Of Fate and Fortune: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance (Arcane Arts Academy Book 4)

by Elena Lawson

  OF FATE & FORTUNE

  ARCANE ARTS ACADEMY: BOOK 4

  Elena Lawson

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Copyright © 2019 Elena Lawson

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, incidents, and dialogs are products of the author’s

  imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events is strictly

  coincidental.

  1

  The sun shouldn’t be allowed to shine on days like this.

  When you carve a hole in the earth to bury your dead, it should be raining. Or storming. Basically, anything other than what it was like right now. A clear blue sky so vibrant it almost hurt to look at—pale in comparison to the blinding white of the sun at high noon.

  Cal drew me into his side, knowing I needed the support. Today we were burying the last connection—the final link I had to my family. Martin Rupert Doyle the Third was the last surviving member of his family. His line had died with him, and I knew the world would be a darker place for it. It had to be.

  “You okay?” Cal whispered into my side, planting a soft kiss against my sun-warmed hair.

  I shook my head a little—somewhere halfway between a nod and a no. Not really sure what I was feeling. Okay certainly didn’t seem like a word that fit to describe it. Empty maybe. Guilty, for sure…though also so, so grateful. I could never thank him for what he did. Without his help, there was a good chance we would all be dead. He saved us.

  “I will be,” I whispered back to Cal as the two men I didn’t know finished lowering Martin down into the cool, damp earth.

  Adrian moved in closer to my other side, lending me comfort how he could.

  Headmistress Granger was here, too. So were Bianca and Marcus.

  Bianca had barely spoken to me since it happened except to apologize over and over. I knew she blamed herself, but even though I didn’t want her to be hurting, there was a small part of me, a dark part, that agreed with her.

  She was the one who couldn’t leave well enough alone. She was supposed to go home, but because she couldn’t find Marcus at the Abbey, she convinced Martin to help her do a locator spell, leading them to the hidden room beneath the academy—and into the maniacal clutches of Professor Donovan.

  If she’d just gone home—if she had just listened—

  I stopped myself, unclenching my fists. I knew it wasn’t fair to think like that. She was worried about Marcus. Wouldn’t I have run in blindly too if it were Cal, or Adrian, or Elias, or even Draven—or Bianca herself who was missing and in potential danger? I knew the answer was yes, but I wasn’t ready yet to admit it. Not aloud anyway.

  We were on a part of the Hawkins property I’d never seen before. The family cemetery. It was on the opposite side to where the hidden underground moon room was on the west side of the grounds. A short walk through gnarled, moss-covered trees revealed a neatly kept graveyard of all the family I never knew I had.

  It was the only place I could think that he might want to be buried. He’d served my family so long and had none of his own—but no, that wasn’t true. He was my family. And I was willing to bet he was family to my father, too. Sometimes the people you chose to have as your family were even closer to you than your blood, and Martin was no exception.

  But something about being here—seeing all the headstones carved with the names of the people I never had a chance to know made it all the more painful. Made it so much worse…because I had to mourn them, too. My father’s headstone stood near to my side, several yards in front of the two that marked his parent’s graves, just beside where his younger sister’s headstone was. Hers was older, coated in a growing layer of moss and cracked from age and decay.

  Grandparents. And their parents. My father and aunt.

  Family.

  I just wish I’d had the opportunity to know them.

  For a moment, I registered that my mother’s grave wasn’t among the others and I had to wonder at how she died—and where. After she abandoned me, had she gone back to live among mortals? Had a different family? A whole other life?

  I gulped hard and sighed. I’d never know. Didn’t think I wanted to, anyway. She didn’t deserve to be buried here.

  “Did he ever tell you?” Adrian said in a low voice. He didn’t have to elaborate. I’d been thinking about it a lot over the last few days—after I got over the initial shock. Martin had known something. Something big. That day he caught us in the moon room I could tell right away he knew something more he wasn’t saying—and that was before he outright admitted it—telling us he’s promised to take the secret to his grave.

  And it seemed he had done just that. As promised.

  I had to wonder if I would ever figure out what it was he was keeping from me, and why. If it were really important—if it might’ve changed things—he would have told me, right? Promise or no?

  I couldn’t be certain. If Martin was anything, he was loyal.

  As one of the two hired men shoveled the first thin layer of dirt onto the deep cherry wood coffin, the little particles trickling down to hit the surface like hard rain, I couldn’t hold the tears back anymore.

  One dropped, and then two. But no more. I held them back. He wouldn’t want me to cry. Not now—probably not ever.

  “No,” I finally replied to Adrian. “He didn’t.”

