Royals of Villain Academy 4: Horrid Charms

by Eva Chase

  Looking back into her worried eyes, I was struck by the urge to take her up on that offer. To tell her just how much I knew and how scared I was. To go back to those childhood years when getting a hug from her was almost enough to offset the sting of Dad’s cold shoulder.

  It had been a long time since then, though. I wasn’t sure I’d even get a hug. More likely, her stare would turn horrified, and she’d plead with me to stay… so that she could contact Dad and find out how he’d want to deal with me.

  I swallowed hard. “I’m fine, Mom. Just feeling the need for a little independence. You don’t need to worry about me either, I promise.”

  There might have been a thing or two in the bathroom I’d have taken, but now that Mom was right here, I didn’t want to linger. I moved toward the doorway, pulling the suitcase on its wheels, and she backed out, her expression still distraught. She touched my shoulder as I passed her.

  “I’m here for you if you do need anything,” she said. “I want to worry about you if there’s reason to.”

  For a second, I completely choked up. Maybe she meant that, but not enough. Not enough to save me. As far as I could tell, I was the only one who could do that.

  “Okay, Mom,” I said, because I wasn’t here to be cruel to her either. Then I hurried out to my car before the mix of guilt and resentment could grip me any harder.

  I had another long drive ahead of me, and this one came with a new set of troubled thoughts. Mom might not have guessed why I was taking this step in the moment, but once she’d had time to mull it over, to talk with Dad about it… would they suspect I was onto their secret? Would Dad decide I was a threat that needed to be eliminated right away after all? Presenting a false heir to the entire community, including the other barons, was an offense a hell of a lot worse than anything Rory was accused of doing.

  I couldn’t control what they thought or decided to do, only what I did for myself from here on.

  Evening set in during my drive. The lights of New York City glowed in the distance long before I passed through the suburbs and crossed the bridge to Manhattan Island. Traffic slowed to a crawl, and Mischief squirmed impatiently beside me, but the bustle of city energy was weirdly soothing. In a place like this, I could disappear at least temporarily.

  When I reached my apartment building, I left the car in the underground garage and hauled my suitcase and the bag I’d brought from school to the elevator. My familiar bounded along ahead of me. The elevator dropped me off on the second highest floor, and my ferret and I walked into the apartment together.

  Crisp filtered air wafted over me in the sparse modern space that belonged to no one but me. Mischief let out an excited chortle and scurried across the hardwood floor to make a full exploration. A smile crossed my lips as I stopped by the broad windows overlooking Central Park. It wasn’t a huge apartment, but I’d been willing to splurge a little for this view.

  The combined living-dining room had enough seating for six around the TV and at the dining table. Maybe someday I could invite all the scions over here for a proper hang-out. The thought of Rory nestled on the corner of the sofa made me giddy.

  I wasn’t sure how I’d explain this move to the others, though. The thought of telling them the truth about my parentage still sent a shudder of panic through me.

  Why the hell would they want to hang out with an imposter, a guy who wasn’t even one of them? Would they have given me the time of day in the first place if I hadn’t been thrust into their midst under false pretenses?

  I inhaled slowly, letting the clean lines of the furnishings calm me. I didn’t have to find out the answer to that question yet. Maybe I never had to. For now, I needed to take every step I could to make sure I kept this new life.

  As I opened my bag, the conducting pieces I’d carefully shaped clicked against each other. I picked up the first one, sat down on the sofa, and began the slow process of casting a protective ward strong enough to buy my escape if Dad happened to come calling.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Rory

  As soon as I started looking for Cressida instead of avoiding her the way I normally did Victory and her best friends, it became very obvious that she was avoiding me. Very effectively, too. No matter what time I left my bedroom in the morning or popped back into the dorm during the day, I never bumped into her. Our paths never crossed on the green or elsewhere around campus. So far she hadn’t even been in any of my classes.

  After getting nowhere for a day, I knocked on her bedroom door the next morning. No one answered, but I had no idea whether that meant she was in there ignoring me or had already headed out. At this point, both possibilities seemed equally plausible.

  As I went about my day, still without so much as a glimpse of her white-blond French braid, the sense grew that this couldn’t be coincidence. She was staying away from me on purpose. And why would she be keeping such a careful distance from me unless she knew something to do with me that she didn’t want to have to face?

  I couldn’t believe she was simply terrified that I might really have murdered Imogen. She’d seen just as much as Malcolm had that I wasn’t the type to lose my temper violently even under extreme circumstances.

  Her two cohorts, Victory and Sinclair, hadn’t taken any jabs at me since they’d gotten back from break, but they weren’t dodging me either. I came into the common room in the middle of the afternoon to find the two of them sitting on one of the sofas murmuring over a fashion magazine, and a prickle ran up the back of my neck. Normally Cressida would have been perched there with them. Was she just not around… or had she been alerted to my arrival somehow and ducked away before I’d walked in?

  The last thing I wanted to do was ask my long-time nemesis for help, but I could bite the bullet when my ability to prove I wasn’t a murderer was on the line. I strode up to the sofa and waited until Victory raised her eyes to meet mine.

