Taming the King (Witchling Academy Book 3) Read online

  “Mistress Belle,” Jorgen said, eyeing me with curiosity as he and Gwendolyn flowed into the room. “What’s wrong?”

  I fixed him with a baleful glare. “What’s the most powerful display of magic my great-grandmother ever showed you?”

  Jorgen frowned. “Well, she built the academy, but every Hogan witch did. She created grand effects of illusion, and she managed to avoid the persistent interests of the king, which was no small feat.”

  I nodded impatiently, gesturing for him to give me more. “She built things, she hid, she created illusions. What else?”

  Gwendolyn looked like she was going to say something, but Jorgen pushed on. “She healed. Whoever the high family brought to her door, any range of monsters from other realms, heavily warded humans who had stepped where they shouldn’t have in the monster realm. And then there’s—”

  “She escaped,” Gwendolyn blurted, clasping her hands in consternation as I turned her way. “The night she escaped, it was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. She was possessed of a singular desire, and more than that, she knew. She knew she would be able to pull it off. She was wild and laughing, and I remember thinking she’d better be successful, because if she wasn’t, there was no question that the king would pursue her until he caught her. She was everything he wanted in a witch. Not for any good reason, of course, he was a foul being, but it didn’t lessen his want of her, and that last night, I understood why. She was transcendent with her power and her magic, and she said she was going for broke.”

  I nodded. I wanted to be surprised, wanted to feel like this was a major discovery, but instead I felt shame.

  “She went for broke,” I echoed. “She tapped her inner power to its highest level and she won. It finally was worse for her to do nothing than it was to burn out in a fiery blast having tried her utmost.”

  Jorgen frowned. “That’s one way of looking at it,” he said cautiously.

  “You weren’t there,” Gwendolyn insisted to him, then swung her gaze back to me. “She knew she had to put it all out there, and she did. She succeeded. We had no idea what she had planned until it was all done, and once she was back beyond the borders of the human realm, we…well, we simply stopped.”

  Her guileless words struck a chord in me. I peered at her and then Jorgen. “And that never bothered you?” I asked, returning to the question I’d never had satisfactorily answered. “She left, and you ceased to be. That’s kind of a lot.”

  “Her other choice was to send us back to where we came from,” Jorgen reminded me. “That would have been the harsher sentence by far.”

  “And I’m telling you it really wasn’t that bad here!” Gwendolyn insisted. “The In Between—”

  “What is it you were thinking of doing, Mistress Belle?” Jorgen asked, once again cutting off Gwendolyn, who turned to me with wide eyes.

  “Are you going to escape as well?” she asked, breathless. I gave her a rueful smile.

  “I don’t want to escape,” I said honestly. “Not this realm, not King Aiden. Not right now.” There would be time to work out the details later, but I had a different focus. “I want to access my full power. I need to focus on a challenge. And after all the time I’ve spent wanting magic at a high level, any kind of magic, I don’t have a clue what to try.”

  “You could build another house,” Gwendolyn suggested, “Like your great-grandmother’s at the edge of the lake.”

  “That would be a very visible attempt,” Jorgen said, frowning. “While I believe wholeheartedly you would succeed, perhaps there is another option…hmm.”

  “Oh!” Gwendolyn interrupted. “I know! You could create wings to fly, or give one of the Fae such abilities. They can affect it with glamour, but to actually have it sprouting full force?” She giggled, and while I wanted her to take the moment more seriously, I found myself smiling as well.

  “I would hate to do that without their permission, but…” The idea came to me all in a rush, and I turned to Jorgen with excitement. “What if I unmade your contract? Gave you freedom too?”

  Jorgen drew himself up sharply, while Gwendolyn gasped. “You don’t want us anymore?” she protested. “We’ve done something wrong?”

  “No, no.” I put out my hands. “You said my great-grandmother had no other choice other than to keep you in stasis or return you to the nether realms of the human world. I say no. I say she had a third choice, and that was to let you roam free. What if I did that?”

