Royals of Villain Academy 5: Corrupt Alchemy

by Eva Chase

  Shelby didn’t look offended by my rejection, which only made me feel guiltier. “That works! A little more time to work on a few improvements.”

  A faint snort carried from across the common room. My head jerked around to see three of my least favorite people on campus, who I sadly had to share a dorm with, lounging on one of the sofas.

  At my narrow look, Victory, who’d probably been the source of the sound, tossed her light auburn hair and looked away. Her attempts at harassing me had gotten increasingly intense over my first two terms at the university, but at the end of the summer, when her cat familiar had nearly devoured Deborah on Victory’s orders, Malcolm had told her off and made it clear that if she hassled me again, she’d be up against him too. Since then, she’d stuck to sneers and a generally haughty vibe.

  Her two accomplices, Cressida and Sinclair, weren’t inclined to act without their ringleader. Sinclair made a show of rolling her eyes before turning back to her magazine. Cressida held my gaze for a few seconds before looking away, her expression more thoughtful than her friends’.

  I couldn’t say Cressida and I were becoming friendly, but she had gone on the record as a witness at my hearing. Her testimony that she’d heard Imogen’s murder from the room below and then bumped into me on my way up to the dorm room afterward had been the only concrete evidence absolving me of the crime. To convince her to risk my enemies’ anger by speaking up, I’d had to cast a spell promising her an undetermined future favor. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to seeing how she’d call that in. From the looks of it, she was still thinking it over.

  I tugged my attention away from that bunch and shot Shelby another smile before I headed out. As soon as I’d left Ashgrave Hall, apprehension started to well up inside me.

  I was going to look for my birth mother today. Try to determine whether she was even still alive. And I had no idea what that would involve.

  Lillian and her blacksuit colleagues were obviously still set on maintaining secrecy around my mother’s possible re-appearance. The Casting Grounds was a large clearing in the western forest that the mage students used occasionally for large-scale spells, well out of the way of regular school activity. As I hurried across campus, I didn’t see a single blacksuit. It was only when I stepped through the thinner ring of trees around the edge of the clearing that I found myself met by several of them, Lillian in their midst.

  “Right on time,” she said with a smile that looked a little tense. Was she worried that the ceremony we did today would prove my mother wasn’t alive after all? Or that it would and she’d have to face the fact that she’d failed to realize her best friend had been imprisoned all these years?

  “We’re doing the spell here?” I asked, glancing around. “You’ll have to walk me through it.” Like the Shifting Grounds where Connar had shown me his dragon form, I assumed there were some kind of magical wards around the area to make sure the Nary students didn’t stumble on it while in use. Presumably the blacksuits would activate them in a way that would repel everyone who ventured out this way. Beyond that, I couldn’t even guess what Lillian would need.

  Her assistant, Maggie, bounded from behind the cluster of blacksuits with her usual cheerful energy. She held up a cloth and a little jar of clear liquid in front of her petite frame. “We just need to wipe you down—not everywhere, but wherever you’ve got bare skin should do it—with this lavender-water mixture. It helps clarify the resonances.”

  When it came to whatever sort of advanced spell-casting they were conducting, I guessed I’d just have to take their word for it. Lavender water didn’t sound dangerous. And when Maggie stopped in front of me and poured a little on the cloth, it did mainly smell like lavender.

  If this was actually part of the barons’ conspiracy against me, it was an awfully convoluted scheme.

  I held myself still but wary, watching for any sign of malicious intent, as Maggie dabbed the damp cloth over my face, neck, hands, and calves beneath the hem of my dress. My skin cooled with the dampness, and I held back a shiver. Lillian followed the proceedings with an impatient vibe.

  “You’ll be more the conduit for the spell rather than an active participant,” she told me. “By channeling your essence, we can reach out to the presence I’ve identified before and see if it resonates the way we’d expect for an immediate blood relative.”

  “So, I just… stand here, and the magic goes through me?” I didn’t really like the idea of sitting back passively, especially when the people casting the spell included a woman who’d murdered a friend of mine and set me up for that murder.

  My gaze slid to the blacksuits around her. How many of them had helped build the case against me? How many of them had wanted to see me convicted and my magic restricted in punishment?

  “Essentially,” Lillian said, brushing her hands together. “But you’ll be conscious of everything we are. If it is your mother, you may sense her before the rest of us do, and you can add your own magic to ours to help direct it. I encourage you to do that if you feel a connection.”

  Okay. I had no idea what a connection to my birth mother would feel like. I wasn’t entirely sure I’d recognize her even if she was standing right in front of me in the flesh, considering the most recent photos I’d seen of her were from seventeen years ago. She’d be in her mid-forties now instead of her late twenties. But we’d have to see how it went.

  A pang of longing quavered through me to have the other scions here—any of them, all of them, any combination would have been fine. Just someone I knew would be looking out for me. But Lillian wouldn’t have allowed that. Lord knew how she’d react if she found out I’d even told three of them this secret.

  Whether my mother was alive or not, I was the heir of Bloodstone, the most powerful fearmancer family around. I had to be able to stand on my own and deal with whatever my enemies threw at me.

