Royals of Villain Academy 1: Cruel Magic Read online

  I tried to wrench away, to hit the people around me, to stop them somehow, but my feet tripped under me. One of the figures spun me around to face him. His fingers clamped on my shoulder, his bright hazel eyes catching my gaze from where he’d tipped his head close to mine.

  I registered through the roar of anguish in my head that he looked younger than the others, not much older than me, and that he was one of the most striking guys I’d ever seen. Even if I hadn’t been in the middle of the most horrifying scene in my life, with one glimpse that smooth face with its slicked-back black hair and those brilliant eyes would have been burned into my memory.

  “It’s okay,” he said in a low gentle tone. “We’ve got you now. You won’t be trapped here anymore. We’re going to take you home.”

  The words sounded like they should have been comforting, and he said them like he meant them. With a weird rush of warmth, my body stopped shaking. But at the same time my mind recoiled.

  I didn’t want these people to “get” me, and this was my home right here.

  “I feel we need to send a message,” said the man who’d murdered Mom from where he was walking toward Dad.

  My heart lurched with a fresh jolt of panic. I yanked myself away from the gentle guy just as the man sliced both hands through the air in an X.

  A matching X gouged through Dad’s plaid shirt right into his chest. A spasm jerked his body, and a cry seared up my throat. I lunged at his attacker.

  More hands caught me. The murderer muttered something under his breath that sounded like a curse.

  “Knock her out,” he said. “We’ve got to get going.”

  A few harsh syllables reached my ear with the swipe of a palm across my forehead, and my mind fell away into blackness.

  Chapter Two

  Rory

  I came to with a sway of the surface beneath me. My body was lying on firm padding, a smooth material against my cheek. My next breath brought the smell of leather into my nose. The thrum of an engine and another swaying sensation told me I was in some kind of vehicle.

  My eyelids felt too heavy to lift. My thoughts were muddled. What had they done to me? The people in the kitchen—the man who’d ripped Mom and Dad open like animals in a slaughter house—

  Nausea surged through my gut at the memory. I stiffened against the seat. Those monsters had killed my parents and dragged me off… somewhere. I didn’t have any idea why or what they wanted, but every particle of my being clanged with fear.

  The haze in my head gradually retreated. I eased my eyes open just a crack to take in my surroundings.

  Some of my hair had fallen across my face, hiding my gaze from anyone watching. Between the dark brown strands, I made out thin sunlight seeping through the windows onto an empty burgundy leather seat that faced my own. I was in the back of a limo.

  My only company was two figures up in the front, the backs of their heads just visible above the tops of the seats. The sunlight glanced off a glass privacy divider between me and them.

  As I took that in, the woman in the front passenger seat turned to glance back at me. My breath stopped in my throat as I held myself perfectly still, watching her through my eyelashes. After a second, she looked away again.

  The divider must have been a thick one. I didn’t hear her speak, but a hint of a laugh carried through as if in response to a comment.

  My captors wanted to keep an eye on me, but I guessed they didn’t want me to hear whatever they might say about me or where we were going. Okay. A faint ache was spreading through my shoulder from lying prone, but I’d just have to pretend I was still unconscious until I decided what the hell to do next.

  None of this made any sense. Mom and Dad had never given me any reason to think they had enemies, let alone the kind of enemies who’d want them dead. They’d spent their lives working with joy, for fuck’s sake.

  This morning—if it was still the same day—I hadn’t seen any sign that they were worried about an impending attack. Everything had seemed so normal.

  A lump rose in my throat. I shut my eyes against the burn of tears. That breakfast was the last time we’d really talked, and I’d spent most of it badgering them about letting me move out. If I could have erased the last day and stopped any of this from happening, I’d have happily stayed in the damned basement for the rest of my life.

  I was pretty sure I was still wearing the same clothes, but no blood clung to my hands or arms. Someone had washed Mom’s blood off me. Somehow that felt like a betrayal in itself.