  “Come on,” Cal said, squeezing my shoulder. I turned into him, letting his birch and whiskey scent envelop me. Soothe me. “Let’s get inside. Get a drink before the lawyer comes, yeah?”

  I nodded into his shoulder, reaching out a hand to pat the granite headstone to my right. Emblazoned on the front were the words, here lies Alistair Percival Hawkins. Beloved husband. Beloved father. And beneath that, in the place where dates would be on a human headstone, was a quote. Death is but the key.

  I wondered what great philosopher had said it. It wasn’t a quote I was familiar with. Seemed a strange one for a witch to have carved onto his headstone—especially considering we, for the most part, didn’t believe in mortal notions like heaven or gods.

  “Bye,” I whispered so softly I didn’t think anyone heard me. Saying my farewell to both my father and Martin—and all the rest of them, too.

  “You two should get back to the academy,” Granger said from the head of the coffin, gesturing to Bianca and Marcus across from us.

  What was a little past noon here in Ireland was after dinner hour at the academy and it was a school night. Not that it mattered much now, though. The term was ending in two days
. After that, we got a whopping three weeks of summer vacation before the next term would begin.

  I’d been excited for the break before. But now…

  I let Cal tug me along behind him, numbly, as I did my best to keep my emotions at bay. But with every shovel-full of dirt that thumped onto Martin, I flinched.

  “I’ll meet you back at the house,” Granger said softly as we passed her, reaching out to give my free shoulder a light squeeze before we moved away. I could do little more than give her a tight nod.

  She would stay and help us deal with the legal side of things. Explain anything I didn’t understand. Though she said it would likely be quite simple. Since all Martin had in the world was the little caretaker’s house down the lane.

  I hadn’t been able to go into it. Hell, I’d barely been able to look at it. There were little bits of him even on the outside. I saw him in the perfectly manicured twin hedges on either side of his pristine blue door. Even from a distance, I could see how the little brass knocker at the middle shone as though he’d only just finished polishing it. And how the little garden was neatly tended. The flagstones leading up to the stoop just so.

  I didn’t see a house at all. I saw the monocled man who greeted me the very first time I returned to Rosewood Abbey. Addressing me as Miss Harper with a deep bow.

  I smiled at the memory as we moved across the lawn. Absently, I wondered who had cleaned up all the mess from the party. The grass was spotless and looked like it was freshly trimmed. The tent where the drink fountain and other goodies were set up had vanished.

  As though reading my mind, Cal said, “We came the other night and cleaned the place up.”

  I gave him a small smile.

  He cleared his throat. “It was Bianca’s idea,” he added, almost as an afterthought. They must have sensed the tension between us these last few days because the way he said it, with a look that gently scolded me, made my insides twist.

  I swallowed hard, unprepared to respond.

  We had bigger problems right now.

  Didn’t we always?

  The academy was on the verge of being closed for the next term due to all the ‘unusual goings-on’ I believe was what was in the Magistrate’s official quote to the Chronicle.

  Unusual goings-on…. ha!

  I think two dead students, and two more almost dead ones—not to mention what almost happened to Kendra and Marcus—and what did happen to Martin. I think the situation warranted more than a statement as lax as unusual goings-on.

  Apparently, there was a full-scale investigation being launched against the late Professor Donovan. Though they had little to go on since by the time we got out of the hidden chamber and the Arcane Authorities got in—everything save for his body was gone.

  To them, it meant there was nothing else ever there. To us, it meant there was definitely someone else involved. Maybe multiple someones. And at this point, I was all but certain whatever it was that was going on went all the way to the top of the witchy food-chain. To Godric Montgomery himself. But I wasn’t about to go telling anyone that. Not yet.

  Besides, not everything was gone. There was one thing we took with us. The single piece of parchment that lay beside his prone corpse against the icy stone. A near-identical twin to the one my father had pressed between the pages of his private journal. The one that told of the curses of the sun and moon. And maybe how to undo them.

  That, we took. The decision to tell no one of its existence was unanimous. As far as we all were concerned, there wasn’t a single person we could trust anymore beyond our small circle.

  We went into the Abbey, the temperature inside so much cooler than the balmy heat outside that I shivered the moment I passed over the threshold.

  “Sorry, toots,” a voice said from my right and I didn’t have to turn to see that it was Rose. I hadn’t seen her much lately. When I finally did turn to her, I found a sincere look of apology on her face. A rarity for her. “He was a good one,” she said and took a long inhale of her ghostly cigarette. “A shame.”

  I nodded my thanks, not wanting to speak to her outright right now. Not in front of Cal and Adrian. They knew about her now thanks to Bianca’s big mouth and because I had no choice but to accept her help to find out where Donovan’s lair was. But there was a difference between knowing about something crazy and seeing it clear as day.

