Rogue Royalty

by Rebecca Ethington

  "Better. If one man is willing to raise up an army of Drains after Gemma left, my guess is that Gemma wouldn't let them. Gemma squandered that gift but this man is ready to take control of the situation. Take control of their world." Talon chuckled, his eyes focused on the map on the wall, his magic burning away at the tiny speck marked Last Pyre, burning a line right to the Academy, right to the underground palace in Prague.

  "If there is one thing I know, it's how to work with power hungry men," Talon said, still staring at the map. "Giovanni, I believe we have found that scapegoat we talked about. I think I know just the piece of flesh to bring him over to our side. There is only one beautiful and cunning enough to convince a Drain to fight for our side."

  They were both looking at me now, a different sort of eagerness trilling between me and Talon, the guys tongue darting out to lick his lower lip the lustful hunger pulling between the two of us, I pressed myself against him.

  "Can you do it?" My father asked, but I didn't look away from Talon, from the blue in his eyes as he pulled closer, peppering kisses over my collarbone, up my neck, in the hollow under my ear.

  "Never doubt me, father. The Drain is ours, the Vilỳ too. This Adrian already wants what we do, all it takes is the right motivation.”

  “The right promise,” Talon cut in, his hand tiptoeing down my spine.

  “Even if I break it,” I moaned as I stretched back, Talon leaning around to kiss me, the last word swallowed by his lips as my father laughed.

  “Then prepare, I expect it done by Saturday night. We have a few royals to take after all. I’m sure that’s a battle they won’t want to miss.”

  35

  Gemma

  I had never experienced a true autumn, with its crisp biting air that smelled of rain and nature. With leaves that twisted into a million bright colors, until they faded into lines of brown that cut into the pale blue sky. Everything dripped with grey, but it wasn’t the grey of stone walls and the early winter chill of sleeping against cement far underground.

  It was the grey of clouds and silver sunsets and crispy mornings with frost and spider webs.

  That all was magic in its own right. I wasn't the only one who was gob-smacked over it. There were so many Undermortals wandering over the grounds that I had considered moving our meetings from the cramped confines of my bedroom to crisp air and chilled breezes of a world I had never known existed.

  Yes, I knew that was dramatic. But after living an entire life away from actual seasons, and sun, and even beds, everything felt dramatic.

  Meeting in the outdoors, during the day was a pipe dream, especially now that I knew Mira was following me around like a stealth helicopter. The weight in my chest was turned on, so she had to be close. On top of the school roof, peeking out from behind the bushes, standing directly over me as she stared down with the most intense expression known to man.

  I was sure with just a glance she could scare more than a few Undermortals away. Hell, I couldn't even see her and I was already wanting to engage in a stank-eye match. Even though I knew she would win.

  She wasn’t about to let up either now that Rowan blew up a whole wing of the school four days ago. You could still see some lazy smoke drifting up from the rubble, dust choking the air as the older students learned how to put it all back together.

  The boy hadn't been seen since.

  I didn't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Those dark eyes were still following me everywhere, the stare as intense as the secret I carried. I hadn't said a word about it, not even to Eddy. I was needing to have a conversation with my sanity.

  But those eyes...

  "Gem!" Eddy shrieked from where he lay beside me, belly down, staring at the grass as he worked to grow a tiny seed he had placed there. "Gem, look at this."

  I groaned and rolled over, body aching after having laid in the shivering sun for so long. I loved this weather, but I wanted to try spring and summer too. Some of the older Undermortals said that it gets so hot you want to walk around naked. I didn't believe them.

  "What is it?" I grumbled, chin on my hands as I looked at the grass he was staring at so intently, expecting a rose or tulip, or something to be sprouting up, but all that was there was the faded green of the grass.

  "Look!" He said again, his face still contorted as he stared at the grass.

  "Do you have bad gas or are you trying to light the dirt on fire?" It could go either way with him. But I didn't get an answer besides a quick smack upside the head, he didn't even look away from the ground. The ground that was now full of tiny little blades of grass, lime green baby spikes that were pushing their way toward the icy sun.

