by Kendal Davis
“Why don’t we just teleport downstairs?” Owain suggested. “Alder is here to give faculty approval.” He grinned at the earth fae’s wry expression.
“What if we land right in the middle of whatever happened? Like we materialize in the face of the Queen? Game over,” I said.
“She’s not here. I’d know.” Alder looked abashed to admit it. As if wishing he could apologize to Ciara for commitments he’d made before she was born, he tucked her hand into his. I almost took her other hand, but I let them have the moment. Sharing her wasn’t always easy, but her happiness was all we wanted.
We met nobody at all on our way downstairs.
The clouds that had been so fast-moving when we were in bed were now covering the moon entirely. I raised my right hand and created a ball of firelight that I set to hover in front of Ciara. She could do it just as easily, but I liked having the chance to take care of her.
We followed the path we most often took, from the tower room to the next level of bedrooms, then to the floor that held the classrooms. We could have heard a mouse squeak, so quiet was the castle around us.
“Nobody’s awake. Maybe all you heard was the bracelet itself talking to you,” I said to Ciara. “Like keeping an ancient and dangerous artifact around as an alarm clock.”
“I keep Alder around for when I want those qualities,” sassed Ciara, leaning against the big man. She was close to agreeing with me, though. Her flippancy was a cover for her nervousness, but maybe we’d all come down here for nothing.
None of us could afford to be expelled.
For Owain and I, it would mean disgrace, but for Ciara, it would mean death. If she did not complete all three years at the Academy, she would perish.
I could almost hear Alder thinking along the same lines that I was. He paused, looking around the dark upper hallway where we stood looking over the balustrade. “Perhaps we should go back,” he said. “I won’t pay a high price for wandering at night, but the three of you will.”
“We would, if we got caught,” answered Ciara. “But you could always say that you’d given us an important school assignment.”
Alder’s lips curved upward, making him look dangerous indeed. “I could, you know. Maybe a small lesson in lovemaking on stairs.”
“What about a big one?” Ciara giggled.
I did take her hand, then, bringing it to my lips. Her soft skin smelled like cool violets. With no warning at all, my body was raging for hers. I felt my cock harden against my trousers as I reveled in her scent. When I leaned forward to kiss her, I felt as if we might actually be about to set off on the foolhardy path of making love on the main school staircase.
Instead, I saw the terror in her eyes, her flirtatious laugh having given way to something entirely new.
Something had changed in what she was sensing downstairs.
“We have to get down there,” Ciara gasped. “Something did happen. The Great Hall…” She stepped forward, tiptoeing and extinguishing the light I’d made for us. We all followed, without stopping to ask questions. We’d find out soon enough.
The lowest level of the castle was just as empty as the others. No fae walked abroad at this hour. Or so I thought. Until we stood in the wide open doorway of the Great Hall and saw just inside the huge room.
The stone floor was covered with long rugs that depicted the four elements that the fae studied. Each rug stretched from the door to the long table where those students sat. After Ciara’s first year at the Academy, the administration had added a table for fae with an earth affinity, but nobody used it. There simply weren’t any other earth fae yet. The rugs for air, fire, and water were immaculate, but clearly of immense age. The one that showed earth as an elemental theme was new.
However, that was not what drew our eyes.
The thing that we all stared at, that kept us from looking away no matter how badly we wanted to was this. A body.
A corpse.
In a school where every student and faculty member was immortal, this was not a common thing.
“I’ve never…” muttered Owain.
“Me either,” I added.
Alder did not add his own words. I suspected that, as a former trained killer of mortals, he’d seen a lot of dead bodies. But they’d all belonged to mortals.
“Is she really...?” It was my own voice. Nobody needed to answer.
Professor Thermophilus, the fire fae who had acted as the interim Headmaster, lay in a heap on the long green rug that symbolized earth power.
She was very dead.
13
Ciara
It was my fault. My head ached with the pain of what I’d done. How had I been so careless with such a powerful object?
I stood there, my mouth open as I sucked in my breath in shock. It was my responsibility. I’d allowed this to happen.
“It’s not your fault,” said Alder in a gravelly voice as he put a hand on my shoulder.
We all stood together, a small group in the massive space of the Great Hall. This was the room where all ceremonies at Fae Academy took place. This was where Professor Thermophilus had stood to welcome us as Head of the school last year. She’d taken over from Landon, and she’d been matter-of-fact about stepping into his shoes when she was needed. She would never do it again.
I shook my head, not meeting Alder’s eyes. “Of course it is. I let Breze get the best of me. He tore the bracelet from me, but it looks like it ended up at the Academy anyway. I was a fool to march off with Thorn from combat class today, as if I was going to take on the world single handedly. I only wanted to find out who my enemies are. Now I’m no closer to that, and she’s gone.”
Owain ran his hands through his light brown hair. “I’ll miss her. She was fair to us all, even if she was a fire fae. But you can’t think this is because of you.”
“Where is it?” was all I could say. “That damned bracelet. I don’t know what I was thinking, even touching it again. I should have known that anything that was a gift from the Directors was evil.”
Alder slid his hand down my arm to take my hand and squeeze it. “She was a good woman. I know her people in the high mountains.”
