Royals of Villain Academy 4: Horrid Charms

by Eva Chase

  All I could do was sit still and wait for Declan to finish sorting through whatever impressions had risen up to meet his question. When he sat back with a sharp exhalation, my mental protections sprang back into place before I even needed to think about it. A ripple of relief passed through me having that wall of defense around me again.

  Declan’s expression had turned pensive. “It’s going to be hard,” he said. “That was a skilled illusion—it mimics actual memories too well to distinguish the difference with insight. The whole process is always so jumbled as it is…” His gaze rose to meet mine. “There might be something, though. Most of the words were blurred, but with the spell—you haven’t been using your own casting words yet, have you?”

  I shook my head. “It’s easier using actual words. I haven’t been confident enough to start making things up on the spot or relying on invented phrases. There’s a word I’ve been using for general insight spells, but that’s it.”

  “And your professors would be able to confirm that?”

  “They should. They’ve all seen me cast for classwork recently—honestly I’ve felt a little embarrassed that I’m still using literal words.”

  The corner of Declan’s mouth crooked upward. “You should be thankful for it. It might help solidify your defense. Whoever cast the illusion clearly didn’t realize that about your own magic use. The spell that appears to kill Imogen in your memories was directed by a word I’ve never heard before.”

  “Really?” The hope I’d felt before bubbled higher. I hadn’t noticed that aspect in the chaos. “That’s pretty good evidence that I didn’t cast the spell, isn’t it?”

  “It should be,” Connar said.

  “It should,” Declan agreed. “And I expect it’ll help sway the judge. I don’t think it’d be smart for us to assume it’ll be enough on its own. Your accusers could argue that you purposefully came up with a casting word for that kind of spell to sow doubt if you had to use it.”

  Jude made a face. “That’s a huge stretch. If Rory supposedly lost control in a fit of anger, why would she have a spell for that situation?”

  Declan held up his hands. “I know it’s ridiculous. We all know it’s ridiculous to think that Rory would have attacked anyone in the first place. But we also know that scheming isn’t exactly an uncommon occurrence among fearmancers, don’t we? It wouldn’t be a hard story to sell. If that’s the only proof we offer. We’ve got at least a week to come up with more.”

  “They could use insight to help determine whether she planned a casting word in advance, couldn’t they?” Connar said.

  “Maybe,” Declan said. “It’d be hard to phrase a question that specific in a way that gives definitive proof. Especially when the truth is that she didn’t.”

  And I didn’t really want the judge poking around in my head any more than he or she needed to. The fear that had gripped me when Lillian had talked about the judge viewing my memories shivered through me again.

  “They’ll probably want to use a lot of insight on me at the hearing, won’t they?” I asked. “It’d be hard for me to refuse without looking guilty.”

  Jude elbowed me teasingly. “If you don’t have any murderous secrets to hide, I think you’ll be fine. You put the rest of us to shame.”

  “Not by regular fearmancer standards, though, right?” I looked at each of them. “There are things I’ve thought, things I’ve said, that the authorities might see as treason. I still miss my joymancer parents. I still… I still wish I were back with that community instead of here sometimes.”

  A lot of the time, even if not quite as much now that I had the support of these three guys. And then there were the plans I’d made to bring down the whole school, the conversations I’d had with Deborah that would reveal who she really was… My mind could incriminate me of crimes the judge would probably see as worse than a murdered friend.

  “I’ve never seen a judge request an all-encompassing insight spell during a hearing,” Declan said softly. “But it’s true, we don’t know for sure what questions they’ll ask—and it’s possible they’d ask something that would brush up against those feelings. They’ll be looking for signs of animosity…”

  Connar sat up straighter, his expression fierce. “We’ll make a good enough case that they don’t have any grounds to do an extensive insight interrogation.”

  Declan and I exchanged a glance. We both knew that the people pulling the strings behind the scenes would take the opportunity of the hearing to undermine me any way they could. I couldn’t count on any amount of evidence sparing me that intrusion.

  But maybe there was a defense I could use that didn’t involve any magical shields. If my enemies could mess with my memories using an illusion… there were other ways I could disguise the reality of my thoughts, weren’t there?

  “Just in case,” I said to Declan, “why don’t— Before, you passed on some reports to me about cases involving the joymancers, conflicts between them and the fearmancers. I’m guessing there’s more material like that you could give me? If I’ve been reading that stuff before the hearing and have it fresh in my mind, it should help cloud any of the positive feelings I have about them.”

  Declan paused. “There is more. If you’re sure you want to read it. The joymancers… I don’t doubt that your adoptive parents treated you well, Rory, but you didn’t know any of the others. The reports I gave you before were true. Their community has done some pretty awful things.”

  Awful by fearmancer standards, maybe. I still wasn’t convinced there was no bias in the accounts I’d read. Even if the Conclave had been afraid of me and denied me my magic… even if the circumstances of my birth parents’ deaths had been questionable… how could anything they’d done compare to the horrors the fearmancers had treated me to in just five months?

  “That’s fine,” I said. “I want to know the truth. If it unsettles me, well, then it’ll stick in my mind even more, right?”

