Savage Monarchs (A New Adult Prison Academy Novel) (Nocturnal Academy Book 3)

by Margo Ryerkerk

  “King O-Olwen?” Lily leaned forward to look between me and Atticus, her eyes wide. “The King of the Winter Court?”

  “Yup.” So she’d heard of him since going into Stanley’s service. This conversation wouldn’t be fun. I sighed. Even worse, Vulthus might know Stanley and figure out that the person who had finished off Stanley was the same one that had attacked him.

  “Why are we going to King Olwen?” Lily voice trembled.

  “Because that’s where I’m staying.” I looked out of the window, hoping that Lily would get the message.

  “Princess Onyx is King Olwen’s daughter,” Atticus said.

  I groaned. “Thanks, dude.”

  He chuckled. “It’s the truth.”

  “This can’t be happening.” Lily collapsed into her seat and hugged herself, muttering indecipherably underneath her breath. This last morsel of information had put her over the edge. She was going into shock. Better now than later. Hopefully, she’d be okay by the time we got to the mansion. Olwen didn’t seem like a patient man. Convincing him to keep Lily as a servant would be much harder if she was a hot mess.

  I was thinking of that? Great. But then what was the alternative? She couldn’t go onto the streets to be captured by the vamps.

  Lily continued to be in her own world as the car drove up the steep mountain. It was only when she got out of the car and stared at the simple cabin that she seemed to return to the normal world.

  “Was this a trick?” Her voice turned squeaky as she eyed the desolate cabin. “Are you going to kill me here?”

  “Shh. It’s just an illusion.” I took her elbow and led her to the front door of the mansion, which Atticus held open. Light poured outside and revealed the white marble floor. Lily’s jaw dropped, but once again I didn’t explain.

  I released Lily as soon as we were inside.

  “Oh, wow, this is beautiful.” Her jaw almost hit the floor as she eyed the corridor and the frosty chandeliers hanging overhead.

  Atticus motioned for both of us to follow him down the corridor. “His Majesty wants to see you immediately.”

  I squared my shoulders, prepared for the battle ahead. I entered the dining room, holding my chin high. Olwen waited at the end of the long ice table. Like the breakfast room, the main dining room had ice furniture.

  “Who is this, Onyx?” Olwen’s jaw tightened as he fixed his gaze on Lily.

  I told him the story of how Lily ended up being a witness in my assassination, but the more I spoke, the deeper Olwen’s frown became. Even presenting the vial of vampire blood did nothing to ease his stony expression.

  “This was very careless of you. You should’ve checked the room for anyone before entering it,” he snapped. “I’m glad you had at least the presence of mind to bring her here.”

  I had done my mission, but I still wasn’t good enough. Instead of being proud, Olwen was disgusted with me. Tears brimmed in my eyes, but I quickly blinked them away. I would not cry. I had done well, I knew it. I crossed the dining room until I was in front of Olwen’s seat and slammed the glass vile down on the table, glad it didn’t break. “Here’s your blood sample.”

  He watched me for a beat. “You know I can’t keep your friend.”

  “She’s not my friend.” I was glad my back was to Lily and I didn’t have to see her reaction.

  Olwen’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t lie. I remember seeing the two of you together at the outings.”

  I balled my fists. “She was my friend. I don’t have friends anymore.”

  “You don’t need friends. You have a court.”

  I exhaled. Despite his disgust, I had passed. Olwen extended his hand, and I shook it, fear darting through me. What would he expect of me now that I was officially part of his court?

  “Welcome to the Winter Court.” Olwen’s voice boomed with authority. I glanced down at the vial of blood. “I’ll still test it,” he answered my silent question, “but I’m confident I’ll be satisfied with the results. As for your friend—”

  “We can’t throw her out, or the vamps will capture her and torture her for information. She can organize. She’ll be a loyal servant. You won’t find anyone more dedicated than her.”

  Footsteps sounded behind me, and then Lily appeared next to me, curtsying deeply. “Your Majesty, I beg you to give me a chance.”

  I exhaled, relieved that Lily had pulled herself together, but Olwen shook his head. “She’s a descendant of the Summer Court.”

