Royals of Villain Academy 8: Vicious Arts Page 4

  And gloves. By the time I’d clambered down to Declan’s window, my palms were aching from more than just the pressure of the rope, and my knuckles were stinging on the verge of numbness. The chill cut through my clothes.

  Another difference: because it was this freaking cold, Declan didn’t have his window open, of course. Suppressing a shiver as well as I could, I focused on the frame and mumbled a couple quick words to urge it upward.

  The window slid open with a rasp. I swung inside as another shiver racked my body.

  I landed a little better this time, with a light thump on the desk below the window that didn’t scatter any of Declan’s possessions. Like before, that sound was enough to wake him up, though. As he sat up in bed, I twisted around to shove the window shut again. By the time I’d slid off the desk, he was there to meet me.

  “Hey, are you all right?” he said, with so much concern that a jab of guilt ran through me. I was supposed to be here to comfort him. He tugged me into his arms, heedless of the fact that the cold clinging to my clothes would soak right through the undershirt and boxers he’d gone to bed in. “You’re freezing. What happened?”

  I let out a sheepish laugh. “I had the brilliant idea of recreating last term’s stealthy entrance. It’s definitely less brilliant in the middle of fall. I’m okay. I just… wanted to see you.”

  He kissed my cheek, his lips hot against my cool skin. “There are these things called doors, you know.”

  “But this was more fun. In theory.”

  “Hmm. Come here.”

  He pulled me with him over to the bed, a direction I wasn’t going to object to. Then he tugged me right onto the bed, scooting over to make room and hauling the sheet and duvet over us the moment my ass hit the mattress. He wrapped his arms around me again, and I tucked my head under his chin, soaking up all the warmth I needed in what felt like an instant.

  “There,” he said. “Can’t have my girlfriend turning into an ice cube.”

  A little tingle shot through me that had nothing to do with the temperature. For all the intimacies I’d shared with my four lovers, I couldn’t remember any of them referring to me as their girlfriend before. But I was, wasn’t I? And they were all my boyfriends. Hell, we’d made a commitment a few days ago to do whatever we could to stay together for the rest of our lives. If you really thought about it, we were practically engaged.

  “Definitely not an ice cube now,” I said, and nuzzled his neck, his cedarwood scent washing over me. Declan made an approving sound, one of his hands drifting lower on my back, but I tamped down on my desires. I hadn’t come here to jump right into that either.

  I raised my head so I could look him in the eyes. “Malcolm showed me the video. There’s no way we’re letting your aunt get away with this. You know that, right? You’re Baron Ashgrave, case over.”

  One corner of his mouth quirked up, but his slanted smile was bittersweet. “So this wasn’t just a casual visit.”

  “I needed to make sure you’re okay. Just like you needed to stop me from freezing to death.” I searched his face. “Are you okay? I know how hard you’ve worked for this. And… it’s partly my fault it happened. If I hadn’t suggested we confront the barons—”

  “Hey,” Declan said firmly, cutting me off. “We all decided to take that step together. I made the choice for myself. And it was the right choice.”

  He paused, his gaze slipping away from me with a momentary distance. “Maybe things will be harder for a little while, but if I hadn’t stood up to the barons now, it probably would have been a hell of a lot harder down the road. I’ve spent so much time playing their games and biting my tongue when I wanted to argue… If I’m going to be baron, I have to be able to say what I really believe in. I don’t deserve the position otherwise.”

  “You don’t deserve to have someone try to rip it out from under you either,” I muttered.

  “No. But like you said, we won’t let her get away with it.” He stroked his fingers over my hair. “I’m not enjoying the situation, but at the same time, I can look on the bright side. It’s giving me the chance to see who my real allies are—who will stand with us even when it looks like we’re on the weaker side. I’m leading people in a way I never have before. I don’t regret any of that. Maybe if I’d stood up to them sooner, we could have avoided things getting this bad.”

