Even a hollow victory was still a victory. I’d take it.
“I wish that I’d known earlier.” My smile was sharp enough to slice. “I would’ve done less embroidery and had far more fun.”
Then I flew out of the broken window with my familiars at my shoulders, as my soul lay just as shattered as the glass, out into the dark storm. The wind screamed like the grief inside my head, but it also blew at my back. I didn’t command it because you don’t command nature: you either worked with or against it. Below me, the lake was a frozen teardrop and the Dead Wood was shrouded in white. I dived down, landing in front of Hecate’s Tree.
Flair and Echo perched on a fallen log.
I stood, tall and proud, in a glade that was now covered in snow drops, rather than sweet-scented lily of the valley because summer had turned to winter. I’d always felt closest to Robin here, but now I thawed, aching because his absence…death…hit me for the first time with all its reality.
He. Would. Never. Be. Here. Again.
I dropped to my knees, hugging the frozen trunk with my arms, resting my forehead against it. I enjoyed the way that it scratched because then I felt something. He’d never swing in these branches with me, shift into his squirrel or bird forms when he was at his freest, or…kiss me.
Finally, I wept.
“Hecate, hear me!” I pleaded. “I regret that I asked for my own freedom. I pray now for the freedom of all the Rebels here in the academy.” The tree didn’t pulse with magic; the branches didn’t shift. In desperation, I remembered my father’s invocation, which had sent a shiver through me. “By the branches of the tree, save your children, blessed be.”
“You should be praying to save yourself.” Henrietta’s hard voice struck me like a whip.
Exhausted, I wrapped my hands more tightly around the tree and didn’t turn around. The immense magical burst that had brought me here had burned me out like a firework. I could barely move my head.
Flair and Echo cawed furiously, flying to rest on my legs like protectors.
“I did once,” I rasped, worn out. “It cost me the most precious thing that I craved more than life. Freedom should never be for one person alone.”
“A fine sentiment.” Henrietta was closer now. I shuddered as I sensed her just behind me; her hand hovered over my head like she was holding herself back from stroking my hair as she would when I was a child. “But awfully naïve for a witch. I’ve failed you, and for that there are not enough apologies under the heavens. But the House of Crows relied on having a daughter who was Blessed, and you’re now Wickedly Charmed.” When her fingers finally carded through my hair, I flinched. “You shame me and every Oxford Coven. Your crimes are multiple and monstrous: loving a mage, being Wickedly Charmed, and cursing my academy.”
“I’m glad that at last I excel at something.” I closed my eyes.
“You shame yourself. I know monsters, and between you and our witch, you’re the one who wears robin skins.” Echo hopped up and down agitatedly.
Henrietta lifted her fingers from my hair one by one like a goodbye. Then she stepped back. I listened to the rustle, as she marched to the side of the glade.
I sighed. Was she leaving me in peace?
“Those crimes are punishable by death.” Her voice was softer and suffused by sadness. I startled, and my eyes snapped open. Did she truly mean…? I struggled to stand, but my knees buckled. Flair dragged on my dress, but I was too weak to escape. “The wicked must burn.”
Suddenly, a scorching rope of feathers lashed me to Hecate’s Tree, catching my familiars and tying them to my shoulders. A sob caught in the back of my throat. My familiars were innocents. They didn’t deserve to die for my crimes as well, simply because they were bound to me.
“If you crave your mage with such devotion, then you shall join him. You’re not worthy of my House. Burn!” At Henrietta’s command, flames burst around the tree.
My dress caught on fire, and I choked on the stinging smoke that stank of dark magic.
“If becoming like you makes me good,” I howled, whilst the flames licked my skin, “then let me be wicked.”
After that, there was nothing but the embrace of Hecate’s Tree, the magenta haze of my magic, and agony, as I was burned alive.
Chapter Three
Rebel Academy, Saturday August 31st PRESENT DAY
Magenta
The worst thing about being a ghost after my own mother had burned me at Hecate’s Tree was the eternal craving: for touch, taste, love, and a truly decent cup of tea.
