by Lucia Ashta
“Three points for Prince Heir Galen,” announced the same male voice.
“Defend yourself, Rina!” Leander prompted from the sidelines, as if I couldn’t figure that shit out on my own. Granted, I probably looked like I had no idea I was supposed to protect myself to prevent the strikes...
I incorporated everything I’d learned from Ky, Leander, and Boone, and parried forward, snapping my staff down in a fast move of my own, jabbing Galen in the gut. The prince arched his back quick as a flash, creating a concave opening for my staff to sweep through. The tip of my staff barely grazed him, and it definitely didn’t hurt him.
As I jabbed again, he jumped to the side and brought his staff down across my back with enough force to convince me he couldn’t possibly really be taking it easy on me—or at the very least not easy enough.
“Four points for the prince heir!” the announcer called out jovially, and had I been able to, I would have turned just to glare at him as the crowd cheered. A flash of Leander inching across the sidelines as if to intervene and call the fight had me straightening through the pain. But by the time I spun toward Galen again, his staff was poised to strike, just waiting for me to face him, as if the elf were too honorable to strike me when I wasn’t looking—though I wasn’t in the mood to appreciate any of his finer features.
When he struck me across my left forearm, the impact dislodged my hold on my staff, and it tumbled to the ground, splattering sand in all directions.
“Five points to our clear winner!” the announcer said, and I legit growled at the mofo. Calling a winner when the fight wasn’t over yet…
I set my jaw and purposefully ignored Leander’s proximity. Galen had his staff drawn back for another smack when he met my eyes, and whatever he saw there made him hesitate.
Good. I was so over this beating.
I tugged my baton free of its holster and tossed it next to my staff in the sand. The crowd gasped at my defiance, no doubt thinking it proved my weakness or stupidity, or a bit of both. I was angry enough to tune out their jeers and comments with ease.
When Galen made to advance on me, I flung my arms into the air and pulsed my hands at him, as if I were about to fling my magic straight at his chest.
I couldn’t tell which one of us was more surprised when a deep copper gold blast shot from my hands … straight into his chest, blowing him clear off his feet. His staff went flying from his grip, and the prince landed with a loud thud amid a wild splash of sand, falling at an odd angle.
Those in the crowd who hadn’t been standing already jumped to their feet, a communal gasp circling their numbers.
“What the…?” I mumbled to myself. I’d been mad and about to prepare to hopefully unleash my mage magic. I hadn’t considered, not for a second, that I might actually be about to blast my powers as if they were second nature to me.
“Holy freaking wow.” I stared at the palms of my hands as if they might hold the answers to what had just happened while Galen grunted and rose to his elbows, shaking his head, his long raven hair brushing a wave pattern across the sand. When he pushed up and managed to stand, he wobbled just once, and then bent over to retrieve his staff, studying me with a distinctly wary look.
A wide-eyed Leander was staring at me while rushing along the sidelines, where he spoke with a four-foot fairy decked out in full livery. The fairy nodded and called out in a voice ten times his size, “One point to Rina Nelle Mont of Earth!” And then waited as if expecting applause or something, and when he didn’t receive it, he continued. “As this is not a true fight, but merely a demonstration, it is now concluded. Your prince heir is your overwhelming winner!” His words rang out as everyone cheered, contradicting what he’d just said about it not being a real fight.
Galen shook his head as if to clear it and turned to face the crowd while his mother and father, who’d sat next to each other in matching thrones during the fight, descended the dais in graceful, sure steps. The king continued on toward Galen, while the queen brushed past me, whispering, “Well done, child, well done,” with a smile so slight I wondered if I might have imagined it. She joined her husband next to their eldest son.
“Your winner!” the king boomed while raising Galen’s free hand to the sky. Their people roared once more, making the king beam, though Galen didn’t, flicking a curious glance across his shoulder at me before further engaging in his father’s theatrics. The queen smiled at her people magnanimously.
“That was incredible,” Leander said, suddenly next to me. “You—”
“Yeah, I know.” I offered him a half-hearted smile. “Can we get out of here now?”
“Absolutely. After that performance, you might as well make a dramatic exit. Just give me a second.” He rushed away to exchange words and embraces with his family. By the time he returned to me a couple of minutes later, an unexplainable exhaustion had seeped into the very marrow of my bones. I could barely stand upright anymore.
He eyed me warily, but didn’t comment, suggesting we’d talk about this later—when we weren’t in the middle of the grand arena of the fae.
Positioning his hands in front of him, his silver eyes began to glow until they appeared lit from behind, and a ball of silver energy sprang to life between his palms. Realizing he meant to portal us out of here, I asked, “What about your mom’s outfit?”
“Keep it.”
“And Adalia and the others?”
“They’ll travel through another portal. I want you all to myself for now.”
I projected a mental smile at him because suddenly I couldn’t get my lips to move anymore. I began to collapse, and Leander swept a supportive arm around my waist, pulling me against his side. He balanced what looked like a large full moon in one hand and tossed it a few feet away from us, where it sprang to colorful, sparking life. When the now-familiar multi-colored lights coalesced into a large tunnel-like opening, I allowed him to pull me through the portal, preparing myself for the unpleasant tumble of portal travel.