  I touched his cheek, wishing I could pass all the love I felt right into him. “You had a lot of responsibilities to balance. You were trying to find the way where the fewest people got hurt. I don’t think you can blame yourself for that. I played along with my mother for a while too.”

  “I’m not going to dwell on it, but I don’t want to go back to biting my tongue all the time either.”

  “Then I’ll be right there making sure you don’t have to.”

  “And that makes the difficult parts even more worthwhile.” He gave me a softer smile and tipped his head to kiss me.

  The press of his lips woke up all the longing I’d suppressed before. I teased my fingers into his silky hair and kissed him back. His tongue delved into my mouth with a hot swipe that left me shivering in a much more pleasant way.

  “We don’t have to be careful anymore, right?” I said, a little breathless, after. “It doesn’t matter if the barons or whoever else finds out that we’re together?”

  “I’d still prefer not to broadcast my love life to the world at large, but no, I don’t think we have to hold back in fear of the off-chance that someone might catch on.” A glint lit in Declan’s eyes. “I’ll take that as my cue to add a little magical soundproofing to the room.”

  He said a casting word, and a tremor of magic flowed through the air around us. Then he ducked his head close to mine again, his lips brushing my cheek.

  “The one thing I’m definitely never going to regret is being with you, Rory. You’ve made everything that was good in my life even brighter and everything that was a burden easier to bear. It would have been worth it even if we’d only had a short time together. If we get forever… I couldn’t ask for a better miracle.”

  I choked up. “There’ll be a way, and if anyone can find it, it’ll be you. I love you.”

  “I love you too,” he said, his mouth already seeking out mine, and then we were kissing and that said more than any words could have.

  Between kisses, we stripped me of my clothes under the covers until I was down to my underwear like he was. Declan slowed, still claiming my mouth with as much intensity, but drawing out the swipe of his thumb over my breast, the trailing of his fingers down my side to my thighs, and finally the dip of his hand between my legs.

  I whimpered as he stroked me through my panties and reached for the rigid length tenting his boxers. Our kisses turned sloppy as we teased each other. Through it all, a sensation I could only call joy radiated more and more sharply through me.

  I was here, in this man’s bed, without any secrets hanging over us, without any fear that being with me would destroy him or what he’d worked for. We could simply come together in love and passion in a moment where nothing mattered but the pleasure we were creating.

  When I couldn’t stand the hungry ache spreading from my core any longer, I tugged Declan’s boxers down. He kissed my jaw and my neck in a heated path as he slid off my panties in turn. I gasped out my protective casting and drew his mouth back to mine, arching up and raising my knees to his waist as he dove into me with a perfect surge of bliss.

  He rocked into me, and I embraced him in every way I could. With each thrust, we locked tighter together, our mouths melding and parting only to breathe, the friction between our bodies turning giddily searing. Declan lifted my hips off the mattress to find an even deeper angle. It only took a few more strokes of his cock to send me spiraling into my release.

  I moaned and clutched him tighter. Declan kept up his rhythm as ecstasy swept through me, the pulse of our connection carrying it on and on, until I was shaking with the force of my orgasm. He let out a choked
sound, burying himself in me as deep as he could get, and flooded me with that most intimate heat.

  Even after he’d swayed to a stop, I kept holding him against me, reveling in the matching flow of our ragged breaths and the closeness that I could dream I’d never have to give up after all. The barons could attack us however they wanted, steal whatever they could from us, but no matter how bad things got, no matter what spells they cast, they couldn’t truly destroy what we felt for each other. Not as long as we were all still living.

  Chapter Five

  Connar

  The doctor stepped back from my brother’s bedside with a long exhalation. He’d been absorbed in his healing casting for the better part of two hours, and the strain showed in the thin lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth. But when he turned to me, it was with a smile.

  “I think you’ll find the majority of the damage has been repaired now. He’ll still need to take it easy as he gets his strength back, both physically and magically, but I’ve worked on his muscles as well so that the transition shouldn’t be as hard as it could be. At this point, I’d give it a week or so, and if he notices any areas where he’s still struggling without obvious progress, we can work on that.”

