Rogue Royalty

by Rebecca Ethington

  "And the king?" I forced another sniffle.

  "Yes, my dear, yes." He turned back to the wall then and I bolted away, tears gone as I grabbed my bag and strutted out the door, ignoring Miko’s curious glance as I went.

  The hallway was empty, everyone was still in class. It would have been so easy to follow Gemma, to send a bit of magic into her back and force her to pay for what she had done. I would have, if I hadn't been handed a much larger prize.

  My legs couldn't move fast enough as I bolted out the front door of the school, heading towards the large hanger that stood on the other side of the grounds and the jet that had been waiting all day to take me home. I didn't even stop to drop off my bag, I couldn't get there fast enough.

  It was with a relief-filled sigh and a smile that I walked into the hanger, notifying the pilot in the lounge to prepare to leave with a flip of my finger before I made my way to the sleek white jet that stood out amongst the hokey hand-me-downs so many other Golden's relied on. The staff was already lowering the stairs by the time I arrived.

  "Miss Demarco," one of Drain workers mumbled, bowing her head as I arrived. Mary? Martha? They were never here long enough for me to remember their names anyway. "We didn't expect you for a few hours, ma'am."

  "Well, I'm here now," I said, shoving my bookbag against her chest. "So, get to work."

  Ignoring her extended hand and offer of assistance I ascended the stairs, taking them two at a time in my eagerness to get inside and sink into the squishy chair beside the window that was my favorite. Turning into the cabin, however, I found the chair to already be occupied, a mop of dark hair peeking over the top of the chair, expensive trousers and shoes crossed over the side.

  "What the hell?" I snapped, bolting my way over to the chair. Fucking new help, they couldn't do one thing right. "What are you--"

  I stopped short, words failing as I faced the man who had stolen my chair, faced the grin and the bright blue eyes that I had seen only once before: on the dais before the Gauntlet. Where he had stood with the rest of his family.

  "Come now, youngest of the Demarco's. I thought you were expecting me," Talon said, rising to his feet, his massive frame both wider and taller than mine. I felt like a child beside him. A pathetic, useless child. All I could do was stare, my mouth open slightly.

  "I am." I squeaked out, he smiled with a grin that I could have sworn stopped my heart.

  "Good. Now, let's have some fun before our meeting, shall we?" He smiled again and my knees buckled, but not from the grin. I sagged against him as his hand slid around my back, his arm lifting me to press against him, his lips crashing against mine, tongue desperate as they parted them.

  My magic as it went absolutely crazy.

  Fire and lightning shuttered through my veins, every bit of magical energy that I worked to restrain pressing against my skin as it tried to flock to him. To connect with him.

  "Fucking hell," he murmured, pulling away from the intensity of the kiss to look at me. I was still trying to catch my breath, but the guy was looking at me with a powerful glare that made all the energy between us multiply.

  "I guess my days of women and madness are over. Sia Demarco, you are mine now."

  25

  Rowan

  They never told me what was happening. Although I had heard enough, and seen enough that I could put it together.

  The Chosen have been revolting against us since the explosion at the Gauntlet, more than the explosion of the cathedral on that first weekend, more than the picket lines from when the school first opened. Pickets don't cause stab wounds, well unless you plunge them through the hearts of the people you are protesting against.

  Flashes of past and present invaded my mind, they throbbed against my skull in a painful rhythm and I pressed my palm to my head, doing my best to calm the magic that I still hadn't been able to regain control of. Sparks of frightening Drak magic came in waves that twisted my bones, pressing against my flesh until I started to shake. The last few days had been better after my father bound the power, but it hadn’t been able to stop the sights. Not completely, so I had remained locked in my room. Being around anyone, especially Gemma and any risk of her magic flaring against mine, was not going to end well.

  But that meant if I wanted answers to what was going on, I needed to be tricky about it. Wandering the hallways at five in the morning on a Saturday was not usually my forte. I was sure Cail would be pissed when I barged my way in, but seeing as my parents and aunts and uncles had made themselves scarce, he was my only option. A little booze, a game of charades and hopefully some shuffling through his desk and I would be in business.

