Tempting the King (Witchling Academy Book 2) Read online

  I shrugged. “The Hogan witches can see the future. Perhaps that stayed her hand.”

  “I guess, but we can only see the future a little bit at a time—or at least that’s the way it’s always worked before. It’s not like we can predict a lottery winner three years ahead.”

  Her tone was derisive, and something struck at me, deep in my memory.

  “Was that always the case?” I asked, and Belle’s cheeks scored red with heat.

  “So far as I know,” she said a little defensively. “My mother couldn’t see beyond a few days. With me, um, usually, it’s a matter of mere hours. But it’s not like we tried to push it. Mom didn’t want me practicing magic if I could avoid it. She was afraid we would draw the attention of the coven of the White Mountains, and it would all come crashing down. She wasn’t wrong.”

  A new spark of annoyance flared through me. “What value is it for your witches’ leadership to promote the disuse of your magic?”

  Even as I asked the question, though, I knew the answer, and Belle merely shrugged.

  “It’s the same for any society that seeks to regulate the behavior of its members. You can’t have chaotic magic in a world where you’re advocating for order. The highest, best magic can only come from those who follow the rules. And those who don’t must face censure in order to convince others not to follow their path. It’s maybe not a fair system, but I understand it. I just don’t understand why they give a damn about the witches after they turn rogue. These aren’t mighty and powerful witches. They just want to be free.”

  “Well, there, I can see the logic,” I said begrudgingly. “If you’re going to keep the best and the brightest toeing the line, you do yourself a disservice by allowing any witch of skill to depart the whole. We don’t have that issue with the Fae, as far as I know. But even then, I suspect we have defectors. The realm of the lesser Fae allows them more freedom to follow their own path, true enough.”

  “Really,” Belle mused. “So a lesser Fae could return to the realm of the high Fae if they wanted?”

  “They can,” I agreed. “They simply don’t. And we don’t push them to seek us out.”

  I gestured her into the house, and she preceded me, but now my own mind was racing, and I began to understand what it must be like to be Belle, whose thoughts never seemed to slow. But what I said was true: there was no central organizing force among the lesser Fae. They lived with full autonomy, each family according to their own desires, coming together by choice to form bands of warriors, protector groups for villages and the like. Did they want to return to the realm of the high Fae? Had they tried in the past? I had no idea.

  “Oh.” Belle’s soft exhalation refocused me, and I blinked, then turned to see what she was looking at.

  There was a shelf now where before there had been an empty wall, and on that shelf was a book. Belle crossed the room and picked it up, hugging it to her tightly as if she was afraid it would disappear before she opened it. But it remained solid and sure in her hands, and she pulled back the cover, quickly riffling through the pages.

  “Portal magic,” she said, her eyes rounding as she turned to me. “And prognostication. And, umm—partner magic? What’s that?”

  “All the interesting magic that starts with P?” I offered as she snorted a soft laugh. Granted, the volume was far too slim for that. “Or simply magic that we have begun already working on without instruction, that we should continue more formally?”

  “I… I don’t know,” Belle admitted. “But it certainly can’t hurt.”

  “It can’t,” I agreed, my gaze straying again to the now-empty shelf. What other tricks did Reagan Hogan have up her sleeve? And why was her path to teaching them so twisted? More questions that needed to be answered…and soon.

  Belle held up a hand, her eyes on the book as she jerked her wrist up, then out.

  A portal opened in front of us, and we both stared.

  With this wave of her slender fingers, the front door of the Witchling Academy now lay just beyond Belle’s living room, waiting for us to return.

  “I did that?” she whispered.

  I reached for her hand, and she let me take it, though her eyes remained fixed on the portal. “You did.”

  “But how? I mean, I understand that I spoke the words, but we’re in your kingdom, and only you can create portals to anywhere you want here. Magnus can take force his way onto battlefields, I guess, but the rest, only you can do. It’s kind of your thing.”

