Two Kinds of Damned: A Reverse Harem Academy Romance (The True and the Crown Book 2)

by May Dawson

  “I want to take you home, Tera.”

  The word home conjures memories of cold marble floors and my father’s grim meetings with his men, of doors shut in my face and then, worse, doors opened, revealing dark magic—twisted faces and bloodied bodies. Another memory flares, one almost lost: my father running down the hill from the house, his robe flapping behind him, hands outstretched toward me, his handsome, aristocratic face alive with fear. “That doesn’t sound like a solid plan.”

  “I hope, in time, you’ll be ready to be the face of the True,” he says. “But it will take time. You have so much catching up to do.”

  He’s so full of nonsense. He has no intention of seeing me as a leader—I’m simply a useful step on his way to the top of True leadership. I can’t imagine this man taking over all Avalon. “The problem with this is that I’m already the face of the True as far as the Crown is concerned. And, as you already mentioned, the executions bit…”

  “We won’t let anything happen to you,” he promises. “No one knows you were taken from your room.”

  “I’m betting someone has noticed by now.” Someone being an overprotective Marine with pretty eyes and a bossy attitude. And besides that, it isn’t my room that they took me from. “How did you know where I was?”

  “You have friends in Rawl House.”

  Yeah, of course I do—someone must have reported back that I was in Airren’s room. He may intend that to be comforting, but it’s a threat too.

  “Oh? I’d love to meet them.” My tone comes out appropriately cool and arch.

  “Soon. We hoped you would do some work with us first. Toward that goal of exonerating your father.”

  My lips twist. It’s a test. My life is full of those, and I don’t seem to pass many. Tests. My Casting test. I’m pretty sure I missed it in the blur of days, and my stomach drops. Then I realize how idiotic it is to worry about that while I’m face to face with the True, and I turn my attention back to the old bald wizard. My voice comes out rough. “What do you want from me?”

  “I don’t want anything from you,” he rushes to assure me. “I want to help you.”

  I nod at his lies, although I don’t try to school my face to look as if I believe them. The dark lord’s daughter doesn’t have to be an idiot, no matter how much some people might prefer I was.

  “Where did you find the dragon’s egg?” he asks me.

  “That’s my secret,” I say. “Just like you want time before you trust me.”

  “I’m deeply committed to the True.”

  “I’m sure you are.” I cross one leg over the other, touching my hand to my neck absently. There’s no comforting chain against my fingers. For once, I’m not wearing one of the enchanted baubles the boys have given me.

  No one is coming to rescue me. There’s no way for Airren to know I was taken through that portal.

  “I’m not sure yet what I want,” I tell him. “But why don’t you tell me what you want? Perhaps our interests will align.”

  “There are worse dangers to this nation than the Crown’s lies and our poisoned, ever-withering magic.” He hands me a photograph.

  The smiling face in the photograph is familiar: a small woman with dark hair, a pointed nose, and rounded cheekbones. Cax’s mature woman.

  This time around, I might agree with the True asshole.

  “Stay away from her.” He says it sternly, but there’s a desperate edge in his voice. He doesn’t want to see my power—whatever it is—on her side.

  “And why should I trust you?”

  He looks into my face, studying me, before he says, “You look so very much like your mother.”

  It’s a blatant attempt to distract me from a very good question, and even though I know that, I ask, “You knew my mother?”

  “You sound like her too. She was so very bright—brighter than Padrick, although wise enough to keep that her secret.” He shakes his head. “Although in the end, he did outsmart her.”

  “What are you talking about?” Memories of my mother twist through my mind: the bright-eyed woman who was so quick with a joke, and the shell she became.

  When I came home from boarding school for the last time, she was gone. My father met me in the cold, expansive entryway to our house, wrapped me tightly in his arms, so distraught he couldn’t speak for long seconds, and then told me she’d left us. Looking back, I think maybe he put an enchantment on me so I wouldn’t question it. I hated her for leaving us.

