Magic Gambit (Hidden World Academy Book 3)

by Sadie Moss

  Cross tries to cover up a snort of laughter by coughing but doesn’t quite succeed.

  “I think she’s feeling the pixie dust,” Theo drawls, and I swear his English accent sounds more delicious than it ever has before. “It’s harmless though, I think.”

  “Th-eee-o.” I try his name out too, letting my lips and tongue massage the sounds. God, his name is so wonderful. It fits him perfectly. It’s posh but fun too, a little quirky. And it sounds great when I moan it.

  I want to moan it right now.

  As Kasian carefully takes the last jar from me and caps it, I turn and wrap my arms around Theo’s neck, because that’s what I want to do, and why shouldn’t I do what I want to do? Especially right now when everything feels so good… mmm, the guys always know how to make me feel good… we should all make each other feel good. Or I could make the guys feel as good as I do…

  “Did you know your mouth is great?” I tell Theo. “I love your mouth.”

  To prove it, I kiss him. I lick the seam of his lips, tasting his skin, and then I run my tongue over his.

  Theo kisses me back, which is excellent and wonderful, and everything feels right in the world right now.

  But before I can slide my hands down and undo his pants and yank off his shirt so we can keep feeling wonderful, and feel even more wonderful—he pulls away, booping me on the nose. He’s smiling, but he’s got his hands on my waist, holding me back a bit so that I can’t kiss him again.

  “I think it’s time we got back to camp. It’s late.” He spins me gently, and I nearly fall into Kasian, who still looks a little bit worried but mostly amused. “Let’s turn that high little ass of yours around.”

  Cross smacks my ass playfully to punctuate Theo’s joke, and with the guys around me, the jars safely tucked into a small bag Kasian pulls out, we start to head back.

  Chapter 23

  It takes forever for us to get back to camp. It took a while to find Madame Mulfrey’s cabin in the first place, and then we got completely sidetracked by the pixies, and now we’ve got to figure out exactly where we are and then navigate our way back to the campsite from there without getting eaten by a mondo alligator.

  But that’s okay! It’s all okay! Because the stars are out, and it’s nice and cool right now, and I have my guys with me!

  As we walk, I kiss them all on the neck, on the jaw, looping my arms around them. My guys, my gorgeous fucking men, I love my boyfriends… they’re the best.

  I love them.

  It’s rude that they aren’t letting me make out with them, because they kiss so very well. If they didn’t want me to make out with them, then they shouldn’t kiss so well in the first place.

  And all the plants! The plants are so soft and lovely! There are all these flowers that only come out at night and they’re all so lovely! I thought I didn’t like the Aeriglades, but they’re amazing!

  Why can’t the world be this amazing all the time? Maybe if we all just got back out to nature, then people wouldn’t be so grumpy and power-hungry and shit all the time.

  The guys keep dragging me along, and I get that we need to go back to camp, but we’re already so late. What’s wrong with taking a bit more time to admire the wonderful world around us? We don’t admire the world enough. And we should. It’s freaking incredible. I don’t belong in this world, and normally that makes me sad. But right now it just makes me happy, because I can see everything for the first time, and that’s great. I get to discover everything, and it’s all new for me.

  I keep trying to tell the guys all of this while we’re walking, and they do seem to respond whenever I press up against them and try to kiss them. But they never let me take it as far as I want to, and they definitely don’t let me take off their clothes like I want to, and they keep telling me we have to keep walking. We have to get back to camp.

  Ugh. I don’t want to go back to camp. I want to stay out here! In the beautiful world! With my guys! Why can’t I just do that?

  As the lights of the campsite finally appear in the distance, I start to feel myself come down from my pixie dust high.

  It’s only as I come down from it that I realize just how damn high I actually was. Whoa. I haven’t been soaring like a kite like that before, ever. Sure, I’ve gotten a bit drunk, but I was never that into trying edibles or whatever.

  “Damn,” I mutter, realizing as I speak that my tongue doesn’t feel like it’s a half-step behind my brain anymore. “That was fun, I guess, but I wish I could’ve taken more advantage of it.”

