Royals of Villain Academy 4: Horrid Charms

by Eva Chase

  Before I could apologize again for the crap I’d put her through, she twisted around to kiss me, so tenderly I didn’t need to hear the words to know she’d completely forgiven my transgressions. I wasn’t sure I’d ever completely forgive myself, but I shouldn’t put the burden of my guilt on her.

  “I’ll see you later,” she said, getting up. As she moved toward the forest, another figure slipped through the trees toward us. My eyebrows rose at the sight of Declan hesitating at the edge of the clearing.

  He glanced from me to Rory, his stance a little awkward, no doubt thinking about the unexpected intimacy we’d shared up here just a couple days ago.

  “Hey,” Rory said easily, as if it wasn’t any big deal, and his shoulders came down. “I’ve got to get back to campus.”

  He nodded. “Can you meet me at the Stormhurst Building this afternoon? Let’s say two? There are some things about your hearing I think we should discuss.”

  Rory’s smile fell at the mention of the hearing, but she dipped her head in agreement. “I’ll be there.”

  She brushed her hand against his before heading down the slope. Declan ventured farther into the clearing, some of his earlier awkwardness coming back. He cleared his throat and looked at me. “I wanted to talk with you too.”

  I shrugged. “Sure. This is as good a place for a chat as any.”

  The corner of his mouth quirked up. He cast around and ended up sitting down against a tree a few over from mine, his long legs sprawling in front of him. His gaze drifted toward the horizon as he ran a hand through his hair.

  “I probably don’t need to tell you this, but what happened up here the other day—no one can know that there’s anything going on between Rory and me. Not while I’m still an aide, anyway.”

  Something about his phrasing made me wonder how much had been “going on” between the two of them before that afternoon. It’d been clear from the way he looked at her that some kind of feelings had been developing for a while, and Rory had seemed nothing but eager about him joining in, but I hadn’t seen any hint of a more than friendly connection between them before. I wasn’t sure whether that was my own obliviousness or Declan’s usually excellent self-discipline.

  “Of course,” I said. “Even if you weren’t working for the university, I’m not really the type to go around gossiping.”

  “I know. Discretion just seems particularly important right now.” He let out a ragged breath. “Maybe I should have walked away. But it was starting to feel so pointless, pretending not to want… what I want.”

  He fell silent. Declan didn’t talk about his feelings in general all that much, at least not with me, so I didn’t have a clue what kind of response he’d be looking for. I fumbled for the right words and finally settled on, “She’s something special.”

  His whole mouth curved with a smile then. “Yeah, she is.”

  It was an awfully strange situation when you looked at it, him and me and Jude all caring about Rory the way we did, and her seeming to share that affection, but none of us really being in a position to make anything permanent out of it. Maybe that was why it only raised the smallest prickle of jealousy to think that she might have had something going with Declan that I’d had no idea about. We were all in the same boat. And we were all on her side.

  “The things you need to go over with her about the hearing…” I said. “Have you come up with a new strategy that could help?”

  “Not exactly. More like damage control.” His smile turned pained. “These aren’t the easiest opponents to go up against.”

  As I knew from personal experience. I hadn’t meant to say anything about it, but his comment brought out the ache in my stomach that I’d been suppressing since I’d gotten the text last night. In some ways, Declan had a better idea of how to deal with the barons than the rest of us scions, even if they were family. Maybe he’d have some wisdom that would bolster my confidence.

  “I’m supposed to meet with my parents later today,” I said. “They’re going to hassle me about Rory not taking their deal, I assume, and who knows what else.” Just saying it aloud made my gut clench tighter. I’d stonewalled their suspicions briefly, but I wasn’t used to playing mind games. What if I fucked something up this time? I hadn’t forgotten my mother’s clear threat about Holden. Of course she’d drag my brother into this situation too.

  “And you’re obviously not looking forward to that meeting,” Declan said mildly. He looked down at his hands where he’d rested them on his knees and then glanced over at me. “You know, I think I’ve made assumptions about you over the years that weren’t really fair, based on seeing what they’re like. Malcolm was right about at least one thing—we need to stick together as scions. I should have paid more attention to you, and I’m sorry about that. For what it’s worth, now that I am paying attention, it couldn’t be clearer that you’re nothing like them.”

  The words might not have given me an answer to my most pressing problem, but they were worth a lot all the same. Some of the uncertainty I’d felt about him and his apparent wariness of me crumbled away. I couldn’t really blame him for keeping a certain distance given my parents, the stories about me, and the aggressive front I’d often let myself put on.

  “I appreciate that,” I said. “Hopefully you won’t ever need to testify to that effect on my behalf.”

  He let out a rough bark of a laugh. “I’ll be happy if the word ‘hearing’ never comes up again in the rest of my life in relation to any of us.”

  He’d been open enough with me that I decided to press the issue a little further. “Why the need for damage control for Rory? What’s going on with her hearing?”