The second worst thing apart from being unable to give Robin the satisfaction of telling me I told you so or freaking him out at a séance by levitating either the table or the medium…? Even Robin hadn’t warned me that you could be trapped with other ghosts.
Whether Henrietta’s sacrificial burning had been taken as a gift by the goddess or Hecate had finally decided to save me (far too late, if you asked me), she’d caught both my familiars and me between life and death within her branches. Yet Flair and Echo had broken free of her hold to fly across to watch over the Rebels and mimic their strange new way of talking and touching, until over the decades I might’ve become — just a little — crazy as well as wicked.
It’d taken more than a century, but now I might once have been the witch who’d cursed Rebel Academy to perpetual winter, yet I’d been long forgotten by the students. Echo swore that I was still legendary with the descendants of the House of Crows who ran the academy. I’d quite shivered with delight, when I’d heard that they burned black candles at the Enchanted Ball each year to ensure their protection and my banishment.
Ah, family.
I giggled, floating higher through the withered branches of the tree, which had died the same night as I had.
The glade had been turned to bones. It was a black ring in the white of the wood. I could hear no songbirds, only the fizzing of my magic, which had rooted after so long. The moon peeked through the shroud of clouds.
I peered over the snow veiled canopy towards the castle. Then a pink feathery bundle crashed into me in the darkness. I caught Echo, snuggling him as tightly as I once had Mr Tailsy. Echo’s magenta feathers were sensitive, and he pushed closer into my hand, rambling a series of clicks.
As a ghost, Echo had been reborn with my magic pulsing through him. I’d imagined that he’d be insulted to match my sparkles but I caught him preening more often than Byron had, and Robin had always called my father a peacock.
Byron had only smirked at that.
At least, I could touch Echo and Flair; ghosts were connected, even if we were divided from the living. Often, that was the best thing about being a ghost.
But then, there were other times…
“By my blood, the elf prince has a spine-tingling voice like ice melting in a spring valley.” Echo flapped around in my arms, until he rested both wings on my shoulders. “Why does he only sing in the shower? I reckon that he’s shy or has a dark angsty secret.”
“You’re bored again, aren’t you?”
“Maybe.”
I tapped Echo on the beak. “It wasn’t gentlemanly of you to peek into the Princes’ showers.”
Echo snickered. “I’m no gentleman; I’m Magenta’s familiar.” Then he sighed, dreamily. “The elf sounded sad. You’d have kissed him better.”
I shuddered at the imagined sensation. Echo was…mildly…obsessed with the uptight but ethereally beautiful elf prince who sang to himself when he thought that no one was listening.
I was…mildly…obsessed with the idea of showers. Water that magically attacked your body as if it was a waterfall, whilst you stood beneath it naked…? Why would I not be entranced by such a powerful spell?
I grinned. “I thought that I’d proved how far I’d go not to kiss princes.”
Echo wriggled out of my hold, hopping onto a branch, before clearing his throat. “He sang this strange song, “Would You Like to Build a Snowman?”. I told him, by my fangs, I’d love to play
with you. But he didn’t hear me, of course.”
When Echo launched into the plaintive song at the top of his off-key voice, I grimaced.
Was that a strange elven song? I hadn’t known that they were so desperate to make snowmen.
“You’d do better to offer to suck him off.” Flair descended out of the cloudy sky, settling next to Echo. Then he pecked his twin on the wing, until he quietened with a grumbling rattle. “The stick’s so far up his arse that I can see it poking out of his pretty sky-blue hair.”
Echo nodded. “He does have pretty hair. Although, it’s not as pretty as our witch’s.”
Flair rolled his eyes. “Magenta is an absolutely perfect young ghost witch.”
I fluttered my lashes. “Why thank you, my sweet familiar.”
“Now let me tell you what I saw. Here’s a clue…” Flair dropped on his back and writhed like he was dying.
Sadly, I knew better.
“Unless Spells, Hexes, and Potions Class went hideously wrong today, I’m assuming that you’ve been adding to your Wank Count.” I raised my eyebrow.