“I do, too,” said Rook miserably. “They won’t understand what happened. Fae do not die like this.”
I thought I would jump a mile in the air when a new speaker boomed out from the other side of the Hall. It was Headmaster Landon. He’d been standing in the shadows, waiting for us. In his outstretched hand was a shining bit of gold.
He had the bracelet.
“Nobody will understand,” he spat out. We were used to seeing him relaxed and happy as he enjoyed the limelight of speaking to the assembly of students. Now, alone in a dark room, he looked sadder than I’d ever seen him. He was more despondent now than when I’d beaten his magic and bound him in vines. It chilled me to see his vulnerability.
“Headmaster,” I breathed. “What have you done?”
He blinked at me in confusion. “What do you mean? It’s you that did this. This belongs to you…” He looked down at the bracelet in his hand as if he had never seen it before. In that split second, I knew that he was not the one who had killed her.
Alder saw it too. “Landon, you idiot. What brought you down here?”
“I heard a noise,” the man said stupidly, his usual bravado gone. “And then I saw her, my friend...my protegée…” His shoulders slumped.
Irritation crept over me. “You all seem so affected by her death. Because she was immortal, right? But what about all the people from my world that the fae have killed?” I turned toward Alder, dropping his hand like a hot potato. “You’ve taken many mortal lives, haven’t you? In your days as an Eternal Assassin?”
Alder dipped his head in solemn assent. “Yes, Landon and I have both done so. We worked with precision, killing in the mortal realm for lifetimes. But we have never seen this.”
Landon’s hands shook with emotion. He was brought low compared to the boisterous braggart he’d be
en when I first came to school. “This is different. She was a fae. This was not her destiny.”
Owain faced the man who had so intimidated us when we first came to school. Owain’s hands began to glow with his own water powers, sending crystals of ice along his arms. He was prepared to fight to keep me safe. “Landon,” he said crisply. “Stand down. It seems it was her destiny, if it happened. Did you know that this artifact was capable of taking her life?”
“I didn’t…” Landon seemed to be at a loss for words. The sight of his colleague on the rug was traumatizing him more than I could have anticipated.
Alder compressed his lips into a thin line. The huge man was always gentle with me, but he did not hold back with others. I’d seen him trounce Thorn when they fought in the gym, which should not have been possible. Our combat teacher was the most accomplished fighter in the land of the fae; everybody knew that. But my man of the forest was impossible in many ways.
Could I trust him?
Just as I was about to ask him again whether he was truly on my side, he lost his temper. He was staring at the green carpet itself, not at the body of the fallen woman. “No,” Alder spat out. “This is taking it too far. One should not need to go to such extremes to make a point.” We all stared at him. Was he talking to Landon?
Landon squeaked out, “I didn’t kill her. I came down here and found the bracelet. All I did was pick it up…”
“Quiet. We can’t believe anything you say,” said Rook.
Alder was pacing now, his feet treading heavily on the stones of the Great Hall. He wasn’t even listening to Landon. “Damn it, Breze,” he shouted up at the ceiling. “Get your ass in here this minute.”
I knew my eyes were wide with surprise as I watched my earth fae lover, but he was right. We didn’t have to look any further than his former best friend to get more information. He was the last person who had handled the bracelet.
I felt Breze before I saw him. The air of the room rippled with something akin to an electrical charge as the mysterious air fae materialized in front of me. He stood in such a way as to create a triangle with me and Landon, with the vanquished Thermophilus in the middle of our tableau.
“Breze,” I whispered.
Alder shook his head with a grim expression in his eyes. “Breze, you take this too far. You wish to show Ciara that she is no assassin? She knew that already. She does not need your taunts.”
The tall man with the bright blue eyes looked from each of us to the next. He was so calm that it was hard to know if he even possessed any emotions, but I thought I saw a flicker of surprise in the set of his lips. “I think we all knew that Ciara wasn’t a killer. But this piece of metal, this despicable bauble, is the tool of one. I sought to separate her from it.”
Professor Landon was no closer to finding a coherent defense, but he mumbled something that sounded like “earth fae, of course…”
Alder caught my eye. “That’s the first thing I noticed. Whoever took the fae powers of Professor Thermophilus, and then her life, wanted people to think they were signing their work. It’s meant to look like the calling card of an earth fae.”
“But we’re the only ones,” I said. “There aren’t any other earth fae.”
“Exactly,” answered Breze. His forwardness surprised me. None of us trusted him an ounce, but he stood there with my lovers as if he fit right in. “I came when you called me, Alder, but this is not my work. This clumsy, vengeful plan could only belong to Hellebore.”
“She wouldn’t dare,” said Alder, but there was calm assent in his eyes.
Landon jumped. He’d once commanded all of us within the school. Now he was a foolish nincompoop. If the fae were eternal, they must indeed pass through low spots in their time. But their time was not supposed to end. “Hellebore would not want to frame me, of all people. Don’t be silly,” Landon said, not at all convincingly.
I stared at him with pity. “If it was the Queen, then it is Alder or I that she intended to frame. You are just collateral damage.”