  I shifted the heavy bottle of liquor I had stolen from Wyn and turned the corner, immediately slamming into a massive pile of pots and boxes that I could have sworn was hovering all on its own.

  "Shit!" Someone yelled as everything scattered, pots clanking, boxes bursting open, glass breaking and covering us with fruits vegetables and what I was sure was leftover listy, judging by the smell.

  "What in the world," I snarled, trying to get the food and listy off me, turning to the girl who was trying to do the same.

  Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit.

  This was a mistake.

  She wasn’t supposed to be here.

  "What the hell, Rowan?" Gemma snarled, peeling some of the foul leaves off her shirt and sending them hurling my way. "Can't you watch where you are going?"

  "It's five in the morning. Why would I watch where I was going?" I hissed, throwing my own wad of food at her, looking at the doors around me and waiting for someone to pop out and yell as us. Surely someone had to have heard that. "I didn't expect anyone else to be up."

  "Well, surprise, you’re not the only insane person pretending to be a vampire." She gave me a grin and threw more of the foul stuff at me, this time hitting me square between the eyes.

  The smell of the stuff was nearly as bad as the wet sticky texture. My stomach twisted in threat of turning out. I had about enough of this stuff to last a lifetime. Now it was stuck to my face like spackle.

  "Vampire's aren't real." I scraped the listy off my face, ready to throw it right back at her. She was already prepared, armed, and chucking more of the green clods my way.

  "Shows what you know, Princey. You’re the one disappearing for days, walking the hallways at night, and allowing a blood sucker of a different sort to hang off your arm. Rowy!" She shrieked that last part in a near-perfect Sia impression. I jumped turning on my heel in expectation of the steam engine to be boiling her way around the corner, steam flowing from her ears.

  “No one’s there, loser,” Gemma prodded, throwing another bit of listy at me, which I artfully dodged as I jumped closer, my hand covering her mouth as I silenced her.

  "Shut up!" I snarled, looking at the door again, but nothing moved, not even a light beamed from under the doors. What was this? The hall of the deepest sleepers known to man?

  Nothing else in the hallway was awake except me and Gemma, who cackled as she shot magic through my hand in an effort to get me off her. I hissed and jumped away, shaking my hand as if it would banish the pain, but the skin was already swelling up and turning red.

  "You afraid I'm going to call her to your side like some kind of obedient dog?" Gemma laughed, throwing more listy against the side of my head before she turned to clean up. "Because I am sure she would. She might even wear a little bell if you asked her, wag her little tail while her ears perk up and she chases her tail."

  "Oh god, I think I might pay money to see that," I laughed, loud and joyful. It felt so good to laugh, after the last few days it was much needed. Besides, the image Sia prancing around like a derpy dog was near perfection. Although I already knew she would be some overbred spoiled thing that expected to be carried everywhere.

  "I thought she was your girlfriend?" Gemma gave me a look as she continued to pile boxes one on top of each other. “It’s not nice to laugh at your girlfriend.”

  "How man
y times do I have to tell you, she’s not my girlfriend, Gemma." I folded my arms over my chest as if that somehow settled it.

  "God, you royals. You collect women, you are born with a permanent scowl, and you don't know how to clean up after yourselves," she sighed exasperatingly, nodding her head toward the broken bottles and spilled contents that were making the hallways smell like a burning farm.

  "Not true, we just don't waste time doing things the hard way," I gave her a smile, waved my hand once and let the tiniest bit of my magic run free. I couldn’t risk too much, but even the little bit of release was sending prickles of excitement over my skin. Trying to pull me closer to her.

  I focused on the bottles, trying to push Gemma and her smile from my mind.

  Waves of smoke flowed from my fingers, a breeze and a snap of wind moving over everything, pushing the listy back into bottles and bottles back into boxes and everything repaired and stacked itself. I even gave an extra gust of wind to clear the foul odor away.

