by Kendal Davis
“Lustre, that was amazing. Did you see? I was actually able to do something with my Voice. I’ve had such a hard time learning anything here. It’s like swimming through muddy water all the time. I can’t understand the lessons, I can’t figure anything out. And now I did. All by myself.”
She cocked her head in wonder, then stepped even closer to me. “Well, with you standing at my side. I wasn’t sure any of you princes really wanted to help me. Not that I should tell you that. Not that you care, I mean. But it has me kind of worn out.” She teetered a little on her feet, her nerves getting the better of her as she rattled on.
I drew her to me, stroking her silky hair. The warm scent of her made my head spin. How could she be doing this to me, this mortal, this creature of a curse? All I wanted, all I’d ever wanted, was to be with her.
Arabella leaned into my arms for just a second, then stood straight again. She made a face of apology. “I didn’t mean to fall on you like that. But, really, I just can’t seem to stay out of the arms of you three princes.” She looked uncertain for the first time since vanquishing the vine.
“There’s just one of me. And I’m no threat to you.” I spoke the words carefully, not wanting to scare her away. “I came out here to see you, as you said. But I didn’t expect you to be able to use your Voice like that. I thought we were done for.” I was uncomfortable admitting the truth, but I found myself wanting to tell her everything.
“You didn't think I could beat that creature, but you still stood with me?” She smiled wide. “It felt good to be able to sing, without the Sisters badgering me. Without the entire crystal weight on me, actually. I always feel so stifled within the school.”
I wrinkled my forehead for a moment as I filed that thought away. It wouldn’t help her case with the Sisters if they knew her song thrived in the forest, rather than the crystal walls of light.
“You are coming into your abilities. Finally. It means that events of the prophecy are in motion.” I held her close to me, tracing a line along her back with my thumb. Her shiver made me want her desperately. “Arabella, we should act on the bond we feel. It’s the only way to release your powers. Your passion for us is what makes your Voice richer.”
I thought she would draw back, but she didn’t. “I’m going to need more information than that,” she said softly. “Is it in the prophecy? Nobody will tell me what it says, but I think I’m getting the idea. You princes keep saying you have what I need.”
“Yes.” I couldn’t lie. Not now.
“So is it really that great? What would I gain by getting involved with you?” She smiled. “I mean, besides the fact that you’re incredibly hot princes. And you have magic. And I’m just very, very attracted to you.” She murmured the last against my shoulder, but I heard it.
I tasted her lips with mine. “Let me show you.”
Chapter 15: Arabella
The forest clearing was completely still around us. It was a warm night; I’d noticed that the minute I left the school. I’d been searching for a moment’s peace, nothing more than a break from the pressure of this place. I’d had no idea that I’d be spending the rest of this sultry evening in the woods with one of the princes.
My heart was still racing from the strange threat of the advancing vine. While the creature had come at me, there had been no choice to make about whether to fight it. Now that I had more time to think, though, I wasn’t sure that I’d done the right thing. I was a visitor to this land. Maybe it was beyond me to know who was good or evil.
The Sisters were no prize when it came to being supportive, after all.
But I would have said that once about Prince Lustre, and I would have been wrong. Tonight, at this very moment, he was supporting me against his body as I fought for the strength to remain standing. Lustre’s arms around me were strong and sheltering. Even if I’d somehow been the one who managed to defeat the vine, he’d been startlingly brave to stand with me.
Now he was holding me in his arms.
“Lie back,” he murmured. “I’ll catch you.”
His words didn’t make sense at first. But I made the conscious choice to allow myself to trust him. Just this once.
I leaned backwards without looking. First, his hand supported me. Then I gasped as I felt myself lying back on a bed of flowers. It floated gently just above the forest floor. The flowers were brightly colored and as soft as feathers. The bed was also the most frivolous use of magic that I’d seen since I’d come to the land of the fae.
“Is that a good use of your powers?” I teased him. “The Sisters are always telling us not to waste our effort in showing off.”
“I never show off.” He grinned at me as he told the obvious lie.
I relaxed fully onto the bed of flowers and pulled him to me. I hadn’t known just how much I wanted to rest my hand against his cheek, softly stroking his skin, then bringing his lips to mine.
“Thank you for standing with me,” I said, pulling back to meet his eyes.
He answered with his hot kisses. His hands roamed over me, making me gasp with pleasure as he stroked my secret places. I could hardly breathe with wanting him.
Prince Lustre found the fastenings that held my floaty fae skirt and bodice on me, and then released them with a twist of his fingers. When the skirt slipped from the bed of flowers to the forest floor, it puddled into a silky ripple in the leaves. Lustre had eyes only for me, for my bare breasts and the curves that had always seemed like too much, compared with the other women at Fae Academy.
He removed his own clothes with a focus that astounded me. Not once did he take his eyes from me. His sculpted chest led my eye down to his washboard stomach, and then to his thick cock, ready and waiting for me. I bit my lip, aware of new sensations all over me. Somehow, the magic that acted within me was linked to my carnal pleasure. And this was going to be a night for both.
