Royals of Villain Academy 1: Cruel Magic Read online

  Cruel Magic

  Book 1 in the Royals of Villain Academy series

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner without the express written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  First Digital Edition, 2019

  Copyright © 2019 Eva Chase

  Cover design: Christian Bentulan, Covers by Christian

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-989096-38-3

  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-989096-39-0

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Free Story!

  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

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Next in the Royals of Villain Academy series

  A Study in Seduction excerpt

  About the Author

  Free Story!

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  Chapter One

  Rory

  If I’d known my parents would be dead in an hour, I’d have done a few things differently that Sunday morning. Made sure to fit in a hug or two. Offered at least one “I love you.” And not dredged up the same old argument we’d been having for the last half a year, which didn’t end up mattering anyway.

  But I didn’t know, so I took what appeared to be my moment. The three of us were sitting around the square white table in the breakfast nook just off the kitchen, warm California sunlight streaming through the broad windows. Dad was finishing up his French toast and eggs equally drenched in syrup, a contented smile curling his lips. Mom poured herself another cup of coffee and inhaled the steam with a pleased sigh.

  I dabbed my last corner of toast in the runny yolk left on my plate and washed it down with a gulp of my own bitter coffee. “I was looking at the listings online,” I said. “There are a few apartments not too far from here that I can afford.”

  Mom let out a very different sort of sigh and gave me a look full of fond exasperation. “We’ve talked about this, Lorelei. You should be saving that money for your future.”

  She only pulled out my full name when she intended to end the conversation. I barreled onward. “I’ve really appreciated having the basement. You know that. But I just turned nineteen. Isn’t my future supposed to be starting now?”

  The first time I’d brought up the idea of moving out, they’d offered me the small basement apartment they’d been using for storage as a compromise. But the whole point had been to get a little independence, and it was hard to feel like an adult with my parents literally over my head. After being homeschooled most of my life, now that I was attending a few classes at the local college—and seeing how my classmates lived—it was becoming more and more obvious that I had to make a real break if I was going to figure out my future for myself.

  Unfortunately, while I was making more than enough to cover rent and the rest, an artist with no credit history didn’t look like the safest bet to potential landlords. To get a lease, I was going to need Mom or Dad to sign on as a guarantor. Which meant, somehow or other, I had to convince them it was a good idea.

  Dad leaned his elbows onto the table. “You know the drill,” he said with a teasing glint in his eyes. “Pros and cons. Go.”

  We’d been playing that game whenever I’d proposed something my parents weren’t sold on since I was seven years old. I’d like to think I was pretty good at it by now.

  “Pros,” I said, ticking off fingers as I went. “It’d be an important transitional step to becoming a completely independent adult. I’d be forced to learn how to look after myself. I could get a place that’s closer to the college so it’d be easier for me to participate in the extracurricular stuff there and save maybe an hour in transit. I’d be building my credit score and a rental history. I’d have more space and more freedom to… to figure out who I am without you looking over my shoulder.”

  I hadn’t let myself say that part before because I’d known it’d make Dad wince the way it had just now. Mom set down her coffee, knitting her brow. “You should feel like the apartment is completely yours, hon. We don’t want to stifle you.”

  “I know.” My hands fell to my lap, and I twisted one of the glass beads on the charm bracelet they’d given me for my tenth birthday and that I’d added to every year since. Each charm was a symbol of a love or a dream I’d shared with them. Why couldn’t they understand this longing? “All you have to do is look out the window to see who’s coming and going. Sound travels up. Even if you’re not trying to monitor what I’m doing, I can’t forget that you’re right here.”

  “All right,” Dad said. “That’s fair enough. Maybe we should have taken that more into consideration. And then cons?”

  I held back a grimace. He wasn’t going to let me fudge this list. “I’ll be spending money I could otherwise be saving. If I have a few bad months in selling my figurines, I’ll have to dip into the savings I already have. I won’t be able to just pop up here and grab something to eat if I’m feeling hungry and lazy, but maybe that’s a good thing?”

  “It won’t be as safe,” Mom said. “You’d be living around strangers.”

  “I’m going to have to sometime, aren’t I?”

  “It’ll be extra stress when you have your studies to focus on,” she went on. “And you’ll have a lot more pressure to keep going with your current job because you need that money, even if you decide you want to try something new that’s more of a risk. In some ways, you’ll have less freedom.”

  “It’s not that we’re trying to keep you here forever, Rory,” Dad said. “We just want to make sure you get the best start we can give you. Why not wait another couple years until you can really launch a career for yourself, and in the meantime we can try to find ways to help you feel more independent here?”