  “She has no ties to them, and she’s not loyal to them,” I said. “They abandoned her and allowed the vampires to buy her.”

  “Please, my whole loyalty will be to you only.” Lily deepened her curtsy. “I have no affinity for the Summer Court. Their royals look the other way as the vampires use us as slaves. Some of them are even friends with the vampires. They despise us earthbound fae because our ancestors fled the faeland when the war started.”

  Olwen’s face hardened, and I pinched the flesh on my hand. Lily had made a good point and even thrown the Summer Court under the bus, but he was going to say no.

  “Fine. She may stay, because I’m generous, very generous.”

  Lily dropped to the ground. “Thank you so much. I won’t let you down, Your Majesty.”

  Olwen ignored her, his gaze drilling into me.

  “Thank you.” I forced the words out of my dry mouth. He’d make me pay for this. At Nocturnal Academy, I would’ve been whipped or bitten. What punishments would Olwen concoct for going against him?

  Olwen studied me for a long moment. “You completed your mission, but you’re still weak, Onyx. You’ll need to prove yourself again before I can entrust sensitive information to you.”

  I swallowed hard. This was the catch, the cost for bringing Lily back, for ever having friends. And there was nothing I could do about it. I inclined my head respectfully. “I understand.”

  Chapter 9

  Lily stayed true to her promise. In between trainings, I found her carrying food trays, dutifully scrubbing the marble floors, and delivering mountains of laundry to the guards’ quarters. She seemed determined to prove herself and remain here. Clever girl. While the Winter fae guards and servants pretended that this mousy Summer fae didn’t exist, I didn’t see them acting cruel toward her. Staying here was much safer for her than being around the vamps. And with time, I hoped that the Winter fae would warm up to her after realizing she held no love for the Summer Court. Maybe Olwen would even allow her to swear loyalty to him, cementing her place here.

  For Lily’s safety as well as mine, I had to pretend she didn’t exist. The last thing I needed was to have Olwen use her against me. The moment he caught us being friendly with each other, he would.

  I watched Lily from afar, dedicating myself to my training. She never came down into the basement, and I suspected that Olwen had forbidden it since it wasn’t like Lily to leave me alone even when I was hostile. With Olwen being her last chance to survive, she couldn’t risk to piss him off.

  I was in a similar position, so I followed his rules and did my best while training with Atticus, trying not to think what Stanley MacGregor had done to Lily before I had freed her.

  During dinner while Lily served my father and I, I tried my best to stare at nothing in particular. I was too afraid that if I held her gaze, the questions would burst out of me. I couldn’t have a friendship with her. I couldn’t jeopardize her life.

  As the days passed, I got used to seeing her as another servant, not a friend. The walls around my heart were getting stronger. I kept piling up the bricks, knowing the weak would not survive in the Winter Court.

  “Has Vulthus reappeared?” I asked Atticus about a week or so into Lily’s stay. Olwen was often absent and had made it clear he would not share sensitive information with me until I proved myself a second time. Not that I blamed him. After witnessing his conversation with Vulthus in the library, it was clear that the vamps would turn on Olwen at the first sign of his betrayal. He might’ve infilt
rated them for the last eighteen years, but they still didn’t fully trust him.

  “Not yet,” Atticus told me, hanging up sandbags for me to practice on. “I have not been able to get much information from Olwen.”

  He stepped aside, and I shot my ice daggers at the sandbags. The impact turned the sandbags into ice and shattered them, just like Stanley’s body had shattered from my ice dagger. I needed to cultivate this ability and grow it like a muscle until I was as deadly to Vulthus as the rising sun. As an ancient vampire, he’d be well versed in avoiding blows to the heart. It would also take more time and effort to turn his body to ice and shatter, but it was possible, and one day soon, I’d do it.

  “Your abilities are improving.” Atticus smiled as he studied my handiwork. “It’s safe for us to return to training in the woods.”

  I nodded in agreement. I was ready to go back out into the plaza by the forest. I had been using swords, daggers, spikes, was comfortable with a crossbow, and could summon ice bolts almost as fast as I could fire them. Also, I had killed Stanley. Sure, he had been lazy and unsuspecting, but he had still been a vampire. If a vamp was lurking outside Olwen’s property, it would be my pleasure to take him on.