I’d won. Sure, I’d actually lost the non-fight demo, and badly, but I’d accomplished what I set out to do. I’d given Leander and me a fighting chance at being together.
Now I was entirely certain: not only did I definitely have mage magic, but I had plenty of it.
II
~ Thunder Mountain ~
~ Sedona, Arizona ~
~ The beginning of Rina’s third term at the
Magical Creatures Academy ~
7
Within the portal, and free from the prying scrutiny of his people, Leander swept me into his arms. Pressed into the firm planes of his chest, I closed my eyes against the overwhelming stimuli. The flashing lights of his magic, too much like the strobe lights of a pulsing rave, pressed in on me like a suffocating weight.
A deep-seated weakness rooted inside me, making me wonder if I was coming down from an adrenaline rush, an unexpected aftereffect of the use of my mage magic, or some combination of both. Of course, it could be something else entirely as well. Not even Dad’s The Compendium of Supernatural Creatures covered what happened when a dual-shifter-mage—who wasn’t supposed to exist, and who’d lost her shifter powers—used her mage powers without training. Even within the world of magic, where the bizarre and unexpected were commonplace, I was an oddity, one no one had any good explanation for.
Whatever free time I’d had while in the Golden Forest when Leander had had to attend to the obligations of royals, I’d dedicated to making further progress through Dad’s seminal work, a copy of which I’d found in the library. I’d made substantial progress in banishing my lingering ignorance, making me wish I’d read the seven volume collection on the supernatural community before attending the academy instead of fearing the additional disappointment that might arrive from learning what I might not ever be able to become a part of.
Dad’s Compendium explained that a portal behaved much like a wormhole, collapsing the physical distance between the two planes and allowing us to cross over the s
hortcut. It took Leander and I no more than a few minutes to traverse the vast space between the fae’s Golden Forest and the trailhead of Thunder Mountain in Sedona.
When Leander stepped free of the portal, an abrupt wave of nausea halted my burgeoning relief. I groaned, my head spinning, though I wasn’t sure if anything was actually moving or not.
“What is it? Are you all right?” he asked while the flashing lights of his portal fizzled out behind us.
I tightened my hold around his neck, unable to answer, willing everything to stop spinning, and for the meager contents of my stomach to remain put. I hadn’t managed to eat a single bite of brunch in the end, and right then that was a very good thing.
He wrapped his wings around me, cocooning me in comfort. Immediately, the sensory overload that had its hold over me lessened as his wings pushed away the world around us. I inhaled deeply as a shiver ran through me. I was focused on breathing and making the nausea behave when he whispered, “Rina?”
“I’ll be okay. Just give me a minute.” The words tumbled out in a slur, but they seemed to reassure him, until…
“Oh. My. God.”
The disembodied exclamation had Leander spinning around to identify its source, taking me with him, and giving new life to the vertigo assaulting me. I clenched my eyes shut.
Leander snapped his wings back behind him, pulling them tight against his back, but the damage was done.
“Are you … are you an angel?” A woman bundled up in a thick winter jacket gawked at us, while the two dogs she had strapped to leashes pulled against them, oblivious to the fact that a supernatural creature stood in their midst. Two, actually.
The main rule of being a supernatural creature is to conceal our existence from the rest of the world. Had Leander and I been paying attention, the first thing we should have done upon emerging from the portal was to check our surroundings. There was little we could do to prevent random bystanders from spotting the portals, but that was another reason it was a good fit for the Magical Creatures Academy to be located within Sedona. The small town had a reputation for drawing to it all sorts of metaphysical energy workers, conspiracy theorists, and those souls willing to believe just about anything. They explained away the sightings of portals as UFOs, alternate dimensions, and the energetic bodies of beings from other planes, among other things. But I doubted Sedona residents were used to seeing real men with wings sprouting from their backs—though maybe: Dad’s Compendium claimed that Sedona was “charmingly kooky” and a place of acceptance for all sorts of “wild happenings.”
I waited for Leander’s reply as eagerly as the woman. How was he going to explain this one away?
Her dogs yipped while she stared open-mouthed, eyes wide and unblinking, as if she were afraid to miss a moment of the glorious apparition before her.
“I am an angel,” Leander finally answered, and my eyes widened nearly as much as the woman’s.
She gasped. “You speak English?”
He nodded sagely. “I speak the language of the person I appear to. Consider yourself blessed. You’ve been chosen for an act of grace.”
“Chosen for what?” she breathed, ignoring the hard tugs her dogs gave. “Whatever it is, I’ll do it, I promise I will.”
Oh boy.
“You are to further the well-being of all life on the planet, in great or small measure. Your job is to make the world a better place through daily acts of kindness, even if that act is offering someone in need a warm smile. There is no kindness too small or insignificant.”
The woman nodded her head with fervor, the pompom that crested her beanie bouncing wildly. “I’ll do it. I’m honored to do that. I’ll help the world,” she said, her eyes taking on a feverish glaze.
“Good, my child.”
