The Academy Volume One

by Maxine Mansfield

  Lark lifted the hem of Sarco’s wizard robe and peeked between his legs at the two people in the doorway. She wanted nothing more than to find a hole to crawl into so she could hide.

  A high, trilling voice sang out, “Sarco, my dear. We thought you knew we’d be arriving today. We spoke with your brother just yesterday. Tsk, tsk, never leave details to others that you should attend to yourself, I suppose.”

  Lark’s mouth gaped open, and she snapped it shut. Her mind raced. How to best explain who she was and what she was doing here, sitting naked on the floor in the middle of Sarco’s office? She almost laughed. At least things couldn’t look worse than they were already.

  “And you, dear, you must be Princess Aryanna.” Sarco’s mother spoke again as she bent and gave a small wave.

  Lark gulped as heat flooded her face.

  “Why, of course you are.” The woman grinned. “How silly of me. Who else would you be? I’ve been so excited about meeting you and about the upcoming wedding. I have ideas and details galore to go over with you. It’s good to see you children getting on so splendidly.”

  Lark grabbed for and fumbled with her tunic.

  Lady Sunwalker stood back up and poked her husband. Lark cringed as she watched the man, who looked much like an older version of Sarco, shake his head and look at his wife. The woman was positively gushing.

  “Oh look, Ty. Just look at those hips, will you? Aren’t they simply perfect for carrying babies? And those breasts, though not huge, they’re impressive. I bet she could feed twins without any difficulty at all.”

  Sarco’s mother clasped both of her hands to her chest and beamed, “I’ve wanted grandchildren for ever so long. I’d almost given up. You, my dear daughter-in-law-to-be, have renewed my faith.”

  “Mother, stop.”

  Lark wanted to cry, and the desperation in Sarco’s voice didn’t help alleviate her feelings of doom. With one last quick tug, she finally forced her tunic into place.

  Sarco bent and helped her up from the floor.

  Lark stood, still partially behind him, glad for the barrier his body provided.

  “What are we going to do?” she whispered.

  Sarco shook his head. “I don’t know. Leave it to me. I’ll handle it.”

  Lark nodded, squared her shoulders, and, out of sight of his parents’ eyes, took Sarco’s hand in hers.

  The tall elfin woman looked much like her son. They shared the same crisply pointed ears, raven-black hair, and gold-streaked eyes. She continued smiling as if nothing were amiss, although she lost some of her bubbly excitement when thunder shook the building.

  “Oh, my, what is with the weather these days?” Lady Sunwalker said. “We haven’t been here but a quarter turn of an hourglass and the sky was clear and the sun shining brightly when we arrived. Yet look at it now. The clouds have rolled in, and the wind has whipped up something fierce. I do believe it just may rain.”

  Lark cringed.

  “Now, Son, properly introduce us to your bride-to-be.”

  Lark held her breath and glanced sideways at Sarco’s face, drawing what comfort and strength she could from his warm hand still tucked into hers. “She’s not Princess Aryanna, Mother. She’s…she’s my apprentice.”

  Lark’s heart stopped. She was sure it had. If it hadn’t, she would be feeling something, anything, not this cold numbness seeping into every crevice of her soul. She let go of Sarco’s hand, and hers fell to her side.

  “I don’t understand, Son. She isn’t the princess? She’s…a…a companion or servant of some kind?”

  Sarco’s father cleared his throat. “Now, now, Jillian, don’t be getting yourself in a tizzy. You know what it does to your blood pressure. Can’t you see what’s going on here? The boy was simply…working, yes, working with his assistant-type person. Nothing wrong with that. Better he gets it out of his system before the wedding. Wouldn’t you say?”

  Sarco’s father winked at them, and a heavy weight of guilt settled deep into the pit of Lark’s stomach.

  Sarco’s mother sighed. “But she has such nice hips, Tylindius. I do so want grandchildren. Oh, well. Do you do laundry, my dear? I have this irritating spot on my favorite royal purple robe, and I did so wish to wear it to the engagement ceremony next week. Would you be a dear and see if you can get it out for me? I’ll have one of my girls send it over when they unpack my things.”

  Sarco glanced at Lark, but his eyes were distant and cold. “An apprentice isn’t a servant, Mother. She won’t be doing your laundry.”