  “It’s my thing, but you are also my wife, Belle. My partner, my ally, the woman to whom I have pledged my power and my people. That makes anything that I can do something that you can do as well.”

  I didn’t know if this was true, exactly, but I wanted it to be true. I wanted anything that would fill Belle with as much wonder as she clearly felt right now, staring at the portal opening that she’d wrought with a flick of her fingers.

  “I—well, maybe, but I…” she swallowed, then broke her glance away from the portal to meet my eyes. She bit her lip as she did, as if she was embarrassed. “I’ve never allowed myself to make bold magic. I’ve always had to remain hidden, quiet, wary. This…I’m just not used to this.”

  “Well, maybe you should get used to it,” I said, lifting her still-trembling hand to my lips, my heart filled with the sight of her beauty and power. “And maybe we should see what else you can do.”

  31

  Belle

  Still holding the book of magic to my chest, I paused in the hallway of the third floor of the academy building, the floors and walls redolent with furniture polish and gleaming as if a horde of cleaners had come through overnight. Aiden had been waylaid before we even reached the academy’s front door; some new crisis at yet another border, this one in the far-off lands of the forest Fae. From the resigned look on his face, he’d been expecting the grim news, and I supposed I should have too. The forest Fae were the only ones who’d escaped the touch of the Fomorians so far, or so we’d thought. Small wonder that that too was a lie.

  But now my attention was drawn to an entirely different frontier. Beyond the open door of the classroom, far over to the edge of a wide balcony that overlooked the lawn between the academy and the castle, Celia sat on a stool, her knees up, balancing a book from which she read to a rapt audience of Fae children aged six to eight. I didn’t know the story, but the children were entranced, and Celia’s voice was strong and resonant, lifting and dropping with a cadence that made the tale of magical animals and the children who befriended them come alive. When her voice got softer at a very emotional part of the story, I couldn’t help myself, I stepped farther into the room, disrupting the focus of the students. A dozen heads swiveled around to stare at me, and Celia looked up. Far from irritation, her expression looked to be a mix of relief and surprise.

  “Belle, I mean Mistress Hogan,” she said brightly. “I’m so glad you’re back.”

  “Finish the story?” asked one of the smallest children, and a sea of hopeful faces turned to Celia. She turned back to them with the ease of a veteran teacher, not a witch who’d spent most of her past five years in a dead-end bar, and gave them a smile.

  “How about first we get some sunshine and stretch your legs a little?” she asked. “We’ll pick up the story after lunch.”

  As enthralled as the young Fae had been with the tale she had been reading, it did not compare with the idea of lunch or getting outside. The children stood, laughing and happy, like any children anywhere, regardless of race. Celia stepped back to let them pass, but didn’t attempt to usher them down the hallway or the stairs. They may have been young, but they could figure out how to get down a staircase on their own.

  Celia watched them go with a soft smile.

  “They’re quite a bit different than I expected,” she said. “I can’t decide why, though. Try as I might, I don’t remember much of anything before my time in the Riven District. It’s like I was spelled or something, but who would do that?”

&nb
sp; I grimaced. This was something we needed to discuss—and now seemed to be a good time to do it. I sat the book of magic from the lake cottage on a table beside me and focused on Celia.

  “What book are you reading? I’m not familiar with it.”

  She smiled down at it and shrugged.

  “Jorgen gave it to me. It’s a story about children using magic to help animals, or the creatures they think of as animals, but then every time they help them, it turns out it wasn’t an animal after all, it was a spelled creature of some sort, some of them quite impressive, some of them quite small. The message seemed to be use your magic to help others no matter who they are, and I’m told by the older children, who are, of course, great authorities on everything, that it’s a lesson of particular importance to the First Fae. Something they only teach the family of the High King.”

  “Really,” I said. “So what happens when the High King’s family gets overthrown? Does everything fall apart?”

