by Rhea Watson
Twenty-four hours ago, Benedict Hammond had me paralyzed on a table, shirt peeled open, bra cups pushed back. He spoon-fed me the twisted facts of his history with my mom—and then, if no one had stopped him, he probably would have raped me in my own greenhouse.
Going back there today had triggered a mini panic attack, but after enduring more meltdowns this academic year than in the last ten, it was nothing I couldn’t handle. By lunchtime, my anxiety plummeted to normal, and now—now I just wanted to put a bullet between his eyes. No magic. No nothing. Something cold and metallic and fucking brutal.
Every time I spotted him today, generally at meals, he had a gaggle of chummy security warlocks around him. They looked like pals, like the meatheads were on break and chatting it up with one of their professor buds.
He had his bodyguards.
I had mine.
Other women might have felt insulted, demoralized, maybe somehow less empowered at the mere suggestion that they needed two strong, brooding men to watch over them.
Nope. I’d take all the help I could get. Bjorn and Gavriel had skills and powers I could never touch, and only the biggest idiot on the planet would shoo them away when the stakes were this high.
Allies gathered. Battle lines drawn.
Just waiting for the final explosion between Benedict and me, the last showdown of the Hammond and Corwin covens, the one to quash this stupid centuries-old beef once and for all.
I had no idea what started it.
And while he’d never admit to it, Benedict was probably just as clueless.
But that didn’t matter.
So long as I got my righteous justice, I had zero fucks to give about why our ancestors hated each other.
Unfortunately, once again the brutality of Iris’s Root Rot regime took precedence.
Shouldering through the door into the corridor where Benedict and I had once beat the holy hell out of each other, we raced toward the distant hum of whispered conversations, auras clashing and sparking, the air thick tonight.
Thicker still when another scream cut through the din. My heart skipped a beat as we sprinted around a corner, the silence after that awful noise deafening.
Bjorn’s footsteps suddenly disappeared.
“What is it?” I hissed, slowing from a sprint to a jog. The vampire’s eyes narrowed.
“I smell blood,” he growled, fangs very present suddenly. Shit. We swapped panicked glances before blitzing down the corridor together, Bjorn taking it slow just to keep pace with me as I ran as fast as I could…
To the courtyard.
Where it seemed the entire student body had gathered, some in the open-air square itself, the rest squished into the corridor surrounding it. Ashen-faced students loitered in the arches, beneath floral awnings I tended to so lovingly and between berry bushes in full bloom.
Gods, what kind of fucked-up stunt had Iris pulled now?
Teeth gritted, I shoved through the crowd to the front, Bjorn at my heels. Fellow professors peppered the crowd, along with den mothers and security who must have abandoned their posts to be here. The warlocks smirked and snickered amongst each other, while most of the den mothers, these shifters swathed in black, these seething stone-faced women, did nothing to quiet their frightened flock.
At the front of the herd, I spied Seamus Norman with his wand out, that handsome aristocratic face warped with fury. My fellow professors watched on, pale and drawn, silent—looking like they were forced to be here.
Forced to watch a child whipped.
The star of the show was a third year: Egbert Norrington, a klepto warlock from Calgary.
He hung by his wrists from a branch of the gnarled, twisted old oak. My oak. My prize. The oldest tree on campus, one steeped in highlands magic. The back of Egbert’s shirt had been ripped open, and blood oozed down his back, six bright red marks blooming.
This was a fucking show.
A display.
Someone had even cast orbs to shine like spotlights on the victim.
Trembling, I looked to the warlock who brandished the whip.
Oh my gods.
Not a whip at all.
A steel-tipped flogger.
Jack had flogged me before, but the tails were soft, supple leather—wielded by a master who knew precisely how to use them. An expert at his craft, his lashes stung like the dickens, but they never made me bleed.
Barely even made me bruise, actually.
If no one treated Egbert, those slashes would harden to scars, permanent, etched deep in his skin and psyche.