  Declan paused, and for a few seconds I thought he might decide he couldn’t trust me enough to tell me. Then he sucked in a breath. “The blacksuits have assigned a different judge at the last minute. Under pressure from the other barons, I have to guess. The new one—he’s known to insist on extensive insight interrogations of the accused, often going far beyond the boundaries of the case to seek out other possible crimes.”

  A chill trickled through me. “We already figured it was possible they’d dig deeper into Rory’s thoughts and memories.”

  “Yeah, but now it’s basically certain. I think her attitudes about the joymancers have shifted, but the wrong piece of a memory, the wrong emotional impression in a situation… The barons want to dredge up anything incriminating they can. It’s going to be awful for her, and I think it’s pretty likely they’ll find something they can spin against her with the lengths this judge goes to.”

  “Fuck. And she can’t get some kind of exemption for privacy’s sake, being the only heir of Bloodstone?”

  He shook his head. “I get the sense there are a fair number of people even in the blacksuits who are wary of her because of her upbringing. I don’t think the barons have had much trouble getting their way with the hearing. A lot of fearmancers would rather have one point of the pentacle dulled than potentially ‘contaminated’ by attitudes they don’t approve of.”

  The idea set my teeth on edge. “If they’d just give her a chance…”

  “We didn’t really when she first got here, did we? It’s only because we had to interact with her so much that we started to see her as she really is instead of through the biases we’ve had ingrained in us. I’m not sure how we’d get the wider community to that point. I’m not saying everyone’s against her or anything, only that it’s not going to be the smoothest road. If we can even get her past the current roadblock.”

  “Yeah.” That was the problem right there.

  We just sat, quietly contemplative, for a little while. Declan got up with a sigh and said, “I’ll leave you to it. Good luck with your parents.”

  As he left, my spirits sank again. I focused on the glimmer of sunlight on the water and thought back over everything he’d told me.

  A flicker of inspiration lit in my mind. Maybe there was something there I could use to my advantage. The meeting
with my parents might not be a total disaster. I just had to play it right… and I had managed to play them once before, if on a smaller scale.

  I turned the possibility over in my head as I lingered in the clearing, and kept mulling it over on my way back to campus. Was it really the best choice I could make? I could be shooting myself in the foot.

  But I had to come to my parents with something, or God only knew how they’d take out their disapproval and frustration on me—and my brother.

  My heart thumped hard as I drove through town and onward to the country inn restaurant farther down the highway where my father liked the food. I got there early, but their car was already in the parking lot. I squared my shoulders and strode inside.

  My parents had only just gotten their drinks: a Bloody Mary for my mother and a whisky sour for my father. The thought of adding alcohol to the churn of my stomach made me queasier. I sat down at their table and asked for a root beer.

  They didn’t even give me a chance to pick up the menu. “You appear to have overestimated your influence over the Bloodstone scion,” my mother said in a low but caustic tone, ripping one of the bread rolls in half. “Given the evidence, I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s learning more from your slips than you’re managing her behavior. At this point, the most useful thing you could do is break her heart the morning before the hearing and let her go with that shaking her up.”

  She watched me from the corner of her eyes as she jabbed butter across the roll, evaluating my response to that suggestion as much as waiting for my agreement. My skin prickled.

  “Rory had already talked to Baron Nightwood before I had a chance to see her that day,” I said. “Once she’d made her decision, it’d have been humiliating for her to run back to him begging to take the deal after all. I don’t think anyone could have influenced her that far.”

  “Nonetheless—"

  I barreled ahead before she could pitch her heart-breaking plan again. “I might not have been able to talk her into accepting your deal, but acting like I’m on her side means she lets all kinds of things slip to me. I don’t think that’s a benefit we should be so quick to throw away.”

  My mother snorted. “And what great insights have you picked up that would be of any use to us, Connar?”

  I forced myself to smile. “Just today I found out something I think you’ll want to hear about this new judge who’s been assigned to her case.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Rory

  The chlorine smell tickled my nose as I followed Declan down to the boiler room near the Stormhurst Building’s pool. The hum of the pipes filled the dim space. It felt even more eerie than when we’d come down here with Jude and Connar to tell them about their parents’ role in the conspiracy against me. Declan hadn’t said yet what he wanted to talk to me about, but it was obviously something perilous if he felt the need to bring the conversation here.

  He crossed the small room and came to a stop by the large pipe at the far end. One of the maintenance staff had left a bucket there. He flipped it upside down and nudged it toward me with his foot. “You can sit if you want. This will probably take some time.”

  “What will?” I asked. “What’s going on?” The worries that had been nipping at me ever since he’d asked me to meet him here clamored louder. “Have the barons come up with more made-up evidence against me or something?”

  Declan shook his head. “It’s not exactly a new threat, just one that’s escalated. The original judge has been replaced with one who’s known for extensive insight interrogations. I’m sure the barons set that up to maximize their chances of uncovering something damaging in your own thoughts or memories. We have to assume at this point that the questioning will go far beyond the scope of the case.”

  “Shit.” I rubbed my face with a rising sense of exhaustion. “I think… I think I should be okay now as far as the joymancer stuff goes. Unless they’re going to hold the fact that I still care about my parents against me, but there’s nothing I can do about that. There might be other things, though.” Deborah, in particular. “The judge or whoever’s doing the interrogation will ask specific questions, though, right? Not just go rummaging around at random?”

