Blooming Black: Rosewood Academy of Witches and Mages (Darkly Sweet Book 4)

by Juliann Whicker

  His lips pursed. “I am almost convinced, but there’s still the matter of children. Would our children have magic or not? I’d hate to watch a child tortured by its peers from its lack of magic, like you were tortured. It would be bad for business. They have to be superior from birth.”

  I looked away from him at the gleaming copper bathtub and the water that still steamed slightly from his warmth spell. “I don’t understand. Do you not care about me at all?”

  “Care?” He laughed, a musical sound that turned hard. “I’m a mage, Penny. It was a delightful game, making Penny Lane fall in love with me, but it’s come to an end. You’re right. You are a valuable asset, but for another mage. Not me.”

  He leaned forward and brushed my forehead with his lips, his breath catching while the scent of black cherry swirled around me.

  Tears crept down my temples when he pulled away. He brushed them away with his fingers then licked them while he studied me, eyes darkening and growing emptier and emptier as his emotions drained away leaving nothing but the mage behind.

  “For a woman who agreed to be married for the sake of a will, you’re very emotional about it. So many emotions I can almost taste them. I wonder if I could feed off your emotions. Such a puzzling creature. Someone should study you, but not this mage.”

  He sighed and dropped to the floor, adjusting his cuffs meticulously.

  “Drake, you signed a contract. My mother isn’t going to let you leave here alive.”

  He glanced at me over his shoulder, a cruel smile on his lips. “Oh, she will,” he corrected, his voice hard, eyes a wasteland of pain and anger. He cared about me. He had to. He couldn’t love me so perfectly if he didn’t care even a little bit.

  “Drake, here is my proposal: marry me, torment me for the rest of my life and I’ll do my best to make your life interesting. You’ll miss me. The wolf in you needs a sweet he can chew on. Please, Drake. I don’t want to lose my best friend and true love.”

  He sighed heavily. “Such sweet words. I’ll remember them and you with fondness.” He tilted his head while he stared at me. I shifted beneath that stare, the hunger in his eyes making my stomach clench and ache. He leaned forward and brushed his lips over mine. “Perhaps I should have seduced you before I broke your heart, but I don’t have time for a prolonged farewell. I have business to attend to.”

  I snapped at him, barely missing catching his soft lips in my sharp teeth. “Go then! Go and worship your precious business. At least you can love something, even if it isn’t flesh and blood.”

  He brushed my cheek with his fingers and I jerked again, trying to bite him. He pulled away just out of reach. “Such a charming creature. Your anger is particularly stunning on you. And the dress, I didn’t think it could be more delicious, but ripped and bloodstained is precisely what it needed to achieve perfection.”

  A roar outside brought his head up. He started towards my balcony door then whirled around, took off his hat, bit my bottom lip with his sharp teeth, nipped my nose, then pressed a hard kiss to my forehead.

  “I will remember you fondly.”

  He replaced the hat on his head with shaking fingers and strode purposefully towards the doors to the roof.

  “Drake, wait!”

  “I’m not that kind of mage. Give my apologies to your mother.”

  He left in my voodoo doll, Dandy’s dark purple suit, bag over his shoulder. He put his hands up and green light spread along the glass until the doors opened. Nothing exploded like it should have if someone unauthorized tried to open my balcony door. Once he stepped outside my hair relaxed, falling down around my shoulders while my ankle bonds released as well. I rolled off the bed and dashed outside in time to see Drake leap off the roof.

  I gasped and then heard a thunderous roar and the heavy beating of wings. An enormous creature rose above the level of the roof, his scales heavy and dark green, like alligator skin, its eyes a neon color that matched the stars and triangles on Drake’s skin where he sat, perched on the monster’s shoulders between its leathery wings. He tipped his hat before the dragon shot away, disappearing from sight in the direction of Rosewood.

  And there I stood in my tattered wedding dress, jilted by some red-haired dragon lord in a purple top hat.

  Chapter 26

  Witch

  The fireball was pink, to match my dress I assumed. I swept it around me in a swirl of pink flame that reminded me of my faux shrug. It was probably still on the floor of the limo.

