Taming the King (Witchling Academy Book 3) Read online

  I stiffened. “The coven of the White Mountains?”

  “Well…” Marley said with another quick grin. “Not exactly.”

  32

  Aiden

  I didn’t mean to read Belle’s mind, but there was no missing the worry that ratcheted up inside her at the mention of witches. The silver fox barfly turned to me, his head tilting as his long, narrow chin bobbed up and down.

  “We didn’t want to do anything wrong, mind you. And we figured out soon enough that there’s more to being a witch than waving your hands around and saying a few fancy spells we had memorized.” He shot Belle an apologetic glance. “You’d done such a good job lamenting your limited magic, and insisting that most of it was wrapped up in the wards of the building, that we always took you at your word. There’s a lot of us who have been quietly trying to learn the magic you do in hopes we could help protect you and your place, and us as well, not to put too fine a point on it.”

  Irritation rippled through me, but Belle laughed. “You memorized my spells?” she asked. “First, Marley, you of all people should know it doesn’t work like that. There’s actual study involved, practice that goes on behind the scenes.”

  The fox tilted his head the other direction, and I could swear his nose twitched.

  “But you forget, we’ve all been coming to the Crane for a long time,” he countered. “It wasn’t just you we saw, it was your mother too. And you both followed the exact same process when you spoke your spells. You opened a book and read them. Nothing more than that.”

  “Well, I suppose we did.” Belle smiled. “And you never once thought to ask me to teach you?”

  “Well—no. It never seemed the right time, and you were always far too busy to interrupt with something so silly. But bottom line, we figured out all we needed to do was to hang around the tavern long enough to soak up its goodness, and it’d give you some power to wield. The very wood and nails seemed to have power.”

  Fae wood, I knew. Reagan Hogan had been no fool.

  “But now we’ve gone and done the thing, and we’ve got a group who would like to talk with Belle. So…” He turned back to me. “Can you receive witches here? In this, you know, space?” He gestured vaguely, waving long fingers around the quiet glade.

  “Of course,” I said, and was pleased to see Belle nod, giving me clearance to do so. As curious as I was, I didn’t want to step on her toes, but she was eager to confront whatever witches had come to challenge her. For all that she had spent a lifetime hiding from a threat she could not control, Belle wasn’t one to back down from any opponent once it came right to it. She would push through to the other side.

  I sketched a portal, murmuring the words of summons, but an unruly jerk of energy shifted my focus, and I sketched the portal wider, wrapping around two sides of the field. Movement surged forth from both angles. From one side came a gaggle of witches, women aged sixteen to maybe eighty, murmuring, muttering, and looking around with delight. Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the field, a familiar figure stepped forward, surrounded by a dozen more of what could only be called warriors, though I knew them to be human. Tall, short, slender, robust—male and female, in this case—they all glanced around the space, taking in their new surroundings.

  “A gathering of witches,” Niall boomed. “And my poor luck that we have no time for a party.”

  “Belle!” A girl of about seventeen stepped out of the first mix of newcomers, and I blinked in surprise. Her hair was fiery orange, her eyes as green as emeralds, and her skin was splattered with a constellation of freckles that stood out against her pale creamy complexion as she grinned from ear to ear. “I bet you didn’t think you’d see me so soon, huh? I’m the runaway who can’t stay away.”

  “Maggie? But—what are you doing here?” Belle protested, her bright smile not quite hiding her dismay. Her thoughts ranged instantly from surprise to profound fear for this group. That they would be tracked, caught by the coven of the White Mountains. “What are you all doing here? How did you get back to the tavern together so quickly?”

  I knew the answer straight away, and whether she picked up on my thoughts or not, Belle turned toward the silver fox. “You dragged them back?” she asked, fully chagrined now. “You succeeded in opening a portal, but it went the wrong way?”