  "Woah," I gasped, shimmying forward to get a better look.

  This magic was similar to the whole expansion stuff we had learned a month or so ago. But instead of making things bigger, you were making them grow. It should be easy; except I had spent so long blowing things up that giving things life was proving to be a whole different set of issues.

  For once, Eddy was ahead of me on something. I couldn't be more proud. Maybe he would become a master and I could convince him to repair that poor tree above us, the silver trunk and branches finally matching the other barren death around us. Not that I expected it to come back to life after what Rowan had done to it. The poor thing was still cleaved in two.

  "That's amazing, Ed," I said, the surprise in my voice catching me off guard. I didn't dare talk too loud, like I would scare the baby grass away if I yelled too loud.

  "I know," he whispered, scooting closer to the baby grass, his hands flat on the ground. "I had put a sunflower seed in there, so clearly I am still doing this all wrong, but I'll take it."

  He chuckled, I laughed and rolled back over to let the sun splash over me again. "You're still doing better than me."

  "Does this mean I can rub your nose in that then? Here I was thinking I was going to be super powerful and instead..." He trailed off, grunting as he focused on his magic again.

  "You're growing grass." I turned my head back to him, giving him the biggest cheesiest grin ever. He didn't see it, but mostly because the grin had fallen right off my face, my heart giving a shuddering start as everything from neck to navel turned to lead.

  "Shit," I gasped before my senses came about it and my eyes focused on the pair that was walking across the grass a few hundred yards away from where Ed and I laid under our skeleton tree.

  "What?" Ed asked, hands flying from the ground as if he was going to protect me and instead, breaking contact with the soil and the plants that immediately stopped their growing process.

  "Shit," he echoed me as his poor grass wilted, before following my focus and the two buzzards clinging to each other on the other side of the sloping lawns outside the school.

  I could practically hear her high-pitched shrieking laugh.

  Sia, and who, for a split second, I had thought was Rowan, laughing, talking, and... kissing?

  "Is that Sia and the Prince?" Eddy asked in a hush, clearly having seen the same thing. Both of us pushing ourselves a little closer to the grass, as if they wouldn't notice two long uninformed people laying there. Maybe we would just look like logs.

  "It better not be him," I said to myself, a leaden weight pushing itself tighter against my chest. Everything felt like it was closing up, seeing him with her causing some kind of physical pain.

  Screw that shit. I pushed it away, well, as well as I could. I couldn't quite alleviate all of the pressure.

  "I don't think it's Rowan, but it's definitely Sia," I said a little firmer, as if I was willing to make it true.

  "No, not that prince. The other one. Not the nice one who thinks he’s funnier than he is. But the other, other one." I looked at him like he was crazy before twisting back to the couple who went back to laughing, although they were plastered close enough together that they might as well have been doing other stuff.

  "Ryland?" I asked, expecting a shriek and a snarling wife to abandon her stal
ker duties and take off down the pitch, there wasn't so much as a whisper hidden in the wind.

  "No, doesn't that guy and his wife follow around the king and queen like lap dogs. They wouldn't be here." I couldn't give him more than a smile, he had no idea how right and very wrong that statement was. "I think it looks like Talon."

  Eddy pushed himself up on his elbows as the two walked away, her irritating laugh fading away as the corset of nerves unwound.

  "Although they do look quite a bit alike don't they?"

  "They do," I don't think I had noticed before, but especially from a distance they all kind of blurred into one mass. Dark curly hair, tall, broad shouldered muscles. I'm sure they both had blue eyes too, not like Rowan's green ones.

  His black ones.

  I sighed and rolled over, throwing my arms over my face as if that would help banish the memory. It made it worse.

  "What are they doing together, isn't she with Rowan?" Eddy asked, lacing that corset back over my chest with a renewed force.

  "No, he finally got his senses together and dumped the bitch," I said with too much snarl.