  Slinging my crossbow over my shoulder, which had become an integral part of me, I followed Atticus out of the basement and up the marble stairs. He sheathed a long dagger and led me toward the back door.

  Lily, perhaps by coincidence, but most likely not, was on her knees, scrubbing the floor right in front of the back doors. She looked up at me, and hope sparked in her gray eyes.

  Tension crept between my shoulder blades as I noticed out of the corner of my vision a shadow moved quickly around the corner, as if someone was there. I froze, eyeing the end of the hall, but no other motion followed.

  A prickle crept up my spine as I understood why Lily was here, scrubbing the floor in my path. I was being watched and judged for my loyalty. Lily continued staring at me again, oblivious, as I followed Atticus to the door.

  “Move,” I ordered, projecting my voice across the hall.

  Lily hesitated before scrambling out of the way. I hadn’t been this close to her without Olwen being present since I got back from Stanley’s house. Keeping my gaze on a pine tree, I swept past her, leg barely missing the bucket of soapy water, and stepped out into the cobblestone courtyard.

  I had passed the test.

  My heart screamed at me to turn around and make sure Lily was all right, but I didn’t.

  “What training are we doing today?” I asked Atticus, desperate for a distraction.

  “Shield work. I’ll have a shield and move through the trees while you fire at me. Forest combat is common in the faeland, but when it comes to fighting vamps, the same skills will be of help. Like us, they can move quickly and use stealth.”

  Didn’t I know it. Vamps had better vision, moved quicker, and had better stamina than fae. The only reason I had such an easy time killing Stanley was because he was a lazy fart, relying on his guards.

  I spent the afternoon shooting at the brown shield that Atticus held between him and my crossbow. One by one, ice bolts impaled the shield. As we trained, he increased his pace through the trees, going faster and faster until I could barely keep up. By the end of our session, I was drenched in sweat, my whole body ached, and I could no longer summon ice spikes.

  “I can’t keep on going,” I croaked.

  “Good. You found the end of your magic well. Use regular arrows.”

  My shoulder protested, but I loaded my crossbow and continued. Atticus didn’t slow his sprint, and each of my shots missed him, impaling trees instead. Despite my failure to hit him, he made me practice for another hour or so until he finally, held up a hand for me to stop. “It’s getting dark. We need to return inside. Olwen doesn’t want you to be out here after nightfall.”

  Fine by me. My body yearned to collapse into a hot bath and be stuffed with fattening food.

  The sun was setting, coloring the horizon in gorgeous shades of pink. Despite Atticus’s words, I felt peace. Yes, night was coming, but if a vampire somehow reached this part of Olwen’s property, I could easily take him out.

  Atticus and I started collecting my bolts, yanking them out of tree trunks which oozed sap. We separated, and I found myself in a small clearing with boulders around a small pond. The place reminded me of the fae garden back in Nocturnal Academy, one of the only places of safety I had there. Even though it was now June, the pond here was frozen and icicles hung off the pine trees. As I stepped into the clearing, the temperature dropped. How much magic did it take to preserve this beauty?

  I was about to return to Atticus and ask him, when I found a bolt lodged into a tree across the pond. I skated over the ice and pulled it out. A small tree hole faced me, and I was about to turn away when I spotted something inside.

  A folded piece of paper.

  Grabbing it, I opened it before thinking.

  Are you all right?

  Large, blocky text spread across the page. I squinted, unable to recognize the writing. Maybe this was a note from one guard to another, but asking each other if they were all right wasn’t a Winter Court trait. No, this was something else.

  Yes or no.

  As if written by a junior high student, the writer had given me two options to circle. This was for me, right? My thoughts went to Lily, but she had never been a note passer, and I doubted she had ventured outside. I got the feeling she liked staying in the mansion, far away from vampires and the rest of the world. If Lily had really wanted to communicate, she would’ve left a note under my pillow or something. She had regular access to my room since she did my laundry.

  This note wasn’t from her.