  Jorgen stared at me aghast, his face unnaturally pale, especially for the ordinarily tanned djinn. “You would do that?” he finally asked.

  “I will do that,” I said firmly. And it was right and true, no different from when I’d wanted to help the rogue witches who came to my door find a better path, a path they alone dictated. “I don’t want you to leave, but I don’t want you to stay just because I wasn’t strong enough to set you free. Or at least strong enough to try.”

  Jorgen and Gwendolyn drew closer together. “What about Magnus?” Gwendolyn asked, her voice hushed. “You’ll free him too?”

  “I want any service you render to me done willingly, not by force,” I said, nodding. No sooner had I said the words than I turned to the book of magic.

  “Freedom,” I murmured, and the pages ruffled, landing on a page I’d never seen before, no matter how many times I’d scoured the book. Because the spell had remained hidden, or because I hadn’t had the guts to ask for it before?

  “Djinn of great service to me,” I began with all the pomp and ceremony I could muster. As I drew in another big breath and felt the magic take hold, Magnus flowed into the room, his ordinarily stoic face flushed, his energy chaotic.

  “What is going on?” he asked sharply. “I know this feeling.”

  “You don’t know this feeling!” Gwendolyn corrected him. “Mistress Belle is going to free us from our contract. She’s going to try the magic of unmaking.”

  Magnus whipped his head toward me, but the spell was already taking root in my hands, sliding up my arms, surrounding me.

  “No,” he shouted. “No, it’s too dangerous!”

  But he was too late.

  28

  Aiden

  “I appreciate you coming to see me in person. Your pledge is accepted, and I’m honored to have your aid.” I was untangling myself from what seemed like the fifteenth noble Lena had brought to my attention, when a flurry of movement caught my eye at the far end of the room. Magnus strode into the tide of cheerful, chattering Fae, his step fast and certain.

  The fact he was striding at all surprised me, but he had taken the extra step to imbue his djinn form with the more accepted mode of conveyance of feet. No one paid him any attention as he approached me, but his face was set, his expression almost panicked.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “It’s the witch,” he said, worry sharpening his words. “She’s trying magic beyond her ken, spells steeped in arcane rituals she does not understand. I tried to stop her, but Jorgen—”

  “Show me,” I said, cutting him off and spinning away to search for the nearest doorway. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw Lena gearing up for another assault, but it was Magnus who cut her off, Magnus who scowled down everyone in our path until we got clear of the crowd and stepped into an alcove. I sketched the portal door, unsurprised to see it led to Belle’s office.

  Without pausing to ask any more questions, I collared Magnus and stepped through the portal. He could have as easily disappeared from the castle and reappeared wherever he needed to be, but I didn’t feel like screwing around.

  I stepped into chaos.

  Belle lay crumpled on the floor, a shining white miasma surrounding her, as Jorgen and Gwendolyn hovered beyond, struggling to break through the fiery corona to no avail. Every time they got close, portions of their bodies simply disappeared. A foot, a hand, half of Gwendolyn’s face until she jerked back, yelping.

  “What is this?” I barked. “What’s going on?”

/>   “It’s her magic!” Gwendolyn said in a rush. “She wanted to try something truly remarkable, and when she said, I mean, when we thought—”

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” She whirled on Magnus with an anger more strident than any I’d seen her express before. “We didn’t know, and you did.”

  I didn’t miss the cold stare Magnus leveled at Jorgen before he replied.

  “It never occurred to me that you would have put such a test to her,” he said.

  “But it wasn’t our fault!” Gwendolyn protested. “She came up with it.”

  “She did,” Jorgen said hurriedly, though to my mind, it was with the air of a man desperate for an out he didn’t deserve. He looked anxious enough, though, as he wrung his hands, casting a glance back toward Belle. She levitated above the ground, her face hidden in her arms, her body apparently at rest, which was the only reason I hadn’t already blundered directly into the center of her magical tangle.

  “What in the Light is that around her?” I growled.