  A small shape shifted against the back of my head. I had to tense up to restrain a flinch. Then tiny claws prickled against my scalp in a familiar sensation.

  Squeak—had she been holding onto my hair the whole time? I’d been so caught up in the attack that I hadn’t thought about where she might have ended up.

  A wry wisp of a voice tickled into my head. Good, you’re awake. We need to talk, sweetheart.

  I almost choked in surprise, and my mouse’s claws pinched deeper into my scalp. Quiet. Don’t let them know you’ve come to. If you stay still and whisper to answer me, we should be able to have a decent conversation without them realizing.

  “Squeak?” I murmured, my thoughts spinning. My mouse could talk—or telepathically communicate, at least? Since when? She’d never acted like anything other than a regular rodent back home.

  The name’s actually Deborah, but when we’re around anyone else, you’re better off sticking with the mousey one. Sorry to spring this on you so suddenly. I’m just glad I managed to hang on to you while these bastards were hauling you off.

  What…? Who…? I didn’t know where to start.

  Maybe Squeak—Deborah?—picked up on my confusion, because she nestled into her favorite spot at the nape of my neck and went on.

  Here’s the quick version: I used to be a joymancer like your parents. The Conclave worked some magic so that my mind could take up new residence in this mouse body. It’s not such a bad trade, you have to understand, because I was just about dead from cancer when they offered. All I had to do to get a bunch more years was play pet and do my bit as your familiar if anything went wrong. I just wasn’t expecting anything to go quite this wrong.

  I couldn’t wrap my head around most of that. Dad had brought Squeak home from one of his stints at the hospital, saying she’d belonged to a kid there he’d failed to save whose parents hadn’t known what to do with the pet. He’d asked if I’d mind looking after her for a bit while he found a permanent home, and I’d ended up enjoying the little animal’s company so much I’d told him I’d keep her.

  “My parents knew?” I said quietly.

  The deal was that I’d watch out for you and signal them if you needed help.

  “You called yourself a ‘joymancer.’” I hadn’t heard that term before.

  That’s what we all call ourselves—the mages who take our magic from joy. I take it your parents never told you about the other kind. The ones that grabbed you are fearmancers. The same way we draw on happiness to power our spells, they draw on terror. As you’ve already seen, that leaves them with a pretty warped sense of morality.

  Fearmancers. A cold shiver ran down my back. Mom and Dad had never said anything about other kinds of mages. I’d never even met any of their colleagues under the Conclave.

  I forced myself to keep my voice low. “Why would these fearmancer people want me?”

  I’m not sure, Squeak/Deborah said. But I do know where they’re taking you. They were talking about it while you were out on the plane. You’ve been down for the count for hours. They brought us on a private jet to an airfield in what I’ve gathered is northern New York. This is just the last step of the journey.

  “A journey to where?”

  The fearmancers have a school where they teach all their awful practices. The Conclave has known about it for a long time, but they keep it well-hidden enough that we’ve never been able to shut it down. They’ve got some fancy name for the place, but most of the time we just call it Villain Academy. A lot more accurate, in my humble opinion.

  Villain Academy. Another chill trickled through me. “I still don’t get it. Why are they bringing me anywhere at all? I’m not even a mage. I’m just a Nary.”

  Deborah made a sound like a sigh. Oh, Lorelei. Your parents really should have told you that part. The thing is—

  The limo jerked to a stop. Deborah froze and then scurried down under the collar of my T-shirt to hide beneath the fabric on my back.

  My pulse raced as my captors stepped out of the vehicle. Someone opened the door by my head with a rush of cool damp air. No, this definitely wasn’t a California April anymore.

  I narrowed my eyes to slits. A shadow fell over me. “We can’t bring her in like this. Ashgrave, wake her up.”

  There was a pause, and then a low measured voice I recognized said, “She’s already awake.” Feet shifted against the ground outside as the familiar speaker crouched next to my seat.

  “Hey,” he said in the same gentle tone he’d used in my parents’ kitchen. “I know you’re probably really confused, but we’re here. You just need to come inside, and we’ll get everything sorted out.”

