by Sadie Moss
Magic Gambit
Hidden World Academy #3
Sadie Moss
Copyright © 2019 by Sadie Moss
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Epilogue
Also by Sadie Moss
Chapter 1
If you’d told me just a few months ago that I would be sitting in a dirty, dusty old secret meeting hall in a club dress after switching back and forth between parallel worlds all night and nearly getting murdered by a man who belonged to an insane magical cult…
I’d have said you were absolutely crazy.
Oh, and if you’d told me that I would also discover in that same night that I have magic of my own? I probably would’ve busted a gut laughing.
But that’s what’s happened.
It’s why I’m here. Still in my club dress. Exhausted, tired, but at least no longer hungry since Cross got us some food.
I can barely think straight. I don’t know how anyone else has the energy to argue with each other. And yet, that’s definitely what’s going on here.
Pressing my fingertips to my temples, I try to sort through the thoughts careening around inside my head as Cross and Bianca gear up for another round. They’ve been arguing pretty much since Cross got back with the food, and neither one of them is showing signs of backing down.
It’s understandable, in a way. Tensions are running high, and we’ve all been through a lot.
Bianca only just found out tonight—or last night, now, since it’s morning and dawn is breaking through the windows—that I’m not really her best friend. That the real Roxie has been on the run for about five months now, and I’ve been pretending to be her for just as long.
I’m shocked Bianca’s not more upset about me lying to her for months, and honestly, I wouldn’t blame her if she were pissed at me. As it is, I think she’s still sort of reeling from the discovery that the guy she was seeing, Gunner, turned out to be a member of the Cult of Singularity and tried to kill us all tonight—until Bianca killed him in self-defense. Between that and the whole “I’m not really Roxie” thing, it’s a miracle the poor girl’s head hasn’t exploded.
Although it looks pretty close to exploding right now. Her face is red, her sleek dark hair in disarray, and her angular features look even sharper than usual as she glares at Cross.
“What are we going to do to help Roxie? She’s obviously in trouble! That cult wants her, and they’ve already found her more than once! We need to protect her!”
“Oh, do we?” Cross barks. “Maybe she’s not the one who needs protecting! She dragged a completely innocent person into this. She didn’t even leave a note for Gabbi warning her or giving her any kind of clues to help her defend herself. What if Gabbi had been arrested? What if she’d been taken by the government? You think they would’ve been all that gentle? You think they would’ve played nice? Hell, no.”
I’ve seen Cross irritated, and I’ve seen him angry, but I’ve never seen him like this. His blue-green eyes flash fire as he puts himself between Bianca and the rest of us as if the posh-looking girl is going to try to kill us or something. And, okay, granted, I did just watch Bianca stab the man she’s been dating with a dagger she had hidden in her shoe, so I guess Cross’s protectiveness isn’t totally out of left field.
But that asshole Gunner betrayed her and all of us for the Cult of Singularity, and he was about to murder me when Bianca killed him, so… Well, right now, I’m sort of okay with her violent tendencies.
“What exactly are you suggesting then, Cross?” Kasian says wearily. He’s trying to be the voice of reason, as always, sitting down across from me and leaning on an elbow as he talks in a lower, soothing tone of voice. “You’re not wrong that Roxie put Gabbi in a bad situation when she initially swapped places with her, but we already know all of this.”
Theo, my third boyfriend, is pacing back and forth, not actively involved in the fight but occasionally adding his thoughts on the matter. He’s the most exhausted-looking out of all of us.
“Kasian’s right,” he puts in, his English accent thick. “No one’s disagreeing with you that Roxie handled this badly.” Bianca growls, and he shrugs. “Well, mostly no one. But is there a point to what you’re saying besides ranting?”
“My point is that Gabbi isn’t safe here; she never has been.” Cross takes off his leather jacket. It’s freezing in here, since there’s no heating and it’s the middle of February, but all of this arguing must be getting him steamed up. “She needs to go back to the Dull World, for her own safety.”
“What? We can’t do that!” Bianca snaps. “If Roxie gets flipped back to this world, the cult is going to come after her!”
“They’re coming after Gabbi now!”
“Roxie is the one that the prophecy is about.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “They’re going to go after her even more zealously—”
“But they actually fucking need Roxie, they don’t need Gabbi. They’ll just kill Gabbi. Roxie, they’ll at least keep alive. And Roxie is the subject of the prophecy, which makes this whole damn thing her mess! Not Gabbi’s! If anyone should have to deal with this shit, it’s Roxie, instead of running away and making us handle it!”