I knew far more about wanking than a Victorian witch burned for wicked pleasures ever should. Hold on, maybe I should have known about that…? Either way, the Wank Count was a game played between my familiars for the number of students that they caught indulging in self pleasure, and as this was an academy for the bad boys of the supernatural world, it now ran into the thousands.
“Fuck me, I always thought that the Dark Fae were kinky.” Flair stilled. “But the fae prince—”
“Don’t you dare mention fae,” I snarled.
Suddenly, I was shaking. My dress billowed out into mist like I was fading, even more ghostly than before.
“Prince Lysander’s not his uncle,” Echo said softly. “He’s not Titus.”
“He’s still a prick though,” Flair muttered.
I turned away from them, staring once again at the academy. I ached to return to it.
Last term, an Immortal had arrived: an incubus. His craving for pleasure had been as great as mine. It’d called to my magic, feeding and strengthening it, until at long last, I too had been able to break free of the tree but only to reach him in the Immortal’s West Wing, when he’d summoned me.
I craved him now.
“As the bones fall, I heard the Principal and her daughter talking of something…someone…important.” Echo hopped closer. “A new student has been sent here and he’s special.”
With an effort, I solidified. Hello, ankles, my old friends.
I blew out a breath, as my heart (or what passed for my ghostly memory of one), slowed. I’d had over a century to understand that I wasn’t dead, but also that I still felt alive. The effect was horrifying. Perhaps, I’d been the one cursed?
“Special?” I asked, welcoming the distraction.
Flair snapped his bill together with a single sharp snap of irritation. “Just because your witchy bitch of a mum transformed our fuckable Fallen backsides into familiars, doesn’t mean that we can’t read.”
I blinked. “Thank you, I’m sure that your skill will become invaluable when I ask for my next bedtime story. Oh wait, I’m trapped in a tree. Well, do continue to list skills that for some inexplicable reason you think I doubt.”
“The new student’s file was open on the study desk, and I peeked at the first page, boss. His name’s Fox, and he arrives tomorrow morning. By the way, you make me shiver with all that sexy sarcasm.” Flair chuckled darkly.
“Special means…different,” Echo muttered.
Why did he sound so worried? All students were sent to the academy because they’d committed a crime or were too different for their own worlds.
What had this new student, Fox, done that made him such a danger?
All of a sudden, my magic pulsed brighter, tugging on me, until I knew — soul deep — burning and desperate, why Fox was both special and different. He wasn’t a danger to the academy: he was in danger.
Hecate, no…
The new student was a mage.
Right now, Fox had crossed the wards and was walking alone down the long path through the Dead Woods, which swept through the estate to the castle’s gateway.
I knew because I could sense him.
He had no idea what awaited him.
Not safe, not safe, not…
I could feel his heartbeat in time with my own, taste the fear on his sweet breath, and in turn feed him my own fizzing magic like candyfloss.
I wouldn’t let him be alone.
It took me a moment to register Echo thwapping his wing against my face.
“On my blood, you faded.” Why did Echo sound like he was weeping? “Don’t leave us, please, don’t leave.”
My voice was far steadier, than my ragged breathing, “Candles and cauldrons, I shan’t ever abandon you. The new Rebel doesn’t arrive tomorrow but tonight. He’s born of a witch family and he has magic.”
“Well, shit.” Flair blinked.
He always had a way with words.
Fox would be the first mage since my lover to be allowed through the wards into the academy. It’d become a rule: Mages were banned.
Why had it been lifted now?
I clenched my jaw. It didn’t matter because this time around, I’d keep the mage safe. I didn’t know how but I wouldn’t allow him to die, alone and in the dark, like Robin. If it took my second death and fading away for good to protect him, then I’d throw myself on the flames this time, I wouldn’t need to be bound.
Rebel Academy was mine and so were the Rebels. I might be wicked, but I protected those whose pleasure I could feel beating through me: a mage, an incubus, and a third Immortal whose godly power was just as fierce.
Then I shuddered, as warm pleasure unfurled through me. I was being summoned to the Immortal’s West Wing.
Who was I deny such a sensual call?
