by Alex Lidell
A few paces away, Coal stands with his arms crossed over his chest.
I’ve been here before, between an angry River and glaring Coal, and a contrite Tye. But as familiar as it is—as they are—the alien coldness in their eyes is a harsh reality.
Tye shifts his weight, placing himself in the line of fire between River and me, but I need not look at River again to know there will be no reprieve. For whatever reason, the male’s attention is locked on me alone, and only I can decide whether to answer the challenge or crumple beneath it.
My chin rises. My breaths, rapid after Tye’s deft touch, escape in small puffs of steam. Meeting River’s eyes, I match him glare for glare as his command of the forested alcove, the Academy, the very air around us ripples out with absolute certainty. His command of everything—except me.
Crossing the two paces between us, River pushes Tye aside to grab my chin between thumb and forefinger. The movement sings with the self-confidence of the king River doesn’t remember he is. The veil amulet might confuse the memories, but it plainly leaves the essence of soul and experience intact. Except River’s soul now finds mine a stranger.
I pull back.
“Stand still, Cadet.” River injects the entire ocean of difference between our statuses into those three words. “I inquired what you are doing here—in explicit violation of the rules—one day after your arrival.”
“I brought her here, sir,” Tye drawls with just enough impertinence to give River no choice but to turn some of his wrath toward the male. Once assured of River’s attention, Tye pulls his shoulders back farther, raising his head in a gesture that exposes his neck more than offers a challenge. “Leralynn is an attractive woman, and I had hoped the spice of…the forbidden forest might give me the advantage I need to secure her affections. Or at least her consent.”
“It is fortunate that that spice also enticed the young woman in question to bring a sword.” Stepping out of the woods, Shade surveys the four of us. The male’s yellow eyes are so familiar that I can’t help but hold my breath in anticipation of recognition, of his long arms wrapping around my body, cocooning me in their tender warmth.
A kernel of hope rises inside me. We are a quint, strongest when together. Now that the five of us are so close…
Shade’s yellow eyes trace the outline of my body before focusing on my face. His full lips open. Shut. Shaking himself, he drags his gaze back toward River. “I think I found at least one of our wild beasts. And before you ask, there won’t be time to get Tyelor and his…companion…back behind the wall. The wind’s been carrying our scent to it, not the other way around. Anyone with a weapon should pull it now.”
I draw my sword. In my side vision, Coal nods approvingly, reaching down into his boot to toss a knife to Tye—the only one of us still unarmed. I feel the twin to Coal’s knife in my own boot, my hands aching to draw it. But I fight better with one weapon, and whatever is coming already has Shade bringing his blade to ready guard.
The trees rustle, and a familiar snort-like breathing now reaches my ears. A few moments later, not even our upwind position can mask the stench-filled calling card of the dark realm’s rodent—not that the males remember how to interpret the smell. I brace myself for the sclices, but when three dark shapes leap at us from the darkness, I find myself unable to focus, my gaze sliding off the shapes as if trying to grip grease.
Tye stumbles beside me, blood flowing from his shoulder as he shoves a shape away. A heartbeat later, a blow I don’t see coming knocks me flat onto the earth, droplets of yellow saliva streaking across my face.
I kick away the shape I can’t focus on. It yields. The sclice is lighter than I’m used to. Certainly smaller than the one who tagged my ribs back in Slait. For a heartbeat, I see the rodent before me—a scrawny elongated hog beast with a too-large lower jaw even by sclice standards. Then the heartbeat is gone, my gaze skidding away from the dark shape as the amulet around my neck heats, scalding my skin.
Stars. I freeze halfway to my feet. The veil amulet. The bloody amulet that I can’t take off in front of anyone here, lest they haul me to a prison cell or worse. Leralynn of Osprey, the human, does not see the sclices—but Lera of Lunos sees them just fine.
19
Lera
River grabs my waist, pushing me behind him as he crouches into a fighting stance.
“Don’t trust your eyes,” Coal orders, his voice low and level and so calm that I’d never think him playing with death if I wasn’t looking at it now. His eyes closed, cheekbones and jaw sharp in the moonlight, Coal dances with his sword, the pattern making the most of his prowess and immortal senses. “The beasts play tricks with the darkness.”
The beasts play tricks with your mind.
Still in front of me, River crouches, his head cocked in concentration before he strikes with his sword and dark blood spills onto the ground, the stench of it enough to make me gag. Now that I know what I should be looking at, I can make out the shapes again. Three snarling sclices with vertical-slitted eyes and back-hinged knees and too-long front limbs—all familiar, yet off. The one River just wounded is too tall but scrawny, while the one about to fall to Coal’s sword has so many fangs that its mouth looks to be permanently hinged open. My head pulses with the effort of watching them against the insistence of my amulet that I look away. The moment I relax my concentration, my gaze slips. It is as if these perverted versions of sclices have a crude veil of their own and the only reason my fae self can see them is because I already know what they are.