  “Thank you so much,” I said. Words really couldn’t express how grateful I was for the help the man had offered—even if the recent sessions had come with much less risk after my mother’s death. Technically he was serving one of his soon-to-be barons now, rather than a traitor to an existing baron. I was beyond thankful that it’d turned out Holden could be healed at all from the injuries I’d dealt him years ago.

  I could express my thanks in other ways, though. I pulled the cashier’s check I’d had written up out of my pocket and held it out to him. A portion of my mother’s holdings had gone to my father, of course, but the majority of her estate was considered part of the barony and so passed directly to her heirs. Since Holden was officially on record as being incapacitated, that meant it had all been transferred to me for the time being. Offering a generous payment only took a small portion of that.

  The doctor’s eyes widened at the sight of the number on the check, but he took it without argument, with a slight dip of his head. “It was an honor to be able to serve the Stormhursts, regardless of the reward. If I’d known of your brother’s situation sooner…”

  He wouldn’t have been able to do anything, because my mother would have crushed anyone who questioned her judgment regarding her heirs. But I appreciated the sentiment all the same. “The late Baron Stormhurst kept the truth tightly under wraps, even from me,” I said. “We won’t forget how quickly you stepped up when called on.”

  I felt weirdly out of place, like a kid playing dress-up more than the near-baron he saw me as—and that I was trying to act as. Did I really deserve the respect indicated in that second bob of his head? Preparing to take over the barony was my role for now, and I had to do the best I could with it, but it was hard to feel comfortable with my new status.

  “Holden should wake up in a few minutes,” the doctor added before he left. “You might want to have a meal ready. I expect with all the work his body has been doing in healing, he’ll be pretty hungry.”

  I walked him to the door of the apartment and then turned toward the kitchen. The place was pretty bland, nothing but the Ikea-esque furniture the rental had come with. I hadn’t exactly had much time to decorate it into something homier. Maybe Holden would have his own ideas about that… if he ended up staying here. That was one of the many topics we’d need to discuss.

  Since he’d recovered most of his capacity for speech a few days ago, I’d found out quite a bit about my twin brother’s current tastes. Some of them had changed since we were young teens, before the vicious fight our parents had forced us into, but he still loved roast beef and mayo on rye. I assembled the sandwich with less art than our chef back home would have brought to it but with plenty of filling to make up for that and carried it into the bedroom just as Holden started to stir on the bed.

  His gaze latched onto the sandwich the second he opened his eyes. He pushed himself into a sitting position. “Room service and everything. I can’t say I mind.”

  It was still a little startling hearing such coherent sentences from his mouth when before he’d often had trouble getting out even a single word. I hadn’t realized how much his voice had deepened over the years when he’d barely been able to use it.

  “You need it,” I said, handing him the plate. I sat in the stiff chair next to the bed as he dug in.

  “Thanks,” he said between bites. “You really don’t need to wait on me like this. I should be practicing getting back up to speed with my independence as quickly as possible.”

  “I owe you a hell of a lot more than a sandwich, Holden.”

  He paused and lowered the remaining piece to the plate. His eyes, a darker shade of blue than my own, held mine, abruptly serious.

  “I want us to put that to rest right now, forever. You know I don’t hold what happened against you. I was there; I know you never wanted to hurt me. I was just about out of my mind at that point too. We were kids, and they were torturing us. That’s all there is to it. Okay?”

  This was the first time he’d managed to say quite that much all at once, without having to halt here and there to work through each thought. The absolution he was granting me seemed so generous my throat closed up for a second. “Okay,” I said. “I just wish I’d realized sooner that I could help you.”

  He waved his free hand dismissively and went back to his sandwich. “I didn’t even realize they hadn’t actually brought doctors in to see me. How could you be expected to know? As soon as you found out, you did everything you could to get me away from them and have me healed, even knowing how furious Mom was going to be. That’s more than enough right there.”