  "You trying to prove you're not weak?" Gemma said, not giving me so much as a smile and she moved to pick up her boxes again. "Because I already got that message when you destroyed my favorite tree."

  "Destroyed? What are you talking about?”

  “You ripped apart the only wonderful part about this place. Turned that massive silver tree to splinters all because I called you weak.” She narrowed her eyes at me.

  It took me a second to figure out what she was talking about. That moment outside by the tree felt like it was a million years ago. I pressed my palms against the back of my neck, flattening the hair and pricks of magic that were trying to congregate there in my shame.

  “I'm sorry, Gemma. I didn’t realize.”

  She froze in her work, glancing at me with an expression so soft someone might have had to knit it there. It was gone before I could get a second look.

  "You're sorry for destroying such a beautiful old thing. Or sorry for being the world's biggest douche. It’s official, your Prince Douche, you can’t take it back now. That's what I'm going to call you from now on." She was beaming with that same smug grin again, her eyes lighting up as she laughed at her own joke. Her laugh, her eyes, it was such a beautiful image that I didn't even care that she had called me Prince Douche.

  "Both," I whispered, my magic starting to prick up as hers flared, as I felt her power in the air. Mingling with mine. Dancing with mine. Wanting mine.

  I tried to push it away, ignore its existence and convince myself that all the blissfully ignorant stories my parents, my aunts and uncles, and Dramin had told me were true. I had Talon for a brother, after all. He didn't seem to be bound by the same rules.

  I did.

  My mouth went dry as the heavy dark waves of the Drak pressed against me, fighting with the binds to reach her. To feel her.

  Her laugh died as she turned to me, eyes wide in shock. As if she felt it too.

  What I wouldn't give to touch her. My fingers ached, my heart thundered as I reached for her, for that tiny piece of hair that had fallen over her eyes. It would be so easy to just move it back. To touch her.

  "Stop staring at me, Rowan.” Her usual mocking tone was shaking. She was shaking. We both were. “You don’t want your girlfriend to catch you looking at me.”

  I don’t know if she had tried to push a joke into her voice, but it was lost in the wispy sigh, in the way she was looking at me, as the step I took closer to her.

  “I told you she’s not my girlfriend.” My fingers twitched, wanting to grab her fingers, to trace the tattoos on her arms, to nip at the piercings in her ears.

  She shivered. I nearly stepped back.

  “I can’t figure you out. You avoid me all the time, your girlfriend stalks me like a serial killer, you glare at me like I’ve killed your family,” I flinched. I couldn’t help it, the image came in a flash and I stepped back, leaving her gasping.

  “Do you hate me, or just my kind Rowan?” she asked with a snarl, swallowing once before she continued, not even giving me the chance to answer her question.

  “Help me clean this up, Princey.” Her voice cracked as she turned away from me, away from my touch, taking her magic with her as she started busing herself with the already repaired food, before deciding to pick it up and run away.

  "What is all this food for anyway?" I asked, grabbing the top two boxes from the massive pile she was trying to maneuver.

  "My people are starving, Rowan. Your parents are helping me get food to them," she smiled like there was a secret hidden in there, but plowed on before I could ask. "The CCC has been raiding them nearly non-stop--"

  I dropped the boxes I had been holding, sending pans, listy and more broken glass over the stone floor. So much for cleaning up.

  "What the fuck, Rowan? Do you need to go plug yourself into a wall or something, recharge your batteries? Did they let you out of your box too early this time?"

  "The CCC," I gasped, cutting her torment off with a single questioning quirk of her eyebrow. "You know what that is?"

  "Of course I know what that is. It's The Chosen Council for Community." I tensed. I had heard of that before. I had heard of that many times. It was the brainchild of Samantha Demarco. A council for the betterment and equalization of our communities.

  By the harsh tone in Gemma’s voice, I was thinking that might not be all true.