  "Careful there, Gem. You are starting to sound like you care for the guy." Okay, maybe I needed more snarl. I really didn't need him thinking I had gone soft on the guy. Except it was Ed, and the look he was giving me made it clear that he already knew.

  "The guy got too excited while sparring, almost used too powerful magic on me that would have killed me and no one has seen him yet," I said, reciting the story that the Queen had concocted and everyone had been sticking too.

  "Uh-huh," he said before going back to the grass. He didn't believe that either. "It's okay to like the guy you know. I won't call you a traitor," he paused, "to your face."

  I growled and smacked him upside the head. "Go back to your sunflower seed you loser."

  It was the best comeback I could give him. It barely stuck. Mostly because my guilt was gnawing at me, digging into my soul like last week's bread. Moldy, soggy, lumps of betrayal.

  He was right.

  I was a traitor.

  A traitor to my people that I promised to fight for. I lied for a prince, I conspired with a queen, I buddied up their guard. I was pretty sure I was falling for the same despicable prince I had lied for.

  Black eyes and all.

  "Shit," I mumbled, the sound more of a groan as I pressed my hands into my eyes and tried to focus on the way the sun was beating against my skull, the cool breeze running over us. Focus on the things that were real. Not some fanciful delusion that if I kept following was going to get people hurt.

  Eddy chuckled at my dramatic outburst, before returning to mumble to the grass, his grumbles sounding like an incantation. The deep bass mixing with the bird song that was twittering over us, filling the quiet afternoon with a normalcy that for a moment felt okay. Like maybe I could be okay with my crush, okay with the choices I made.

  Although I had the very real feeling that the second I left and walked back into my school and towards my people that I would have to leave that all behind. Leave it to rot like the shattered fragments of the tree we laid under.

  I had loved that tree, too.

  "Hello, Gemma."

  Bars of iron jutted through my spine, that metal corset locking against my chest and heart as they forgot to breathe, to pump. I lay frozen beneath that voice that I would recognize anywhere.

  I didn't even need to peek behind my arms that I had thrown over my eyes. I could feel his magic in the air, feel it twist around me. I don't think I could ever forget what that felt like.

  "Hello Rowan," I whispered, trying to figure out what to say and how to react to the shy voice that was right above me. To the boy, I had pestered for months, who had more secrets and more depth than I ever would have guessed.

  I could only do one thing, pretend that it had never happened.

  Except, when I finally did shift toward the handsome prince who squatted beside me, arms on his knees as he played with a few shards of grass; I remembered that it did happen. All that pain, and fear, and panic I had seen in his ebony eyes was real. I couldn't ignore it.

  Any of it.

  I didn’t want to.

  "You're okay?" I asked, my voice cracking.

  "I'm okay," he said with a nod, and I did probably the dumbest thing I had ever done in my life.

  I threw myself into his arms and gave him a hug.

  36

  Rowan

  There she was, blissfully laying under the remains of her tree, arms thrown over her face. She looked so vulnerable. Innocent.

  It had taken a lot of guts to come back from Imdalind after what happened. Even more to tear myself out of my room. But as she had told me on more than one occasion, I needed to stop being quite so selfish.

  Seeing her there, so calm, the pink in her hair reflecting the sun, the curls spread over the grass. It made the trauma of leaving my hiding place feel a little bit safer.

  Eddy looked up as I came closer, his jaw-dropping before it broke into a wide smile. Pressing my finger to my lips in a plea for silence, he gave me a wink and went back to mumbling at the grass.

  "Hello Gemma," I said, voice wavering as I knelt beside her, pulling a few strands of grass from the ground as if fiddling with the things would help my stomach to stay in place and not fall through the center of the world.

  She tensed, my back straightening as I felt her magic flare, nervous energy pricking against my spine as the powerful stuff drifted unseen toward me. Reaching for me, as I wanted to reach for her.