Rage drummed between my ears, breath falling hard and fast as I absorbed the unfolding horror show. As soon as the warlock gripping the flogger geared up for another strike, I snapped.
“What are you doing?” I shouted, storming onto the stage and instantly half blinded by a spotlight orb. Bjorn’s fingers ghosted along my shoulder, but I slipped the noose before he could haul me into the crowd and out of sight. “Are you insane?”
I darted in front of the warlock in his black uniform, his boots made for crushing skulls and his wand displayed prominently on his belt. He flinched, so focused on Egbert that it was like he hadn’t even clued in to my presence until I was literally right under his nose. Fucking asshole. Too into the torture, apparently.
I pointed to a shivering, bleeding Egbert with a snarl that would have made my guys proud. “That is a child.”
“A child who needs to learn his lesson,” the warlock grunted. Bald. Massive. One green eye and one brown. Cockney. New. I had no idea what his name was, but even if he didn’t flock to Benedict like his bros, he wasn’t my colleague.
This fucker was the enemy.
“Step aside, Professor Clarke.” Iris’s nasally order trilled from somewhere to our left. Scowling, I squinted and shielded my eyes from the spotlight orbs once I picked out her familiar silhouette.
Root Rot’s interim headmistress had a bench to herself in the front row, which she perched upon like a throne. Hoop skirts were in now, apparently, and her stiff Elizabethan collar declared her desire to be queen of this place. Hard to miss something so fucking obnoxious, pearls and all.
Benedict stood over her shoulder, lips twitching into a sneer when our eyes met. Ice flashed through my insides, but I pushed through, something bigger at stake here than our feud.
“No,” I announced roughly. No, I wouldn’t move. Like fuck would I let this bastard anywhere near one of my kids again. As I squared my shoulders, I scanned the frontlines of the crowd quickly, faces familiar—and lacking. No admin staff around. Not a single librarian, either, including Gavriel. Just professors and students and those who controlled us.
Bjorn stalked into the courtyard when the warlock tried to step around me, maybe even shove by me, but I held my ground, body-blocking him so that our fronts touched, his like steel—and mine titanium.
“No,” I spat. Murmurs rippled through the crowd. Just as I had the night I attacked Benedict, I felt my aura snap and sizzle in the ether, fueled by rage, desperate to rampage over all these sadistic bastards and put an end to the dread queen’s reign.
Hot on Bjorn’s heels, two den mothers marched out of the crowd and into the empty space around the oak. Wolf shifter Helga kept her eyes on Bjorn in his adorable tweed professor suit, but bear shifter Nadia had her sights on Egbert; no telling whether they had stepped forward to help or to harm, but as I flicked my arm to loosen my wand, the polished cherrywood sliding deftly into my palm, I was prepared for either.
“Silence.”
Conversations flatlined. The shuffling ceased. Iris stood before her throne, one hand up, and waited for everyone to fall in line. Bjorn stilled, eyes keen, assessing our surroundings with an intensity that was as hot as it was intimidating. I gripped my wand tight, ready to hex or stab it into this warlock’s eye—whichever was most effective in the moment.
Much to my surprise, the meathead bailed and met Iris halfway across the courtyard. Her little heels clicked primly with ea
ch lazy step, her massive deep purple skirt swaying side to side dramatically. Head bowed, the security warlock handed over the flogger, then joined the crowd of deathly silent onlookers.
Well then.
I tensed when Iris’s yellowish-grey eyes zeroed in on me.
This… seemed like a concerning turn of events.
After exchanging a quick glance with Bjorn, I backed up, putting myself between Iris and Egbert. A hurried flick of my wand over my shoulder, paired with a muttered incantation to break bonds, had the third year collapsing to the cobblestones, where he lay in a whimpering heap until my heel nudged into his shin. He then curled into a ball with a sob, his terror palpable, scenting the air for a crowd of supernatural predators. There I finally stopped; standing over him, gaze locked with Iris, was exactly where I belonged.