  Lady Jillian Sunwalker placed her hands on her hips and glared at her son. “Well, does your apprentice at least have a name, or do we simply call her your apprentice?”

  Sarco opened his mouth. “She’s…umm…”

  Lark stared at Sarco willing him to say something, anything, but he didn’t utter another word. She looked from Lady Jillian to Lord Tylindius Sunwalker. They smiled back benignly.

  Pushing Sarco aside, she stepped forward and extended a hand. “I’m Lark, and I am indeed your son’s apprentice. It is a great honor to meet you both. As for your robe and its pesky spot, please do send it to me, Lady Sunwalker, and I’ll be glad to see what I can do. If you would excuse me, please, I’ll leave you and your son to get reacquainted.”

  Then, without a second glance at Sarco or his parents, Lark stepped out the door into the howling wind. With her spine ramrod straight and her chin held high, she headed toward the rooms she shared with the real and future Mrs. Sarco Sunwalker.

  Lightning flashed across an angry sky as the clouds darkened. Fat drops of cold rain pelted the ground and stirred the dust beneath her feet.

  Lark seethed.

  Chapter Eleven

  If ever a man should’ve been shot, then drawn and quartered, and roasted over a spit before a single tear could’ve been shed for him, Sarco Sunwalker was that man. Why, then, could Lark not staunch the persistent, irritating flow of the small droplets trickling down her cheeks?

  His apprentice? She was nothing more to him than simply his apprentice? And, when asked, he hadn’t even been able to remember her name?

  She rationalized it for the hundredth time since laying her head upon her pillow. How would she have handled the introduction if the tables had been turned?

  Lark understood how difficult it must’ve been for him. After all, Sarco couldn’t have said, “Mom, Dad, I’d like you to meet Lark. She’s Princess Aryanna’s younger sister. We’ve been fucking each other’s brains out for the past couple phases of the moons, even though I’m supposed to propose to and marry Aryanna soon. Not that I’ve given much thought to the spoiled little princess anyway, mind you.”

  It didn’t matter. Saying only that she was his apprentice, then not even remembering her name—that wasn’t the right way to handle the situation either.

  Men! Damn all their souls to VoT.

  Lark fluffed her pillow, then punched it for good measure, wishing with all her heart it was the traitorous Sarco Sunwalker’s jaw. She sniffed twice, blew her nose into a wad of soggy tissue for the umpteenth time, and scrunched her eyes tightly shut.

  A warm feeling radiated from the core of her mind outward, and Lark braced herself for what she knew was coming. Then he was there in her head, as if simply thinking about him had conjured him to her.

  “Wonderful, you still awake?”

  Lark stiffened. “It’s My Apprentice to you, Professor Sunwalker and, no, I’m asleep. Go away. I’m in the middle of dreaming about a man who actually knows my name and isn’t afraid to say it.”

  She felt his sigh just as strongly against her skin as if he were lying right beside her.

  “I deserve that. I’m sorry, Lark. Please forgive me. I panicked. I didn’t know what to do. I mean, what else could I have said? They caught me off guard. None of this is your fault. The last thing I want is you hurt. I was trying to protect you.”

  Lark shook with anger. She could feel it coursing through her body and wasn’t anywhere nea
r ready to listen to reason. “Oh, so forgetting my name was a form of protecting me? Admit it, if not to me, then at least to yourself. You were ashamed. A younger sister isn’t good enough for your highly esteemed family.”

  Fragments of light exploded behind her eyes in every shade of red as Sarco’s frustration projected outward. “Is that what you really think? Let me tell you one thing, Miss Princess Larksong Hammerstrike, then I’ll leave you alone. I’ve spent the entire evening racking my brain for a way to make this whole mess right. You’re not good enough for my family? I’m the one who’s unworthy. I’m the one who has been seducing you even though I know I’m expected to marry your sister. Don’t you think I know what a low-life, dishonorable piece of gutter scum that makes me? And still I can’t help myself. I love you, you’re in my head, my heart, my very soul.”