  I still remembered when she had gotten the votes to start the thing.

  "You mean that group that cleans up neighborhoods, feeds the poor, stuff like that?" Judging by the hatred that was flaring in her eyes, that wasn't what it was.

  "It sounds so pretty when you use their wording, but the only cleaning up they are doing is burning our homes, killing my people, and carting children off to a life of eternal servitude. Thousands of Tarns, raiding people with no way to fight back. The fucking CCC, they deserve to die. All of them." She was snarling, her lavender eyes flashing as she stared at me, pushing her hair back behind her ear.

  Her fingers fluttered against her hair and my heart stopped, the air stopped.

  "Where did you get that?" I asked, grabbing her hand and holding it between us. My magic flared with the contact, her breath catching so quick that I was sure she felt the electric spark. I pushed it away, staring at her hand, my thumb fluttering above the burn on her finger, not daring to touch it.

  "Where did you get that burn?" I asked again, shaking her hand again to get her attention.

  "I... ummm..." she stuttered, clearly still trying to catch her breath. "Your mother, that water stuff."

  "Black Water," I sighed, everything aching as I mumbled the words that had been filthy and vile for most of my life.

  The burn was the same, same as all of the maids at the Demarco’s. I knew I had seen it before, on Gemma's finger. My dad had a similar burn that covered his entire right hand, but it had been there so long that it had mostly healed, now looked like his skin had melted. But Gemma's was fresh.

  All of the maids were fresh.

  The Demarco's, the CCC, they had Black Water. They were burning the Undermortals with it.

  I said nothing to her as I bolted away, leaving her alone in the dark hallway.

  26

  Gemma

  What was I doing here?

  I had no idea what I was doing here.

  Being a stupid ass bitch is what I was doing here.

  I shouldn’t be here.

  Something was clearly wrong with the guy. Last time I saw him he was taking off down a hallway, rambling about the CCC like a crazy person and leaving me to carry all those boxes alone. Nothing like a dapper prince at all. Yes, I wouldn’t have accepted his help, but it was the principle of the thing.

  That’s it, I was getting out of there before someone caught me and shit really had to go down.

  God, I was a fool.

  I turned around so fast that I nearly fell over. In fact, I thought I had with how hard I impacted against the stone wall chest of a man who had apparently stepped right
behind me as I had paced. It was that chest that sent me to the ground.

  "Holy hell!" The boulder of a chest said, I shook my head, looking up at the face I recognized at once. He had been to a few late-night meetings and had even helped deliver food to his community the last few weekends.

  "Greer?" I asked with a gasp, taking his hand and allowing him to pull me up. "What are you doing here?"

  "I could ask the same about you," he chuckled, peering around me to the door I had been pacing in front of for the last few minutes. “I have a date.”

  “A date?” Yes, I might have squeaked a bit.

  “Yes, of the best kind.” He lifted a book, the old leather cover similar to the one we used in basic spells, but clearly more advanced. “Get your head out of the gutter, Gem. I happen to know he has no interest in guys. He’s got his sights set on someone else.” I rolled my eyes; it wasn’t like it was a secret who had spent months sucking Rowan’s face off.

  “This is a study date,” Greer finished and I think my jaw dropped.

  “God, I think that’s worse,” I mumbled, attempting to step around the bulking man and high-tail it back to my room. He quickly countered, his wide smile flicking wider as he chuckled.

  “Why don’t you join us, Gem, seeing as you are already here.” How in the world could one man make me feel so trapped?

  “I have better things to be doing that reading books with two losers.” The barb completely missed. Greer chuckled, he had clearly been around me too much.

  “Well, I’m going to tell him you were here either way. So, you can’t escape, he will know that you were stalking around his door.” Greer continued to chuckle, weaving his arm around mine and practically dragging me to the door.

  “You’re not giving me a choice, are you?” I dropped my feet, letting him drag me.

  “No, you have no choice boss lady.” He was laughing so loud now that I was sure everyone inside the rooms could hear him.