  Sorted out? Were they going to sort out the way they’d murdered my parents? The fact that they’d kidnapped me and dragged me from one end of the country to the other?

  But the young guy with the gentle voice and the striking face hadn’t carried out the killings. He’d sounded like he wanted to help me. Maybe not everyone here was a total villain.

  And in any case, he could clearly tell I was faking.

  I eased myself upright as if I’d only just woken up. The guy’s black hair was a little rumpled from the trip, but his face was still as stunning and his eyes as brightly alert as before. He offered me a little smile with perfect cupid’s bow lips. “Let’s go. The headmistress is waiting for you—she’ll explain everything.”

  I wouldn’t mind a few explanations, but I wasn’t in any hurry to go anywhere with a bunch of villainous mages. I didn’t feel all that safe in the limo, though.

  The guy backed up as I scooted forward. I stepped out onto the smooth asphalt of a parking lot. Immediately, the cool air raised goosebumps on my bare arms. I wasn’t dressed for northern weather, especially now that the sun was sinking low.

  A couple spots away from the limo, a posh gunmetal gray sedan was parked. The other figures around me must have arrived in that. All six of the creeps—the fearmancers—who’d stormed in on my parents stood around me, watching.

  Directly beyond the sedan lay a field framed by a dense forest that wrapped around to my left. The road my captors must have driven up veered away between the trees there. That was my chance at escaping.

  To my right, a massive stone building loomed, looking like the illegitimate offspring of a medieval castle and a Victorian manor house. Turrets jutted here and there, their windows shuttered. A gargoyle hunched over the arched front doorway. Um, yeah, I’d rather not set foot in there, if I had a choice in the matter.

  The trouble was, I didn’t think I had any choice at all.

  “Why am I here?” I said. “What do you want with me?”

  The fearmancer who’d killed my parents stirred impatiently on his feet. “As he said, Ms. Grimsworth will do the explaining. That’s how she wanted it.”

  I guessed what I wanted didn’t figure into his plans. I glanced toward the road again, and his underlings tensed around him.

  I’d be kidding myself if I tried to pretend I wasn’t generating plenty of fear to fuel their magic with every thud of my heart. I’d seen how easily the one man had slaughtered Mom and Dad. If I made a run for it, what were the chances I’d even make it across the parking lot before they caught me?

  I squared my shoulders. They’d brought me here for a reason. I’d be able to come up with a better strategy for getting out of here if I knew what that was. Know thy enemies. Dad used to say that, jokingly, when talking about working around the hospital administration.

  A punch of grief hit me in the gut. I clenched my jaw, holding myself steady against it.

  I didn’t have a clue what was going on, but I did know one thing for sure: no way in hell were these assholes getting away with what they’d done to my family.

  “Okay,” I said, hugging myself against a chilly lick of breeze. “Let’s go.”

  My parents’ murderer, who appeared to be in charge of this little squad, made a dismissive gesture with his hand, and three of his followers got back in the sedan. He, the young guy, and one of the women escorted me up the stone steps to the building. As I got closer, I could make out a crest carved into the peak of the stone arch just beneath the gargoyle. The crest was framed by prickly leaves, and at its center was a dragon’s head. Not ominous at all.

  Our shoes rapped loudly against the polished hardwood floor inside. The huge front hall smelled like mahogany with a whiff of smoke, the former from the broad curving staircases on either side and the latter from the flames dancing in sconces along the stone walls. Their glow gave a wavery quality to the daylight that streamed from the high windows.

  The man led us past the staircases and down a narrower, dimmer hall beyond them. It opened to a second entrance room with gold-gilded wallpaper and a single mahogany staircase directly in front of us.

  Voices filtered from a side room, but we weren’t headed there. The man strode up the stairs. I climbed after him, fidgeting with the glass charms on my bracelet as I went.

  “That’s right,” a smoothly amused voice rang out from above us. “Let’s see how you move with a real fire under your feet.”