  He finished off the last few bites and licked the traces of crumbs and mayo off his fingers with a couple of quick swipes. I stood up to take the plate.

  “You’re feeling all right?” I asked. “The doctor said he thought this might be the last session you need.”

  Holden rolled his shoulders and shifted his legs under the sheet. “My head isn’t at all muggy anymore. I don’t feel like I’m ready to take up Olympic racing, but most of the aches in my legs are gone. It’s a hell of a lot better than I was doing a week ago.”

  I hesitated for a second and then pushed the words out. “Maybe we should really talk then. About what happens now, with Mom gone and… everything.” Over the last few days, I’d filled him in on the basics of our conflict with the other barons, but I hadn’t wanted to push him to make any kind of decisions while he was still only partway through his recovery. I wasn’t going to push him now either, but he should at least have a chance to give his opinion on how we went forward from here.

  “I’m up for that,” he said. “Why don’t we take it to the living room? I should put these legs to work.”

  I gave him room to push out of the bed. He made his way across the room on his own two feet with slow steps and a wobble here and there. When he reached the walker the doctor had brought him, which Holden had left by the door, he grasped hold of it and let it support him the rest of the way to the boxy beige sofa.

  I sat down at the opposite end and grappled with where to start. Maybe it made sense to focus on the most immediate considerations first.

  “Since Mom isn’t around to be pissed off or take anything out on us, you don’t really need to stay hidden,” I said. “You can stay here in the apartment as long as you want… but if you feel ready to enroll at Blood U, I can arrange a talk with the headmistress so we can figure out how the staff will want to handle that.”

  He’d had to put off his magical education for so long, I doubted he’d want to keep waiting to dive into his studies once he was up to it. Between the two of us, I’d always been a little more on the athletic side, but as kids and preteens we’d both been pretty rambunctious, more likely to be climbing trees or tossing
a ball around in our free time than sitting in quiet contemplation. Holden’s injuries had forced him onto a different path. He hadn’t been able to do much with his body in the past six years, and I could already tell all that time when he’d relied on his books and his music to keep him sane had turned him into a more thoughtful and scholarly counterpart to me.

  Putting proof to my suspicion, a smile crossed his lips at the idea of joining the school. “I’d like that,” he said. “I’m not sure I could keep up with full classes yet, especially at the senior level, but maybe they’d be willing to start me out with individualized tutoring for at least the first little while.”

  “I’m sure they could arrange something like that. You are a Stormhurst, after all.” I dropped my gaze. That statement led us to the much bigger aspect of our future we needed to consider. “And possibly the baron-in-training.”

  Even without raising my eyes, I felt Holden’s attention intent on me. “You earned the role,” he said, simply and evenly. “It’s yours. I’m not going to challenge you for it after all this time, Conn.”

  “I know you wouldn’t. But I didn’t earn it, not in any way that should have counted. Their way didn’t prove anything about who’d really be a better leader.” I forced myself to look at him again. “If anything, it proved the opposite. I had less control; I broke faster. You can see it as their fault, but you can’t deny that.”

  Holden studied my expression. “You’ve been studying, honing your skills, and developing your connections with the other scions and all our peers for years now. Do you not want to be baron?”

  I wasn’t really sure. The thought of trying to rule alongside the current barons made my stomach knot. But if it could be Declan and Malcolm and Rory I was standing beside… There was something thrilling about that idea and the changes we might make, absolutely. That didn’t change the facts, though.

  “You’ll have time to do all the same things once we get you into the university,” I said. “Maybe you’d be better for the position than me because you experienced so blatantly how a baron can misuse their power. I don’t want to shut you out just because I got first shot at it. Obviously we don’t have to decide anything right away, but if you want a chance at the role, we can figure that out. I guess… I’ll have to step up once I graduate anyway, since I’ll do that first, and we’ll see how that goes and how you feel once you’re properly back in the community. I just want you to know the opportunity is there if you want it.”