“Hellebore will be here soon,” observed Breze almost casually to his old friend, my Alder.
“Well, she’ll be here even sooner if you keep saying her name aloud,” shot back the man of the forest.
“Do you think she needs me to speak her name in order to hear us? What is this, elementary magic class for first-years? She’s been listening to Ciara, and watching her, since the day she gave her that cursed bracelet.”
Alder stepped closer to me. “Since you did, you mean. I didn’t put it all together until we met in your office, sitting together in front of your fireplace like the old days. You said you were at the meeting of the Directors, the day that Ciara left her world to come to the Academy. It was you, wasn’t it?”
Breze did not answer the question. Instead, he looked up at the high ceiling of the room. The chandeliers that gave the Hall its soft light as we dined every evening were powered by magic. They had been dark as we’d been standing there, of course. But now, they were glowing. Smoke began to swirl around the ceiling, swooping and twining into corners.
Alder rolled his eyes in irritation.
Breze cleared his throat, like somebody who didn’t want to upset a child. “Hellebore, there’s no need for a dramatic entrance. Not this time.”
I stepped backwards, wishing I could run out of the room. I’d never enjoyed meeting the Queen of the fae. This did not look like it would be an exception to that rule.
Apparently unwilling to completely give up her idea of an entrance, she shimmered into being next to Breze, her feet set on white flames as she stood there. She was languid as she took in the scene, but I did not believe her insouciance was genuine.
Queen Hellebore was even younger and more beautiful than the last time I’d seen her, when she’d opened the school year here in the Great Hall. Her long, blonde hair swirled around her unlined, dewy face. She looked even more in her prime than any other fae, which didn’t make sense. Especially since I knew she had only recently been an ancient shell of a ruined creature.
She chose to appear at Breze’s side. The tall, blue-eyed fae had himself stood next to the Queen as she spoke to the school on the first day of term. She’d called him her right-hand man.
Was he?
Queen Hellebore tucked her arm into his. “It seems I have all my favorite people assembled here. As well as my least favorite. And you’ve been up to no good?” She licked her lips as she took in the scene. “I’ll have to call in my troops, won’t I?”
It suddenly occurred to all of us that Landon had not bothered to conceal the weapon that he was holding. He was to be the patsy, then.
If the Queen could not pin this crime on an earth fae, she would ask Landon to take the fall for it. She had plans within plans, always.
With Rook and Owain behind me, and Alder at my side, I was bursting with power. My bonds with them gave me strength that I’d never known was possible. Yet I could feel a sizzling in the space between me and Breze. He was my fated air mate. We both knew it. Yet I could not imagine that we could ever claim our bond.
Where I had once been united with my men against the Queen and her lover, Landon, now I found everything rearranged. Somehow, Landon was my ally now, or perhaps I was his.
I stood against the Queen and her right-hand man.
Breze was the key to all my powers, the last of the bonds that would fill me with fourfold strength that would be unbeatable in any world. He was the Queen’s lieutenant.
And he was the man I needed more than anything.
14
Owain
I hated to see Ciara’s tentativeness as she looked at Breze. The man was cold and hard. There was no chance in the world that he would accept their bond. Yet I had to stand with her as she hoped. We could all feel her longing for that last connection that would open her powers fully.
The nature of her bond with Breze was an oddity. I would need to do some research in the oldest books in the Academy’s library, if I want
ed to understand it better than I did now. I’d always suspected that Alder was much older than the rest of the fae we all knew. He’d been suspended in sleep for a time in the treetops where the white mists stole fae magic. But now I was sure that Breze, also, was ancient.
“You two went to school together?” I didn’t have to wait for anybody else to speak. I had a right to try to get the answers that I needed. When I stepped forward to address Breze, nodding over at Alder as well, I ignored the Queen. It was an act that would have terrified me earlier in my life, but it did not now. I had Ciara as my mate, and everything had changed. I let my body touch hers, my arm moving around her in solidarity.
Breze looked at me as if he’d never noticed me before. “You are one of her lovers? This Tithe is like no other, just as we planned, Hellebore.” He was resisting the pull he felt to Ciara’s side. He was succeeding for the most part, but I could see a fine sheen of sweat on his forehead. It was not happening without effort.
Alder sighed. “Let’s just put all the cards on the table for once. Breze was once my best friend. When he left the Academy, we all thought it was because he refused to take oath as an Eternal Assassin. He said he would not work for the Queen. Yet here he is.” Breze glanced at Breze with bitterness.
“You are hardly one to talk,” scoffed the blue-eyed man. “You were her personal killing machine for eons.”
“But no longer.” Alder’s eyes flashed a warning.
Queen Hellebore was tapping her foot. “I don’t like to be ignored, men. Or kept waiting. When I alert the authorities in the castle about what has happened, I expect both of these earth fae to be taken into custody. They are obviously the perpetrators of this crime.”
“No we’re not,” said Ciara. “You have no proof.”
“All I need is the word of two fae witnesses. That is how our laws work.. Who will stand with me?” Hellebore was languid as she stretched out her moment of triumph. “Landon, my love?” She smiled at him, the change making her face more beguilingly beautiful than ever.