  I threw the flame ball back at her before I pulled out my first hurter. She caught it and immediately a cloud of pink smoke swirled around her, mixing with the pink fire. It was quite pretty. After she’d wrapped the flames and the explosives inside a net of sparkling silver magic she studied me, her expression blank.

  “You love him.”

  I clenched my jaw. “It’s not a problem.”

  “You belong to him. You didn’t even bother to cover up your shoulder.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe if you’d warned me about binding myself to someone…”

  She smiled and took a step towards me, red flame flickering at the ends of her hands. “You think that a warning would help you? I warn you. Tourney fighting, keeping live pets, jumping off houses, but you are rebellious and foolish, a daughter after my own heart. You wouldn’t allow a man to carve his name into your skin if you weren’t already lost.” She lunged forward, palms flat as she sent a long wave of red fire at me.

  I screamed as I swirled the fire around me. I wanted to feel the burning, the aching agony so I would stop hurting from Drake’s refusal. I knew better, she was right, but that would never stop me from doing what was in my nature. My nature was to fall, to end up loving a man who would ruin me as my mother had been ruined, like Poppy…

  I spun the fire around me for too long. I barely had time to send it into the floor before it consumed me. Red flames still flickered on my skin, agony that cleared my head. I stared at her and felt almost calm. This was my life, not hers. “It’s not a problem. I still have time. There are others at school I can use. How did you find Revere; how did you secure him?”

  She frowned and the flames at the ends of her fingers flickered out. “I knew Revere before. I…” She had a look of emotion that I didn’t want to see. Her voice was soft, difficult to make out. “Blackheart, we met. We were together. We talked and laughed.” She swallowed and closed her eyes, clasping her hands in front of her. “I met your father. His scent consumed everything.”

  I knew this part. My hands started shaking.

  “I was lost in him. Such madness, I still feel his teeth on my throat.” She opened her eyes wide and rubbed her neck with her fingers. “You broke the thrall, little Penny. My body was filled with life and I remembered myself, remembered Revere, and escaped.”

  This was not the right story. He’d abandoned her when he saw that she would not give me up.

  “He held you in thrall?”

  Her eyes became focused and her voice hardened. “Love is thrall. He enslaved me, ruined me. I almost allowed you to be destroyed. When I refused, he left me with nothing. I gave my life for you. That is the curse of motherhood, losing oneself.”

  “But you said that you remembered yourself when you had me.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Eventually. Without you I wouldn’t have had focus, purpose, something to get me through the moments that dragged on for years until Revere found me and made us his home.”

  “You love Revere.”

  She frowned sternly and threw a spear of fire at my head. I ducked and threw a hurter back at her. She caught it and for a moment we stared at each other until a pink dragon wrapped itself around her spewing fumes and chemicals that would burn her and poison her skin.

  She closed her eyes and then I heard her whisper. “I know that I love because I do not own. You can’t love something you keep in chains.”

  “Tell me about desire, about binding. Where does it come from? Why does it consume everything?” I
clenched my fists, hands out, waiting, ready.

  Her shoulders were slumped, acid eating her skin and through the fabric of her dress. She didn’t seem to notice. “Men and women, witches and mages are natural enemies. What one wants, the other has to become subjected to provide. It is the natural way. To conceive and continue a line both are required. The scent of desire, the bonds of possession were created to end the wars. Men are not allowed to attack a woman and vice versa. To do so is to invite immediate death.”

  I stared at her, but that seemed to be all that she had energy for. I ran to her and threw a neutralizing powder over everything to stop the acid from eating her away then I put my hands on her face and pulled out her pain.

  She screamed and I screamed because she had too much pain and I should never, ever try to touch another witch’s pain. How had I forgotten the first rule?

  She threw me across the room into a glass door that cracked but didn’t shatter. I slid to the floor, body aching from the impact. The skirt had actually broken a lot of the force, so that was nice. I pushed myself to my feet, arms still twined with fire.

  She screamed at me before she was on top of me. I twisted away, blocking and punching in the perfect rhythm she’d drilled into me from my earliest memories.