  “Well. Maybe we had nothing to do with it,” the fox shifter said stiffly. “Maybe the Crane itself wanted some reinforcements, and it tricked us into summoning them. That’s as easily the case as any.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Now it was the one of the elder witches who spoke. Sun-darkened and healthy-looking, she stood in a simple ensemble of worn T-shirt and frayed cargo pants, her weathered feet tucked into sandals. “What matters is that we’re here now, and we can help just as you, your mother, and grandmother helped us once upon a time, long ago. We can help, Belle.”

  Belle opened her mouth to turn away this offer, reject it. To assure these women she could carry the weight herself, as I suspected she generally did. Then she stopped, smiled. Resolutely, she reached out a light, tentative hand to me.

  I took it readily, and power flowed between us through that simple touch. Whether she sought my strength, my reassurance, or my solidarity—all were hers, whenever and however she needed me.

  With a smile that complemented the blush that now scored her cheeks, she turned back to the witches. “I welcome your help. I’ve learned that magic often works better when you have friends who help you wield it. Thank you for standing with me in this fight.”

  “And what is the fight, exactly?” A woman stepped out of the cluster of witches, and both Belle and I flinched back.

  “You’re not a witch,” Belle said sharply.

  “Not exactly, no. But close enough for government work.” The woman gave us a hard, quick grin. She was slim, medium-build, with dark hair whipped back into a tight ponytail, dark jeans and a leather jacket hanging loose on her body, as if she hadn’t been eating enough recently. A brace of jagged knives hung from a long leather belt at her waist. “I’m sort of an honorary witch, though, and I have a bad habit of sticking my nose in where it’s not wanted. My name’s Sariah, and I can fight, don’t worry about that. So if there’s a fight to be had here, I’m in.”

  I didn’t miss the way one of Niall’s warrior witches stepped closer to him, murmuring into his ear. He caught my eye, our connection strong as ever.

  “We need the help, sure enough,” he said, drawing the woman’s attention. “And this one comes well recommended. I’ll take her knives as long as she’s able to wield them.”

  Belle nodded and peered more intently at the woman. “I know I’ve never helped you. I doubt quite seriously you’ve ever taken anyone’s help. And from what the sight is telling me…there’s a lot of trouble ahead for you.”

  The young woman folded her arms over her chest, looking thoroughly delighted. “Well then, you should probably put me into the middle of the worst part of the fighting.”

  “It’s decided,” Niall said, rocking back on his heels. “I wanted to bring these warriors here, to train them out of earth’s timetable. Just in case we don’t have the luxury of waiting very long. Figured we could take some into the training grounds of the In Between if need be.”

  “I knew it!” The young woman who Belle had called Maggie spun around and poked her finger at a woman beside her, who stood tall, lean, and ageless. “I keep telling Janet here she should be doing TikToks. She claims she’s a hundred years old, but she barely looks thirty, and her house sits right on top of a portal to the In Between. I knew it.”

  Aiden nodded, taking all this in. “We’ll accept your help, and gladly, all of you. But you need to know the truth of it. The Fomorian king will attack on all fronts. He has nothing to lose now.”

  “I thought about that,” Niall agreed. “I mean we have witches and weres and…” He hesitated, looking at Marley in his human guise. “Whatever you are. We’re not without options.”

  “Then
we fight,” Belle said, her voice calm, resolute. “But not here. Not on Fae grounds, nor human either, for that matter. If war is a foregone conclusion, we force the hand of King Lyric. There’s a reason he’s put this pageant in motion exactly this way. He has been planning for a long time, and he feels in control. We need to understand why that is…and then take his power away from him.”

  33

  Belle

  “King Aiden!” Young Alaric shouted from a distance, through the brace of woods surrounding my great-grandmother’s cottage. The words were exhaled on a sharp breath, indicating the boy was running. I struggled to pull myself out of the thrall of the visions that were bombarding me, feeling the weight of the emerald crown shift over my brow, the shackles tighten. There was something important I needed to understand about King Lyric, something I alone could—I knew it in my weary witch bones. But it hovered just out of reach, forcing me to wait.