  It was only when I was Earthside that memories of her began to haunt my dreams. It was only then that I remembered the graves outside the house, and how I’d sleepwalk, waking up with the wind whipping around me, alone in the gloom and breathing in the scent of iron.

  Every time I think of my mother, I imagine her as a ghost, smiling at me from somewhere down the street. Her face is hazy in my memory; I can’t imagine her up close.

  Although I guess she wouldn’t smile if she really saw me, living this odd and often ugly life of mine.

  “Your mother is a spy for the Crown,” he says, cocking his head to one side. “Didn’t your father ever tell you?”

  “No.” The thought makes my chest tighten. It can’t be real. That my mother could be… the image that rises in my head, faster than reason can push it away, is of the ghost that smiles at me from afar. But color washes over her as she becomes solid, her cheeks turning pink again, that frozen faint loving smile widening…right before she takes a step forward, holding her arms out to me.

  Stupid. I’m always so stupid when it comes to the things I want most: those men of mine, and true friends like Stelly and Josie, and my mother back.

  “She’s on a mission in Vasilik, but I’ll reach out to her.” He promises me. “I’ll make sure you get to meet her.”

  I stare at him. I want my mother back so badly that I can’t say anything.

  “Oh, would you do me one favor?” He passes a slip of paper to me. “I can’t get into that library of yours on campus. Find me this book, Tera.”

  It’s clear this is the carrot: my mother for serving his wishes.

  I stare back at him, because there are so many things that don’t make sense. If my mother were alive, why wouldn’t she have rescued me years ago? Why would this man—who claims to be someone important in the True—know where my mother is, if she were an agent of the Crown? They wouldn’t exactly have much in common. He’s full of shit.

  But the fantasy of my mother living and breathing still spins around me.

  He pushes a piece of paper across to me. “I think one day you’ll need to go home, Tera. But I’ll go with you if you like. I’ll be right by your side.”

  I unfold the paper. The title inside is written in the old language, the one from before Avalon and Primus were torn apart. I can’t read the entangled, foreign letters.

  “And how exactly does this book help you?”

  “It will give us the ability to see through time,” he tells me. “We can use it to exonerate your father. And it has many other powerful spells too—to enhance your powers, to help you take your rightful place in the world, Tera.”

  I nod at him brightly. All these old spells that seem too good to be true—like the one that was supposed to rekindle my magic—are as fake as a fairy tale. Not only is he True, he’s a loon.

  My mother’s nothing but a fairy tale, too.

  “If I decide to do this, how will I get back in touch with you?” I ask briskly. I still have a mission, even if my hopes have flared suddenly and then crumpled to ash all in the course of one short conversation.

  “We’ll be in touch,” he promises me. “Are you ready to go back?”

  I hold my palm out. “No more smoke. That gave me a headache.”

  “We had to act quickly to bring you through the portal.”

  “That’s illegal, isn’t it?”

  “So is being True,” he says. “But all right. We’ll return you to your room. Don’t tell anyone we met. Once I know I can trust you, I’ll
introduce you to everyone. They’ll be so happy to meet you, Tera.”

  “Who would I tell?”

  “Don’t you have a boyfriend?”

  “You think I’m going to replace Padrick Donovan, the Dark Lord, and you’re asking if I have a boyfriend?” A girl can’t get any respect in this world, even if she is its most infamous living villain.

  He starts to say something, and I cut him off. “Look, as I’m sure you know, I’m rarely on my own. Someone’s going to notice I was gone. I’m going to need a cover story.”

  “You won’t,” he tells me earnestly. “No one will know you were gone.”

  “I went missing what, an hour ago—” I don’t know how long that smoke left me unconscious.

  “You didn’t,” he assures me. He raises his voice, twisting back. “Kairus!”

  He turns back to me, a benevolent smile on his lips. “My son. You know his name now. And so you know how much I trust you, Tera—I am putting our lives in your hands.”

  That’s a weird thought.

  The door opens, and the blond-haired boy from earlier comes in.