  She snarled and hissed at me. “Penny, if you make my sacrifice vain I will destroy you myself!”

  I smiled at her widely. “You can try, mother.” I spun and attacked, fast, hard, focusing all of my energy on the movement, the space, the flow from one position to another. We could have fought for hours, days, we probably had in the past, but eventually Revere cleared his throat in the doorway and we both froze.

  “The limo driver is getting anxious.”

  I broke away from my mother, smoothing down my dress and then wincing when the roses became singed. I went to Revere, holding out my hands. He took my hands in his, pulling the flames and pain out of them.

  For a moment I saw Drake, felt him lift my fingers to his lips, but when I blinked, there was Revere, his scowl a little harder than usual. They hadn’t enjoyed their privacy and isolation being broken by a dragon.

  “I’d better get back to school.”

  “Aren’t you going to change first?” Revere asked. My mother wouldn’t notice my ripped and singed gown.

  I shrugged. “Everything at school is as ridiculous as this. It’ll be fine.” I went out to the limo, barefoot over the cold ground. The cold seemed faraway, like the ends of my limbs. I curled up in a corner of the limo, where he had sat and closed my eyes. I could smell him, his aftershave and laundry detergent, but not black cherry. Maybe it wasn’t real. Maybe it was just in my head. The trip passed in a blur until I got to school, barely remembering to get Señor Mort out of the trunk.

  People were walking around but stopped to stare when they saw me. I waved at them cheerfully. Too bad I didn’t have lollipops to shove down their throats to choke their hungry curiosity. Crazy Penny Lane had finally been dumped by Drake Huntsman, declared unworthy and sent back where she belonged.

  I walked through the halls back to Lilac Stories, beaming brightly. When I got to Lilac stories, I flung the door open and stepped inside.

  “This room is so ugly it’s almost beautiful. It’s good to be home. Did you miss me ugly floral couch? Idiot shepherdess? That’s no way to hold your crook in the defense against wolves. You’re clearly waiting to be eaten. Stupid ho-ho.”

  Zach came out of his room looking disheveled and smelling rank. “Penny? What are you doing here?”

  “I’m feeling a lot of things. Burning things. Like this room needs burning. Also, redecorating. What color shall we do? I’m feeling black, but Viney would like that too much. Grey would be nice. We could plate the whole thing with inset lighting so it looked like some sci-fi spaceship. Would echo too much. What do you think Señor?” I asked, holding up my cage. Señor Mort licked his nose and sniffed. “Yes, yellow is happy, but also fairly hideous. Yellow and lilac would be incredibly awful. We’d better just burn it down. You’re right.”

  “Um, Penny, are you okay?”

  I stared at Zach. He was looking more sober and more confused all the time. “Zachary Stoneburrow, my dearest idiot friend. I’ve been jilted. Revere didn’t even get to rip him apart because he flew away on a dragon. Green. We should paint it green. Green and green and green.” I patted his head as I went towards my room. “Order paint samples, will you? That’s a good mage.”

  He followed me into my room, closing the door behind him while I flung myself across my swinging bed.

  “What do you mean, you’ve been jilted?”

  “Do you want all the gory details? He found out that I had no magic and immediately dragged me back to my garret to inform me that he couldn’t possibly deign to marry a magickless witch.”

  “Last night?”

  I kicked his chest to send my bed swinging higher. He was obliging and planted his feet so I got some good loft. “This morning with the dawn, in the light of the morning star. It was really beautiful. I had no idea the old lady could look so alive. It was like my grandmama was back.”

  “So, he told you he didn’t want a witch without magic?”

  I sighed. “And then Pitch came out and almost killed him.” I shook my head. “It was the weirdest wedding ever, particularly since it didn’t end in actually getting married.”

  He flung himself down beside me, sending the bed rocking wildly. “And Drake flew off on a dragon. Was it cute?”

  I nodded and turned to grin at him. “Super cute. I think it was the same one at the Creagh battle. I wish I’d gotten to pet him. Drake seemed in a hurry.”

  “I bet. Huh. I’m really hung over. We could go drinking anyway if you’d like.”