  Aiden had no such hesitation. He turned to Niall and, with the barest gesture, sketched a portal that led to a shadowy chamber. “Take the witches here. Time will expand, giving you the necessary hours to prepare, possibly days, but definitely not more. No matter how much I can compress time here, I expect the battle to be engaged before nightfall.”

  “Then we need all the time we can get,” Niall agreed. He turned and cocked a smile to Celia. “Ladies first,” he urged, and the tawny-haired spitfire rolled her eyes but stepped smartly into the portal. The slender human with her wicked, curved knives hesitated. I pierced her mind enough to see her future, in the thick of the battle with a large, tentacled beast.

  “Whether you go with Niall or not, your result is the same, Sariah,” I assured her. “You will fight.”

  She turned back to me, her brows tenting. “Short-term prognostication—and a few other tricks besides.” She grinned. “Nice. I think I like being an honorary witch.”

  I felt the tug of her energy, the barest slice of my own abilities slipping off me like an unneeded sweater as the woman’s smile broadened.

  “Appreciated, Witch Hogan,” she said, then stepped through the portal to follow the others.

  Maggie led the other witches into the In Between with eager delight. “This is going to be so cool!” she announced.

  “War is never cool,” her older companion informed her.

  “Then we’ll have to make it that way, at least this one,” she argued right back, then she was gone and the rest followed, including Marley and the taciturn dwarves from the dwarf lord’s guard.

  They had barely cleared the space before Alaric rushed up.

  “Mom has been trying to reach you, but she can’t find you, though she scoured the academy and made Magnus take her into every room. She said there was no way you would be here at the cottage, so of course that’s where I thought to look.”

  “As always, an excellent job of listening,” Aiden said drily.

  Alaric flashed a bright grin. “But you have to come!” he announced. “She’s kind of stressed out. She said half the castle is already up and seeking to gather for a war council. That they spent the night fighting off dreams of battle that ranged from nightmares to glorious success—but mainly nightmares. Now they’re all exchanging stories and not sure who or what to believe. She’s got them all in the council chambers now, but it’s tight.”

  Nightmares—that was the province of King Lyric and the Fomorians. This wasn’t good. A whisper of premonition snaked across my mind as I studied Alaric. In my mind’s eye, he was bathed in light, chattering happily. Then he turned to look off into the distance, and his face registered shock.

  My blood chilled, but there was no turning away from any of our possible futures now. The war had to be started in order to be ended once and for all.

  “Not the king’s audience chamber,” I said, with such certainty that Aiden jolted beside me. “Lena should take everyone to the solarium, where they can fight beneath the sky, if need be.”

  “But we were just there,” Alaric argued. “That’s where you go to party, not to plan a war.”

  “The solarium,” Aiden echoed, reinforcing me. “It will hold them all, and it’s filled with light. And the Light is what we are fighting for. I like it.”

  “Well, Mom’s gonna be pissed,” Alaric said, and he gave another mischievous grin. “I like it too, if only for that. But you’ll come now, right? They’re waiting for you.”

  “We’ll go now,” Aiden said. “The three of us. We’ll send word for your mother and Magnus to join us.”

  He sketched a portal, and we stepped into the grand solarium of the high Fae castle.

  “Off with you, then,” he said, turning to Alaric as he sketched another portal, this one opening up on the stairs before the Witchling Academy. “Anyone you see along the way, bring with you, especially Cyril.”

  Alaric scoffed. “I’m sure he’s already on the run. If that old shoe has any magic at all, it’s to find you.”

  Aiden laughed as the boy disappeared into the portal, and I looked around the solarium. As Aiden had predicted, the chamber was filled with glorious sunlight, and I took a moment to take it all in. My great-grandmother had been in this room, I knew immediately, and she’d left behind her own touches, though how she’d managed it, I wasn’t sure. Still, I could see her mark in the wards tucked up into the corners, now glistening like sequins and starlight despite the bright sun.