  “It’s a spell of undoing,” Jorgen said. “And Gwendolyn is correct, it was Mistress Belle’s request to attempt it. She wished to undo the contract binding us to her.”

  “The contract.” Though I knew he’d spoken additional words, that the contract in question was not the one that had brought the Hogan witches to the Fae, the idea of Belle attempting such magic that was clearly stretching her to the limits of her powers sparked an unaccountable fury in me.

  “Why is she attempting such a thing? Surely she can see she’s not prepared. She’s not capable. Not on her own, for the Light’s shake. You have to stop it.”

  Jorgen straightened, his face brightening. He looked at Magnus, and the hope in his expression seemed very real. “We can stop it,” he declared, then ruined the effect by continuing. “Can’t we?”

  “We can,” Magnus said. “But there may be damage.”

  He looked at me as though for approval, but he damned well wasn’t going to get it. Not for anything that would hurt Belle

  “There will not be damage,” I informed him. “Any damage I will hold you personally accountable for. All of you.” I included Gwendolyn in my sharp gaze, and she gave another little squeak, though I could see where the edges of her form were clearly singed from repeated attempts to get close to Belle.

  I couldn’t think about that. I couldn’t think about anything. “What can I do?” I demanded.

  “Stay out of our way,” Magnus said, and he lifted his hands. Jorgen followed suit a moment later, but his eyes were wide and fixed. He didn’t know this spell, but Magnus appeared to. Thank the Light, since we needed one of our assembled number to have a clue.

  Magnus began speaking, then jolted as a finger of fire leapt from Belle’s body and lashed out at him, throwing him against the wall. Gwendolyn screamed, and I rushed forward, but at the same moment, the nimbus of fire holding Belle aloft winked out. She dropped heavily to the floor and gave an audible oof. A second later, I knelt beside her, and it took everything I had not to crush her to me. She blinked her eyes open, appearing no worse for wear after her dance with fire.

  “Aiden! Did you help? Did I need your help? Was that why I couldn’t do it?”

  Her voice was so excited, her expression so eager, I hated to disappoint her.

  “No, my heart,” I managed, and the gravel in my tone had her blinking in confusion. “The spell didn’t take.”

  “Dammit!” she groaned, sagging back onto the floor. “I wasn’t strong enough. How the fuck can I not be strong enough?”

  Once again, it was Magnus who came to the rescue, his tone matter-of-fact but also reassuring. “Your great-grandmother had help as well,” he said. He gave a rueful smile to Jorgen and Gwendolyn. “You didn’t know, you couldn’t, but she used me as a prism to pull in additional magic when she faltered.”

  Belle lifted up on one elbow, her eyes still mirror bright as she fixed him with her gaze. “Oh! Is that all? Well then, we can try it again because you’re here, right?”

  “No,” both Magnus and I retorted. Jorgen and Gwendolyn, to their credit, shook their heads with similar vigor.

  “No,” Jorgen agreed. “Wielding the magic you did needs time for recovery, even in the best of cases.”

  “But first off, I accomplished exactly nothing, and secondly, I feel fine,” Belle protested, her gray eyes sparking with determination. I chuckled and reached for her hands, which were still warm, and tugged her up.

  As she got to her feet, she swayed and blinked in confusion. “Well, maybe I’m not in as good shape as I thought.”

  I barely kept a leash on my temper. “You need to take better care of yourself,” I informed her, and she frowned, studying our linked hands.

  “You know, I wonder…”

  Magnus moved, and I didn’t miss the stiffness in his body. “Are you injured?” I asked belatedly, but he waved me off.

  “Nothing that rest won’t heal,” he assured me. He cocked a finger at Belle. “Rest you should be getting as well, Mistress Belle. Your strength will be needed in the coming fight.”

  “I’m telling you, I’m fine,” Belle insisted.

  “Let’s make sure of that,” I muttered. And I pulled her from the room.

  29

  Belle

  “Oh…okay, whoa, there, sparky.”