Branches crack behind me, the sounds as loud as thunder in the darkness. I jerk around so quickly that the earth sways, my mind groping for the slipping focus, without which I see nothing of the sclices. Too long. I’ve waited too long to strike, making myself vulnerable. I give up straining my mind in favor of swinging my sword in a full wide circle.
I hit only air.
My stomach squeezes, my hands white-knuckled around my sword. The sclice is close. So very close. My heart races. I swing again. Blindly. Wildly. Losing my footing for lack of contact.
As I stumble, a hog’s rancid breath brushes the back of my neck.
Before I can scream, a great wolf leaps from the woods, his yellow eyes flashing as he throws himself onto the shape behind me. Gray fur and darkness roll, dragging one another back into the forest’s shadows.
“Shade!” I call after him, my voice cracking from my too-dry mouth.
A few paces off, Coal grunts with satisfaction as his sword finds its mark and a sclice tumbles to the ground, its body and dull dead eyes suddenly visible. “What the bloody hell is this?” Coal rolls the corpse over with his foot.
“Something damned by the fae,” says River.
I cringe—and not just from River’s words. Sclices are ugly enough, but deformed ones are worse still. Now that I can see it clearly, the beast’s corrupt mouth takes up half its face, the saliva rolling free from the hideous maw. From beneath the short fur hide, the sclice’s skin protrudes in a mosaic of moles, one so large, it looks like a warped snowflake.
I turn away from the corpse, my chest tight as I take in the settled silence. With the dead body at Coal’s feet, I hear no more movement. The males, their swords at the ready, disperse toward the edges of the clearing to check for additional intruders, their beautiful faces tight with concentration. Feeling. Listening. Scenting—for whatever good that will do with the whole place reeking of sewage.
I shake myself, a tingle along my spine screaming that the males are wrong. I saw three of the beasts, which means one is still here. Staying still. Lying in ambush. Forcing my breath and heart to slow, I survey the battleground, my mind on nothing but the truth of the sclice’s existence. I am Lera of Lunos. I am not human. The amulet burns against my skin, the headache returning. I am Lera of Lunos. I—I gasp as red-slitted eyes crouched low beneath a bush not a pace away meet mine.
Thick-as-tree-trunk limbs, a melon-sized snout, teeth made to shred meat. Bloody stars.
The discovered sclice roars, rushing me just as I raise my sword. Dark blood sprays the air.
“Not bad for a wee lass,” Tye mutters at the edge of my hearing.
“Not bad for a damn soldier,” Coal echoes, with equal quiet. “But could be better.”
My arms tremble from the strain. Even with my blade solidly striking flesh, the sheer size and force of the beast brings me to my knees. My breath catches, my lungs too tight to draw air.
The wounded sclice rears to its full height looming over me, clawed limbs ready to tear.
Everything inside me screams to roll away, to sprint, to run run run. I force my hands to stay on the sword. With my heart and breath speeding, it won’t be long until I can’t focus enough to see the sclice anymore—and the males are blind to it utterly. I have to stay, to drive the sword firmly into the beast’s flesh. Not a killing blow—I’ve struck the thing’s thigh—but a way to mark the sclice’s location for the others. Give my males a chance.
The raised claws lower. My ribs scream in anticipated pain of another sclice attack, my body readying itself for the blow. With all the muscle I’ve ever gained, I force the blade in in in.
Something rips me away just before the sclice’s nails rake the space where my head was. Iron-hard arms, pounding heart, a scent of fury and woods. The male gripping me twists in the air, taking the brunt of our fall against a wedge of stump and stones.
“Have you no sense?” River shouts into my face, his eyes surveying me desperately. Pushing off the ground, he hauls me upright, the hands he had around my waist now gripping my shoulders. “You could have died just now, Leralynn.” He shakes me, his eyes flashing. “Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I breathe. In my side vision, I see Coal and Tye’s twin assaults converging on the sword I’ve left in the sclice—the blade now appearing to fly about in the darkness. A heartbeat later, the outline of a too-large sclice drops to the ground, becoming more and more visible as dark liquid drains from its severed neck. Coal spares me a brief nod of approval before cleaning off his blade.
Safe. We are all safe. Relief slams into me so powerfully that I stumble, only River’s grip on my shoulders holding me up. River. Right. I look back into his ice-gray eyes, recalling the question. “Yes, sir.”