  “Me too, love,” Theo drawls, tugging me toward him and nuzzling my hair. “You’re hard to resist under normal circumstances, but you’re persistent as hell when you’re high. And sexy as fuck.”

  My lower belly warms, and I mentally curse cults and prophecies everywhere. We still manage to find times to connect, even amidst all the worry and craziness, but damn… I really want a week on a secluded beach with my three men, no clothes allowed. I want to fuck them until we pass out, fall asleep with them, and laze around doing nothing when we wake up.

  Someday, I promise myself, before the mean, practical part of my brain adds, Maybe.

  I turn my head and press a kiss to Theo’s lips, then blink at the warm glow on the horizon.

  Oh, wow, the sun is starting to come up. Have we been gone all night? I wonder when the tiredness will start to hit me. Probably once my high finishes fading.

  “We have to be quiet,” Kasian whispers. “It’s still early. If we’re lucky, we’ll be able to sneak in. See if we can get into our tent before anyone sees us.”

  “Damn these stupid fucking camouflage spells,” Cross hisses heatedly, tripping over someone’s tent pole. The illusions on the tents might keep us safe from wild animals while we sleep, but they also make sure we can’t see the tents very well, so Cross is bumping into them as he tries to help me stay on track.

  I’m aware enough now to know that I should probably be more helpful and not just wander all over the place, but I’m not quite down from my high yet, and I just want to look around and take in everything. I want to feel the tents, the grass, the mud…

  “Ah, ah, no, this way.” Theo leads me along. “Come on, minx. We’re almost there.”

  “Good morning!”

  Oh, fuck.

  It’s our professor.

  Professor Harris smiles at us jovially. “Nice to see you all up so early. Come to try to see the green light?”

  The green… what?

  “Yeah, but no luck,” Kasian says quickly. “Guess we’ll just have to try again tomorrow.”

  I glance at Cross, who shrugs as if to say hey, don’t look at me.

  “Since you’re the first ones up,” Professor Harris continues, positively bursting with excitement, “you can choose what section of the marshes we’re going to study today.”

  Did he not know that we were gone? How is that possible? Did our preparation and illusion work really last that well? Or do we have Bianca to thank for it? Where is she?

  “Sure thing,” Kasian says, again speaking for all of us. “Why don’t we do the northwest section? That seemed to have the most promising, um…”

  “Nests,” Cross adds.

  I’m ninety percent sure this is a wild guess on Cross’s part, but it works. Professor Harris points at us in pleasure and excitement. “Excellent, excellent. I’ll see you all in a short bit then.”

  The guys and I all stare at each other. Did we seriously just get away with that? Holy shit.

  “Well? What are you waiting for?” Professor Harris calls over his shoulder. “Start to work on getting the water samples!”

  Oof. Right.

  We all share a pitiful, exhausted look, then turn and follow after Professor Harris.

  Getting things like water samples is easy work, but it’s boring. Mind-numbing. I am definitely coming down from my high now and I wish I could go back to when the world was beautiful and marvelous, and I just felt so… happy, in a floaty kind of way.r />
  Ugh, I wish I could go to sleep. I’m exhausted now. I tramped through the swamp all day to find Madame Mulfrey, found out I’m supposed to destroy the world, had sex, nearly got eaten by a spider, got high, and now I’m supposed to somehow make it through another day with no sleep?

  I can remember in high school when I would stay up all night practicing dance moves or watching movies or whatever, and I’d be fine in school the next day. How did I ever manage that? What was wrong with me? I know I’m not even out of my twenties yet, but damn, I feel old right now.

  We’ve been out for about an hour doing our work when Bianca swings by. “Oh, thank fuck, I was worried you’d all died,” she says, keeping her voice low.

  I hug her. Bianca goes stiff in surprise for a moment, then relaxes, hugging me back. She’s getting more used to my spontaneous shows of affection, and I like that.