  He shuddered, and Lark caught herself reaching out for him, though all her fingers met was empty air. “Oh, Sarco. I love you, too. And it’s not really you I’m angry with at all. It’s me. It could’ve just as easily been Ary who walked through that door as your parents. Can you imagine how hurt, how upset, she would have been? What kind of woman has sex with her own sister’s intended without a thought of the damamge she’s doing? I’m not very proud of myself right now. And what are your parents going to think of me, of us, when they find out who I really am?”

  His heartbeat doubled, and she felt it pounding in her own chest. “Don’t worry about my parents. They’ve never been the kind to judge. But what are we going to do, Lark? Time is running out, and I can’t marry your sister while loving you as I do, and I can’t not marry her if I can find no way around the prophecy.”

  Lark swallowed twice, afraid that even though she was communicating with thought and not speech, her despair would show. She didn’t want that. She was the one who’d started this. Sarco hadn’t really wanted her in his class or in his bed to begin with. He’d tried to warn her. She’d known this would end badly, and she’d insinuated herself into his life anyway. So she was the one who now needed to be strong. “Perhaps it would best for everyone involved if we simply didn’t see each other again?”

  His gasp rolled through her, leaving her chilled. “No. I can’t give up on us yet. I need you too much. We still have time. We still have options. Give me another chance to fix this, please.”

  She wanted to cry, and at the same time, she wanted to believe. “Do you really think there may be a way to fix this mess?

  She felt his nod. “There has to be. We’ll start working on it first thing in the morning. But for tonight, tell me you forgive me, Wonderful, for how badly I acted today. I can’t sleep unless you do.”

  She smiled into the darkness of the room and with her mind stroked his cheek. “There is no reason for forgiveness. We were both caught off guard.”

  He mentally smiled against the skin of her neck and nuzzled. “‘Night then, Wonderful. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Her blankets became his arms as she nestled into his embrace and let slumber dry her tears.

  “G’night,” she whispered.

  Lark’s last words were like a kiss upon his lips and Sarco smiled sadly into the darkness. He closed his eyes and tried to relax enough to sleep. Morning was but a few short turns of the hourglass away, and with it would come the time for decisions. What was he going to do?

  Lark was a complication to his life for which he would eternally be grateful but that didn’t make what he was contemplating any easier. His choices were simple yet, ultimately, excruciatingly difficult. Disappoint one woman and himself, or devastate all of his family, the council and, last but certainly not least, his people?

  There was no way he could think to retain both his love and his honor. He wished, not for the first time in his life, he had Cyrrick’s skill at diplomacy. Explaining his reservations to those who mattered would be so much simpler if he did. And Cyrrick. What would he think of being thrown into the forefront of the fray?

  Sarco sighed and rubbed the dull ache at his temples. Since the moment of his birth, he’d been groomed, trained, and decreed as the next Lord of the High-Elves. It defined him, had always been who he was and what he would become.

  Years of tutoring on every subject from sitting in judgment of wrongs to kissing babies and shaking hands, from swords and fireballs, to prophecies and legends. They’d all been for one purpose. He was Sarco-Keltoris Titus Sunwalker. The heir. How could he simply turn his back on his people and walk away? Yet that was exactly what he was contemplating. Wasn’t it? The thought made his heart heavy.

  Could he do it, though? Could he stand and face the Council of the Elders and Princess Aryanna’s parents, then turn to his own family and abdicate his right to be Lord of the Realm to his brother? Would Cyrrick then be duty bound to fulfill the prophecy by marrying Aryanna?

  Honor and duty had been drummed deeply into his soul from the moment he took his first breath, and now he was considering his own wants and needs before those of his people, before those of even his brother. This didn’t feel honorable, this didn’t feel right. But what else could he do? Spend the remainder of his life in a cold, loveless marriage to the sister of the one woman on Albrath he did love?

  Sarco shuddered to his core. Ultimately, he was who he was and could not be another. Tomorrow was a new day with new possibilities, and the ceremony was still almost a week away. There was still time.

  Tomorrow he would make it a point to find the time to visit Uncle Arizon and ask him if there was anything in the prophecies and legends that might help them find a way around the rules. Tomorrow he would spend every possible moment he could with Lark so when and if their time together had to end, she’d know his love was real and she was the one and only woman who would ever truly own his heart. For tonight, though, he lifted his eyes toward the heavens and prayed.