When Lustre smiled wickedly at me and ducked his head, I knew where he was going. I felt my back arch in anticipation of his touch at my center. He found his target, making me gasp as his tongue slid against me. My hands gathered the flowers I lay on, holding them in a tight grip as if to keep myself tethered to something. If I held on, then I would still remember who I was.
Lustre’s thumb flicked across my clit, making me moan. We were alone in the woods. Nobody would hear, no matter what noises I made. As he tasted me, he used his hands everywhere. His tongue was enspelled, slipping inside me, darting, probing. When he pushed his thumb into me, I called out in a wordless groan.
The price feasted with his lips on me, using powers that might have been magical as well as carnal, as far as I was concerned. I knew that the force of his fire magic ran through everything he did. I could sense that now. The songs that underlay everything about him were like flames, licking, licking at me.
If anybody had warned me that what I was doing was dangerous, I would not have stopped. Nothing in any world would have made me walk away from this.
“Lustre,” I whispered, twining my fingers in his blond hair. “I need you.”
He met my eyes for a moment. A heat blazed from him that I’d never seen before. Was I changing him as much as he was changing me?
As he worked his magic on my body, I began to hum. By the time his touches pushed me over the brink, I was sure my song was so loud that the entire forest could hear it. Without meaning to, I raised my Voice in a melody that endured long beyond my climax. The piercing final note hung in the air, lifting above the darkness of the treetops.
Lustre held me in his arms, his touch simultaneously soothing and promising. After I’d caught my breath, I leaned into him again. I kissed his gorgeous lips, wishing I’d done this every day since I’d come to Fae Academy.
But when I wriggled against him in suggestion of further movements, he shook his head. “I have to go back to the castle,” he said abruptly.
“Why do you call it a castle?” I spoke idly, my guard still down. “I meant to ask you when you said that earlier. Has
n’t it always been a school?”
He did not meet my eyes. “It was the palace of King Regis, long ago. Once our King was gone, the Sisters took over this place. They say it is necessary to keep our magic alive.”
“I’m sorry,” I reached for him. “It sounds like most of the history of the fae has to do with those old battles. It is a lot of history to come to terms with.” Surely this had all happened a long time ago. The fae were eternal.
“Arabella, that’s not it.” He rasped out his words with sudden urgency. “It isn’t history, it’s now. It is all happening right this minute. It is why Amaris gave you fae magic that you had no business having. No right to have.”
As if in apology for his roughness, he kissed me softly. He stood to leave.
I scrambled up as well, not sure why I felt like I was at such a disadvantage. What had gone wrong? “Are you really leaving? I thought we were going to have more time here…” His implication was obvious. We weren’t going to finish what we’d started.
“I wish we could.” He was firm, strangely impassive.
“Never mind,” I muttered. In the blink of an eye, our time together had shifted from sensual promises to inscrutable barriers.
We dressed without speaking. The bed of flowers faded unobtrusively out of existence, without any apparent gesture of song from Lustre. He had much greater control of his magic than I’d realized. Even a week earlier, I wouldn’t even have noticed the subtlety it took to work that spell. It was nice to have proof that I was learning something here.
I was still trying to figure out if we were on good terms as we walked through the woods toward the school. Our time in the woods together had been intimate in every way. He might be a fae, but he was just like a human man in not wanting to talk about anything.
“Can I ask you something?” I slipped my hand into his, daring him to drop it. He didn’t. Instead, he nodded to me. “Why did you want to stop making love? I thought you took your clothes off for a reason.” A pang of fear hid inside me. What if he said something arch or haughty? I’d finally let my guard down with him. Would he do the same for me?
Lustre smiled down at me. “Of course there was a reason. It is the mark of the spiritual for us. A mark of respect.”
“Like doing P.E. in the nude?” I said it lightly, but then I saw he was totally serious.
“We three princes are here at Fae Academy to care for you,” he said. “It is a sacred duty.”
I couldn’t think of a single thing to say to that. I knew he still wanted me. His body spoke to me plainly, despite the polite spell of concealment that he’d used to hide his arousal. If I read him right, he wanted me passionately.
But, for whatever reason, he wasn’t going to allow himself to feel the pleasure that I’d had.
I felt an itching envelop my hand. As I looked down, the place that had once had a tiny black mark was now so eye-catching that nobody could miss it. Even if I used the spell that Lara had shown me, any fae would have to be aware of it.
It was a black river of power, flowing from the center of my palm down to each finger. It twined up my arm to the elbow, its tendrils taking hold on me. The velvet darkness throbbed in my skin, calling to me with a low urgency.
Lustre had seen the black marks. He must have watched them develop along my arm as he brought me to climax. And he must have stopped touching me because they offended him.
All at once, my mind caught what he’d said. It was just the same as always. Just like the other princes, he was always going to be the one in charge. And I was always going to be a chore for them.
He’d said that being with me was ‘sacred,’ yes. But he had also called it a ‘duty.’
The pain that filled my heart threatened to rise up and choke me.
Chapter 16: Varic
The night had grown late. After dinner, the students of Fae Academy usually spent an hour in quiet drawing room pursuits, then retired to bed. Alone. Although the Sisters knew that we three princes were courting Arabella in our own way, there were rules against being in bedrooms together. Nobody who had won the privilege of coming to the Academy had ever flouted that. So far.