  It was hard to argue with that. There were tons of cons. I didn’t know how to express how important the one main pro was to me in a way they’d accept without hurting them a whole lot more than I wanted to.

  As I bit my lip in thought, Mom smiled, her voice falling into the softer lilting tone it often did when she was about to work her magic. “I know you’ve been getting a little stir-crazy, wanting to do some traveling too, so I thought we could finally take that trip to New York City this summer—see the Met and MoMA.”

  Her words did exactly what she’d intended. A spark of delight lit in my chest at the idea of jetting across the country to some of the most respected art galleries in the country. We’d done a bit of traveling as a family before, but only within the state.

  With that joy came a knot of guilt as well. I was already planning my own solo trip—a week in Florence, Italy to see all the amazing galleries and architecture there—and I didn’t
need parental sign-off to do that. I hadn’t decided yet whether I was going to wait to tell them until I was heading out the door or not until I was actually on the plane. Telling them now, months in advance, would only mean more arguing.

  Mom couldn’t feel the guilt, though. As a mage, she drew on joyful feelings to perform her magic, so she was finely attuned to only that aspect of my emotions. With a soft murmur and a flick of her hand, she set my cooled coffee steaming again. A bit of comfort to ease the sting of their disagreement.

  “Thanks,” I said. “And that trip sounds fantastic.”

  “I’m looking forward to it too,” Dad said with a grin. “I’ll see if the Conclave has any special projects I can take on. I expect we’ll have plenty of energy to work with.”

  He was a mage too. The two of them could turn any joy they stirred up in each other or me—or anyone else we ran into—into power. Dad’s specialty was healing. Around his ordinary accounting job, he volunteered at a nearby hospital, nudging people’s recovery along. Always be open to happiness, he’d told me when I was little, half playful and half serious. Every time I make you smile, it could save someone’s life.

  Letting them turn my happiness into magic was as close to any kind of supernatural power as I got. From what I’d gathered from the little bits and pieces they’d revealed over the years, being a mage was hereditary. As an adoptee, I hadn’t gotten the genetic benefit, and there was no way for them to teach me when I didn’t have the power already inside me.

  Maybe that was another reason I wanted to take at least a few more steps away from the house I’d grown up in. No matter what I did, I was never going to be as special as they were. Most of the time, I was okay with the fact that I was just a Nary, which was what Mom and Dad called regular people—short for ordinary, or as Mom had said when we’d had The Talk about their talents, Nary a bit of magic. Sometimes, though, the yearning prickled so deep it made me queasy.

  I was ordinary, and eventually I was going to have to build a life with no magic in it at all. Might as well get it over with.

  “We’ll come back to this conversation when I can convert some of those cons into pros,” I told my parents, getting up. Maybe they hadn’t been able to teach me magic, but they’d definitely taught me stubbornness.

  I brought my coffee downstairs and through the laundry room. On the threshold of the basement apartment, I paused for a moment, taking a sip and contemplating the space.

  I really did appreciate having it, and I wished it’d done the trick. Even though the apartment was cramped and dim with storage boxes stacked against one wall, it wasn’t awful. I just couldn’t shake the growing sense that the longer I stayed this tied to my parents, the harder it was going to be to stand on my own when I really needed to. Until I’d started the college classes this fall, Mom and Dad had been the only people I’d regularly spent time with. I had a lot of catching up to do.

  My pet mouse, Squeak—not the most original name, but it was her first owner who picked it, not me—was scurrying around her cage, nuzzling in the bars. The sunlight coming in through the little window over her perch made her fur shine: pure white other than a splotch of black on her left flank. I popped open the door and let her scramble up my arm to my shoulder while I considered how I wanted to spend the rest of my morning.

  I could finish the last bit of the History of Modern Design essay that was due on Thursday… or I could get to work on that phoenix figurine idea that had come to me last night.

  I wavered for approximately two seconds before grabbing my bin of polymer clay and my sketchpad off my desk. Squeak’s whiskers tickled the back of my neck as she wriggled under the dark waves of my hair. Sometimes she liked to hang out back there like it was a nest or something, which, given how much trouble I often had getting those waves to behave, was kind of fitting. I started up one of my favorite playlists on my phone and sat down at the little kitchen table.

  The first stage for any figurine was working out the design with pen and paper. I had to see what I was going to sculpt before I could start working on the actual pieces. My fingers flew over the sketchpad, bringing to life a fiery bird soaring up from a burst of flame. A giddy shiver ran through me as I filled in the details. Perfect.