  “Sorry, we ran into some trouble on the way back. Er, to be fair, I got us into some trouble,” I amend. It was my idea to go bounding off the path after that pixie, after all, and even though it worked out okay, I feel bad for dragging my guys into danger like that.

  Quickly, I explain about the pixies and the spider.

  Bianca shudders. “I’m glad I didn’t have to run into that fucking thing. But you got the pixie dust for old Anzac?”

  “I wouldn’t call him that if I were you.”

  She rolls her eyes. “We’re not in fairyland, he can’t hear me.”

  Honestly, I wouldn’t put it past Anzac to be spying on us somehow, but if Bianca wants to keep disrespecting the fae, that’s her business. So long as I’m not caught in the crossfire.

  “How did you keep Harris and the others from finding out we were gone the whole time?” I ask. “We weren’t supposed to be away from camp nearly as long as we were.”

  “Every time somebody asked where you were, I just would tell them I’d seen you a moment ago, and that they must’ve just missed you.” Bianca shrugs. “We were all enough of a distance away from each other that we weren’t always able to see each other. So I got away with it. And then in the afternoon, when it got later in the day and people were getting sick of being outside, I just told everyone that you’d snuck off back to the tent to have sex.”

  What?

  I can feel my face heating up. When I was high a short bit ago, I wanted to touch my guys all over, everywhere, and have them touch me right back. It wouldn’t have bothered me at all if the whole world had known how bad I wanted them. I wanted sex, sure, but not just for how good it would feel, but for the contact and closeness. I felt so in love with them and I just wanted to be intimate with them.

  Now that I’m back down on ground level, mentally, I feel mortified. I don’t want everyone here knowing when I’m sneaking off to have a quickie, for fuck’s sake.

  But I can’t deny that Bianca gave an effective and realistic excuse. It’s not that far outside the realm of possibility that I’d drag the guys back for a little afternoon delight. The guys know it too, especially because of what I was just doing on the walk back, kissing them, touching them, trying to climb them like trees.

  Cross nudges me, his hands grazing my lower back just above the curve of my ass. Theo smirks, devastatingly sexy even when he’s teasing me. Kasian tries to keep a straight face, but he bumps his hip against mine, sandwiching me between him and Cross. I can practically hear their thoughts, the smug little jokes they’re composing in their minds, and I struggle not to glare at them or yank them toward me and kiss them, focusing in on Bianca instead.

  “Anyway,” she drawls, eyeing us with amusement. “When I got enough of my stuff done, I snuck off from my group to do the work that you guys were supposed to be doing.” Bianca hands me some papers that she’s been holding, and I tuck them into my pocket. “It’s not the best work, but you were able to draw some samples yesterday.” She does air quotes as she says draw some samples. “So nobody knows that you were gone. They think you’re horny slackers, but you can make that up to them today.” She winks at us.

  “Thanks, Bianca, I appreciate it,” I tell her, and I mean it. We would’ve gotten into huge trouble without her, and I’m going to owe her big time for this. As if I don’t owe her big time already.

  I hug her once more, and then Bianca slips back to her group, which means we have to get back to work over here.

  Yay. The glamorous life of saving the world: collecting water samples from a swamp in the humid heat.

  Chapter 24

  The day absolutely drags.

  The pixie dust is hidden in a bag I keep slung over my shoulder, and all I want to do is get home so that I can give it to King Anzac and consider our debt paid. I don’t want this fae debt hanging over me, and I don’t want to be carrying valuable pixie dust around if we get into a scuffle with some dangerous swamp creature. I can feel the weight of the pixie dust like it’s a much heavier thing than it actually is, like a dumbbell or gold bars that I smuggled into my bag somehow.

  But at last, at last, the day finishes up, and we all report in our findings. We gather up and discuss what we’ve found, some people show pictures of animals that they saw—I shudder and absolutely do not talk about the crab spider—and we compile our data. Professor Harris is excited to hear all about our various findings. I have the feeling that if I mentioned oh, hey, we nearly got eaten by a spider and choked by some vines, he’d make us all trek out to the spot so that we could study the area.