  Jude chuckled. “That’s the spirit,” he said, ruffling my hair.

  By the time we headed up to the main floor, we each had tasks to do, if not a definite plan for proving my innocence. Declan went off to get those records for me, and Connar gave me a quick kiss before heading into the library, where he was going to look up some advanced physicality approaches that he thought might reveal something in the crime scene. Jude ambled out onto the green with me, intending to chat up the few teachers currently on campus.

  My job was to take a walk around the university and see if anything jostled free a memory that could point me in a useful direction—something I might not have noticed the significance of before Imogen’s murder. It didn’t feel like a lot, but it was a starting point, anyway.

  As we came out of the building, one of the general education professors was leading a small group of students our way. The glints of the leaf pins by their shirt collars revealed that they were all scholarship students: Naries. Blood U admitted a handful of nonmagical students each year to give the rest of us practice at keeping our magic secret—and easy targets for generating the fear we needed to fuel that magic.

  “This is Ashgrave Hall, where you’ll be staying,” the professor was saying. “Each of you should have received a dorm assignment with your letter.”

  “The new batch of senior Naries,” Jude said by my ear as the professor led the group into the building. “Or at least the newly senior ones. They always start their school year here in the fall to mimic the regular school system. The staff have them arrive a little before classes start to get settled in… so they have a little time to acclimatize before the mage students will really go after them.”

  “Lovely,” I muttered.

  “Hey, they’ll have more of a respite this term thanks to you.”

  I’d almost forgotten the summer project I’d been celebrating right before Imogen’s death. With my help, a group of Naries had designed and overseen the construction of a clubhouse solely for the scholarship students. The wards I’d laid down w
ith Connar and Jude’s help would give them one place safe from malicious castings.

  That victory seemed like a small one in the face of everything that had happened since.

  Jude leaned in to kiss me, letting his lips linger a few seconds longer than Connar had—maybe on purpose—and shot me a grin before setting off toward the teachers’ offices in Killbrook Hall. The guys might have been willing to share my affection, but I didn’t think their competitive instinct had completely faded.

  I was about to meander toward the Stormhurst Building, figuring I should retrace my steps from right before the murder first, when a few more figures came around the hall from the main parking lot, one of them a completely welcome sight.

  Shelby, the Nary girl from my own dorm room and the first person on campus who’d been truly friendly to me when I’d arrived, was hauling a small wheeled suitcase over the grass to the paved path. She had her cello case, which was nearly as tall as she was, slung over her shoulder. Her mousy brown hair bobbed in its usual ponytail, and her expression was as earnestly determined as ever. Keeping her spot at the music program at this school meant the world to her, especially since she’d nearly lost it once.

  My first impulse was to hustle right over to welcome her back, but something in me balked. I didn’t know what she’d heard about Imogen and my supposed involvement in the murder. The Nary students had left the morning before it’d even happened. Maybe she had no idea? But surely the administration would have notified them somehow, if only to pre-empt the talk that would be circulating among the fearmancer students on their return.

  Shelby spotted me right then and bounded toward me as fast as her luggage allowed with a smile that didn’t leave any room for doubt. Whatever she had heard, she was still perfectly happy to see me. I let a smile stretch across my own face as I met her halfway.

  “I’m glad you’re already here,” she said after we exchanged a quick hug. “Weird as it might sound, I’m glad to be back.”

  “Even when you’ve got more hassling from people like Victory to look forward to?” I said.

  “Ah, really, there are people back home who can be just as mean. At least here I’m making sure I’ll have a good enough career that eventually I’ll never have to go back.” She gave a sheepish laugh. Then her smile faltered. “Is it really true—the school sent around this official notice that Imogen died?”

  My chest tightened. “Yeah,” I said. “They’re still investigating exactly what happened.” She obviously didn’t know the whole story. I fumbled for the right words. “I—People are saying, because I was the one who—”

  “I didn’t know they allowed murderers to come back to school,” someone said from across the green.

  I stiffened, my head jerking up. It wasn’t only Naries arriving today. A few of the senior fearmancer girls, ones I didn’t know that well, had just come onto the green, carrying their posh tote bags. If they had larger luggage, no doubt their chauffeurs or the school staff would be carrying that.

  The three of them were staring at me, hostility in their eyes, fear wafting off them to congeal in my chest. The aggressive posturing was a front. They saw me as just as dangerous as the maintenance staff woman had the other morning.

  “I didn’t hurt anyone,” I said, willing my voice not to shake. “I found her body—that’s all.”

  “That doesn’t seem to be what the investigators think,” one of the girls said. Her gaze dropped to my arms, and I could tell she’d noted the recording cuffs, although she couldn’t comment on them in front of Shelby. “I think I’ll steer clear, thanks.”

  She raised her chin with a faint sniff, and the girls started to march on, giving me a wide berth. I’d have left it at that, but Shelby took a step toward them, her voice unexpectedly taut.

  “You obviously don’t know Rory at all,” she said. “She’s the last person who’d ever attack someone, let alone—let alone that.”