“And is she another angel?” The woman beckoned toward me with her head. All vestiges of vertigo, nausea, and exhaustion vaporized.
Leander smiled warmly, glancing briefly at me. “She is to me.”
My heart thudded despite the ludicrous nature of our situation. I darted wary eyes across the parking lot of the trailhead, hoping not to spot a horde of zealots hightailing it here.
“What shall I call her? What shall I call you?” the woman asked, working to get her facts straight. That made me nervous. She was clearly already preparing to recount her experience later.
“You may call her the Angel of Hidden Blessings. And you may call me the Angel of Hope.”
The woman’s eyes widened like UFO saucers at the fancy titles Leander gave us. “Wow,” she whispered. “I feel so honored.”
Leander nodded regally. “I extend my blessing to you. Everything will go your way now. And you, in turn, will shine your kindness and grace on others.”
“Oh yes. Yes, I will. I’ll do it.”
“Now go, my child. Leave us now and do not look back.”
She gulped visibly. “What happens if I do?”
Leander settled his features into a thunderous mask.
“Never mind. I take it back. I won’t look back. I’ll go straight home without turning once.”
“That you will, my child. Now go!”
She nodded wildly, the pompom at her crown rolling all over the place. After staring at us for another few beats, she took off at a run, her dogs leading the way across the asphalt toward the street that meandered through a small residential district.
Leander waited to make sure the woman didn’t turn around, and when she took a sharp right and vanished from sight, he took off in the opposite direction, toward the base of the mountain that housed the entrance to the secret academy.
“We’re angels now? Really?” I said, leaning back in his hold to study his face.
“What else was I supposed to say? It wasn’t like I planned that.”
“I know … but angels?”
He shrugged. “It’s as good an explanation as any, and there’ve been claimed angel sightings all around the world throughout history. Hopefully the woman will feel bolstered by our ‘apparition’ and encouraged to be kind to others.”
I sighed and leaned my head back against his chest. “I guess so. At least all you told her was to be nice. With the look she had on her face, I’m pretty sure she would’ve taken a nosedive off the nearest mountain if you’d told her to. And she would’ve taken the yappy dogs with her.”
“Her faith in whatever she believes in will be strengthened, and this will fade into a happy, blessed memory for her, that’s all.”
“I hope you’re right…” I trailed off. She looked a little too excited by her angel visitation. But there was nothing to be done for it now.
“You look like you’re feeling better,” Leander prompted while he marched us across the base of the mountain, rounding it toward the hidden entrance to our school.
“I am. That woman cleared my head right up. I think I can walk now.”
“Why don’t I carry you through the mountain, just to be on the safe side? Walking through the mountain wall feels weird to you on the best of days.”
It was true, and apparently Leander had been paying attention to everything I’d told him over our shared time during the break. “All right, then, thanks.” It wasn’t like I objected to being cradled in his arms anyway, especially when no one was around to see me being carted around like this.
I listened to the steady beating of his heart beneath my ear while taking in the spread of startling mountains in varying shades of red, spanning across the distance. “It’s too bad we don’t get this view from the inside,” I lamented.
“I agree. It is pretty stunning. But the academy grounds are quite beautiful too, don’t you think?”
“Definitely. The school is starting to feel like home.” An uncomfortable feeling bounced around my insides, but this time it wasn’t nausea. “I really hope the Academy Spell lets me stay…”
“After your demonstration in the Arena of Death and Defiance, I’d say you’ll be staying.”
“The Arena of Death a
nd Defiance…? Boy am I glad I didn’t know that when I fought your brother. Remember, though, this is a school for magical creatures, not mages.” The thought of being sent away to the Magical Arts Academy was almost as bad as being sent home. It’d mean I’d have to start over, far away from Leander, my brother, and my friends.
“I’m sure the rabbits will approve you, no problem.”
The rabbits. Beyond wondering how things were going with the hunt for Rage and Fury, I’d all but forgotten them lately. Unease bubbled through my blood as I pictured the three mean, mafia rabbits who’d have returned from hunting the rogue shifters to terrorize incoming students.
Leander found the entrance to our school, concealed beneath otherwise unremarkable terracotta-toned rock, and stepped through it, walking through the solid wall into air too insubstantial to be real. I directed all my attention to the magic that must be needed to sustain this illusion and did my best not to dread the rabbits I couldn’t do anything to avoid.
When we emerged from the mountain, Leander set me down. He waited until I nodded, then he took my hand and we set off up the pebbled path lined with flowers. The crisp chill of Sedona melted away beneath the warm sunshine of the magically-controlled climate, the colorful blooms seeming extra bright after the stark winter landscape of the trailhead.
After a few minutes, the towering gates of the academy came into view, flooding me with relief. I’d worried for naught. “They’re not here,” I said of the rabbits.
“Hunh. They must still be out hunting Rage and Fury with Ky and Boone.”
“I would’ve thought they’d all be back by now,” I said, not quite masking the worry that laced my words. “We’ve had too little news from them over the break. I don’t like it.”
“You heard the last Talk-a-Letter we received. They were following a lead, and everyone was okay.”