  My head jerked around. Down by the right-hand end of the second floor landing, four guys were standing in a cluster. Or rather, as I reached the top of the stairs and could get a better look, three guys were standing in a semi-circle around a fourth.

  My legs stalled as I stared. If my hazel-eyed “friend” was striking, the three young men looming over their target were heart-wrenchingly gorgeous. The kind of stunning I’d have assumed had been tinkered to perfection in Photoshop if they hadn’t been standing before my eyes just ten feet away.

  One appeared to have been built entirely out of muscle, with a chestnut-brown crew cut that emphasized the chiseled planes of his square-jawed face. Another held his lean body with a languid grace, his dark copper hair shadowing boyishly angular features that were made mature by lavishly full lips currently curved into a smirk.

  Between them, directly in front of the scrawnier kid they’d caught, was the guy who’d spoken. I could tell it’d been him from the haughty tilt of his handsome face, which managed to look divinely innocent and yet devilishly hot at the same time, a mix of soft and hard lines so perfect that my fingers itched to try to capture them in clay. His golden-brown hair was just long enough to show a hint of curl, and his dark eyes, fixed on the kid, glittered with satisfaction.

  The kid, who I’d have placed at sixteen or so, backed up a step, and the divine devil moved his hand. A spurt of fire shot up beneath the boy’s shoes. He yelped, scrambled backward, and lurched forward again as the flames seared higher and hotter at his heels. His eyes had gone wide with terror. His tormentors laughed.

  Fearmancers. What a fitting demonstration of their talent. Horror twisted tight in my chest. My three escorts had started across the landing in the opposite direction, but the last shaky thread of composure I’d been holding onto snapped.

  This morning I’d been totally useless while one asshole had flayed my family. I didn’t have to watch another one flambé this kid. I could at least create a distraction that’d give the boy time to flee.

  “Leave him alone!” I said, marching toward them. “You’re hurting him.”

  Three startled gazes leapt to me, the flames flickering down. The divine devil grinned.

  “I’m teaching him a necessary lesson. Are you aiming to get schooled too?” His eyes skimmed down over my body, and I was abruptly aware of my wrinkled tee and loose jeans in comparison with the pressed dress shirts and slacks everyone around me was sporting. “You look like you could use it.”

  My eyes narrowed. “You’re welcome to try.”

  Before I’d even finished speaking, his lips moved and his fingers twitched, and a streak of flame darted across the floor toward me.

  If he’d thought he was going to shock me, he had no idea what I’d already been through today. I stomped my foot down on the fire, restraining a wince at the flare of magical heat, and glared. “Is that the best you’ve got?”

  The copper-haired guy let out a laugh. The divine devil’s mouth curled into a sneer, his expression as cocky as before, but a quivering sensation flitted through the air between us. It wriggled through my ribs and up to the base of my throat, sharp and heady, as if I’d bitten my tongue.

  The guy whipped another lick of flame at me and the kid, and one defiant word crackled over my tongue. “Freeze.”

  The quivering jolted out of me—and a sheen of frost raced across the floor, swallowing the flames and fixing the guy’s loafers to the floor with a glint of ice. The kid dashed away.

  My pulse stuttered. What the fuck? How did that— Had I done that?

  Where had that power come from?

  The jitter of uncertainty that hit me was my undoing. The guy recovered in a flash. He stomped his heel, the ice crinkling away under it, and the entire surface beneath me turned slick and hazy. I moved to take a step, and my feet shot out from under me. I landed on my ass with a sting of pain up my spine. The frigid layer of ice bit into my palms.

  “Do you really want to keep going?” the divine devil said, managing to sound both teasing and menacing.

  I scrambled up, and the woman from my escort grabbed my arm to steady me.

  “This isn’t the time,” the man said, and motioned to the hazel-eyed guy. “Maybe you’d better fill them in. And you.” He jabbed his finger at me. “This way, please.”

  “I look forward to seeing you later,” the divine devil called after me as my two remaining escorts ushered me across the landing and around a corner.