worrying about the issue ever since Evana had suggested we go back today. “We both know we don’t have anything official that we need to hurry back for. So your parents might think we are leaving because we haven’t had a good time with them.”
“No, it’s not that. Besides, of course you want to get back, so you can meet him.” Evana looked distracted as she checked her appearance in the mirror. She looked like just what she was: a slender fae woman with a talent for sorting everything out perfectly. We made a good pair, as I was always making things more complicated than they already were.
She turned to me with a frown. “Do you think I should change my hair?”
I couldn’t help laughing. “Seriously? This is the day we’ve been waiting for ever since school vacation started. We finally get to go back and get to know the new professor. And you’re wondering if you look right? You look amazing, just like you always do.”
She raised her eyebrows at me. “Ciara, all I’ve heard from you the entire break has been how eager you are to get to meet this guy. No matter how many interesting excursions my folks planned for us, or how much you wanted to learn about fae household life, all you could talk about was the new professor.” She smoothed down her hair and came to join me where I was standing, on the center of her pale blue rug.
“I’m sorry, I know.” I couldn’t help giving her a quick hug, even though I knew she wasn’t crazy about girly embraces. Ok, maybe that was why I did it. “I really have had a wonderful time with you all. The trips were amazing. Your parents are incredible, and I liked hearing all their stories of fae legends. The old days of pixies and spirits sound so intriguing. I can’t thank you enough for inviting me, especially since I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
Evana snorted. “Those legends have been around since before my parents were born. It’s nothing but fantasy, although the stories are fun. But you could have stayed at the Academy. If you had, you’d probably be eternally bonded to the new prof by now.”
“Is that meant to be a challenge?” I laughed out loud. “Anyway, I wrote all my thanks in the note for your mom. Will she be mad when she finds it?”
“Not at all. She’ll be relieved, deep down. If we slip out like this, she won’t need to worry about coordinating our departure.” She shook her head at a memory. “You should have heard how intense she was when I went to school last year. All of us first-years had to come on the sky train from the mortal world, of course, and she put a ton of work into making sure there were no problems.”
I pushed back my own recollections of what had happened on that train. I didn’t want to spend any more time in my life wondering why one of my political handlers had put herself in danger. Or why I had taken the bait and used my wild magic to kill her.
That was all over and done.
Instead, I smirked at Evana. “Your mom really is good at organizing things, isn’t she? I can see you come by it honestly.”
I thought she’d rise to the tease, but she merely smiled sagely. “You know it. And if you want me to keep helping you now that we’re second-years, you should probably butter me up a little more.”
“Will do,” I said easily. Never one to waste time, I started in immediately. “Your hair looks really great right now, with that air spell you’ve put on it. Are you planning to meet somebody later?”
A tiny smile lifted the corners of her lips, but she didn’t answer. Instead, she closed her eyes, ready to concentrate on transporting back to the school. First our luggage, then ourselves. We were required to send our own trunks, now that we had completed our first year and we had the magical skills to do so. “Hush. I have to focus. Didn’t you ever hear Madame Gaskin tell that story of the time one of the water fae wasn’t paying enough attention? She sent her trunks from her home straight to the bottom of the lake at the Academy.”
I stifled a laugh, just in case Evana was about to tell me that it had been a relative or friend of hers. The fae all seemed to know each other. Maybe it was because they were eternal, so they were bound to have spent time together in the past.
She went on, though, not taking the story personally. “What a doofus, right? Anyway, don’t make the same mistake. You have so many powers that nobody could even say where your things would end up. Lose sight of your teleportation destination, and your magic might rip your trunk into four parts, scattering them to the elements.”
Just when I was about to answer her, she grinned at me and pointed to her trunk. It vanished soundlessly, leaving a compressed place on the rug, where its weight had rested for the two weeks of our vacation. Then she winked out of sight herself.
Absently, I lifted my right index finger, sending a tiny air spell to fluff up the carpet fibers. I’d come far enough in my first year with the fae that I could do a trick as small as this without setting anything on fire or freezing it. I was the only student who had that particular difficulty, for I was the only one who commanded more than one element.
