Rebel Academy: Crave
WICKEDLY CHARMED BOOK ONE
Nothing is more deadly than secrets…
…and mine could bring this mysterious academy to its knees.
Many have forgotten my name. Magenta: the wicked witch whose dark magic created the Rebel Academy — a magic paranormal prison for supernatural bad boys. But now I’m back and eager to claim the love and life that was stolen from me, even if first I have to survive the start of term.
My enemies trapped me as a ghost on the very cursed grounds that I helped to create. Yet thanks to three deliciously tempting immortals, I’ve been awakened. One is a beautiful incubus who hungers for pleasure. The next a gorgeous shifter and mage who always senses the truth but enjoys his lies far more. Oh, and who could ever forget Loki’s hot trickster son?
Why choose between these sexy delinquents when having them all is such sinful fun?
The immortals risked everything to free me, and I’ll stop at nothing to protect them from the elitist princes who rule the reform school. Will my bond with the magical students and new friendships be enough to battle the dangerous rivalries, as well as the cruel professors’ schemes?
Or will I be forced back into the darkness…
…and left to fade away?
REBEL ACADEMY CRAVE: WICKEDLY CHARMED BOOK ONE © copyright 2020 Rosemary A Johns
www.rosemaryajohns.com
Copyright notice: All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
Fantasy Rebel Limited
Contents
Books in the Rebel Verse
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
Author Note
Read Crush Now!
Rebel Angels
Other Books By Rosemary
Appendix One: Academy Membership
Appendix Two: Rebels
Appendix Three: Professors in Rebel Academy
Appendix Four: Characters
Appendix Five: Witch Covens and Courts
About the Author
Books in the Rebel Verse
REBEL ANGELS - COMPLETE SERIES
COMPLETE SERIES BOX SET: BOOKS 1-5
VAMPIRE HUNTRESS
VAMPIRE PRINCESS
VAMPIRE DEVIL
VAMPIRE MAGE
VAMPIRE GOD
VAMPIRE SECRET: REBELS AND RENEGADES
REBEL WEREWOLVES - COMPLETE SERIES
ONLY PERFECT OMEGAS
ONLY PRETTY BETAS
ONLY PROTECTOR ALPHAS
REBEL VAMPIRES - COMPLETE SERIES
COMPLETE SERIES BOX SET BOOKS 1-3
BLOOD DRAGONS
BLOOD SHACKLES
BLOOD RENEGADES
BLOOD GODS
REBEL: HOUSE OF FAE - COMPLETE
HOUSE OF FAE
REBEL ACADEMY - WICKEDLY CHARMED COMPLETE SERIES
CRAVE
CRUSH
CURSE
AUDIO BOOKS
LISTEN HERE…
Chapter One
Rebel Academy, Saturday September 14th 1891
Magenta
I knelt before Hecate’s Tree in the Dead Wood, ghosting my gloved hand across the trunk that pulsed with magic.
“Sweet Hecate, I crave…” What didn’t I crave? Safety for every student in Rebel Academy, for Robin to love me with the same fierceness that I loved him and not simply as my best friend, and for father to escape mother’s cruelty. I clenched my fists. “…freedom.”
I breathed hard, waiting for the lightning crack, earthquake rumble, or at least the frogs to stop hopping over my feet with mocking croaks.
Sunlight speared through the branches of the trees. Lily of the valley wrapped the glade in its intoxicating aroma. Butterflies flitted between violets, which held both the deadly power to kill or cure.
Like me, the entire wood hid both sides within it.
I hissed in frustration, as tears smarted my eyes. It wasn’t like the goddess Hecate had helped me before. But tonight, I’d be wed to a fae prince who I’d never met. Mother was only using me to make alliances.
I’d never even been kissed. How could I marry a stranger?
I was the single Blessedly Charmed witch to have been born in the last five hundred years. My magic as a baby had reached with its pink roots through the castle’s grounds to bond with Hecate’s. It’d created the wards that my mother, Henrietta Crow, had then used to establish the Rebel Academy. Perhaps, I didn’t deserve freedom myself when my magic had led to the imprisonment of wicked supernatural males as Rebels within the academy. Yet I didn’t believe the Rebels wicked but rather rejected, abandoned, and broken.
Since I’d turned twenty-one last week, my magic craved to protect, venerate, and love the Rebels who my magic had trapped.
If I wasn’t free, how could I do that?
Mother would’ve been spitting crows’ feathers for a week if she’d known that I loved any of the Rebels.
Please, please Hecate free me…
“Aren’t your ancient powers mightier than the House of Crows’?” I goaded the goddess. My heart thudded in my chest at my daring. “I belong to you. Take me!”