The other princes teased me for being too studious. At least I knew the history behind the prophecies. At least I cared.
Lustre thought of little beyond showing off. Frost never responded well unless he was in charge. But I? I’d spent the last thousand years studying what it meant to be a Defender of the Realm. When the Golden Council selected the three of us to be Arabella’s princes, they had given us a gift. I hadn’t known it until I saw her that first day on the lawn of the Academy.
We’d always known that she would be powerful. Amaris had made sure of that. We had not known we would fall in love with her.
Frost and Lara had spent the last hour in a halfhearted game of matching their fae magic. But the little party tricks that every other student at Fae Academy was able to do were not enough to pass the time for me. Sure, any beginner could work a spell of concealment, or of parrying fire with mist. That was so basic that I had to work to keep from rolling my eyes at their fun.
Now that I’d begun to understand what Arabella was capable of, I could think of nothing else. She had responded to our magic when we stood with her under the apple tree. She was trying to hold out against our seduction, but it was a hopeless effort. The bonds between us were strengthening. She was changing, growing in her abilities.
Soon.
Everything that the fae had worked for the last thousand years would come to pass soon.
And I was finding that my focus was faltering.
“We have to save her,” I said abruptly. I stood from my seat and faced the other two. Nobody bothered to ask who I meant.
Frost shook his head solemnly. “It is not our place. She does not belong in our world.”
Lara looked tired. “I can’t keep you two distracted anymore, can I?” She sank into the seat I’d vacated, leaving her game with Frost.
I frowned at her. “Is that what you think you’ve been doing? Don’t you know that we can feel her all the time now? It doesn’t matter where she is, or what we’re doing.”
Frost gave me a sharp nod. “She is with Lustre. He is awakening her magic.”
“Well, I’d say we did a little bit of that ourselves.” I couldn’t let that go unsaid.
Frost and I stared at each other, both poised to move. In another moment, one of us was going to say that we had to go to her. We could not stay back, not when Arabella’s song was thrumming through our hearts.
Then, with a poignancy that pierced my very soul, Arabella’s Voice rang out. Every fae in the Academy heard it. Even Lara, whose powers were mediocre at best, lifted her head.
“What was that?” she tilted her head.
“It is the mortal. The abomination.” Frost grated out his words.
“You’re wrong, soldier. She isn’t evil. Can’t you see beyond black and white?” I hated to admit it, but I was defending her. We rushed to the door of the library. The sparkling halls of the school were filled with students hurrying to see what was happening in the forest.
Frost read my mind with a scowl. “If you defend her, then you cannot defend the land of the fae. That would make you a traitor to your people.” He turned away from me.
We were all moving now, joining in the tide of curious fae. As I listened to the crowd, though, I understood that I was the only one who felt any sympathy for Arabella right now. Every other student in the school was running to fight her back.
They hated her.
“This has gone too far,” murmured one of the Sisters as she fell into step with the mob. It was Alaris, who had tried so many times to clear the shadows from Arabella’s music in our classes. “She can’t stay here any longer.”
We all flooded out of the school onto the slates that marked the back gardens. My head was splitting with the noise of the crowd. If even half of what I heard was true, they were going to bar her from returning to us.
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br /> Yet when we saw the sky above us, every student hushed.
The night horizon was swirling with unspeakable magic. Whatever fae gifts this human possessed, they were breathtakingly powerful. We had all grown used to the Darkness that hovered over the deep woods. Now, that dimly lurking shade was a maelstrom of velvety blackness throughout the sky.
Auris, the Sister who had first welcomed Arabella into the Academy, had gone pale with fear. “This is not what was promised. When Amaris gave us the girl, it was to save the fae.”
Acharis chimed in. “Not one of us has ever believed that. We have nurtured a viper and we all knew it.”
At that, Arabella herself emerged from the woods. She was relaxed and smiling. Her beautiful hair was tangled, and her skirt was rumpled. We princes knew well what she and Lustre had been doing.
She stopped, her face a mask of panic. “What’s going on? Why is the whole school out here? What’s happening to the sky?” As she spoke, she lifted her hand to brush the blonde hair from her face.
Every single fae watching her gasped in horror. Her right hand was a pulsing mass of magic. And it wasn’t our kind. The Dark power that emanated from her fingertips was pure evil.
Auris stepped forward. “You must stay back. Look at yourself. We cannot allow you into the Academy.”
Arabella looked uncertain. “I don’t know what’s happening. The marks on my hand are getting worse, but that doesn’t mean I’ve changed.”
I pushed my way to the front of the phalanx of students who had formed to confront her. “The two of you...Lustre, you must have found a way to help her sing.”
He stood squarely next to Arabella, still holding her left hand in his. Despite the gravity of the situation, he grinned briefly. “She is wonderful, isn’t she?”
She looked at him, then back at me. “Varic, you’re supposed to be the one who knows so much about the history of fae magic. Maybe you can look this up somewhere in the library? Find out how to stop it?” She held out her arm, then lifted her chin to indicate the roiling, flashing skies above us. At least she knew that she was the cause of it.