  And I would not do that if you paid me a million dollars.

  “All right, everyone.” Professor Harris claps his hands together. “Let’s pack up and gather our things. We need to get all of these samples back to the lab and then tomorrow we can analyze everything properly.”

  Oh, thank God. I can’t wait to get back to Radcliffe and zip over to the fae realm. I chuckle to myself at that thought—it’s like I’m thinking of taking a quick trip to Starbucks to get a coffee instead of going into a hidden magical world that might or might not be physically connected to this one. I’ve never been able to figure that out about the fae realm.

  It is hilarious though, that this has become so normal for me that I’m not seeing it as a huge deal, just a minor errand. Even in the Hidden World, regular contact and interaction with the fae isn’t something most people really do, so—even in a world of magic, I’m finding ways to be out of the ordinary.

  We all gather up the equipment, and I try not to push everyone into rushing as I hurry around cleaning up the campsite.

  “Leave it just as you found it,” Professor Harris keeps reminding us, checking to make sure that we’re not leaving any trash around or stomping down on the plants too much.

  I clean up absolutely everything, and I even conjure up a little magic breeze to fluff the plants so they look all nice and perky. We pack up our tents, carefully package the data and samples so that nothing gets damaged on our hike back to civilization, and then with a final sweep, we set out.

  About damn time if you ask me. I have to get out there and get back to Valencia.

  I hate traveling back to the school through the transportation circle, but I’m legitimately grateful for it this time even as my stomach heaves.

  Theo and Kasian steady me, and we step out of the way to help the others get the samples into the lab. I want to just say forget it and book it for the entrance to the fae realm, but after the disappearing act we pulled yesterday, we need to be careful. We can’t have people getting suspicious of us.

  At last, we’re able to break away and head out, except—

  Bianca follows us.

  “Where are you headed?” she whispers as we walk. “Is it about the prophecy?”

  “No, it’s about the, uh, pixie dust.” I pat my bag, and Bianca’s eyes gleam with interest. “Now that we have it, I want to get it to King Anzac as soon as we can. I don’t want to owe him for any longer than I have to.”

  “That’s smart,” Bianca agrees. “Fae are hard to trust.”

  I go to move forw
ard, only to find that Bianca keeps walking with us. I give her a look.

  She gives a look right back to me, arching an eyebrow. “I’m coming with you.”

  Oh, no. My first instinct is to tell her hell no, no way, absolutely not. But honestly, I’m dead on my feet with exhaustion, and I don’t have the time and energy to argue with Bianca about this. She’s stubborn as hell, and she did manage to not get us thrown in jail the last time we went to the fae realm. Maybe this time she’ll behave, now that she has a better idea of what’s going on?

  “You can’t go getting yourself in trouble. Or us,” I warn her.

  Cross rolls his eyes as if to say good luck with that.

  “I’ll be fine,” Bianca scoffs. “Don’t even worry about me. I can handle myself with a few fairies.”

  “See, that’s the kind of attitude I’m worried about.”

  Bianca laughs. “I’m sorry. It’s just funny because usually, between Roxie and me, we’re pretty equal in stuff—but if anything, I’m the more cautious one. But you’re definitely a lot more rules-following and all than I am. It’s funny.” She stops laughing and fixes me with a determined stare. “I’m seriously going with you though. I’m not going to let you go off to the fae realm and then find out later that you got hurt and I wasn’t there to help. You need all the support you can get. What if the cult jumps you on your way there or when you’re coming back?”

  She’s got a good point. Unfortunately, we can’t be sure that the cult won’t jump us, especially after my run-in with Hawksmith. We do, in fact, need as much support as we can get. If push comes to shove and we get into a fight, there’s nobody I’d rather have at my back than Bianca. She’s proved she’s a fierce fighter.

  “Okay,” I relent. “But behave yourself.”

  “I’ll be a very good girl,” Bianca promises, batting her eyelashes at me.

  “Somehow, I’m not reassured,” Theo murmurs.