Royals of Villain Academy 4: Horrid Charms Read online

  Dad made a noncommittal sound. “She was undisciplined and lacking in training. Justice will be carried out in any case.”

  “Better we see what she’s capable of now, especially after her attempts to present herself as some sort of peacekeeper.” My mother sniffed disdainfully.

  “A loose cannon needs reining in,” my father added, with just the slightest note of triumph.

  I looked up in time to catch the glance he exchanged with Mom—a glance with a quick flicker of a smile. My breakfast stirred uneasily in my stomach. Yes, that was exactly why they’d have wanted this to happen to Rory. It offered a perfect excuse to limit her powers and bring her solidly under the other barons’ control.

  That was why they might have orchestrated the entire situation. It’d be awfully convenient if someone else had framed Rory with no involvement from the people who stood to benefit most, wouldn’t it? And the Wakeburn girl made a much better victim than Victory or her friends from their perspective. A mediocre mage from a middling family—not someone who’d be especially missed, no risk of pissing off the powerful figures they wanted to maintain good relations with.

  Was that what Nightwoods did now? Not just attack our enemies to keep the upper hand, but slaughter random innocent mages if it served our plans? Who the hell wanted to be ruled by barons like that?

  No one. Which was why they were staying so close-lipped about it even with me.

  I had dozens more questions clamoring for attention inside me, but I couldn’t ask any of them directly. I did let myself venture a mention of their other possible crime.

  “I’ve heard that the professor who got sick and ended up offing himself was her mentor. Wonder if that really was a natural death or she had something to do with that one too.”

  Dad had a poker face with the best of them, but I felt him perk up from across the table. “Have you heard someone speculating about that?” he asked.

  What, because then they’d try to spin that story around on Rory too?

  “No,” I said blandly. “It just occurred to me, considering the current situation.”

  “Well, let me know if anyone else starts talking. If there are leads pointing in that direction, we’d want to know.”

  Or if he thought they could sway public opinion toward pinning Rory with that death too, he would. I poked at my scrambled eggs before managing to gulp down another mouthful.

  What the fuck had happened to family honor? Where was the strength they’d insisted I learn to show from the moment I was old enough to follow their orders? It wasn’t strong to kill some nobody girl and put the blame on your opponent because you couldn’t manage to take the real threat on directly.

  They’d decided Rory was too tough for them to handle, so they’d taken a coward’s route.

  My fingers tightened around my fork, but I plowed through the rest of the food on my plate while my parents cleared theirs. Dad had a new investment to go over with his business partners, and Mom had a meeting for some board she was on. They headed out one after the other before I’d left the dining room.

  I wouldn’t have considered myself to be under my parents’ thumb. I made my own decisions; I had my own mind. But there were some rules I’d never contemplated violating. For example, Dad’s home office had been off-limits for as long as I could remember.

  Before, I wouldn’t have violated that rule out of respect. Now… I was finding I couldn’t summon quite the same level of deference I might have in days past.

  If Dad really was involved in more horrifying machinations than I’d ever have suspected, I wanted all the proof I could find. He might not have left even a hint around the house anywhere, but if there was going to be some, it’d be in that office.

  He didn’t simply trust family and staff to stay out of the office. The door had a complicated magical repulsion spell on it too. I cast a quick bit of my own magic to make sure no one was nearby, and then I studied the threads of energy surrounding the doorway. If I stepped more than a few inches away from the opposite wall, a shiver ran over my skin and down into my muscles, urging me to flee.

  So I kept close to the wall and murmured a testing word and then another to get a deeper feel for the spell. I’d used something like one part on my dorm bedroom plenty of times. Another aspect reminded me of a project we’d worked on in Persuasion last year.

  A small smile crossed my lips. I could disarm it. Dad’s areas of magical strengths were the same as mine, and he’d underestimated how much my skills had grown.