  “Take Tera back to her university.” He rises abruptly, and the feet of the chair scrape across the rough stone floor.

  Kairus nods. He holds his hand out to me. “Come with me. I’ll take you through the portal.”

  His voice is deeper than I expected, a deep, musical voice that doesn’t quite fit with his narrow frame.

  I wait until the old man has left before I turn to him. I expect I’ll walk into a room full of Crown agents, including perpetually-exasperated Cutter. If I bring this kid back through the portal with me, he’ll be arrested, the Crown will rush in, and we’ll have met one goal—finding the men who invaded the ball—but we’ll have left so many questions unanswered.

  “You can’t open a portal into that room,” I tell him kindly. “It’s too dangerous.”

  He touches a finger to his lips, a flash of mischief in his eyes.

  Then there’s a flash in the door, too.

  I shake my head as I follow him toward the door.

  But when he opens it, it doesn’t lead into the night outside or into a chaos of police sweeping through the door with their swords and shields.

  In front of me stands Airren’s dorm room, with the neatly made bed and the silver coffee pot and the stacks of books and the windows that look toward the library. It’s quiet. Empty.

  “I can do funny things to time.”

  I turn back, but he’s still in the doorway. “Sleep well tonight, Tera Donovan.”

  There’s not a chance in hell of that.

  He closes the door between us.

  Well. It’s been a whirlwind of an evening, what with the kidnapping and the revelation that my mother might be alive. Although it can’t be true, my head still pounds as I cross to the window and push open the sash. When I breathe in the cold night, it carries a bite of wood smoke and the soft, pleasant dampness of rain-soaked air. As I gaze up at the whirl of silver-bright stars above, I put a hand over the back of my dragon, holding her against my shoulder; I don’t want her to tumble out the window. She seems as unsteady in this world as I feel. I should tell the guys about what just happened, shouldn’t I? If they are Crown after all, they need to know. If they’re True, they’ll be pleased I’ve made contact with Lerak.

  But what about my mother?

  Whatever their mission, no one will care about finding her like I do.

  I don’t have more than a moment to make sense of it. There’s a creak as the door opens behind me.

  Airren comes in, with Stelly behind him. He’s shaking his head, and she’s laughing at whatever she’s just said that he doesn’t approve of. The minute they see my face, Stelly stops. As she stares at me, Airren dashes toward me. Stelly suddenly comes back to life, closing the door so the noise of the hall fades away.

  He stops a step away, holding his hand out as if I’m a skittish animal.

  “What happened, Tera?”

  I can’t ask him if I can trust him. He’d lie to me anyway.

  But I still walk unsteadily toward him, and he closes his arms around me, enveloping me in his warm, hard grip and the scent of his cologne.

  I feel safe when he holds me. But is that the biggest lie?

  Chapter 22

  “Talk to me,” Airren says, tucking my hair back behind my ear.

  “I was taken.” God, I can’t keep that from him, even if it would be smart to lie; I’m still shaking. “By one of the True leaders. Lerak.”

  “One of the True leaders?” Airren frowns. “The True leader here in Corum is Raila…”

  “There are two of them,” I say. “They’re fighting for control. Lerak wants Raila dead. He didn’t say so, but…I’m sure.”

  I turn my back on him, twisting in his arms—though I’m not quite willing to leave them—when I say, “And you didn’t tell me about Raila.”

  The bitterness threaded in my voice is real. I can’t stop thinking about how Cax embraced her. How I’m nothing but sweet.

  “I’m sorry,” Airren says. “But we didn’t know much of anything about her. She disappeared three years ago.”

  “You’re such an idiot.” Stelly’s voice is acidic. “I can tell you anything you want to know about Raila. I don’t need her file.”

  “Stelly,” Airren says, with a note of warning in his voice.

  “She ripped my brother’s heart out,” Stelly says. “And she shouldn’t have taken it anyway. He was sixteen. She was thirty.”