  ****

  The door to Sarco’s office banged open so hard it shook the walls. “What the pierced, puckered nipples of a big-nosed, pot-bellied, red-eyed, ugly ogre woman were ya thinking, lad?”

  Lark gasped. Next to Leeky stood Sherman Bobert Limburger the Ninth with his robe singed and tattered. His glasses were askew, and his face was beet red and blistered. The stubs of his still smoldering hair stuck straight up, both eyebrows were now gone, and the corner of his mouth twitched spasmodically every few seconds.

  “What happened?” The sound of Sarco’s and Uthiel’s combined voices reverberated off the walls.

  Sherman continued twitching silently with a blank expression on his face while Leeky explained. “The Shermanator here had a small error in judgment, that’s all. Just need ta get him cleaned and fixed up a bit, then I’ll take him back out. Don’t worry about a thing. I’ve got it completely under control, and I’m pretty sure Briar will forget about it before ya know it.”

  Lark jumped at Uthiel’s roar.

  “Briar? What has this to do with my wife?”

  The gnome shuffled from one foot to another. “Now, now, Uthiel, ya know how she is. It was a simple misunderstanding really. I told the Shermanator here ta walk up ta the prettiest woman in the lunchroom, give her a solid smack on the arse, and grab a good cheek full. Ya and I both know women secretly like that kind of stuff. How was I ta know Sherman would think Briar was the prettiest? Not that she isn’t, mind ya. Pretty as a picture, I always say.”

  Sir Uthiel’s entire head turned red and Lark feared that at any moment now, the poor man would simply explode.

  Then he did.

  “You mean to tell me this…this halfling-wizard-wannabe grabbed my wife’s arse?” Uthiel unsheathed his sword and advanced on a trembling Sherman.

  Leeky jumped in front of the traumatized halfling and spread his arms wide. “Just a minute there, big fellow. If ya be wanting ta carve up someone I guess ya best start with me. Sherman didn’t know she was your wife and, trust me, he got the worst end of it. The lunchroom’s gonna need repairs, too.”

  Uthiel sighed, lowered his sword, and shook his head.
“What happened, what is it going to cost me, and do I really want to know any of this?”

  Lark tried unsuccessfully to follow the conversation. “I don’t get it. What did Lady Dragonheart—I mean, Briar—do?”

  Leeky grinned sheepishly. “Oh, that’s right. Ya weren’t here last year, were ya, lass? Ya don’t know about our girl. Briar has a tendency ta set things on fire when she’s surprised or upset. She channels, ya know, and with her protective force field up, sometimes the results are, shall we say, catastrophic.

  “Uthiel himself spent more time without eyebrows last year than he did with them. And Ray, the headmistress’s pet human…why, ya can’t get him ta go anywhere near her. Singed every hair on his body clear off and near ta ruined his favorite toy, she did. Sweet child, though, really, she is. Still, I think it’s best if the Shermanator and I stay clear of her for a while, just ta be safe.”

  Lark frowned. She and Sarco hadn’t had even a moment alone to talk this morning, and now, with the addition of Leeky and Sherman along with the now everpresent Sir Uthiel Dragonheart, it looked as if they wouldn’t be getting the chance anytime soon.

  Sarco wasn’t smiling either.

  Leeky sighed. “I had such high hopes for the lad.” He patted the halfling on the back. “Sherman. The next woman ya lay eyes on, I want ya ta walk right up ta her, grab a good-sized handful of arse, and tell her something ta make her laugh. Women like a man with a sense of humor. Just make sure it isn’t Briar this time.”

  No sooner were the words out of Leeky’s mouth than the office door opened once again and in sauntered Headmistress Seychelle with her human, Raynorel, in tow.

  Everyone except Sherman froze. They tried to signal the halfling before he made a horrible mistake, but there was no helping it. As Headmistress Seychelle walked past Sherman, he sank both hands up to his knuckles into the black, silver-studded, leather material stretched tight against her rounded derriere and squeezed for all he was worth.

  “I once took a class on joke telling so I know how to do this. Did you hear the one about the halfling with the small pecker? No? That’s because there isn’t one.” Sherman doubled over in laughter.