I was also the only mortal at Fae Academy.
Not a day went by that I forgot that I was different. The other students were kinder than when I came to school last year. I might have mistaken their natural reserve for cruelty at one point, when it seemed that they hated me. That
was too strong a word in hindsight, though. They thought I was an oddity and a troublemaker, and they were right on both counts.
The one thing I wasn’t anymore, though, was naive. Not after all I’d been through to make it to my second year at school.
I took a long, slow breath, and teleported my heavy trunk to my bedroom at the Academy. Without pausing to overthink it, I held my visualization of the room in my mind and transported myself there. The emptiness of the jump lasted only a fraction of a second, but it left a coldness in my belly that I knew from experience would last all day.
In contrast, our room itself was warm and inviting. I grinned at Evana who was standing near the window. “It’s good to be back, isn’t it? We went through a lot last term, but think of all the fun we had here.”
She nodded. “Yeah. The late night snacks, the dinners in our sitting room with wine and extra dessert? Good stuff, right? Well, that’s all over now.” My usually unflappable roommate frowned at me, waving a thin piece of parchment in her right hand. “Look. This was waiting for us. We have to change rooms.”
“But we just got here. And I even managed to get my trunk to land here, instead of the bottom of the lake.” I tried to joke with her, but she wasn’t having any of it.
“Nope, there’s no way you are going to make me laugh. It says we have to move to a quad room. We’re going to have new roommates.” She crumpled the parchment in frustration. In response, it made a rude noise at her and disappeared. “What did we do to deserve that? It’s supposed to work the other way round. You know, when you advance at the school, you end up getting better accommodations.”
“So when you’re a third-year, you’re planning to have a single room? Whatever…” I deadpanned, not really minding either way. “Fine. Let’s get to the new place and see if we like it. Maybe it’s a better room.”
Evana huffed, never a fan of changes in plans. “Just remember, you said I could have the bed by the window this year.”
I nodded, but my mind was elsewhere. “I don’t mind which room we have, or which bed I take.” I didn’t have to say aloud that I would be sleeping elsewhere most of the time. She caught what I’d meant, and lifted a single eyebrow in acknowledgment. “I mean, I think we have bigger issues that we’re coming back to. You know, like whether the Headmaster is where we left him.”
It was her turn to make a purposefully blank face. “You mean, tied up in the cellars?”
“Or whether the Queen of the fae is coming back to the Academy to try to kill me. Or if our membership in a certain secret society is going to lead to us killing somebody.” My words tumbled out with increasing speed as I realized that we were, as it happened, kind of knee-deep in problems.
Evana rolled her eyes with mock patience. “All that will be fine. It’s just another day in the life of Ciara, the mortal Tithe.” She was laughing at me. I couldn’t help joining in. “But there’s one thing you forgot. Besides the insanely difficult course load for second-years. The real question here is whether you can juggle not just two men but three.”
“I don’t have three yet,” I protested, but I knew what she meant. The new professor of earth magic was going to be mine. He and I were the only mages anywhere who commanded earth powers. We were meant for each other.
And I could do the math just fine. I had two lovers already. Owain and Rook were the cornerstone of my existence. They meant everything to me. Adding a third man might make our bed a little more crowded.
But it would be worth it.
2
Rook
The school holidays had been the longest two weeks of my life. Like every fae student at the Academy, I was well versed in the old tales of pranks that people put together during the break. My older brothers had visited our family home while I was there, raucously joking about what I might do to make a name for myself on my return. I’d laughed along with them, but I didn’t know how to say that I had no room for errors like that in my school career.
My brothers had been athletes like me, carrying off every possible trophy in their years here. The oldest had been a captain of the javelin team, just like me. To his chagrin, though, he hadn’t been tapped for the job until his third year at school. I was the first fae ever to be selected as a team captain before I ever arrived for my first year.
But that was the least significant thing I had going on here. I was also a newly minted member of the most coveted of the secret societies, the Eternal Assassins. And most importantly, I was the bonded mate of the most powerful and beautiful woman ever to grace the halls of the school.
There was no way I was going to screw up my future at the Academy by playing the fool.