Bianca gets up in Cross’s face. There’s a good five inches of height difference there, and she’s no longer wearing her heels, which makes the height difference even more pronounced. But she’s not letting that stop her. Cross glares down at her, and Bianca glares right back at him, neither of them looking all that keen on moving.
“Roxie is my best friend.” She pokes my copper-haired boyfriend hard in the chest. “And if the cult gets a hold of her, they’ll use her to destroy the Dull World, and possibly ours too if the whole thing goes sideways, and then where will we be, huh? We can’t just throw Roxie to the wolves!”
“Roxie deserves to actually try to clean up this mess!”
“She was trying to clean it up by leaving! By removing herself from the equation! Everyone knows that the more you do to try to stop a prophecy, the more likely it is to actually happen, so she tried to cheat the system by going into the Du
ll World. That’s smart! That’s brilliant, and you should be thanking her for it! If she’d stayed here, I bet the cult would’ve captured her long ago!”
“I am not letting Gabbi be in danger for one more second when it’s not even her problem to deal with!”
“And I’m not letting you put my best friend in danger!”
“And I’m—”
Oh, for crying out loud. I step up in between the two of them, shoving them both back and then keeping my hands up so neither of them can get at the other. “Guys, cut it out. Okay? I am actually here, and I have an opinion.”
Cross and Bianca fall silent but continue to glare at each other.
“This is my life we’re talking about.” I keep my hands up just in case one of the two tries to rush the other one. If any of us were going to get in a brawl, honestly, it would be Cross and Bianca. They’re the ones who are ready to rumble. “My life, my choices. I’m not the only one who gets to decide our plan against the cult. We’re all in this together. But I am the one who gets to decide what to do with my own life. And I’m not going back to the Dull World to hide while you guys fight this on your own, and I’m not going to put Roxie in danger like that. Not when she’s the weapon they’re looking for.”
“Gabbi,” Cross says, and I know it’s serious because he rarely calls me my name when he’s speaking to me. He usually calls me ‘cupcake.’ I think it was, at first, a way to covertly call me something other than Roxie, a way to show that he knew I was someone different from her—he was, after all, the first person to figure out I wasn’t really Roxie. But now it’s just habit, a sign of affection. His pet name for me. “Gabbi, we can’t just let you be in danger like this.”
“I have magic now,” I remind him. Sure, I have no idea how the hell I got it, but it’s mine, and I can use it. “And I won’t stay on the sidelines while the people I love risk their lives. This isn’t just about my safety, or Roxie’s. This is bigger than any one person. And not to be rude or anything, Cross, but your world isn’t the one that’s at stake. The Cult of Singularity doesn’t want to destroy this world. It wants to destroy the Dull World, my world. That means my parents, my brother, my friends. They’re all going to be gone.”
My stomach heaves a little at the thought, and I clench my jaw. When I try to comprehend the enormity of what’s at stake, I feel like I’m staring into an abyss so vast it makes my head spin.
But I have to think about it. Because it’s a real. It could happen.
“To me?” I add softly. “That’s worth risking my life for. That means I have a stake in this. And if I have a stake in this, then I get to fight in this; I’m not just going to stand aside or run away and hide. And if Roxie really is the key to all of this, then we need to keep her safe and away from them.”
Cross glares at Bianca before shifting his gaze to me, and something in him seems to snap. He grabs me fiercely, wrapping his arms around me so tightly I can feel the uneven thud of his heart against my chest.
“I fucking hate this, cupcake,” he growls into my ear, burying his face in my hair. “You’ve been putting yourself on the line this entire time, and Roxie hasn’t helped you out, not even once.” His grip on me tightens, as if he could protect me from everything bad in the world if he could just hold me close enough. “You deserve to be safe. You deserve a break.”
I cling to him and inhale his woodsy pine scent, letting myself give in for a moment, letting myself relax into his solid embrace.
From everything I know about her, Roxie is a really strong and independent person. She’s a badass. And I’m… not. I mean, I try to be. This whole time, I’ve been trying to be strong like she is, capable, able to handle anything that gets thrown my way. But right now—it’s just too fucking much.
So I let Cross hold me as I bury my face against his chest and let a few tears slip free.
He responds by pressing a soft kiss to my hair, and everyone else falls silent. I hear Theo stop pacing and walk over to sit down.
Until the count of ten, I tell myself.
I count to ten in my head, holding on as tightly as I can, and then I let go and step back, composing myself. Putting on my “badass” costume again, even if it doesn’t quite seem to fit.