  Aiden smiled as he turned to me, our thoughts still intertwined. “I believe you’re right, though I hadn’t thought of it before,” he said. “Reagan Hogan’s touch is laced throughout this room, and I am willing to bet my grandfather never knew. Otherwise, he would have torn it down.”

  “She would have loved to see this again.” An unexpected whisper of melancholy slipped through me. “I wish I could have known her better. She was very old by the time I came on the scene.”

  He reached out and took my hand, squeezing it gently. “Do you think she knew this would happen? Did she have full future sight?”

  “Not a chance,” I said definitively. “We—I mean, life was pretty good for us, but it also kind of sucked. Our world was very isolated and hidden—it had to be. As a result, though, we could only celebrate small, quiet joys. We couldn’t build friendships or networks, not like normal people. My grandmother passed when I was ten years old, my own mother ten years later. After that, it was just me. I think my great-grandmother would have warned us somehow if she’d known that kind of grief was heading our way. Then again, maybe she was wiser than all of us and knew, but never told us. According to my mother, she always said we had to choose our own paths in the end.”

  “I do feel her here,” Aiden murmured beside me. “With you by my side, at least. I don’t know that I ever would have without your presence, but now that you’re here, I feel…” He lifted his free hand slightly and wiggled his fingers. “Something in the air.”

  I smiled and lifted my free hand too. My fingers were warm, comfortably so, little zips and zings of heat slipping along my skin’s surface. Not enough to burn, definitely not so much as to warn, much more an invitation to explore where those zips and zings might lead.

  “Do you have a plan? ” I asked, and Aiden coughed a short laugh, glancing skyward to take in the radiant sun.

  “I don’t,” he admitted, squinting through the tall windows with some bemusement and then rubbing his chin. “We will assemble, because the Fae love to assemble. And then we will talk, because we love to do that as well. The talk will turn to boasting, and the boasting will turn to challenge. Hopefully, that will distract Lyric until Niall and his makeshift army have enough time to prepare. And with any luck at all, we will have warning before Lyric strikes.”

  I tried to see the future, scowling as I glanced around the room. Explosions and chaos greeted me down every timeline. “I think we need to be prepared for the fight to come more quickly than any of us want. It’s like you’re giving him an engraved invita—aigh!”

  Pain shot through me, and I slapped my han
ds to my temples, where the illusory emerald crown weighed down on me like a pile of bricks. Aiden shouted, but I spun away from him, leaning into the vision that struggled so hard to break through.

  “Invi-tation,” I gasped, the agony in my head clanging like a gong. “He’s pushing you to do this. Needs you to call him out. He’s…out of time. He…he tried before to negotiate—ahhh!”

  I gusted out a long breath of air, then dropped to my knees, suddenly limp. Aiden lifted me before I hit the floor and steadied me on my feet. For a long, blessed second, I stared at him, curiously light without the emerald crown pressing down on me.

  Then the pressure slammed back home, and I shuddered. Aiden gave me the space to sort through what I was feeling, though every muscle in his body seemed clenched to fight an unseen foe.

  “I—it’s gone again. That’s all I can recall. He needs this war, though. Needs you to demand it.”

  “Well, that works out,” Aiden said, his gaze raking over me as if to assure himself I wouldn’t collapse again. “If it means you’ll finally be free of his hold on you, I need it too.”

  With a wave of his hand, the upper reaches of the glassed-in solarium shifted, the glass winking out of existence, allowing the cool morning air to flow in. Birdsong filled the room, the chatter of people talking and laughing somewhere near the castle, the sound of the breeze against the network of elegant, bowed wood and stone making a melodic whistling noise. A hubbub of voices from inside the castle caught our attention, the sound of fast-striding feet. Alaric burst into the room a moment later, his face flushed, his eyes dancing.