  “Shelby,” I said quietly, even though her defense made my heart squeeze with gratitude. The last thing she needed was for her friendship with me to make her an even bigger target.

  “What the hell do you know?” the first girl snapped.

  “A lot more than you do. She’s the only non-scholarship student in this place who’s never been an asshole to me.” Shelby gave the girls a pointed look as if to remind them of the times when they’d probably been assholes too. “So why don’t you shut up about things you don’t know anything about?”

  The girls looked from Shelby to me, and another quiver of fear seeped into me. They turned and went into the building with an audible huff but no other comment. Shelby drew herself up a little straighter.

  “That felt good,” she said. “I’m tired of just putting up with them talking crap—especially when it’s about you too. How could anyone think you’d murder someone?”

  You have no idea, I thought but couldn’t say. I wasn’t allowed to tell her anything about magic or fearmancer politics… and even if I could, at this point my life was such a mess I wasn’t sure she’d have been able to wrap her head around it.

  “People look for the easiest person to blame,” I offered, and she nodded as if that was explanation enough. As she hefted her cello, I noted the silver chain with the violin charm I’d given her still hanging around her neck. I’d warded that charm to defend her from any spells cast her way.

  “Let me help you with your stuff,” I said, reaching to grab her suitcase. As I bent down, I murmured a few words under my breath to propel more magic into the charm. After a week away, its effects would have faded.

  And as much as I appreciated Shelby’s growing confidence, I knew just how much trouble it could get her into too.

  Chapter Eight

  Rory

  I discovered Malcolm was back in residence when I stepped out of my dorm room that evening. He was standing in the hallway outside, in the process of cuffing a boy who didn’t look more than sixteen across the head while two other junior students looked on.

  My lips parted with an automatic protest. The juniors had all glanced up the second the door had opened, even the one Malcolm was harassing, and three waves of terror coursed into my chest. At that sensation, my mouth snapped shut before a sound had left it.

  “I’d better not see you skulking around the senior dorms again,” Malcolm said, aiming a menacing glower at all three of them. With bobbed heads and meek postures, the juniors fled for the stairs.

  By the time they’d disappeared from view, my nerves had settled. I gave Malcolm a skeptical look. “Is it really necessary to resort to physical violence just because they wanted to check out the place?”

  I got the impression he’d only just held himself back from glowering at me too. “That’s not all they were doing, Glinda. I caught them whispering to each other about some big plan to see if they could provoke you. Two of the nitwits had dared the other to bang on your door and pick a fight.”

  To see whether they could get me to attack him like I supposedly had Imogen? My stomach turned. I guessed I shouldn’t be surprised. It was just like fearmancers to goad each other on like that, and the juniors weren’t quite as careful in their attempts at bravado.

  “Well, you didn’t need to step in,” I said, pulling the door all the way shut behind me. “I’m pretty sure I could have sent them off no problem on my own, without maiming anyone in the process. Or are you rethinking your stance on my innocence and you were hassling them for their own protection?”

  Malcolm’s jaw worked. “This is my job as the heir of Nightwood. I know you don’t like it, Rory, but the scions are meant to exercise their authority—to keep the rest of the community in line. If you don’t start now, no one’s going to listen to you when you take your spot at the barons’ table.”

  I wasn’t in the mood to get into an argument with him about this of all subjects. “I think I’ll find other ways to ‘exercise my authority’,” I replied, and headed for the stairs.

  “It’s for their good too,” M
alcolm called after me. “If no one lays down the law when they’re breaking it in small stupid ways, imagine how much trouble they’ll get into the next time around.”

  Unfortunately, that logic did have at least a little sense to it, even if the last thing I wanted to do was agree with Malcolm on his approach to student relations. I settled for ignoring him as I left him behind.

  Jude had texted me asking me to meet him in “the music room.” Nightwood Tower, which held all of the university’s classrooms, had at least a few different spaces for rehearsing music, but I knew from past experience which one the Killbrook scion would have meant.

  The room with the piano was right up near the top of the tower. A graceful melody seeped out as I nudged open the door.

  Jude was already sitting at the piano, his fingers dancing over the keys with an easy confidence. He didn’t look up in acknowledgement, but a few additional flourishes crept into the tune with my entrance. A satisfied smile curled his lips. I leaned back against the door and let the music wash over me. It was a shame, really, that he kept this talent a secret. He was very good.

  He finished with a chain of finger work that sped through the notes so quickly his hand became a blur. Then he turned with a little bow. I laughed as I gave my applause. “Show off.”

  “If you’ve got it, flaunt it,” Jude said with a wink. He scooted over and patted the bench beside him. “Come here?”

  I sank down next to him, and he tucked his arm around my waist. Sitting there in the small but airy room, I couldn’t stop my mind from slipping back to the last time I’d spoken to him here. The time when he’d confessed that he knew he wasn’t really the heir to the Killbrook barony—that he wasn’t a Killbrook at all. When his parents had failed to produce an heir, they’d arranged for his mother to get pregnant with another man under the influence of magic.

  And now his parents were expecting a new baby, one that would be the real heir. One that made Jude not only expendable but a liability. His father wouldn’t want anyone finding out about his deception.