  “Where’s Cressida?” I asked. Might as well cut to the chase and keep this conversation as brief as possible.

  Victory wrinkled her nose. “I’m not her keeper. And why should I tell you even if I know—so you can go harass her?”

  I restrained myself from rolling my eyes. I’d never done anything remotely close to “harassing” Victory and her friends, unless you counted paying them back in kind for the ways they’d harassed me.

  “I need to ask her about something important,” I said. “I’m not looking to argue with her or whatever.”

  Victory shrugged and turned back to her magazine. “You really should ask your fellow scions for help, since you’re all so close these days.”

  Obviously she was still pissed off at me because Malcolm had interrupted her plan to feed Deborah to her cat familiar. I wavered, wondering if there was any other tactic I could try, but the only things I knew Victory wanted from me were to see me crushed or disgraced, neither of which I could offer up. She’d probably rejoice if I failed at the hearing.

  In the end, I grabbed a book on insight magic from the library and took it out onto the green to read where I could watch for Cressida coming or going. She had to have classes sometime. I didn’t think she could make it from the dorms to Nightwood Tower without me spotting her.

  The first hour or so passed pretty uneventfully. Other students claimed spots on the grass between the paths, some of them eyeing me before moving a little farther away, but no one interrupted my reading. Cressida didn’t make any appearance either, though. I’d gotten through a couple chapters with my broken attention when mocking laughter reached my ears from across the green.

  I shifted position surreptitiously and peered toward the sound with my head still tipped toward the book. Shelby and two other Nary students from the music program had just left Nightwood Tower, and a few fearmancer students had closed around them. One of them was the Cutbridge guy who’d argued for fearmancer world domination in Physicality the other day.

  The girl beside him made a subtle gesture with her hand, and Shelby’s feet flew out fr
om under her as if she’d tripped. She sprawled on her hands and knees, her cello case landing with a thump that made me wince. Cutbridge laughed again.

  “Leave us alone,” one of the other Naries snapped at the mages.

  “We didn’t do anything,” Cutbridge said in a sly voice. “It’s not our fault if just being around greatness makes you clumsy.”

  Behind the Naries, another of the fearmancers twisted his fingers. The Nary guy’s ankle jerked at the same time, and he stumbled.

  I scrambled onto my feet with a hiccup of my pulse. The fearmancer students liked to hassle the Naries, sure, but I’d never seen them toe the line of revealing their magic so blatantly. They were pointing out the fact that they hadn’t needed to touch the other students to assault them. Was Cutbridge trying to force some kind of reveal with his talk about greatness?

  Shelby had said the vibe between the scholarship students and the regular ones had become more tense. How long had stuff like this been happening?

  I wasn’t sure how much I cared whether Naries knew magic existed or not, but I wasn’t going to sit around while a bunch of bullies tormented my friend and her classmates. I shoved the book under my arm and marched over.

  Shelby was just pushing herself upright when she looked around and saw me. A relieved smile touched her lips even as she blushed with embarrassment. The fearmancer girl who’d tripped her, currently leaning over the cello case, caught her glance, raised her own head, and yanked herself backward at the sight of me.

  “It’s Bloodstone,” she murmured. “Holy shit.” Her face paled, and her shoulders came up defensively. A waft of fear rolled off her into my chest.

  The smack of emotion made me queasy. I held up my hands to show I was coming over peacefully, but the movement made the girl flinch. The other guy was backpedaling too with another wave of panic. Cutbridge held steadier, but his jaw had clenched tight.

  “I’ll just remind you that there are witnesses,” he said stiffly.

  Witnesses? So that I’d think twice if I’d been planning on murdering him? Frankly, that comment made me want to murder him more than anything else this bunch had done. I settled for letting my voice come out sharp and tart.

  “Why don’t you all go find something more productive to do? You’ve got better ways to make yourself feel big than this, don’t you?”

  I waved my hand vaguely toward the other buildings, and the girl lurched away with a yelp as if I’d cast something at her. Fresh fear raced into me so swiftly it quivered all the way up my gums.

  “I didn’t—” I started, not knowing how to deny I’d done something that I wasn’t allowed to admit was even possible in front of Shelby and the other Naries, but the girl was already spinning and dashing away.

  “Bitch,” Cutbridge muttered, and stalked after her. The other fearmancer guy fled in the opposite direction.

  Shelby straightened the rest of the way up, brushing off her clothes. “Thanks. I don’t know what trick they were pulling there. That was almost spooky.”

  “Seriously,” the guy said with a shudder.

  My gut twisted, but I didn’t know what was disturbing me more—how blatantly the other mages had flouted university rules or how terrified they’d been of me. I’d known people were more nervous of me than before, but… were there really students who’d seen how I’d behaved in the five months I’d been going to school here and still thought I might slaughter one of them in the middle of the green?

  The worst thing was, they weren’t even completely wrong, were they? Being my friend, helping me in any way, could get you killed. Ask not just Imogen but Professor Banefield too. Could I even keep the Nary girl in front of me safe, really?

  “I’m glad you’re okay,” I said quickly, and swiveled to hurry off in the direction of the Stormhurst Building, for no particular reason other than I was sure the Naries wouldn’t be heading there too.