“I just want you safe,” Cross whispers, gently thumbing away the tears that have slid down my face.
“Yeah, I know,” I murmur, catching his hand in mine.
And I do know that. He wants to take care of me, just like I want to take care of the people I love. But I’m not sitting out this fight. I can’t. How could I live with myself if my world and everyone I loved was destroyed because I did nothing? No way.
I may feel scared shitless and out of my depth right now, but I’m not a runner. And I’m not a quitter.
“So it’s decided,” Bianca says. Her gaze shifts to me, something like gratitude shining in her almond-colored eyes. “Gabbi here’s got a pair of balls on her. I like it.” She sits on the edge of the table, stirring up a bit of dust as she does so. “But we still need to figure out what the hell we’re doing next.”
I like this new side to Bianca, as terrifying as it is. She’s someone that I unfairly discounted. I thought of her as an airhead, shallow and a little self-absorbed. But it turns out she’s actually tough as fucking nails. She killed her boyfriend without hesitation to stop him from doing the same to us. She’s protecting me, and she’s ready to fight even though this has to be scary. I’ve gained a lot of respect for her in the last few hours.
“The cult is going to try to get Roxie back again,” Kasian says. “They need her for their plan to separate the worlds. And we need to be ready for that.”
“I don’t know how much more swapping either of us can handle,” I admit. Cross helps me sit down and I face the others. “We were going back and forth like that so much last night, it made me sick, and I’m sure it made Roxie sick too, and then that last time—it was like we became one person for a second. It was really freaky.”
“And now you’ve got magic,” Theo points out.
I nod. “Now I have magic.”
I have no idea how my temporary merge with Roxie caused me to manifest my own magic, but it’s the only explanation. I didn’t have magic before I merged with her, and now I do.
How this all works though, feels like uncharted territory. The Dull World knows nothing about the Hidden World, and the Hidden World knows very little about the Dull World. There aren’t exactly tomes of information on the subject. Whatever Roxie and I are going through, I’m pretty sure that nobody else has ever gone through it. Switching back and forth like this? Especially in such a rapid-fire way? I’m sure there would be some record of it if this kind of thing had happened before. Kasian’s a historian, so he specializes in this type of thing; he’d know about it even if regular people didn’t.
But he hasn’t said anything, and that makes me think Roxie and I are the first.
“Well, they’re not going to be able to get Roxie that easily,” Bianca says, grim satisfaction in her voice.
“You don’t think so?” Kasian’s brows draw together. “Even if she hides out in the Dull World, they’ll just send someone after her like they have before. They have a Disc of Eile just like we do.”
“No, they don’t.” With a shake of her head, Bianca pulls something out of her bra and holds it out in her open palm.
My mouth falls open.
It’s a disc.
Chapter 2
Bianca is holding a Disc of Eile.
I blink, my jaw still dangling open like I’m a fish.
Holy shit.
It’s about the size of a large coin, and the metal is decorated with ornate carvings, just like the one I have. Discs of Eile are extremely rare fae-made devices, and they can be used to flip yourself from one world to the next. Roxie stole one from the fae, which is how she was able to get to the Dull World and swap with me. She hid the disc outside my dorm room window when she was first kidnapped by the Cult of Singularity and bro
ught back to the Hidden World, and I was able to find it.
I’ve had it on me ever since. I never let it leave my person. Kasian even made a spell that sticks the disc to my chest as if it’s made of velcro so I can keep it with me when I shower or… do other naked stuff.
But the one Bianca’s holding? That’s not mine. It must be the disc that the cult used to kidnap Roxie. And that means…
“Holy shit.”
This time, I speak the words out loud, my gaze flying up to meet Bianca’s. She nods grimly.
That means Gunner was the one who was kidnapping Roxie this whole time.
When Roxie was stolen from the Dull World the first time, she wrote they’re taking me, don’t trust— on my desk in my dorm room. She didn’t get to finish the sentence, but it must’ve been Gunner’s name that she was about to write down. She would’ve known who he was since he’s a TA at the college. Maybe he and Bianca had already been flirting a bit, so Roxie realized that he was trying to get close to us.
Fuck. If only Roxie had been able to write out Gunner’s name before she was taken. We would’ve known not to trust him or get in the damn car with him.
Now though, we have Gunner’s disc. But does the cult have another one?
“What bloody good is that going to do?” Theo asks, running a hand through his dark brown hair. The silver rings he wore to the club glint on his fingers, and I swear I can hear the gears grinding in his brain as he tries to process yet another new piece of information.