  Airren’s eyes flicker toward Stelly and then return to me, his jaw tightening. “How did they take you?” he demands. “You were just here. I left you for two minutes—”

  “They can twist time. Or at least, one of them can.” I wet my lips, about to lie, for the umpteenth time tonight. It’s not easy under Airren’s warm, worried gaze. “They want me to get a book for them. A book of powerful, lost spells. I think it might just hold the way for me to get my magic back.”

  “Why?”

  “Lerak said there’s all kinds of magic in that book. Powerful spells. The ability to restore things that were lost…”

  “When it comes to time-twisting, that magic has been all but lost.” Airren’s eyes are worried. “If the True can twist time, the war is going to get a lot more complicated.”

  I’m sure he’s not True. But with Stelly hovering beside me protectively, radiating concern and friendship that makes it hard to meet her eyes right now, I can’t tell him Cax might be True. Maybe he’s not—maybe he only betrayed my trust to win Raila’s over. The thought does nothing to ease the jealousy clutching my chest at the thought.

  I hold out my palm to Airren, uncurling my fingers from the slip of paper Lerak gave me. My accidental fist has crumpled the paper into a ball. “Does this mean anything to you?”

  His fingers brush against my palm when he takes the ball from me. “When are they coming back?”

  “They didn’t tell me.” I shake my head. “But if I give them the book, they’ll trust me. Airren, he said there are more True…here, in Rawl House.”

  Airren swears, running his hand through his hair. “I should have expected that.” But something in his tone sounds betrayed anyway.

  “You need to tell me everything that happened, start to finish,” he says. “Every detail you remember. And we’ll find your book and see if we can give it to them for the sake of your cover.”

  “Library?” I ask.

  “We’re going to take a portal,” he says. “I don’t want anyone to follow us out.”

  When he taps his wand against the door to his closet, I demand, “You couldn’t do this any time? Like when I was late to class?”

  “Can’t spoil you, sweetheart. Also, it’s highly illegal.”

  “And here I thought you were a rule follower.” I mean to tease him, but my tone comes out harsher than I intend. I regret the words as soon as they hang between us, something completely different than I intended.

  He
frowns as if I’ve hurt his feelings. “What made you think that?”

  I shake my head, and he swings the door open for me. Ahead of us, the massive warehouse yawns, the shelves of relics and books disappearing into the darkness.

  I don’t move to walk forward into the gray warehouse, and he turns back to me, then follows my gaze into the dark. “Sorry.”

  The lights flicker on a second later, the long glass tubes turning on in sections as his magic brightens the bulbs. At least that means we’re alone. But the lights, and my inability to turn a light on in this world where magic runs everything, always frustrates me.

  “Where’s Mycroft?” I ask as I step into the warehouse. It’s so hard for me to imagine Mycroft and Cax having any secrets from each other. But they are men. Lord knows if they talk about a damn thing.

  “He’s working on a lead.”

  “On Raila?”

  Airren hesitates. “On your magic.”

  “What kind of lead?”

  Stelly follows us through the portal, and as soon as she’s joined me, Airren slashes with his wand to cancel the spell. The portal vanishes behind us, and the door to our office re-appears where his dorm room was.

  “He thinks he can find the man from Avalon,” Airren says.

  “Why now?” I demand. I need him with me right now. I don’t need him traipsing through Corum, hunting down the names of people who passed through a portal and came back bloody.

  “Without your magic, you’re…” Airren hesitates, then shrugs, as if he’s decided to be blunt. “You’re an easy target.”

  “For the True? I thought we wanted me to be a target.”

  “For anyone,” he says. “You know you have enemies, Tera. And apparently, we can’t always protect you.”

  Irritation threads through his voice, but there’s something more than that, too. Tension is evident in his broad shoulders, but then, as if he sees me noticing, he relaxes.

  “I’ve done all right for myself so far with nothing but my wits.” It’s supposed to be a joke, but Airren rests his palm on my shoulder and leans forward to brush his lips against my hairline.

  “You definitely have,” he says, and warmth rises in my chest. Then he turns to Stelly. “Send Cax a bubble to meet us here, would you?”