  “It’ll definitely be a directed questioning. We just don’t know for sure what questions they’ll ask—or what might come up in your mind in response. That’s why I thought we could try a practice run, if you’re okay with that. I’ve come up with a list of the questions I think they might use that would pose the most risk, and I can ask you them using insight to see what they provoke. If anything shows up that I think could be a problem, we have a few days to figure out how to handle it.”

  My pulse stuttered at the thought of even Declan making a thorough exploration of my mind. There were things he still didn’t know about me, things I didn’t think he’d approve of. But… If anyone out of all the fearmancers I’d met was going to accept the secrets I’d been keeping, it’d be him. Better I found out what might emerge now in his company than during the hearing.

  “I guess there’s not much chance I could simply decline the interrogation altogether?” I said without any real hope.

  Declan made a face. “Not without looking incredibly guilty. The best defense we have is the use of the casting word in the illusion, and we’ve got no proof of that unless you let the judge see it. If you refuse to allow other questions, the barons or the blacksuits on their side will spin that hesitation against you in an instant.”

  “Okay.” I exhaled slowly. “Let’s try the practice interrogation then.” I wasn’t sure what a judge might ask that would uncover any sign of Deborah’s true nature anyway. Maybe it’d turn out I was safe after all. The questioning might reveal some of my antagonistic feelings about the fearmancers, but only in the context of my parents’ murder or the harassment at the hands of students here. It wasn’t as if I’d taken any active steps toward taking down the community so far.

  I sank onto the up-turned bucket. The ridged plastic surface pressed through my dress pants in a way that wasn’t exactly comfortable. Declan took a step toward me, just close enough to graze his fingers across my forehead and brush my hair farther aside. It’d been a perfunctory gesture, but a tingle of warmth shot through me anyway. For an instant, I was back by the lake with his mouth and hands—and Connar’s—on me.

  A question of my own tumbled out. “Are we ever going to talk about what happened on the cliff?”

  We’d left the clearing in a sort of blissful daze, and I hadn’t seen Declan the day after. Since meeting up today, he hadn’t made any mention of the encounter or any move to touch me other than that brief motion just now. I wasn’t even sure whether he was glad he’d surrendered to the moment or full of regret.

  Declan’s body went still. His mouth opened, closed, and opened again. “We will,” he said, in a slightly rough tone that sent a flutter through my stomach. “But I think maybe we should leave a discussion that potentially intense for after the hearing. And… it’s better not to mix any of that part of our relationship with preparing for the hearing.”

  Because we wouldn’t want the judge stumbling on those memories either. Concern shot through me. “You don’t think—he won’t ask about my dating life, will he?”

  Declan gave me a crooked smile. “I’d say it’s unlikely. But even if he does, anything he sees of us will only reflect badly on me. By the time you’re in the hearing, I’ll already have supported you every way I can. Even if you lose my testimony, you’ve got Jude and Connar too.”

  “I don’t want you getting in trouble either,” I muttered.

  “It was my choice. On the off-chance it does come up, you can always say those were only daydreams.”

  My lips twitched in amusement. “I just fantasize about you a lot. Got it.” It wasn’t even a total lie.

  “Are you ready?” he asked.

  I steadied myself on my makeshift seat. “I’d better be.”

  I closed my eyes to try to focus on my own int
ernal sensations, not that I’d be able to detect exactly what Declan picked up. He stayed where he was a couple feet away from me, a solid presence even when I couldn’t see him.

  The lilt of spell-casting came into his voice. “How did you interact with Imogen Wakeburn in the months before her murder?”

  A quiver of magic rippled through my head. Then there was only stillness. I trained my attention on the rhythm of my breath until Declan must have seen everything he thought he’d get and moved on.

  “What was your relationship like with your other dormmates?”

  My enemies might get some mileage out of that, but not anything I could imagine anyone seeing as a criminal act. Victory and the others had done a lot worse to me than I’d ever done to them.

  Declan went on through his list of questions, and I gradually relaxed. Nothing he thought the judge might ask seemed to bump too closely against the things I’d rather keep hidden. I was just starting to feel a little relieved when he said, “Have you ever intended to cause anyone at the school harm?”

  My body tensed instinctively for a second before I willed myself calm again. What could he see in my impressions that would give away any of the plans I’d only considered, without any chance to put them into action? And I’d never really wanted to see anyone hurt, only… stopped.

  But that might not be good enough. Declan was silent for a longer stretch than before. When he spoke, there was a note in his voice that made me nervous all over again.

  “Rory.”

  I opened my eyes and looked up at him. He was studying me, his brow knit, the brightness of his eyes shadowed with concern.

  “When I asked that question, I mostly got fragments of times when you pushed back against Victory’s hassling,” he said quietly. “Nothing unusual there. But there was also—some time when you were with Connar, at night—I think it might have been up on the cliff—you were asking him about the school’s wards. About the joymancers trying to find us. Why would that have come up?”