A rush of wind howled through the glade that was cool even in the warm afternoon. I gasped, as natural magic thrummed through the yew tree, lighting it up like a firework. I could sense its roots reaching through the estate and underneath the academy itself. Then it burst into me with searing strength, and I howled, falling onto my back amongst the foxgloves.
My black velvet dress with its billowing train, which mother had gifted to me for the Enchanted Ball tonight (where I’d first meet my fiancé, Prince Titus), would no doubt be stained.
It appeared that I’d be closer to Cinders than Cinderella at the altar.
My long blond hair broke free of its clips and tumbled around my shoulders. My own magenta magic glittered around me like fairy dust, just as it had since I’d been in the cradle, which is why I’d been announced Blessed.
It was father who’d named me Magenta, and I’d always been grateful for that.
Certainly, goading a goddess had been foolish. But had she just rejected me with a witch slap?
I pulled myself onto my elbows. “Now see here…”
Then I yelped, as Hecate’s Tree wrapped her glowing branches around my mid
dle and dragged me struggling into the air. She yanked me above the canopy, slithering her branches down me, until I was dangling by my ankle. I blushed, lifting my dress away from my face.
My crow familiars who were twins, Flair and Echo, flapped around my head. They’d been another gift from my mother for the ball and just as unwelcome. Their midnight feathers thwapped across my nose, as they cawed like they were snickering.
“Pretty stockings, petticoats, and drawers,” Flair’s mocking London voice broke telepathically into my mind.
“For a witch,” Echo added with a tilt of his head.
As captured vampires (which were in fact Fallen angels), my mother had only transformed them into familiars on my twenty-first birthday. I didn’t blame them for gloating now. After all, they’d been forced into becoming my familiars. Although Echo was too gentle natured to derive satisfaction out of my misfortune. When their freedom had been stolen because of me, I almost wished that he could enjoy the reversal.
I flushed, squirming harder.
“Kind of you to notice,” I wheezed. “Could you be awfully chivalrous and help me to escape?”
Flair settled with a flourish on my boot like it was a perch. “Not a fuckity fuck’s chance in feathered hell, boss.”
Black cats, chivalry was dead.
Although, if that meant riding on horses and waving a sword around like a big manly prick, pillaging, and boasting about holding doors open for maidens in between slaughtering dragons, then I imagined that was a good thing.
“Excellent view, this. By my blood, you can see all the way over the river Thames to Oxford.” Echo’s tone became achingly wistful. I hadn’t even asked him where he’d lived before his capture, but had he been snatched from the Oxford vampire court? “If you don’t look down, you don’t even have to see your scary academy.”
Of course, I looked down.
Mage’s balls on a stick… Too high, too high, too…
My pulse thundered in my ears, and I clenched my fists in my bunched dress. The Gothic gray walls of the ancient Rebel Academy, which hid the truth of what lay inside, bulged alarmingly as my vision blurred.
A witch who doesn’t cope with heights is like a werewolf who doesn’t cope with howling. That was Number 73 in my mother’s Principal’s Motto Book.
I hated mottos with a witchy passion.
When I glanced up, Echo was peering at me. Was that concern in his beady eyes?
“You look pale. As I have Fallen, are you quite well?” He asked, softly.
“I’m hooked like a worm. It’s the perfect answer to all my prayers.”
“You’re up shit’s creek all right, and sarcasm is useless as a paddle. Did no one teach your bouncy bosom to be careful what you pray for?” Flair’s voice became steely. “What’s freedom for one, is a prison for another poor bastard. Did you wish freedom from your corset, opera, or…?”
My eyes widened. “True freedom is death.”
That was Number 21 in the Principal’s Motto Book.
I screamed, as the branch slithered around my ankle, loosening. I jolted down a couple of inches.
Had I risked everything to sneak out today only to ask for my own death by mistake…?
Well, Merlin’s prick.
My life flashed before my eyes: cup of tea — embroidery — cup of tea — piano lesson — cup of tea — reading — cup of tea.
My goodness, that was boring.
I clenched my jaw and forced myself to look up once again at the academy. Inside there, the men — Immortals, Princes, and their whipping boys like Robin — were allowed a magical education at Oxford’s secret college where the most dangerous witches from across the world taught those in most need of reform. An education that’d been denied to me, even though I was more powerful than all of them combined.
Today, the Rebels would be studying a class in Shifter and Familiar Training. Flair was lucky that I’d missed that. He wouldn’t like the methods, which the covens used to break unruly familiars like him.
But I didn’t want to break anyone.
“Go on then,” I hissed at Hecate, even though my breath was ragged, “drop me.”