  I knew Dad well enough to realize the defenses outside the door wouldn’t be the only protections. After I nudged the door open, I identified an alarm spell tied to the floorboards just inside. I didn’t need to remove that, only to take a good hop over it. Then I stopped and swiveled to take in the room.

  The furniture was styled like the rest of the house—lots of old, fine wood and thickly embroidered fabrics. The space was more open than I’d expected, though. A huge desk dominated one end of the room, backed by a stately wingchair, but the other half held nothing but a rug and a single armchair, with bookshelves along the walls and a heavily curtained window.

  No one came in here other than Dad, but I didn’t see a hint of dust or smell a wisp of must. He must clean it himself and air it out regularly.

  The chair at the desk squeaked faintly when I sat on it, and my nerves jumped, but no catastrophe descended on me. I already knew his computer was a lost cause—I couldn’t magic my way into knowing his password, and he’d have chosen something not at all obvious. Like all the other fearmancers I knew, though, he still did a lot of work on paper.

  I flipped through his leather-bound agenda, lifting the pages carefully. The meetings and appointments were mostly written in short form I couldn’t fully decipher, but it wasn’t as if he’d include something like “Frame Rory Bloodstone for murder” in there anyway. I didn’t see any suspicious-looking items around the day of her arrest or of Professor Banefield’s death.

  The document sorter on his desk held various bills and invoices and other business-related paperwork. Somehow I doubted he’d requested a formal receipt for any murders either. I riffled through those quickly anyway and then turned to the drawers.

  Nothing in there linked him to Rory or to the professor. Nothing pointed to any violent plans. I grimaced at myself as I pushed the last drawer back into place. Maybe it’d been stupid taking this risk.

  My gaze fell on the small metal trash can under the desk. I tugged it out and peered at its contents. The few crumpled papers that I smoothed out, I found unhelpful. Then there was an invitation to some fearmancer gala that Cressida Warbury’s parents hoped mine would attend. Obviously Dad hadn’t been interested.

  I was about to flick the cardstock rectangle with its silvery lettering back into the can when marks on the back caught my eye. I turned it all the way over and tipped it to the light filtering through the window.

  Dad must have had this on his desk when he’d taken some notes on another paper. His pen had pushed impressions into the card underneath. I could make out some of the letters just squinting at them.

  With a whisper of magic, I filled in the shallow grooves with thicker shadow. The text swam into sharper focus.

  Pers – Wed, 2pm

  Phys – Thurs, 11am

  Illu – Fri, 4pm

  I stared at the notes for a moment, my chest constricting. It wasn’t hard to guess what this was. He’d been writing down someone’s university schedule.

  Two of those classes I’d been in this summer. They were the ones I’d shared with Rory. I’d be willing to bet everything I owned in this house the other class was hers too.

  At the beginning of the summer, he’d told me to back off her at school. Apparently he’d been keeping track of her movements by other means. For other purposes.

  It didn’t scream murder, but it wasn’t a good sign, either.

  I dispelled the magic and tossed the invitation back into the garbage. As I set everythin
g into the right places, the constricting sensation expanded from my chest up to my throat.

  Was there really much question? If Dad hadn’t wanted Rory in the blacksuits’ custody, he could have gotten her free by pulling a few strings. He was in on the plot, regardless of his exact level of involvement. I knew that, even if I hated it.

  I dodged the alarm by the door again and tugged it shut behind me. As I was rebuilding the repulsion security spell, the floor down the hall creaked. My nerves jumped, and I spat out the rest of the casting as quickly as I could under my breath. I stepped away from the door and started ambling down the hall just as my little sister slipped around the nearest corner.

  Agnes slowed, peering at me with her big brown eyes as she tucked her blond hair behind her ears. Her gaze slid past me down the hall and then back to my face. I tensed instinctively, bracing for questions I’d have to dodge. But she just ducked her head, her own shoulders tense. Maybe she was worried about what I’d say to her about her coming down for the morning this late.