Head cocked, the witch weighed the flogger in both hands as she strolled toward me. Jack’s had been thicker, but these leather tails came tipped with razor-sharp steel quills that had ripped Egbert’s back clean open.
And would have shredded him to ribbons if no one had stepped in.
Egbert was a shy kid in my classes with a penchant for trying to nick gardening tools, his attempts forever thwarted by either me or a watchful den mother. I’d also once caught him carving obscene material—dicks, mostly—on the underside of my worktable, his herbs wilting and in desperate need of water. The warlock could be a little shit, sure, but no kid deserved this.
Iris didn’t stop until she had invaded my personal bubble, maybe three feet between us, the still crowd at her back. Her lips kicked into a soft, patronizing grin as she assessed me.
“I told you, Miss Clarke,” she started, weaving her fingers through the flogger’s lethal tails, “that not everyone is cut out for this line of work. Reform of the supernatural is a noble calling—but it is difficult, bloody work to get right. Is this little stunt your formal resignation?”
I lifted my chin, hyperaware of Bjorn closing in out of the corner of my eye. “No.”
“Then you’ll understand, of course,” Iris dropped her arms to her sides, right hand loosely coiled around the flogger’s woven grip, “why I must make an example of you.”
“I—”
“Everyone must adhere to the rules,” she insisted primly, loudly, her words echoing around the courtyard as the oak’s leafy canopy murmured overhead. “No one is above academy law.”
We both struck at the same time, my wand hand shooting up, a defensive spell on the tip of my tongue—but Iris was just a smidge faster. Nimble for her age, strong for her stature, she cracked me right across the face with the flogger, steel-tipped ends and all.
The world went black for a moment, and when the light screamed back into a hazy focus, pain radiated through my skull and down my spine. Disoriented, I hit the ground hard, fire sizzling across my face, blood whumping between my ears. Sprawled over the cobblestone, I struggled to blink my swollen lids, somehow both numb and in unbelievable agony. The world blurred—
Iris towered over me, steel quills swinging in and out of focus. Red tinged my vision, but in the functional depths of my mind, I knew to brace for another strike.
Then a black knight rescued me.
No. Not a knight.
A Viking.
Bjorn materialized in front of her with a terrifying roar and slammed his open palm into the dead center of her chest. Bones crunching, her ribs caved like a crushed soda can, and the headmistress careened across the courtyard with a panicked, strangled wail.
Chaos erupted from the crowd, steadily muffled by the high-pitched whine howling louder and louder between my ears.
I flinched at the first caress of frost on my cheek.
“B-Bjorn?”
Security descended, warlocks shouting, boots clomping, colorful spellwork flashing behind my closed lids.
“I’m here, elskling.”
For the second time tonight, my world went completely black—yet I still felt him, not only his icy touch, but his being, his energy.
His love.
“I’ve got you.”
And then… nothing.
18
Bjorn
This wasn’t the first cage I’d ever been shoved into…
But it was the first of its kind that I knew of in the castle.
After six and a half years, I had memorized the shadowy stairwells and fire-forged stone corridors at Root Rot, and all this time I’d thought the academy only delved two stories underground.
Tonight, Iris Prewett’s warlock militia taught me something new about my highlands home: there was a third floor, deep in the earth, for prisoners.
I should have assumed as much.
All castles had a dungeon.
This one was about as cliché as they got.
As soon as the wands left the back of my neck, I stalked forth, taking in my new surroundings with a raised lip and a keen eye. Stone walls and floors. Metal bars. Six cells. Dust and dirt and cobwebs. Torches flickering on the wall at the base of the staircase.
Security swarmed as soon as Iris hit the ground back in the courtyard, and the only reason I had gone quietly was because one of the fuckers had grabbed Alecto. Some beefy bastard had scooped her unconscious body into his arms, and I was done for; fight on the backburner, all that mattered was keeping an eye on my elskling.