Two could bluff like a goddess…
Echo flapped his wings, wildly cawing. “Ignore the witch, Hecate. She’s got too much blood rushing to her head and doesn’t know—”
Hecate’s Tree let go of me.
I screamed, bouncing through the branches and wincing at each crack to my ribs, shoulders, or hips. In shock, I could feel the bruises blossoming.
Well, I’d make a battered corpse in a ripped dress. That’d horrify mother.
I almost smiled.
“Oww, son of a mage...” I snatched at the branches as I fell to slow my descent.
The floor of the glade rose like a flowery grave. The bizarre thing about your last thought before you died, I discovered, was that you have no control over it. Mine was: I shall come back as a ghost to haunt Robin, so that he’ll have the satisfaction of saying I told you so. He’d always wanted to hold a séance to prove that ghosts were real.
Then I closed my eyes.
Only, I didn’t hit the hard earth in an explosion of agony but a soft cushion that caressed me in fizzing waves. I carefully opened my eyes. Then I laughed, and euphoria flooded me.
I wasn’t going to die…
My Blessed magic reached out of the earth and the plants to catch me on all sides, before lowering me to the ground.
Had Hecate known that my magic would save me?
I sighed, kissing the earth. Yuck. I grimaced, smacking my lips. Why did people do that? Oh yes, because I hadn’t splattered to my agonizing death from a great height like I’d always feared in my nightmares. But still, every inch of my bruised body ached. I groaned, rolling onto my back. My twin familiars fluttered down, landing on my chest.
Flair cocked his head, staring at me far too intently. I squirmed.
“Well, paint me pink and call me a bitch, that was close.” Flair blew out a breath in relief. “One day I’m a free Fallen just minding my own business, and the next I’m transformed into a bird and saddled with a crazy witch, even if she is beautiful.”
“Don’t dare a god,” I admitted. “I’ve learned that they won’t blink first.”
When Echo rubbed his soft head against my chin in comfort, I stilled in surprise. “She’s still our crazy…beautiful…witch,” he muttered fondly.
I smiled, rubbing my thumb over his feathers.
“Traitor,” Flair hissed.
Unexpectedly, the pink around me glowed, before worming out like roots and tangling above my head into brambles that trapped me beneath my magic…and safe from Hecate’s Tree.
Yet the goddess’ tree had always been my refuge. This wood was forbidden to the Rebels, but that’d never stopped Robin and me sneaking between the trees’ hushed darkness whenever we could. I’d spent hours swinging from those branches, which had just swung me upside down and then dropped me.
Hecate’s Tree was the traitor…or had she been trying to ignite my magic?
Suddenly, I stilled. Something rustled in the branches of the yew tree. My breath caught, and my pulse pounded. Had I been followed?
Keep calm, Magenta, no punishment could be worse than being forced to marry, could it?
I squinted up at the branches of the tree. Then a bird darted overhead with a silvery burst of song like laughter. The robin circled the web of brambles that protected me, pecking at them like they were worms, as they in turn wiggled away from the bird’s sharp beak.
I squirmed myself at the strangeness of the sensation.
“Desist, Robin, you’re always hungry.” I chuckled.
I should’ve known that Robin would find me here in his bird shifter form. It was our secret meeting place, after all.
With a sweep of my gloves, the magic parted enough for the small bird to dart inside and settle on my stomach. My familiars swiveled their heads towards Robin with menacing intent.
Wait, did
crows eat robins?
“I have a gentleman caller,” I tried for mother’s haughtiness but I’m certain that I failed, since I’d never admitted a caller in my life before, “so take your feathery backsides hence.”
Certainly, my etiquette was perfection. Then again, possibly not because Robin let out that silvery laugh again, at the same time as the crows cawed their outrage and hopped away to the edge of the glade.
I studied the pretty bird who was (with far too deliberate intent), pecking between my tits and up my neck. I sighed. If I imagined it just right, it could be kisses.
My eyes widened. Why was Robin’s beautiful red breast plucked of feathers?
Robin was the only mage who’d ever been allowed into the academy. He was also a rare and powerful shimage: A mage who could also shift into animals. Yet witches had rules, and they included that mages were their enemy. I’d long wondered if I was a failure of a witch, however, because Robin had been my best friend since I was a child, and for years I’d craved him as something more.
More meaning that I believed our immortal souls were knit together for eternity.
Yet how could you tell your best friend that you’d loved him for years as the one who made your heart and magic thrum with such excitement that flowers would burst awake from the soil? Especially when he was a mage and a Rebel. It’d be a crime for me to choose him.
Rebel Academy: Crave: A Paranormal Academy Romance Series (Wickedly Charmed Book 1) Page 1