  My world tipped a little funny, and a moment later, I registered that Aiden had picked me up, and was carrying me through the corridors of my great-grandmother’s academy. My head lolled back against his shoulder, and I flapped my hands a little. The steel shackles seemed…lighter. My head felt lighter. Everything was lighter. Then again, I was being carried. Weightlessness, it was a thing.

  “This academy is so big,” I murmured. “Why did my great-grandmother have to make it so big? There are really not that many Fae who seek out magic.”

  “Maybe she wanted to fill it with more of the Fae,” Aiden reasoned, drifting a kiss over my hair. The panic was cresting and falling within me, but right at this moment, I could study it as if from the outside. I knew I should be doing something. Knew there was much work to be done, but I couldn’t seem to move, not physically. And, as it turned out, I didn’t have to move physically, because Aiden was carrying me.

  I giggled, my mind rabbiting off into new thoughts, away from the shadowy guilt that I wasn’t doing enough of…something.

  Aiden’s next words ended on a question, but I didn’t catch it.

  “Hmm?” I glanced up. It was hard to see a person’s face when you were being carried by them, I decided. I caught the side of Aiden’s jaw, the long angular line of his nose, the sharp edge of his chin. “When do you have time to shave?” I asked, speaking over his attempt to reframe his question.

  He glanced down at me, his perfectly winged brows coming together over his sea-blue eyes. “You have pretty eyes,” I offered when he didn’t say anything at first.

  Those pretty eyes narrowed, then glanced ahead, and he murmured words I couldn’t quite catch. A portal flared in front of us, and he stepped through it without pause, the warm, quiet surroundings of the Witchling Academy giving way to the cool breeze and the night air. Not quite the night, I thought. I could see and hear our surroundings, but it was as if there was a haze around us, a thin shadow.

  “Are you cloaking us?” I whispered.

  “Well, it’s your fault. You were so impressed with the protective effect I was able to create in the Hallows, I felt like I needed to keep up. Here we go, then.”

  He mounted a few stairs, and I realized we’d returned to my great-grandmother’s cottage by the lake. “This is all so wrong,” I sighed as we entered the small room with its fussy details. “I mean, I love it because it was hers, but it’s wrong for me.”

  He slowed to a stop but didn’t put me down. “How would you change it?”

  “Oh, you mean if I had all the magic to change all the things?” I sighed. “Wouldn’t that make things easy.”

  I let my eyes drift shu
t and imagined a large open room filled with the light of the setting sun, its wide windows making it seem as if the walls were made of glass.

  “Ohhh…” I blinked my eyes open in surprise as Aiden sat suddenly, then bounced.

  “What did you do?” I asked, thoroughly delighted by the enormous, upholstered chairs we landed on, the revised floor plan of my grandmother’s house. Beneath gleaming white countertops, the cabinets were all done in soft grays, and the hardwood floor was a mix of taupe and gray as well. There was nothing on the shelves, and very few shelves at all except for a new bookcase tucked up against the wall—this one no longer empty. It was filled with books in a riot of colors, whose titles I couldn’t see from this distance. It almost didn’t matter. All I knew was there were books, and there would be learning and long sunny days at the edge of an enchanted lake.

  “It’s beautiful,” I sighed dreamily.

  “It suits you,” Aiden agreed. He leaned back against the thick cushions, lifting a soft hand to brush my hair out of my eyes. “Why did you try to break the contract of the djinn?”

  I shrugged. “Oh, I know. I shouldn’t have tried that much magic, not really knowing what I was doing. I should have, could have, waited for you. It wasn’t about showing off.”

  He rumbled a soft laugh. “No, I don’t think it was.”

  “Jorgen just wanted it so much, and Gwendolyn seemed so amazed that such a thing might be possible, I just felt like I needed to try.”

  Aiden frowned. “Jorgen?” he asked levelly.

  “Don’t blame him,” I said, feeling a deep internal pressure to protect the djinn. “I was flailing around for something to try, to test myself, and he said…” I shook my head slightly, trying to clear it. “Why can’t I remember what he said?”