  Maggie finished applying the lavender water and drew back with a flash of a smile that looked uncharacteristically tight. Before I could give that much thought, Lillian was taking my arm and guiding me into the center of the clearing.

  The last—and only—time I’d come out to the Casting Grounds, it’d been for a display of illusions. Malcolm and I had been locked in our game of provoking each other. Remembering that brought up a conflicted twinge.

  Malcolm still wasn’t back at school. He’d said it’d take a day or two before his father would heal him, and it’d only been one. But after seeing the lengths Baron Nightwood was willing to go to in order to discipline his son, I wasn’t going to feel okay until the Nightwood scion had returned to campus with all his bones in one piece.

  But I couldn’t dwell on that now, not when I needed to see this ceremony through and stay on my guard.

  “We’ll arrange ourselves somewhat like your initial university evaluation,” Lillian was saying. “The only difference is that there’ll be six of us around you directing magic your way rather than four.”

  I glanced around, noting the other five blacksuits already stepping into position at equal distances around the edge of the clearing, leaving one spot for Lillian. I’d have expected Maggie to stay to watch, but I caught a glimpse of her chocolate-brown hair disappearing between the trees. Lillian must have sent her on some other errand now that she’d done her work here. I guessed she couldn’t be that powerful a mage if she was working under Lillian rather than becoming a full blacksuit herself.

  Lillian gave my arm a gentle squeeze. “It shouldn’t take very long, but channeling the magic as it reaches across all that distance will tire you out. If we can’t sense her after several minutes, we’ll stop and try again another day.”

  I wanted to jerk away from her touch, but at the same time her words sounded genuinely concerned. Did she care what happened to me now that she might have to answer to my mom?

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m ready.”

  I closed my eyes instinctively, the way I’d been told to during the evaluation of my magic. Murmurs of castings
reached my ears from around the clearing. The air shivered against my skin, and an almost electric tremor of energy pierced through my chest. My lungs clenched in resistance.

  “Try to relax,” Lillian said calmly. Her voice sounded farther away than I knew she was.

  Try to relax, while she and five blacksuits were pouring magic into me? Easier said than done. But we did have to get this over with. I needed to know whether my birth mother was really still out there just as much as any of them did—probably even more.

  I took slow, deep breaths, and the pressure in my chest eased. The electric jitter spread up through my body, nipping at my jaw, sizzling into my brain. Then it seemed to burst out the top of my head with a crackle through my scalp so tangible I was surprised my hair didn’t stand on end.

  My awareness stayed with that beam as it flowed out of me. The mages around me were urging it onward, off to the southwest, to joymancer territory. If those mages were holding my mother, she’d have to be in that general area. They wouldn’t have been able to keep her presence a secret that long without having her surrounded by their power.

  Flickers of other energy pinged off the stream of magic. None of them made enough impact for me to pay much attention to them before they were gone. The blacksuits didn’t appear to think they were worth any notice. More magic flowed into my body, making my muscles tremble.

  Yeah, I didn’t think I’d be up for any marathons after they were finished with me today.

  I got only vague impressions of the landscape we were crossing—a warming of the temperature, a dimming of sunlight as we left behind mid-morning for near-dawn. The hum of cities, vacant stretches of forest and farmland.

  The forward momentum halted abruptly, wrenching my mind into place. I was still partly aware of my physical self in the Casting Grounds, my feet on the ground, the cool moisture on my skin. The rest of me felt the magic coursing through me, spreading as if in a vast cloud over the area where Lillian must have detected this uncertain presence before. It stretched and seeped through the air, twisting this way and that.

  The fatigue that had started to affect my muscles tightened into a dull ache. Lillian had said the presence had caught her attention at specific times. I hoped she’d scheduled this ceremony well. I’d rather not feel as if I’d already run ten marathons by the end of it.

  Somewhere on the fringes of my awareness, a sensation wriggled to me through the sprawl of magic. A tiny tug that reached down to the center of my magic… the same place where I felt my connection to Deborah, where it chafed at me when my familiar was kept apart from me for too long.

  A connection. Lillian had said to watch for that.

  Ignoring the ache taking over more and more of my body, I drew from my own store of magic and focused on that distant impression. What was it? Who was it? Could I really tell if it was—

  My awareness brushed up against the sensation more closely with a waft of my own energy, and a jolt rang right through the middle of my chest. Cluttered images flooded my head, too vague to catch hold of, just flitting scraps of warmth and the lilt of a voice and a churning fury.

  My eyes popped open before I could stop them. I staggered and found my legs wouldn’t hold me at all.

  As my knees gave, one of the blacksuits let out a shout. Footsteps thumped over. Lillian knelt beside me, catching me just before I sprawled flat on my back.

  I stared past her toward the pale blue of the sky for several seconds, gasping for breath. Not just the memory of the impression I’d picked up on but the impression itself was still clanging through my senses as if I were still caught up in that rush of magic.