  Blair as far as I knew was still trapped in Vulthus’s dungeon fortress. Plus, neither she nor anybody else knew where I was.

  There was only one person I could think about who might’ve figured out where I had disappeared to and would be bold enough to send me a message.

  Thorsten.

  I searched the note again and found a faintly drawn T on the bottom corner of the page.

  My heart thumped. His arctic blue eyes exploded in my mind as the note trembled in my hand. Emotion welled up in my chest. I shoved it down. I could not be weak. Thorsten was playing more games with me. Would he never leave me alone? What was his problem?

  More importantly, how the hell had he gotten up here? He was a young vampire. He couldn’t fly, and even if he could, how on earth would he have found this place with all the fae magic protecting it?

  No, the note wasn’t from him. Olwen must’ve seen me with Thorsten. This was another test from Olwen. He wanted my full loyalty. Suspecting I was friends with a Summer fae was bad enough. But if he thought I cared about a vamp? There would be hell to pay.

  If there was anything I had learned, it was that in the Winter Court, you were guilty until proven innocent.

  I wanted to scan the trees, but I resisted the urge. Letting Olwen or any of his spies know that I was suspicious would not get them to back off anytime soon. My hands fumbled with the note, playing with the corner for a bit before I forced a look of disgust on my face.

  I knew what I had to do.

  I ripped the paper in two, then fours, then eights. I threw the bits back into the tree hole where they fluttered into the darkness before settling. Then I turned away, bolts in hand, to rejoin Atticus and return to the Winter fortress where I belonged.

  Chapter 10

  Apparently, I passed the loyalty test, because two days later, Olwen called me into the Solstice Room, where I found him sitting at his usual place, the head of the icy table.

  I inclined my head and sat opposite him. “You wanted to talk to me?”

  He got right to it. “It’s time for you to train on real targets, Onyx. Over the next few days, I’ll send you to a few vampire gatherings of my choosing. You will slip in undetected. There, you’ll zoom in on easy targets, vamps who are loners. When they leave the pack, go af
ter them, and knock them out, but don’t kill them. Make sure they don’t see you and that they don’t know it was ice magic that knocked them out.”

  I nodded. I had knocked the twins Kayden and Kassius on their asses before at Nocturnal Academy, by creating a sheet of ice underneath their feet. I could do this. Did I feel relief that I didn’t have to kill this time? No, I couldn’t allow myself to think like that. I was a warrior. Warriors did whatever was necessary to protect their court. “I understand. I won’t disappoint you.”

  “Good. Once I know you can be discreet, I’ll give you a tougher target for your second test. If you pass that, we’ll take down Vulthus.” Olwen leaned back, his eyes sparking with shrewdness.

  My chest puffed out as tingles of satisfaction raced up my spine. Justice would be mine. I’d become the avenging angel of all the fae who had been mistreated by the vampires. Maybe, after I got rid of Vulthus, the vamps would think twice before exploiting us. Maybe Nocturnal Academy would be disbanded and its teachers imprisoned.

  If only the earthbound fae worked together and stood up to the vamps, we could change everything. Or not. What was wrong with me? Why did I think that I could change a whole world that was rooted in injustice with everyone but me accepting the status quo? I had to stop being naive.

  Olwen waved his hand to dismiss me. “You may go. Your clothes will be waiting for you in your room. Atticus will take you to the party, which is being held by Marilyn Claire tonight, the owner of the Claire makeup line.”

  Another somewhat famous vamp. Lord Sullivan had lectured us about her family, too.

  “Thank you.” I inclined my head and left, spotting Lily outside the dining room, cleaning the windows. Her gaze met mine, and my heart contracted. I should be happy, ecstatic. I was finally the hunter, not the hunted.

  But I had a hole inside I could never fill.

  Even if I became the toughest assassin of the Winter Court, I’d have to continuously glance across my shoulder. I could never love freely, have friends, or enjoy life. My fists balled, and I quickened my step. I was an inch away from a meltdown. Reaching my room, I pushed the door open to find a female servant inside, wearing a black dress, curtsying deeply. “Your Highness, allow me to get you ready.”