  It was going to be hard to part with this one, but now that I’d spent a few years building a name for myself online, I could make twice as much money selling just one of my little creature sculptures than I did with my three shifts a week at the art supply store downtown. I needed to pay for that Venice trip—and maybe to put down enough advance rent that some landlord would be willing to skip the whole guarantor thing.

  When I was satisfied with the sketch, I started warming up the orange clay that would form the base of the phoenix’s body. Its tangy waxy smell filled my nose. The feel of the clay softening under my fingers always took me into a sort of trance that felt almost magical. My art was the closest thing I had to a special power.

  I was shaping the lump of clay, humming faintly with the song that had just come on, when the ceiling shook.

  Bang. Bang. Two sharp thuds echoed from upstairs in quick succession, so violent my skin jumped. The clay slipped from my fingers.

  Voices barked loud enough for the hostility to travel through the ceiling, but the words were indistinct. I jabbed the music off, my heart thumping. What the hell was going on?

  One of the voices upstairs yelled again. Something made of glass or china smashed. I swallowed hard and grabbed my phone. As I slipped out of my apartment to the stairs at the other end of the laundry room, I dialed 9-1-1.

  “What is your emergency?” said a woman on the other end, who managed to sound both pert and deadly serious.

  “I don’t know,” I said, fighting and failing to keep my voice steady. “It sounds like someone broke into my parents’ house. I’m in the basement—I can hear a commotion upstairs. It doesn’t sound good.”

  “What is your address?”

  I rattled it off.

  “All right,” she said. “We’ll have the police there as soon as we can. You hang tight. Stay on the phone with me—and stay out of whatever’s going on.”

  That was easy for her to say. It wasn’t her parents going through God knew what up there. I kept the phone clutched by my ear, but I also slunk halfway up the stairs, placing my feet carefully so the steps wouldn’t creak.

  The voices got clearer. They must be in the kitchen—Mom and Dad often lingered there for a while reading or chatting after breakfast.

  “…is she?” a man was demanding. “Out with it, or this can get much worse.”

  There was no sound of impact, but Mom let out a pained gasp as if she’d been hit. Was this some kind of home invasion? Couldn’t she and Dad use their magic to turn the tables on these assholes?

  I guessed there wasn’t much joy in the room for them to draw on.

  I couldn’t help myself. Maybe some other girl would have stood by while thugs smacked around her parents, but not this one. I eased up another step so I could peek through the mudroom into the kitchen.

  Mom and Dad were hunched on the floor at opposite ends of the room, Dad farther away with his back against the fridge, Mom closer to me, braced against the oven. Five figures stood over them, three men and two women, all dressed in posh black shirts and slacks like they should have been out at some exclusive dinner party and not here threatening random innocent people.

  Except, what were they threatening them with? I didn’t see weapons in anyone’s hands. What the fuck was going on?

  Footsteps thumped down the stairs at the other end of the house. “Second floor is clear,” a guy hollered.

  Clear of what? What had they thought might be up there?

  “Check the basement,” said the man who’d been warning Mom earlier.

  Mom’s back stiffened. A strange look came over her face, frantic but fierce.

  “You don’t have to,” she said with a rasp. “I’ll tell you where she is.”

  Two suspic
ions clicked into place in my head: The assholes were looking for me. And Mom was only pretending to give in to get the satisfied smile that crossed the man’s face in that moment. A brief jolt of happiness was all she’d need to break out her powers.

  Heaving herself to her feet, she thrust her arms out with a swift murmur. The man and the woman next to him stumbled backward. My heart leapt with hope in the instant before the man caught himself. He slashed his hand and spat out a word that wasn’t from any language I recognized.

  Mom’s flesh tore open from the base of her chin all the way down her throat. Blood gushed out, streaming down the front of her pink cotton tunic. Her legs gave way beneath her as the color drained from her face. She sagged over in front of the oven.

  My mind went blank with horror. No, no, no. I dropped the phone and threw myself toward my mother.

  The man had already been swiveling toward Dad. “You deserve far worse for the crimes you’ve—”

  He cut himself off as I hurtled into the room. I managed to catch Mom’s head before it hit the tiled floor. Her blood washed hot over my forearms and flowed across the tiles. Her head lolled in my hands, her eyes glazed and lifeless.

  My stomach flipped. I pressed my palm against the raw gaping wound on her throat instinctively, as if any part of me really believed I could still save her. “Mom,” I choked out.

  “Rory, get out of here! Run to—”

  The woman closest to Dad said a word and twitched her fingers, and his mouth snapped shut. Several hands grasped my arms to haul me away from Mom’s body.