  She was only thirteen, for fuck’s sake. We were in the exact same boat, always on our guard around our parents, always waiting for the next test. I’d never tried to test her too—I’d never wanted to take part in that vicious aspect of our lives… but maybe I should have offered her a little more support along the way. Could I really say I completely agreed to our parents’ approach to toughening us up?

  Not anymore, not knowing what I did now, that was for sure.

  “Hey,” I said carefully. “Have you had breakfast yet?”

  Agnes shook her head. “I slept in,” she said, her voice meek but her mouth tightening defiantly.

  She’d definitely picked up a lot of their lessons in caution and keeping one’s own counsel. But maybe there were a few things I could teach her that’d serve her better than anything our parents had inflicted on us.

  I stepped closer with a tentative smile. “You know, it’s been a while since we went to that pancake place you like in town. Mom and Dad went out—they won’t even know. You want to go grab a stack?”

  Agnes’s face brightened in an instant. Our parents disdained the Nary-run pancake place the same way they looked down their noses at ketchup and nachos. I’d always been the one to take her out there when the coast was clear.

  “That’d be great,” she said. “It’s been a while.”

  It had been, I realized as we headed for the door, Agnes with more of a bounce in her step now. I wasn’t sure we’d gone out there since I started in the senior class at Blood U. Our parents’ tests had ramped up, and Dad had been watching for the slightest slip to hold over my head… All my attention had narrowed down to surviving and maintaining the authority I had.

  Not anymore. I was done dancing to his tune.

  Chapter Four

  Rory

  I was just getting up from the dinner of roast beef and buttered beans my jailors had brought me when a knock rapped against the door. I froze. No one had bothered knocking before they’d come in before.

  “Um,” I said. “Come in?” Was telling them to go away even an option?

  When the door swung open, I was grateful I hadn’t tried that. Declan strode into the room with an authoritative air lent even more power by his tall frame. His bright hazel eyes flashed with a hint of anger as they took in my holding room. Then his gaze came to rest on me, looking me over with obvious concern.

  My heart had started thumping twice as fast. I could have kissed him just for being here, except that would have been an exceptionally bad idea with two blacksuits hustling into the room behind him.

  “She’s been held according to proper procedures,” one of them was grumbling.

  “Maybe as far as where and how,” Declan said, folding his arms over his chest. “As I’ve already pointed out to your supervisor, any mage never before charged with a crime has a right to continue their day-to-day life with minimal restrictions. She shouldn’t be here at all.”

  “When the crime is murder—”

  Declan turned to the man with a glower. “Nothing in the statutes makes exceptions based on type of crime. Do we need to go back and run through the entire law book with your supervisor again?”

  “It’s fine,” the other blacksuit snapped. Apparently having a scion barge in on their operations and tell them how they were doing things wrong had put them in a bad mood. Somehow I couldn’t summon much sympathy.

  “I can leave?” I said as Declan walked over to me.

  He nodded, with a hint of a smile at the relief that must have been written all over my face. “Until your hearing. Which isn’t going to happen for at least ten more days, because the law also says you’re allowed a minimum of two weeks to gather evidence and testimony for your defense.” He shot a pointed look over his shoulder at the blacksuits.

  “Not when the accused has appointed a representative to investigate in her stead,” the first blacksuit protested. “That’s already being handled, and her representative—”

  “Did you appoint anyone as your representative in this case, officially?” Declan asked me.

  “No,” I said immediately. “That—I didn’t even know it was a thing.”

  Lillian must have claimed that role without telling me about it or asking whether I wanted her taking charge. I resisted the urge to clench my hands. She’d told me she was going to defend me—all the while speeding my hearing along so there’d be less chance to find proof that I was innocent and denying me the chance to look into anything myself.

  “There you go,” Declan said. “Do the blacksuits have any signed documents that contradict the accused’s own statement?”

  From the scowls we got, they obviously had simply taken Lillian’s word for it. I supposed I couldn’t blame them for that.