Fortunately, we were destined for the same place, drowning in a cloud of her blood, its scent overwhelming as the boys marched me through the castle. Fangs at the ready, the monster as close to the surface as he had ever been, I’d walked familiar pathways—until I didn’t.
Until they shoved me to the back of the kitchen, chefs and dishwashers cowering at the onslaught of black uniforms and bloody detainees in their realm of stainless steel and marble white. Through a secret back door. Into a stairwell with air so musty some of the warlocks coughed.
Now here.
My cell door clanged shut, those six sets of footsteps that had escorted me as a unit retreating to safety. Hands clasped behind my back, I turned slowly, fangs bared as I surveyed the sigils carved into the metal bars.
Old runes, ancient even to my eyes, that prevented magic users from casting.
Possibly even prevented shifters from shifting, but that was only a working theory—one that disappeared when the warlock carrying Alecto dumped her into the cell next to mine.
If I’d needed it, I would have breathed a sigh of relief.
But I gave them nothing, my heart back to its regular three-beats-per-minute tempo now that I knew we had each other down here.
That they hadn’t placed her in the very last cell down the way, four miserable holes between us.
While the monster in my chest seethed and snarled at the sight of a strange man touching her, at least the warlock shit hadn’t flung her into the cell. He wasn’t exactly gentle as he set her on the floor, but no further damage came to her head.
Her face had tasted enough brutality for one night, the six slashes stretching from her forehead to her chin oozing bright red nectar.
My cheek twitched. And now those open wounds were touching dirt.
Any outside chatter or sneers fell on deaf ears, their echoey voices white noise as I focused on her. As soon as the last of them disappeared into the stairwell, then eventually through the narrow hidden door into the kitchen, I lunged.
“Alecto?”
I’d be sacked for this.
As an orphan vampire, no coven could sanction me. Iris couldn’t stuff me full of wood and ship me back to some lord or king; instead, I would face a trial in front of the high council of academies—if her brutes didn’t exact justice first.
That would likely be my fate, judge, jury, and executioner Iris Prewett presiding.
Still, the memory of her bony chest shattering beneath my palm brought me some comfort.
The monster had seized control back there. The man I presented to Root Rot Academy had insisted I go for Alecto; sensing some shit would go down, I’d been on t
he way already.
But then the blood, her cry, her lifeless body sprawled across the ground next to a whipped student…
I let the monster win.
Gave them all a glimpse of Bjorn the Brutal.
And now we were here.
Alone, at the very least.
On my knees, I pressed against the crisscrossed bars and shouldered my arm through as far as it could reach. Once my cheek touched the metal, I found the shifter containment strategy: pure silver. Sigils for witches. Silver for shifters. And—my nostrils flared at the very faint tang of iron a few cells down.
A little treat to contain wayward fae, even if, as far as I knew, not a single fae student had ever enrolled at the academy. Of all the supernatural communities, fae were the only ones who well and truly dealt with their own.
“Alecto,” I whispered again, louder this time as I tuned in to her heartbeat. Her chest’s steady rise and fall was proof enough of life, but I kept tabs on the drumbeat inside, primed for the music I so loved to slow to dangerous levels. For now, it beat strong and true.
I needed to stop the bleeding.
Head wounds could be so vicious; they bled hard and fast, hot and furious. Alecto’s was no different.
I snapped a few times, the crisp clicks of my fingers ricocheting off the stone and metal—rebounding uselessly onto an unconscious witch. Already the blood had dribbled onto her sweater, the massive sunflower pattern stained red, the freshly pressed white collar poking out the top done for. She paired the top half with faux-leather trousers today, fitted but not overly snug, then a pair of women’s oxfords.
“In case I need to run,” she had muttered when I first saw her this morning, dressed and ready to face another day, Gavriel long gone after using up all our hot water.
Only she hadn’t run.
My elskling rarely did. She faced every trauma head-on here at Root Rot, from my kidnapping to Egbert’s beating and everything in between.