  When I’d gotten ahold of myself, I eased upright with Lillian’s help. She studied my face, hers taut with concern.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “If we pushed you too hard…”

  “No,” I said with a shake of my head, which sent a wave of dizziness through me that might have proved that denial a lie. But even if the spell had left me out of sorts, I didn’t regret it. It’d also left me certain.

  So certain it made me nervous. What if those lingering sensations and the one that’d set them off weren’t even real? As surreptitiously as I could, I brushed my fingers over my necklace, pressing the two points that worked together to activate the illusion-detecting spell.

  No tingle of warning touched me. The charm simply gave off a faint warmth that let me know a little of the magic Professor Burnbuck had imbued it with had activated. But it hadn’t brushed up against anything in or around me that was false.

  Which meant… the things I’d felt were real.

  “Rory?” Lillian said.

  I wanted to see how she’d handle the situation before I gave anything away. I gazed back at her leonine face. Would I even realize if she was deceiving me?

  “Did you find what you were trying to?” I asked. “Did you reach the presence you were looking for?”

  She appeared to be analyzing my reactions just as closely. “We did. Just before you collapsed. You engaged your own magic, didn’t you?”

  She already knew the answer to that, obviously. I swallowed hard. “I felt something. I wanted to figure out what it was.”

  “And?” She paused. “Something about it seems to have resonated with you strongly.”

  I couldn’t tell whether she had been able to sense the connection as clearly as I had and just wanted to see if I’d recognized it, or if she was honestly still uncertain. Maybe it didn’t matter. I knew what I’d felt, down to my bones, and there was no way I could have denied it.

  “Yes,” I said. “My mother’s out there. She’s alive.”

  And if I wasn’t mistaken, she was also very, very pissed off.

  Chapter Seven

  Malcolm

  I had no idea what story my father gave to explain my injuries to the fearmancer doctor he brought in. Knowing him, he’d never have admitted to being responsible himself. A baron’s heirs should stay well enough in line not to need any severe punishment. And a baron shouldn’t reveal his disciplinary strategies to anyone outside the family.

  No doubt the doctor formed his own suspicions but was wise enough to keep quiet about them. Whatever he made of my injuries, he tutted to himself a few times and then began a spell that prickled through my body like creeping vines, winding around my bones and fusing any cracks back together. The few larger breaks stung with sudden bursts of pain, but those faded quickly with his final casting.

  “Take it easy for the next few days,” he said to me before he left. “And try to avoid getting into this much trouble again.”

  Hopefully I wouldn’t be in another situation where I needed to—at least not until the other scions and I could really challenge the assholes who were running things.

  The biggest asshole—a.k.a., Dad—came into my bedroom a few minutes after the doctor had vacated it. I was still lying in my bed, reveling in the simple pleasure of having been able to roll onto my back for the first time in three days. He came up beside the bed and stood there gazing down at me with one of his impenetrable expressions.

  “I hope this experience has given you plenty of time to think about how you can conduct yourself more wisely in the future,” he said.

  It didn’t seem particularly wise to tell him that what I’d been thinking about more than anything while I’d been sprawled here staving off the agony was how satisfying it’d be to see his head ripped from his body.

  “I’m not likely to forget any time soon,” I said, which was true.

  “Any steps you would like to take regarding the Bloodstone scion, if not on direct orders from myself or your mother, you are to speak to me about before proceeding. Any unusual behavior you see from her or any remarks she makes regarding the baronies, you’ll report back to one of us. All of which you should have been doing in the first place.”

  All of which I had been doing up until a couple months ago, not that he’d ever seemed all that satisfied with my efforts then. And now that I knew he only gave lip
service to the principles of honor and loyalty he liked to spout, I didn’t see why I should owe him more than I did to the people who’d actually demonstrated those qualities.

  I kept my mouth shut about all that too. “Of course. It was a rash decision in the spur of the moment. I should have thought it through more carefully. Is there anything in particular I should be watching for or contributing to when it comes to the heir of Bloodstone?”

  What new malicious schemes have you got up your sleeve when it comes to Rory?

  If he had any current plans, he mustn’t have seen fit to tell me, just as he hadn’t given me any details about what he’d been involved in before. Because even while he was urging on plots to frame the sole surviving member of one of the ruling families for murder, he knew he couldn’t justify that kind of duplicity no matter how he framed it.

  We policed our own families our own way. Taking shots at and undermining adversaries was fair play, but within certain boundaries. Even my father couldn’t have denied that what he’d tried to do to Rory was treason.

  “Just keep your eyes open,” he said, and turned on his heel. “There are developments in progress.”

  Developments like the possible “avenue” I’d overheard him discussing with that blacksuit he had in his pocket? The woman—Ravenwood, that was her name—had been cagey about what exactly she’d been investigating that might help him or how it related to Rory…

  Shit. I should have mentioned it to the Bloodstone scion when she’d come here. It’d been hard to concentrate between the physical pains and my surprise that she’d come at all.

  The surprise, at least, had been pleasant. As Dad stepped out of the room, shutting the door behind him, I rolled onto my side again. Since yesterday morning, I’d been able to intersperse my imagined revenge on my father with equally enjoyable if very different memories.