  I swallowed, the knots in my swimming stomach tightening. I wanted it, but I didn't know if I would get it. If she would ever trust me. Not after what she saw. Mira had said that she hadn't told anyone what had really happened, but that didn't mean she was going to welcome the freak into her life.

  I had almost attacked her. She had seen what I really was.

  "Hello Rowan," she said, her voice as shaky as the knots in my belly. She didn't move from where she lay in the breeze, hair twisting in the wind, her magic pressing against mine. Eddy’s head twisted between us like it was on a string.

  Finally, she moved her arms. Those lavender eyes stared at me, shaking as she saw me, as her magic swelled.

  "You're okay?" Her voice was stronger, not a touch of fear in it. I couldn't stop my lips from turning up at the sound and the light that was in her eyes, barely a scrap of fear bleeding through her gaze.

  "I'm okay," I whispered, my fingers aching to reach out, to hold her. To promise her it would never happen again, to thank her for covering for me. To plead with her to understand.

  I didn't get one word out before she lept from the grass, her arms wide as she wrapped herself around me, both of us tumbling back into the grass. For a split second my fear, panic, and years of Uncle Rylands slightly paranoid training kicked in and I could have sworn she was attacking me. But then her skin made contact with mine and her magic flooded into me.

  Electricity sparked through my veins, her power winding through me unchecked as it mingled. As it danced. As everything became fire. I knew I should shield against it, that I should push her away lest I risk the already shredded binds of my fathers to break and the Drak to break free again.

  But I didn't care.

  I didn't fucking care. I held her against me, my hand pressing against her back, against her neck as I buried myself against her, smelling that tangle wood aroma of her hair. The one that always followed her around. The one I had dreamed of. The one that I was losing myself in.

  "I'm sorry," I whispered against her hair, hoping she could hear. "I'm so sorry."

  The words were like a trigger and she was up, jumping off me and to her feet, leaving me lying in the grass and staring up at her. I could practically see the snarky rage drip back into her features. Her eyes sparking mischievously as she put her hands on her hips.

  "You better be sorry. You almost killed me and left me to clean up your mess," she snapped, eyes blazing. It would have been f
rightening if the wind wasn't picking up the loose curls from her mohawk in just the right way. "I have a reputation for destroying buildings, you know. Now, thanks to you, prince killing."

  I would have smiled, I could see a tiny bit of a grin trying to pull its way through her teasing scowl, but her words resonated a bit too deep. I had already heard a few shocked whispers as I made my way through the school to find her. It was ridiculous that they would believe that.

  "Did they really think you killed me?"

  "Your girlfriend does. She loves telling everyone about it," she snapped with a look behind her, as if Sia was going to appear there and knock her on her ass.

  "Not my girlfriend."

  "Yeah, we know," Eddy said with a chuckle, the kid still staring at the grass.

  "Don't want to hear it," she said, sinking back down to the grass and leaning against the shards of the tree. "I'm glad you didn't blow yourself to Timbuktu, your majesty."

  I may have been imagining things, but my title didn't seem to have nearly as much vitriol in it as it usually did. She didn't seem quite so flippant. So angry. That same bit of caring was peeking out again.

  "Nope. All in one piece." She didn't respond, although Eddy was still looking between us like we had turned into one of the prince hookup movies.

  Amazed. Shocked. Angry.

  She really hadn't told anyone what happened.

  "Eddy, right?" I asked, holding out my hand. He took it reluctantly. I put a shield over my palm in case he tried anything stupid. He squeezed, which actually hurt. Dude was strong. "Nice grip. I thought my douchebag brother would be the first one to break my knuckles."

  "Woops!" he said, dropping my hand, although I wasn't one hundred percent sure the response was genuine. He was now shifting his weight, looking between me and her like we were a bomb about to go off.

  “Don’t worry about it, I’ll have to show you some old grip games we have back in Imdalind,” I said, still looking at Eddy, ignoring the pull to turn. “That is if you will join me when I go back home for the weekend tomorrow.”