Just as I was musing about how our first year had gone, my roommate, Owain, slammed the door as he entered our sitting room.
“What are you smiling about?” He was even more distracted than usual. “Don’t you want to hear what’s happened to Ciara?”
“Of course I do, but it can’t be anything serious. We’d feel it in our bond with her.” As I spoke, I sent a tendril of questing awareness along the connection I felt with Ciara’s fire magic. Nothing too dire came back to me.
Owain scowled at me. “Rook, seriously. All you’re doing is sitting there, dreaming about sports, right? I can tell without even asking you that you’re going over the team lists for javelin.”
“I’m not,” I shot back. “If you really want to know, I’m basking in the memories of how well the athletics went last year. You were too busy trying to win the prize for first-years to come to the championship games, but you must know we trounced both underworld teams we played. ”
Owain ran a hand through his light hair, looking dismissive. “I know it’s your particular thing. I respect that, man. But don’t you want to know about Ciara?”
“I already said that I do. But if all you want to tell me is that she’s in a new room this year, then I already know that.” I lifted an eyebrow at him, downplaying his urgent news.
He looked momentarily crestfallen. “Oh. I guess I thought I was the first to find out. It’s farther away from our suite, you know.”
“That won’t stop her from coming to us every night.” I spoke with the assurance of knowing my mortal lover had slept in my arms every night of last school year. Well, our arms. We were a triad, and we always would be.
“It’s nice that you’re feeling so overconfident this year,” he jibed. “I hope you can acquire some sort of modesty soon. Even if it’s not possible in athletics, you could maybe assume less when it comes to her.”
“Why?” My question was an honest one. “She is our bonded mate. There’s nothing to worry about there. She’s amazing, and she always will be.”
Owain still scowled. “Maybe not. But it’s possible that you’re taking this all too lightly. Do you remember, for example, the small problem of the Headmaster we bound up in magical vines and stuffed into stasis in the cellars?”
I snorted at the picturesque way he put it. “I do, yes. And he is still there, quite safe. When we got here an hour ago, you said the first thing you wanted to do was to check on him. My first thing would have been to find our girl. I’ve just been waiting for you to get back.”
“Thanks for that,” he acknowledged. “And you’re right, everything is fine down there. He is well-cocooned in our magical bonds. I wasn’t sure if we had the spells stable enough for while we were away, but it’s incredible how much power Ciara gets when she blends all the elements together. I had to take the slow way down, slinking on the stairs, rather than teleporting. That’s why it took so long.”
“Come on then,” I said easily. “Let’s find her now, then. I didn’t miss you a bit, old friend, but I don’t know how we lasted two weeks without her.” I rose from my leather chair and put down the team rosters I’d been perusing.
“I don’t, either,” he returned, pushing a pile of books back on the desk that faced the window of our sitting room. He spent so much more time studying than I did that I’d decided
long ago to let him think the desk was his alone.
We didn’t need to say anything more. Instead, we left our suite together to go in search of Ciara’s new rooms. All we needed was our awareness of her to find her. I could have located our beautiful, pink-haired mage anywhere, now that we’d had months to cement our bond.
The castle that housed Fae Academy was a hilltop masterpiece of perfectly chiseled, gray stone. It extended from the wide entry staircase in both directions, where the building had sprouted additions over the centuries. Every fae came here for their education, enjoying particular perks that came with living here and only here.
We never knew when we’d be called to begin our studies at the Academy. When the summons came, though, every fae jumped at the chance to develop their magic. For most of us, that meant becoming attached to an eternal mate.
Ciara, though, was a rule unto herself. She had four elemental affinities, where the rest of us had only one. I was bonded to her with fire, and Owain with water. Logically, that left the possibility that she might take more mates, but I was reserving judgment on that. Perhaps that moment would never come.
“Look at that,” I muttered, as we climbed another staircase. “She’s in the oldest tower there is, right in the center of the castle. It seems like it should be an honor, but I can’t help thinking there’s something strange about that.”
Owain looked at me approvingly. “I noticed that, too. Last year, she had rooms in the same hallway as all the new students, just like us. Why the change, and why only her?”