  Getting the hint, Rose mimed locking up her lips and throwing away the key.

  I mouthed a thank you to her before Cal could herd me into the dining area and pull out a chair for me to sit down. “Do you need anything?” he asked.

  Adrian scratched at an invisible itch on the back of his neck and looked horribly uncomfortable as he asked, “Yeah, like tea or something? Water?”

  I smirked at his attempt to help. He and I were the same in this way. Sad people made us uncomfortable, edgy. We didn’t quite know what to do with ourselves. “How about something stronger?” I asked, and Adrian perked up at the suggestion. Probably wanting a little nip, himself. And happy to have been given a task—something to busy his hands.

  “I can do that,” he said with a little grin and disappeared back the way we’d come.

  “The lawyer should be here soon,” Cal said, dragging another chair away from the table and sliding into it. He bent forward, his fingertips steepled against his lips and his elbows on his knees as he considered me. “If you aren’t ready yet I can ask Granger to postpone it. I’m sure she could—”

  “No,” I said, interrupting. “I want to get it over with.”

  It was the truth. I didn’t want to keep dragging this on and on and on. The waiting for the funeral had been bad enough. Now it was done. Martin was buried in his rightful place alongside my family. I hoped his soul was at peace.

  Now there was just this—the reading of his will. And since he had no surviving family, it seemed he’d left something to me. I was a bit surprised when Granger told me—especially since I’d only just met him several weeks before. Had he really had time to change his will so quickly? And why? Why leave me anything?

  I couldn’t imagine what it was he’d have wanted me to have. I already had his monocle, though it was cracked down the middle now. I’d asked the Arcane Authorities if I could keep it, and with a little pressure from Granger—bless her—they released it to me.

  I just wanted something of his. A memento. He deserved to be remembered. And the statue was a nice idea and all—another brilliant one of Bianca’s—but I wanted something I could keep from him that was just mine. And the monocle seemed the most appropriate thing to me—not sure why.

  The statue would be there for everyone to see and admire. It had been easy to get Granger to agree to erect it in the courtyard at the academy. Since it was Martin who had saved the lives of two students and all of us.

  I paid for it out of my father’s bank account—er—my bank account, which by the way had a ridiculous sum of money in it. We’re talking so many zeros it made my head spin…

  By the time we got back to the academy tomorrow, the statue would be finished. I couldn’t wait to see it. I hoped he would’ve liked it. That he would have felt proud. Honored. I could picture him blushing at the sight of it, scolding me for making a fuss over him,

  Cal laid his hand over top of mine where I had them clasped tightly in my lap. He began to massage the tension from the muscles there, relaxing each tendon in turn. I sighed as the tightness left each digit before he worked his way to my palms and down into my wrists. His face was hard. Stony.

  “What is it?” I hedged in a low, quiet voice.

  He didn’t answer me right away, instead continuing in his massaging, the furrow in his brow deepening. He found aches where I didn’t even know I had them and I sighed some more. He was silent as he worked, and I wondered what he was thinking about behind that hard mask he wore.

  It was strange to see this softer side of him. Cal was all hard edges—or at least, I’d thought so. But since Martin’s passing, he’d been every
thing I’d needed him to be. A shoulder. An ear. Someone to quietly be with while I rode out the pain.

  “Cal?” I urged, wanting him to know that he could talk to me.

  I reached out with my free hand and ran my fingertips along his jawline from his temple to the dip just under his chin. He glanced up briefly and then let his gaze drop. “It’s nothing,” he said with a shrug.

  I tipped his chin up so he would look at me. “It’s not nothing if it’s bothering you. What is it?”

  A myriad of emotions crossed his face all at once, and he didn’t have to say it because I could see it written there in the lines in his forehead. And in the deep, dark circles under his eyes. None of us were sleeping. It was the not knowing. I could see it in him just as clearly as I could feel it like a gaping abyss at the center of my being. The not knowing was going to eat us alive.

  First Sterling. Then the kidnapped shifters and vamps. Now the murders at the academy. They were all connected. They had to be. But how? And why?

  None of us said it, but I knew I couldn’t be the only one thinking it—how long before it was one of us? How much time did we have to figure it out before…

  I gulped.

  That was dangerous thinking. Every time I went down that path I wanted to lock up everyone I loved in a damned bomb shelter and swallow the key. I wanted to squirrel them away someplace safe. Keep them there. Unspoiled. Unharmed.

  But I doubted any of them would be having that. In fact, they’d sooner lock me up than allow me to lock them up I was sure. Even though I had more power in my pinkie finger than they had in their entire bodies. “When did Elias say he was coming?” I asked Cal for what I thought was probably the third time today.