  She laughed. “You know, I asked that very question, and the poor child looked at me like I had three heads. Apparently, the concept of the king being overthrown is not a popular topic of conversation. Not because somebody will get in trouble for it, merely that it can’t be imagined, even though I’m sure it’s happened.”

  “Oh, it’s happened,” I agreed, “but it’s been a while.”

  I blew out a breath and looked at her more intently. “Celia, we need to talk about the necklace you’re wearing.”

  “What about it?” she asked, instantly defensive as her hand lifted to her collarbone. She’d traded out her ratty barmaid outfit for a simple tunic and trousers, and I could barely see the delicate chain. I needed to be careful here, but at least try to get her to see the truth.

  “Your mom gave it to you, right? Before she sent you off—before you escaped?”

  Celia bit her lip. “She’d upset her mate, and she was worried for me. Not for herself, I don’t think…” She paused, shaking her head as if she wasn’t sure of her own story. “She was scared, though. I know that for sure. And then there was fire. Like, an explosion of fire in the grate, coming from the walls—it was terrible. At the last minute, she gave her necklace to me, and then a portal I’d never known was there—but obviously she did—opened beside us, and she shoved me through. Almost like the necklace was some kind of trigger for it, though when I tried to get it to work to get me the hell out of the Riven District, no dice. But I figured out how to handle myself pretty quickly. I landed square in the middle of the same bar you did, only I was mistaken for the help. I slung alcohol for five straight hours by the time the owner noticed me, and he gave me a job and food. No questions asked, no explanations offered. He didn’t mind I was a Seline, as long as I stayed in my human form when I worked. I’ve been there ever since.”

  I nodded and made my next words as gentle as I could. “You never wondered what happened to your mom?”

  She scowled. “She died. That could have been the best possible outcome for her. I saw the Selines’ faces who were coming after her, heard her snarl of rage. And there was all that fire. If she didn’t die…” She shook her head, resolute. “She died.”

  I opened my mouth to contradict her, then stopped. Perhaps her mother’s death was all she could hold on to if the alternative was so much worse. Still—she deserved to know the truth.

  “I don’t know what happened to you and your mom in the land of the Seline, Celia, but—you’re a witch, not a Seline. A human witch. Your mom and my mom knew each other, back in the city where I grew up. That necklace you carry, it’s yours…but we gave it to your mother, like twenty-five years ago.” I stopped short of telling her I had her mother’s photo hanging on the back of my bar cabinets in the White Crane. After the fire…it probably hadn’t survived.

  I expected Celia to protest, to object, but she didn’t. Her shoulders slumped.

  “A witch,” she muttered. “Jorgen said the same thing when he gave me the books. He called me Witch Celia, and I didn’t want to explain. But then I opened the book he gave me, and everything I taught the children, like the magic of healing, of manifestation, it came to me like it was second nature. So…maybe it’s true, somehow. I even conjured up this.”

  She reached into a pocket and pulled out a small gold coin, grinning as I gave a little gasp.

  “Is that real?” I stared back at her, unable to hide my surprise. “Like real gold?”

  She laughed. “I don’t know!” she confessed. “I kind of want to go to some kind of shop and see, and then see if I can do it again. I’d be quiet about it, you know, but if I could have enough money to survive, that…that would make things a lot easier.”

  “It would,” I said firmly, only a little put out that Jorgen hadn’t seen fit to teach me the art of money making. Something I needed to follow up on. Even if this was part of the Fae’s needs magic, I had needs too, especially when I thought about my tavern back in Boston, or whatever was left of it.

  Celia was looking at me expectantly, and I gave her a reassuring smile. “We’ll get you to wherever you want to be,” I said simply, gesturing her down the hallway. We began walking, following the children now at a far distance, but the movement seemed to calm Celia down a bit. “Whatever home you choose. Aiden probably knows the ways of the In Between enough to ensure you land somewhere far away from the coven of the White Mountains. There has to be a coven that will give you shelter if you want it, even for a little while.”