  I was about halfway there when I noticed the thud of footsteps behind me. A moment later, Declan caught up with me, his black hair windblown. When he stopped, his hawk familiar circled overhead and dropped from the sky to perch on his shoulder. I guessed he’d been out letting it stretch its wings.

  “Hey,” he said quietly. “I caught the end of that confrontation on the green. You looked pretty upset.”

  “I wasn’t going to hurt them,” I blurted out.

  Declan gave me such an incredulous look that I immediately felt ridiculous for even saying that. “Of course you weren’t,” he said. “I wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

  “Yeah, I mean, I guess. I’m a lot more okay than Imogen is.” I managed a weak laugh. “Which is obviously what’s on everyone else’s mind too.”

  He glanced around and motioned for me to follow him. “Come on. Let’s go somewhere quiet, and you can talk about everything that’s bothering you. You’re going through a lot.”

  I didn’t have the wherewithal to argue with him. I wasn’t sure I really wanted to.

  We wandered down toward the lake, where the breeze carried the fresh watery scent and a chilly tinge that had put an end to most swimming expeditions. Declan made for the boathouse, giving his familiar a gentle rub to its chest that must also have served as a command. As he opened the boathouse door, the hawk lifted off him with a flap of its wings and soared over the roof.

  My heart skipped a beat before I followed Declan inside. He had no idea about the heated and then chilling encounter I’d had with Malcolm in here. That was weeks ago now, though. I wanted to move past it.

  The dim space felt different now with the cool of the approaching autumn instead of mid-summer humidity. The boats creaked in their moorings with the lapping waves. Declan pulled a couple of plastic crates away from the wall and pushed one toward me. He sat down on the other.

  “It’s getting to you,” he said. “The way people are reacting because of the accusations.”

  I sank onto my makeshift stool. “I know there was the arrest and everything, but it’s hard to see how people could think I’m this violent person after everything I’ve done not to lower myself to really fighting since I got here. Even if I’m acquitted at the hearing… do you think they’ll assume I just cheated my way out of the sanctions? Will they still be scared of me?”

  Maybe they’d be even more scared, thinking I’d not only murdered a fellow student but gotten away with it.

  “They might,” Declan admitted. “But it’s fearmancer nature to assume the worst of people, to always be suspicious and wary. No one knows you all that well except for, well, us scions I suppose. You’ll have more chances to show them the longer you’re here.”

  I lowered my head into my hands. “I just wish all this craziness was done already. It feels like every time I think I’ve found my footing here, someone pulls the rug out from under me in some new way. I’m tired, Declan.”

  His crate scraped against the boards as he scooted closer. He touched my shoulder with a reassuring stroke of his thumb. “I know. I’m trying to make it easier for you any way I can. We’ll get through this, and when we’re both in the pentacle of barons, we can start changing things. That’s why they’re pushing so hard at you now, you know. Because they’re scared of what will happen when you really have power.”

  That idea provided a comfort all of its own, but only a small one, considering I wasn’t sure I’d make it to that future. It seemed awfully distant right now.

  “I guess I shouldn’t be complaining to you,” I muttered. “You’ve had to fight to keep your position for years.”

  “I worked up to it. You were thrown into the deep end. And I’ve never had to deal with attacks as intense as they’re aiming at you.”

  “So, I’m just special.”

  “Yes,” he said with a smile I could hear. “You are.”

  I looked up at him so I could see that smile, a little crooked on one side. The affection shining in his eyes wasn’t quite enough. I shifted forward on my crate so I could lean into him, giving him what I’d meant to be
a quick hug. But once his arms came around me, it was incredibly hard to let him go. I pressed my face into his soft shirt and drank in the cedary smell of him.

  One of his hands came up to brush over my hair. An electric tingle shot through my skin. Heat pooled in my lips, and I pulled myself back before I was any more tempted to act on that attraction.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I just—I needed that.”

  “It’s okay,” Declan said, but I saw the conflict in the tensing of his face. He stood up a little abruptly. “I think I’ve found a source for some more information on the joymancers, if you still think that would help.”

  It took me a second to catch up with the abrupt change in subject. “I—Yeah. Yeah, it still might. And I’d like to know everything I can about them anyway.” If I was going to turn to these people, I’d better know who I was really dealing with.

  Declan nodded. “I’ll meet you in the scion lounge tomorrow morning at nine?”

  “That works.”

  He tipped his head to me again and headed out, so briskly I couldn’t help feeling I’d somehow ruined the moment between us on top of everything else.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Declan

  I ended up in the scion lounge a half hour before I’d told Rory to meet me. Restless, I managed to kill several minutes fiddling with the espresso machine Jude had requested a couple years ago. It finally produced a cup of coffee that tasted like coffee. As I sipped the bitter liquid, I wandered through the room.

  The envelope I’d left on the sofa felt way too flimsy to really help Rory. It was good for her to know what the people who’d stolen her away were capable of, but I wasn’t sure reading those horror stories would block enough of her long-held sympathies for her to get past the judge’s scrutiny if he started along that line of questioning. She shouldn’t have to be worrying about how much she might have misjudged the community she’d grown up in on top of everything else going on.