He lets me go too quickly, hollering for Shade as he surveys the new kill.
“I’m here.” Shade—once again in his fae form—steps out of the woods where his wolf disappeared minutes earlier, breathing hard. I wonder what would have happened if the males saw Shade shift before their very eyes—and whether it is better or worse that they didn’t. Of the four, Shade and Tye are the only shifters, though Tye’s relationship with his tiger is very tenuous still. If that shift happened in the mortal world, all hell would break lose.
My attention focuses on Shade, my heart squeezing at the beautiful sight of him, his swinging black hair, damp with sweat, his arms rippling with corded muscle. Shade exchanges curt nods with Coal—who is now clearing the perimeter—before jogging to River. “I took one down, whatever it was. How did you make out?”
I step forward despite myself, my soul calling toward the shifter. “The wolf—”
Tye gives me an odd look.
“Wolf?” Shade glances my way, his yellow eyes slightly unfocused, as if struggling to orient. “No. Whatever it was, it was no wolf.”
My breath stops. Shade thinks I’m asking about the sclice he killed. Shade doesn’t know he shifted. Doesn’t realize his wolf was involved in the tussle. Neither does anyone, it seems. Surely they’d remember… Unless the veil covered up the too-close shift by distracting the males’ attention from the wolf altogether. Given that the animal was among us for mere heartbeats, it’s possible. I swallow. Given what’s already happened with the amulet’s powerful magic, anything is bloody possible.
“No, that is certainly not a wolf,” Coal says, jerking his head toward the sclice corpses. “I’ve no notion what it is, but ‘deranged hog’ seems descriptive enough.”
“Are you all right, lass?” Tye’s voice brushes the top of my head, and I realize the male has come up behind me, his feet as silent as a tiger’s. Warm callused hands brush along my shoulders and arms, the touch so familiar, I want to burrow in Tye’s chest.
“It appears we found your mystery beasts, River,” Shade mutters nearby, his face pulled back in a grimace. “So the night wasn’t wasted, at least.”
I close my eyes. Not River’s mystery beast—the Academy’s. This perverted trio of sclices had been killing for a week before we stepped foot on Great Falls grounds, and would have gone on doing so if not for us. Us—the quint. Whether the males know it or not, we are where we are supposed to be.
Tye’s cheek presses against my hair. “Did you know you smell of lilac?” he drawls softly.
“Your shoulder—” I open my eyes, remembering the blood from the initial contact, and reach for the male.
“Shade.” River’s ice-cold voice cuts between us before I can touch Tye, the command in it instantly summoning everyone’s attention. “Please examine Tyelor while Coal escorts Leralynn back to the Academy and places her chambers under guard. I will deal with them both tomorrow.”
As Coal’s callused fingers encircle my arm firmly, his familiar metallic scent surrounding me, I give one last glance at the shattered clearing, three precious males cleaning up with the calm practicality of seasoned warriors. And then, with a small shift of his face toward me, all I can see are River’s furious gray eyes. Lingering in my mind long after the night swallows them.
Continue the GREAT FALLS ACADEMY adventure with episode 2, Crime and Punishment
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Also by Alex Lidell
New Adult Fantasy Romance
POWER OF FIVE (Reverse Harem Fantasy)
POWER OF FIVE
MISTAKE OF MAGIC
TRIAL OF THREE
LERA OF LUNOS
GREAT FALLS ACADEMY (Power of Five world)
RULES OF STONE
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
SCENT OF A WOLF
Young Adult Fantasy Novels
TIDES
FIRST COMMAND (Prequel Novella)
AIR AND ASH
WAR AND WIND
SEA AND SAND
SCOUT
TRACING SHADOWS
UNRAVELING DARKNESS
TILDOR
THE CADET OF TILDOR
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About the Author
Alex Lidell is an Amazon KU All Star Top 50 Author Awards winner (July, 2018). Her debut novel, THE CADET OF TILDOR (Penguin, 2013) was an Amazon Breakout Novel Awards finalist. Her Reverse Harem romances, POWER OF FIVE and MISTAKE OF MAGIC, both received Amazon KU Top 100 awards for individual titles.
Alex is an avid horseback rider, a (bad) hockey player, and an ice-cream addict. Born in Russia, Alex learned English in elementary school, where a thoughtful librarian placed a copy of Tamora Pierce’s ALANNA in Alex’s hands. In addition to becoming the first English book Alex read for fun, ALANNA started Alex’s life long love for fantasy books. Alex lives in Washington, DC.
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