  I grimaced, falling silent as we reached the stairs and headed down. While we usually didn’t direct the witches who came through the tavern to any other coven, preferring the solitary route, I knew there were sheltering covens out there. The coven of the Southern Forest, the coven of the Iron Sea. We’d told a few of the witches about them, but not many. I’d been taught since I was young that our silence was to protect the young women who fled, but maybe that assumption needed to be challenged. Everything else was certainly getting questioned.

  “I’m not sure where I belong,” Celia said as we reached the first floor of the academy. “I wouldn’t even know how to begin finding it.”

  “Then you’ll just have to take it slow. We’ll ask Jorgen for his insight—and maybe we go back to the Seline? See if we can find your mom?”

  “No,” Celia said with finality, her hand jerking up to reassure herself that her necklace remained safely around her neck. “Mom—if she ever was there, she’s not anymore. That door is closed for sure to me. I know it.”

  “Fair enough.” By now, we had reached the first floor of the academy and the wide doors that led out to the lawn. Celia looked up with a smile as a child shouted her name, and I watched her as she hurried out. Even if she couldn’t go back to wherever she’d been before her mother had given her the Hogan necklace, Celia had spent too much time alone. It would be good for her to start a new life, this one in safety and security. She could find someone she loved, start a family of her own if she wanted one. A family of more than one.

  I frowned. Someone should have someone to love, right?

  32

  Aiden

  The sudden wave of melancholy caught me unexpectedly, and I looked up, instantly distracted.

  Niall noticed, of course, and fell silent. He had been briefing me and the rest of my closest guards on the attack of the forest Fae from the Fomorian, but at least in this situation, the danger was minimal. The forest Fae were long used to defending themselves without us, it seemed, an assessment that didn’t necessarily make me feel much better. But the sadness that had overwhelmed me had a decidedly Belle-like quality to it. Nothing urgent, but troubling nevertheless.

  Still, the forest Fae had been ignored by my family long enough. They deserved my attention for a few minutes more.

  “They fought them off that easily?” I asked “How? What made them so successful?”

  Niall smiled. “You can be sure they were happy I asked. I don’t think I’d seen a prouder Fae warrior when he told me that story. You would hav
e thought I was the High King myself for all he preened.”

  He spoke the words in jest, but I only grimaced anew. Yet another reminder of the dangers of ignoring your own people. It took so little for them to feel counted, important. And they were important. I’d need all of them to send the Fomorians back into their hole.

  “So, in part, it was the stalwart nature of their warriors, none of them willing to give quarter to the slimy buggers. Their words, not mine,” Niall continued. “But he acknowledged they had some help. Old witch magic is what he called it, and he had no sense of shame in sharing it. Clearly, they had no idea that the ocean Fae were no longer in the good graces of the Hogan witches.”

  “Really,” I said, focusing on him more intently as Belle’s melancholy faded, her emotions turning to more abstract interests, as if she was studying. “What kind of magic?”

  “That was an education for me,” Niall allowed. “Turns out, the forest Fae have a fair number of portals still operational between the high Fae and human realms. Portals he assumed I knew about; otherwise, I doubt quite seriously he would have shared their existence so readily. They attach to a section of the British Isles of the human realm. In those forests, according to him, there remain covens still friendly to the Fae, though respectful all the same. They’ve shared their warding magic and antipoison and spells of order, all of which are anathema to the Fomorians.”

  “And did they give you these spells?”

  “They seemed to be of the mind that we already had them, so I didn’t push the matter, seeing as I don’t actually wield magic myself. But when I said that they, in their isolation, probably knew a few tricks more than the High King did himself, he puffed up grand as you please and said he stood for all Fae, and he would teach and share whatever you needed to know. I liked him. I liked them all, for all their rougher ways. I think the forest Fae have spent more time in the human realm than any of us realize. And that’s not such a bad thing if their magic will help us knock down the Fomorians.”