by Jody Morse
“I wanted to, but…” He glanced around, looking to see if anyone was eavesdropping on us. Leaning in closer he said, “There’s so much I have to tell you, Juliana. So much has happened since the last time I saw you. Can we meet up tonight after classes?”
“I have to go visit Professor Ryan during her office hours, but after that, I’m free until my night class.”
“Water Magic?”
“Yeah. How did you know?” I questioned with raised eyebrows.
“Because I’m in that class, too. You wanna eat dinner together before we head to class?”
“Sounds like a plan,” I replied.
“I’ll meet you outside the Dining Hall then. We can grab our food and eat in the courtyard or… somewhere private.”
“Okay,” I agreed, though all I could do was wonder what he had to talk about that it was such a secret that he didn’t even want us talking about it in the Dining Hall.
What had happened since the last time we’d seen each other?
At that moment, Professor Frye stood before us and cleared his throat. “Welcome students to Magical Weaponry. You might be wondering the reason our classes will be held outdoors sometimes. Well, the answer to that is pretty simple. Magical weapons can be really dangerous, and a lot of them should never be used indoors—not unless we want to burn the whole school down.”
Ambur raised her hand. “Wait, so we’re going to learn to use weapons that can help us light shit on fire?”
“Yeah, we are. We’re also going to practice putting those fires out after we start them.”
I suppressed a chuckle. As if I needed practice with that.
“Similar to my Magical Animals and Creatures class, this class is going to take place both in the Enchanted Forest and inside the classroom,” Brandon continued. “I’m going to be doing our weapon demonstrations out here. You’re also going to be learning how to use the weapons out here, too. On Fridays, we’ll take written exams on the weapons you’ve learned to use.” He paused. “So, let’s get started on the first weapon we’re going to be learning about in this class.”
Brandon lifted a case from the ground. Opening it, he pulled out a sword. The sword had a golden handle that was adorned with what appeared to be rubies.
It was, by far, the most beautiful sword I had ever seen—not that I’d seen many swords in real life, so I didn’t have a whole lot to compare it to.
“This is a Firedrake sword,” Brandon explained, holding it high above his head for everyone to see. “It’s made from sterling silver, which has been spelled with a combination of wolfsbane, blood of a phoenix, and pixie dust—the deadliest concoction for a dragon. If you were to strike any dragon with this sword, it would die almost instantly.”
My hand shot up in the air.
“Yes, Juliana?” Brandon called on me.
“Can this sword only be used on dragons? Or can it also be used on dragon shifters?”
“It can be used on dragon shifters as well,” he replied with a nod. “Any weapon that can be used on a magical creature can also be used on its shifter counterpart.”
I swallowed hard. Now that I knew that sword could kill me, I wasn’t about to go anywhere near it. There was no way in hell I was going to touch it. Truthfully, I didn’t even want to be as close to it as I was right now. I just wanted to be as far away from the sword ss possible.
The only problem was that I couldn’t tell Professor Frye about how uncomfortable I was with this word unless I told him I was a dragon shifter. And if he knew I was a dragon shifter and a magic user… Well, he might start to put two and two together about who I was. I couldn’t have too many instructors—or students—at Paranormal Academy know I was The Chosen One.
No, I was going to just have to be extremely careful with the Firedrake sword—and seriously kick ass if anyone tried to get anywhere near me with it.
***
As we waited for our Paranormal Societies instructor to come to our classroom, I told Ambur and Draia about my conversation with Kaden. “We’re going to have dinner together tonight in some private location.”
“I’m so curious to know what he’s going to tell you,” Ambur said. “What do you think it is?”
“I have no idea.” Honestly, I just really hoped it would be something I could at least share with them. I hated keeping secrets from my best friends. After keeping the fact that I was The Chosen One and that I was a member of the Vixen from them for so long, I hoped that I would never have to keep another secret from them again.
“Now, here’s the really important question. How did it feel seeing him?” Draia asked.
“It felt…” I trailed off, thinking about it for a long moment before glancing over at her. “Weird. Really freaking weird.”
That really was the best description of it. Seeming him there… It had felt so unreal. So much time had passed since the last time we had seen one another. I had rehearsed so many conversations with him inside my mind, conversations about how it all would go when and if we ever did talk to one another again. There were days and nights when I had questioned if that would even happen or if Kaden would ignore me for the rest of our potentially immortal lives.
So, I’d built up this whole idea of how seeing him would go. Most of the time, I had jumped into his arms and kissed him before we even said anything to one another. But our first real life interaction hadn’t gone anything like that. It wasn’t that it had been bad, but it hadn’t been anything like my dreams, that was for sure.
At that moment, Professor Vanderbilt, who was a new instructor at Paranormal Academy, came into the room, completely interrupting my thoughts about Kaden.
She was a middle-aged, short woman with chin-length, raven black hair and olive skin. She was dressed entirely in black: a short black skirt, a black jacket, and black shoes.