  I rubbed my wrists instinctively, shifting the warded cuffs I was starting to get used to, and Declan frowned.

  “Those need to come off too,” he said, pointing to the cuffs. “You can monitor her magic usage, but you can’t cut it off completely. She’ll need it to continue her studies and conduct whatever inquiries she needs to before the hearing.”

  “That never came up during the negotiations,” the second blacksuit protested.

  “Because no one bothered to tell me you’d cuffed her like this. I’ve got photographs of the relevant documents right here.” He fished his phone out of his pocket. “And if you need the source material, I’ve got more books in my car I can bring for you to go over.”

  The first blacksuit sighed. “You stay here and keep an eye on things,” he said to his colleague. “I’ll check with Sootbane.”

  It didn’t seem wise to say much of anything to Declan with the other guy eyeing us. I took the opportunity to sit down on the edge of my bed, tucking my hand slightly behind me.

  Deborah, who’d found an opening in the box spring that let her use it as a hiding spot, must have been following the conversation. Several seconds later, her small warm body darted onto my palm. I closed my fingers gently around her and lifted her as if I were reaching to scratch the back of my neck. She scrambled beneath the collar of my shirt where both the fabric and the fall of my hair would conceal her.

  I was going to get to leave this place—this prison. I’d have ten days to try to break the case against me. It wasn’t a lot, but it was so much more than I’d had before.

  The first blacksuit reappeared a few minutes later and beckoned for Declan to come with him. “I’ll be right back,” the Ashgrave scion assured me. I stayed where I was, with the second blacksuit standing guard, the seconds ticking by with the thud of my pulse.

  Finally, Declan and the woman blacksuit who’d been part of my first interrogation marched into the room. She was carrying two cuffs that were slimmer and detailed with different etchings than the ones I was currently wearing. These looked more like matching bracelets.

  “Please come here, Miss Bloodstone,” she said in a terse voice. I didn’t think she was very happy about this turn of events either, bu
t obviously the precedents Declan had presented couldn’t be argued away. Thank God I could count on him.

  I came over, and she motioned for me to sit at the table. “Lay your arms out,” she instructed. When I had, she clicked the new cuffs around my wrists before unfastening the old ones with a couple of quiet casting words. The reduced weight on my arms brought a fresh wave of relief.

  “The monitoring cuffs will take an impression of every spell you cast,” the woman said. “Certain types of more aggressive magic will set off an alert and result in your returning to custody. Is that understood?”

  I nodded, tucking my hands onto my lap. I didn’t think that’d be a problem… I’d just have to hope none of my fellow students pushed me into a situation where I needed to use force to defend myself. Lord only knew how the blacksuits would respond to that. I didn’t suppose the cuffs conveniently recorded magic that was cast on me.

  “She’s free to go?” Declan prodded.

  The woman nodded. “We’ll notify you when the hearing date is settled on.”

  Even more tension stripped off me as I stepped through the doorway into the hall, leaving my lovely but suffocating prison cell behind. I curled my fingers into my palm against the urge to grasp Declan’s hand. That wouldn’t be a good look here either.

  He didn’t speak until we’d left the entire three-story facility behind. Outside, evening was falling, a cool breeze washing over the nearly empty parking lot and the shadows stretching long across the asphalt. Traffic whirred by along the highway I could see in the distance.

  “I’m sorry it took me this long,” Declan said. “I had to make sure I had every possible argument covered, and then it took a whole day before they even gave in to having the meeting.” He swiped his hand through the smooth black strands of his hair with a jerky movement.

  “You don’t have to apologize,” I said. “I had no idea there was any way to get out at all. Thank you so much for going to all that work on my behalf.”

  He looked at me, so much emotion in his eyes in that instant that a flutter ran through my chest. “Of course I did. I know you had nothing to do with Imogen’s death. I wasn’t going to leave you in there to be treated like a murderer.”