  “So I can smell like you? Tempting, but I have other ideas of how to spend the day.”

  He turned and grinned. “I bet you do. We gonna trash Drake’s room? Less sparkles, more fireballs? I’m all over that. I have this flamethrower that will ignite anything.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “It’s Tuesday. I’m going to do Community Service. After that, I want to get in a bar fight. Break chairs. Then, I want to meet that mage whose skin belongs to me. Can you schedule a meeting for tomorrow? Dawn? Dawn is the best time for ripping out hearts.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “That’s fine, but when are we going to hurt Drake?”

  I smoothed down the bodice of the glorious gown. “It’s not his fault. I should have told him upfront. He was perfectly reasonable about it. You know how he’s never reasonable. Let’s go.”

  When we got to the parking structure, I stopped and stared at the monstrous hulk of dented metal that Zach stopped beside.

  “What is that hideous thing?”

  He stroked the metal side. “It’s my new car. I got it for a wedding present.”

  “You get yourself wedding presents? That’s a great idea. I should do that.”

  “For you. Look how far the backseat is from the windshield? I was going to work on it while you were on your honeymoon. Looks like you’ll have to help me. I was thinking some good electromagnetic shocks to knock out anyone around me so cars pull over dead and I don’t get stuck in traffic.”

  “Yeah, traffic in Fairfield is awful.” I shot him a glance and shook my head. “And torpedoes.”

  “Definitely torpedoes.”

  “What about little techno animals that eject nasty substances on the other car’s windshields?”

  “Totally juvenile. I love it. Get in.”

  After the drive to town, Zach put his feet up and snoozed while I went inside the hospital. I went straight for the special human unit after a nurse stopped me, asking if I were okay or if I needed to be checked out by a doctor from my accident.

  I looked down at my ruined gown and for a second I almost cried. She gasped and said, “Wait, I’ve heard about this. Is it a destroy the wedding dress photo thing? You’re not hurt, thank heavens.” She patted my shoulder and sent me on my way.

  I
smiled while my throat closed up. Right. It was a photo shoot thing. What did I look like? The Old Lady didn’t have tons of mirrors. Because I smashed them. I stopped in a bathroom and stared at my reflection. I looked fine if a bit wide-eyed and crazy. Good.

  I flung open the doors to the beautifully appointed room holding the human Darkside survivors. I went over to the couch and toppled over the back so I was lying on the cushion staring at the ceiling. Missy jumped away from me, curling into the corner of the couch like I was going to hurt her.

  “Penny? Are you okay?”

  “This is my wedding dress. Is it? I didn’t get married so maybe it’s my not wedding dress. It was so pretty.”

  She slid closer to me and cautiously took my hand, squeezing my fingers. “You don’t have to talk about it.”

  I closed my eyes and hot tears slid down my cheeks. “I’m not good enough for him. I don’t have magic, Missy. I don’t have any magic so he doesn’t want to marry me. I knew this would happen. I knew it, so now I don’t have to be afraid because it’s all over.”

  Her hand gripped tighter and I felt her fingers carefully stroke my hair like I was a weasel with a tummy ache. I cried for a long time on that couch with Missy until it was time to go.

  I sat up and wiped my face on the back of my hands. “Thanks for letting me cry. It’s not really something I can do with mages and witches. Is it okay?” I looked at her one gray eye, searching for whether this made her too uncomfortable.

  She shook her head and patted my hand. “It’s good to share sadness. It helps us be human, to not feel so alone. If I can help you not feel so alone, I’m glad.”

  I bit my lip and sniffed. “Thanks, Missy.”

  She cocked her head and smiled slightly. “Also, he’s an idiot if he doesn’t realize how messed up his life will be without you.”

  I sighed. “I think I was actually the mess. It doesn’t matter. It’s over. Thanks again.” I tentatively gave her a hug and she returned it, squeezing me tight until I thought I was going to burst into tears again.

  Sniffing, I hurried out to the car, slipping into the backseat and tapping Zach on his head. “Driver, to the pool hall. We have chairs to break. You’re going to pay for all of them.”