“Hi, everyone,” Professor Vanderbilt said as she stood at the center of the room. “I’m Professor Vanderbilt. I’m a new instructor at the Academy this year, and I am very excited to call you my first students.” She glanced around the room at us. “But before we begin with our first lesson, I want to tell you a little about me. I am a fairy. Even more importantly, I am a Paranormal Historian and Sociologist. I have a lot of experience in this field, so I intend to pass a wealth of knowledge onto all of you. By the time we have completed this course, you will know all there is to know about every paranormal society in our world and how they all function and interact with one another. You will know about every paranormal war and every battle. You will also know about every Royal House.”
The castle Kaden and I had seen when we’d traveled through the portal in the Enchanted Forest came to mind.
I really hoped that of all the lessons Professor Vanderbilt had in store for us, that red castle that had been surrounded by the raven shifters that had nearly killed Kaden and I that day would be one of them.
***
The rest of my day seemed to creep by at a snail’s place. Lunch felt like it lasted for an eternity.
I had Shifter Studies with Brett. We sat together, even though it felt like there was this awkward elephant in the room with us. I wasn’t about to bring up the fact that he was back together with Everly now, and I got the sense that he wanted to bring it up but wasn’t sure how to approach it. Then there was also the fact that I was suddenly so attracted to him now.
I was pretty sure that all of this was going to end up ruining our friendship, even though I didn’t want it to. Brett was the first paranormal being I’d ever met from the Academy. The last thing I wanted was for the two of us to be on bad terms with one another.
Needless to say, I was excited to get to Fae 101. Professor Periwinkle may have been my favorite instructor so far. She was an extremely short woman with naturally violet-colored eyes and lavender hair, which were a perfect match for her fairy wings. Her personality lit up the room. I knew I was going to have a lot of fun in her classroom this year, but I couldn’t focus on her lesson at all with every minute
that passed.
I was just so anxious and nervous about what the rest of my day had in store. I was nervous to learn the truth about what my having elemental blood meant for me, and I was even more nervous to hear what Kaden had to say about why he had disappeared from my life randomly and suddenly.
I wasn’t sure what to expect either of them to say, but I did know one thing. This time, I supposed you could call it intuition. I could feel it deep inside my gut; it was a feeling that just seemed to consume me.
I somehow just knew, with every ounce of my being, that what they were both about to tell me was going to change everything.
Chapter 6
Professor Ryan’s office door was open, and she was staring down at some papers on her desk when I arrived. I cleared my throat, and she glanced up at me.
“Juliana, please come inside and close the door behind you.” There was a sense of urgency in her voice. She wanted me to close the door so none of the other instructors would hear what she was about to tell me.
I wasn’t going to lie. It made me even more nervous of what she was going to say next.
As I closed the door, Professor Ryan motioned to a chair in front of her desk. “Please, have a seat.”
I sat down, and she stared across the desk at me. Running her hand through her long blonde hair, she sighed. “Did Professor Tate mention how he learned that you have elemental blood?”
“No.” I shook my head. I paused. Even though I didn’t want to reveal all of his secrets, the truth was that he was gone now. I figured that sharing everything I knew with Professor Ryan could only help. She might not have been my favorite instructor in the past, but I truly believed that she really just wanted to help me. “He told me that he had elemental blood, too.”
“Interesting,” she murmured. “I was unaware of that.”
“He said that he had less elemental blood than I do,” I explained.
She frowned. “I still wish I knew how he came to this conclusion, but we’ll just assume that whatever he found was true. It would explain a lot about why your affinities for the elements are so strong.” She sighed. “I’m afraid that, as with all good things, there are some downfalls that come with having elemental blood. There are certain things about it that put your life in grave danger, Juliana.”
Great. It figured that my elemental blood was something else that would put my life in grave danger. As if being The Chosen One wasn’t bad enough, now there was another dangerous thing to add to it.
I couldn’t help but feel sort of frustrated. Why couldn’t I have just been an average paranormal being? One who came from an average paranormal family with an average bloodline, like most of the other students at Paranormal Academy? Why did I have to be the most powerful paranormal being in the entire world with whatever this elemental blood crap turned out to be?
“So, there are a lot of things I don’t know about elemental blood,” Professor Ryan began, “but I’ll tell you everything I do know.” She paused. “Elemental blood stems from the Royal bloodlines. Each type of paranormal being has its own Royal family and its own Royal House. But there’s something unique about each of the Royal bloodlines and their Houses. Each of them is grouped according to element.”
She handed me a notebook from her desk. “I grouped each of the types of paranormal beings by their element for you, just so you could see.”
I glanced down at what she had written.
WATER
*** These paranormal beings are most likely to have a water affinity.
Mermaids
Sea witches
Sea nymphs
FIRE
*** These paranormal beings are most likely to have a fire affinity.
Witches
Warlocks
Fairies
Pixies
AIR
*** These paranormal beings are most likely to have an air/wind affinity.
Dragon shifters
Raven shifters
Other bird shifters
EARTH
*** These paranormal beings are most likely to have an earth affinity.
Werewolves
Cat shifters
Bear shifters
“I know I left out a lot of paranormal beings, but I tried to make sure I included the most important ones,” Professor Ryan said as I read through them.