The lurch, like my magic was being wound on a thread, rushed to my head. I closed my eyes, only to open them again and find myself stuck in the portrait that mother had created of me on the night of the Enchanted Ball. It chilled me to be staring out of painted eyes.
Please don’t let me be hung still in the portrait gallery where Robin was walled up…
When I noticed the torch emblem over the archway that proved I was in the West Wing, however, I calmed. The bedroom was plain with an oak wardrobe and three desks that groaned with books. Then my heart sped up again at the sprawl of naked incubus in the center of the vast bed beneath the portrait.
The incubus had pushed back the sheets, but had nested in the satin pillows like a ruby eyed, alabaster skinned emperor. His silky black hair haloed his face, as if he wasn’t every sin that the witches had warned me about.
But what was the point of temptation if you couldn’t give in to it? I hungered to devour him.
I’d never seen Bask — or Crave as he’d been rechristened when he’d entered Rebel Academy — stripped bare before. Although, he still wore long pink gloves as was the law for all incubi. With one touch, they could read your deepest and darkest desires to both feed on your pleasure and to control you. A fed incubus was a dangerous creature, and yet, without your pleasure, they’d starve.
Did he desire touch as much as I did?
For a moment, I was distracted by the music that was playing. A woman sang hauntingly about craving, as a man rapped (Echo had explained to me that nowadays talking counted as music; I called it lazy). Echo was entranced by this popular music. It certainly had less dreary warbling than opera, and more the erotic sense that the singers were making love to you, as stripped naked as Bask was right now.
I bit my lip. Echo was right: this twenty-first century was electrifying.
Bask lay on his back, staring up at my portrait with an adoring intensity, which made me shiver. Then he trailed one gloved hand down his chest, circling his nipple, before tugging on it more roughly. He bit his plush lip to hold back his moan.
I breathed in deeply; he smelled d
elicious. If I leaned forward, could I take his lip between mine and swipe a taste of his coco and almond sweetness? Just one…?
Bask arched his back, teasing his hand still lower. He skirted his prick, however, which was straining hard against him, instead touching between his thighs. With a sigh, he opened his legs.
His eyes became half-lidded.
Wait, was I about to gain the first point in the Wank Count…?
Then Bask’s heel nudged against a huge crocodile plushie. Witching heavens, the prehistoric-looking toy was ugly. Blushing, Bask kicked it by the snout under the pillows.
“Nile, did you have to ruin the mood?” Bask’s voice was gentle and Irish.
His crimson eyes were framed with longer lashes than I’d ever seen and gleamed with something so broken that I struggled to escape the portrait.
Inch by fizzing inch, my fingers broke free, glowing magenta.
Let me reach him…
“I don’t want to be alone,” Bask whispered like a confession. Then he stared up at me, as if he knew that I was there or was desperate for me…needed me. “It’s already the weekend before the start of term. What if I can’t protect Slippy from the Princes, the professors, or himself?” He sighed. “But then, Slippy thinks that I’m crazy.” He darted a glance up at me. “Here’s the thing of it, I know that you’re there.” His voice shook with longing. My temples throbbed, but I forced myself further out of the painting. Bask was in danger, if he gave his love so easily. It shook me to the bones to see the way that he watched me with such veneration. Who’d protect him from the predators who’d take advantage of such capacity for love? “I crave you. Let me please and love you.”
Bask ran both his hands up his thighs, letting his thighs splay wide open. His prick throbbed. His chest rose and fell rapidly, as one gloved hand cupped his balls, and the other clasped the base of his prick, before slowly running up its length.
My skin felt too tight, and I flushed. I’d never witnessed a man engaged in pleasuring himself before. Especially when I knew that he was imagining that it was I touching him in such intimate places. At each throb of his prick, my magic throbbed more powerfully like it was being fed. Yet even more so was the emotion: Bask never dropped his gaze from mine in the portrait like every moan, as he twisted his hand over his prick or slid his thumb lightly over the slit in its head, was in worship of me.
Rebel Academy: Crave: A Paranormal Academy Romance Series (Wickedly Charmed Book 1) Page 4