I frowned as I read through the earth element paranormal beings. As far as I knew, I didn’t have any of the paranormal beings that fell into the earth category. Then again, earth was the one affinity that I, technically, didn’t know if I had yet. Kaden had been convinced that I could probably control the earth, since I was able to control all of the other elements. But I wasn’t entirely convinced of it myself.
“I’m a little confused.” I glanced over at Professor Ryan. “Avery… Professor Tate… told me that only magic users and shifters have affinities for the elements.”
“Technically, any paranormal being can have an affinity for any element,” she explained. “It is rarer for certain paranormal races to have any affinity at all, and some are less likely to have certain types of affinities. For example, water races are extremely unlikely to have fire affinities—and vice versa. That being said, paranormal beings with Royal bloodlines are far more likely to have affinities for the elements. In fact, pretty much all of the Royal paranormal races had at least one, if not more than one, affinity for the elements.” She paused and glanced over at me. “If you have blood from a Royal bloodline, it means you have elemental blood.”
I just stared back at her, slightly confused at what she was trying to get at. “Wait, what are you saying?”
“You come from a Royal bloodline, Juliana. And from the sounds of it, you have a lot of Royal blood. That explains why your affinities for the elements are so strong,” she explained. “Professor Tate didn’t mention what Royal bloodline you came from, though, I’m guessing?”
“No,” I lied. I knew I couldn’t tell her who Avery had told me I had inherited it from—my grandfather, Rubeus Draco—without telling her the truth about everything. If she knew that I was both magic user and part dragon shifter, she might be able to piece together the fact that I was The Chosen One, which was something that I still wanted to keep on the downlow. Even though I really appreciated her telling me all of this, the truth was that I didn’t fully trust her with anything just yet.
“Juliana, it’s quite possible that you might have enough elemental blood to be an heiress to one of the Royal thrones,” Professor Ryan told me.
“Really?”
She nodded. “But there’s a tricky thing about Royal Houses. The elemental ones are up for grabs by anyone.”
“I don’t really understand what you mean,” I replied with a frown.
“So, for example, there’s a Werewolf House of Royals. A Royal heir must be the one to become the next King in that Royal House,” she explained. “But there’s also a Royal House of Earth. With the Earth Kingdom, any of the earth races—werewolves, cat shifters or bear shifters—could ascend the throne in the event that the current King or Queen should pass.”
“Wow. I didn’t even know until now that there were Royals in the paranormal world.” I wasn’t entirely sure what to make of this. On the one hand, I supposed that this probably shouldn’t have surprised me. I was the most powerful paranormal being in the entire world, after all. It didn’t seem that surprising that I had come from a Royal bloodline. But at the same time, it was hard to imagine me having Royal blood. Up until last year, I had never been anything but average. Plain. A little bit boring, if we were being honest. But Royal? Well, it was shocking, to say the least. I sort of felt like I was stuck in the paranormal version of The Princess Diaries.
“Yes. But here’s the problem. When you have Royal blood—elemental blood—like you do, Juliana, there will be people who want to take advantage of you and your powers. And not only that. They’ll want to use you for their political gain. I would know.” Her gray eyes met mine with a sad l
ook.
“You have elemental blood, too?” I asked with wide eyes. It probably shouldn’t have surprised me; she was my Elemental Magic instructor, after all. She clearly had an affinity for the elements herself.
“My mother’s mother was the Queen of the House of Fire,” she explained.
“Oh, wow.”
“Juliana, here’s the thing.” She met my eyes. “My mother was powerful, but she was nothing in comparison to you. Trust me. I have seen many magic users throughout my lifetime. Your magic doesn’t seem to know any bounds. If I had to guess, I would say that you’re the direct descendant of one of the Royals, as well. I know the Montgomery bloodline is very powerful, so I would imagine that’s where you’ve inherited your affinity for the elements and your elemental blood.”
Wrong. Of course, there was no way I could tell her she was wrong without telling her the truth about what Avery had told me. But he’d somehow learned that I wasn’t a descendant of Harrison Montgomery—my grandmother’s husband—after all.
What made it all even more confusing was that I wasn’t sure what that said about my father. Was my father my biological even my father at all?
No. He had to have been. I was a Vixen because of my grandmother. It was thanks to the spell she had cast with the other members of the Vixen that I was The Chosen One in the first place. So that had to have meant that that my father actually was my biological father; his father just hadn’t been his biological father, whether he had actually known that or not.
“This is difficult for me to discuss, but I’m going to tell you about it anyway. I really want to emphasize to you why you should keep your elemental blood a secret from anyone you meet, unless you are certain you can trust them.” She met my gaze. “My mother became a pawn in a very dangerous game between the elemental Royal Houses. As the next in line to rule the Royal House of Fire, the other kingdoms wanted them to marry one of the Royals from their houses in order to form an alliance between the kingdoms. She ended up in a love triangle with the next in line to be King of Water and the next in line to be the King of Earth. She eventually chose the King of Earth and formed an alliance with him. He was a bear shifter, a powerful man who didn’t have good intentions.