The Ascended: The Eight Wings Collection Read online

  The Ascended

  The Eight Wings Collection

  Serena Akeroyd

  Copyright © 2019 by Serena Akeroyd

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Dedication

  To Dad. That ending? Boom. :D

  Contents

  Dedication

  Faeling For Them

  Part I

  “Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.”

  1. Gabriella

  2. Gabriella

  3. Gabriella

  4. Gabriella

  Part II

  “The best way to predict your future is to create it.”

  5. Matthew

  6. Gabriella

  7. Seph

  8. Matthew

  9. Matthew

  10. Matthew

  Faeling Hard

  Gabriella

  1. Daniel

  2. Riel

  3. Daniel

  4. Seph

  5. Riel

  6. Matthew

  7. Seph

  8. Matthew

  9. Riel

  10. Seph

  Finally Faeling

  1. Riel

  2. Matthew

  3. Seph

  4. Matthew

  5. Daniel

  6. Seph

  7. Matthew

  8. Seph

  9. Riel

  10. Matthew

  11. Riel

  12. Riel

  13. Riel

  14. Riel

  15. Seph

  16. Riel

  Two Decades Later

  Afterword

  Also by Serena Akeroyd

  Faeling For Them

  Part One

  Semesters One & Two

  “Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.”

  Lao Tzu

  “Man, I’m too old for this bullshit.”

  As I stared up at Eight Wings Academy, I clenched my jaw. I didn’t want to be here. In fact, I’d spent the last few years hoping I wouldn’t be called to attend, but of course, the Fae bastards knew all and saw all.

  That meant, a bit like Harry Potter, I’d received my letter in the mail, and had to deal with the consequences.

  Unfortunately for me, I wasn’t leaving behind a bedroom under the stairs or a family who loathed me. I was leaving behind a loft in downtown L.A., a successful career as a fashion designer—okay, that was stretching it, but hell, people would kill to PA for Jessica Lansing, the decade’s hottest designer—and a family who, until recently, hadn’t known what I was.

  The letter had been the catalyst for a lot of wailing, self-recriminations, and mostly? Confusion.

  I was a witch.

  Not Fae.

  Right?

  My mother had looked at me with entreaty in her eyes as she pleaded with me to say, “No, madre, I’m not Fae. I’m a witch.”

  But I couldn’t say that.

  Couldn’t outright lie to her either, not without her casting a spell and finding out the truth anyway.

  Instead, I’d told them the impossible reality.

  “I’m both.”

  Both?

  Yup.

  In a world where allegiances were strictly delineated, I was stuck in the middle, which technically meant I was nowhere.

  Plus, to the Fae? I was worse than a turd stuck to the bottom of their boots, because I was, in their eyes, human born and to them, the human born were scum they had to tolerate.

  Fuck, this first day was going to be a bitch.

  Running my hand through my curly black hair, I tugged at the roots a little. A bit of pain would help me focus, keep my eye on the ball.

  I was walking into enemy territory.

  In more ways than one.

  I grabbed my backpack, mourned the taxi as it drove off, and then, shoulders back and spine straight, strutted my shit. This wasn’t high school. This wasn’t even college. I’d done both, survived both, and still had friends from my time there. This was Eight Wings Academy, and my destiny and it had finally decided to get it on.

  The Academy itself was impressive—I had to admit that. But it didn’t come as much of a surprise considering the Fae owned it. Anything remotely Fae was like billionaire ultra-chic.

  This place made Harvard look grody.

  With its ancient walls, which were entwined with vines that weren’t ivy but some weird Fae flower that looked like it, and that had golden veins running through the leaves, it made the place look like a Sultan’s palace.

  Well, if the Sultan lived in England or something. I highly doubted there was any of that faux ivy stuff in the Middle East. Unless it was bespelled, of course.

  The gray stone structure the flora embellished was severe to the extreme, rippling with cornices and moldings that couldn’t make this behemoth any prettier. It was what it was. Imposing. Its purpose was to show the little humans that the Fae were better than anyone else.

  Two rounded towers sat right in the middle, soaring into turreted points. Along the way, smaller towers made an appearance, each one glittering with windows that made me pity any cleaner who had to care for them and wasn’t allowed to use magic—or maybe they had misbehaving students clean them. It would certainly be a terrible punishment. Each tower was connected to another by a flat roofed segment. Windows peeped out on the roof too, like oddly set eyes that were bracketed with slate tile ‘brows.’

  With more turrets and architectural gems that would have given any architect a woody, more than anything I was taken aback at its expanse.

  From the front, the Academy was at least ten blocks wide. Yeah. That was how fucking big it was. From the back and sides? Well, I hadn’t seen that part yet. But as I watched fairies begin fluttering from one side to the other, their wings flapping like mad, it figured that the building would be so big—they didn’t have to walk the distance as they could just fly across it.

  For the first time since they’d popped out when I was eighteen, my wings were on display and they twitched at the sight of so many people flying. Well, it was either that or the fact they’d never felt this much sun on them before now, something I knew was going to present another kind of problem.

  Fae wings started dark, but like an ugly duckling, they morphed into whites and creams as the sun hit them over time. Mine were dark and speckled, like a pigeon rather than a dove… I was going to get shit for that.

  I knew it like I knew my face in the mirror.

  Why wouldn’t the color cause me shit? I was going to stick out like a sore thumb, and everyone would instantly be able to recognize exactly who I was and what I wasn’t—Fae.

  With a sigh, I stepped away from the gate with its grand spindles that were wrapped in so many curlicues it was like looking at curled ribbons and not wrought iron, and crossed the gravel drive toward the entrance.

  My feet crunched under the path of perfect pebbles, and overhead, I could feel the Fae staring at me as they flew. Their eyes felt hot on the crown of my head and my wings fluttered again as though they were aware they were being judged and didn’t appreciate it.

  As I headed to the entrance, I took a deep breath and stepped toward my future.

  A year.

  That was all I had to do this for.

  A single year.

  That was barely any time at all.

  Right?

&
nbsp; One

  Gabriella

  “I don’t get why you had to leave.”

  As I stared at what the Fae considered a classroom—or as I’d snootily been told, a Forum, by a bitchy female whose name I had no desire to learn—I had to admit, I didn’t get it either. I didn’t fit in here and the other students were going out of their way to ram that fact home to me.

  Take my current location.

  All around me, there was a vacant two-seat perimeter.

  I was literally an isolated island in a sea of Fae fuckers.

  “I wish I didn’t have to,” I muttered grumpily, eying the bastards who were intent on ignoring me.

  I mean I’d expected this reaction, just not to the extent I was getting it. After all, why bring me here if they didn’t want me? How was this supposed to integrate me into their society? If anything, I was just getting more and more alienated, and this year-long session in torture was starting to seem like a bigger waste of time than I’d imagined.

  “Jessica’s furious.” There was delight in the words Halle, my friend from work, uttered. It wasn’t for me or the fact that Jessica was mad at me, simply that Jessica was mad. Period.

  “I’d pay to see that,” I said with a laugh, lifting my booted feet and hooking them to the base of the seat in front of me.

  If Halle could see me now, she’d probably piss herself. I looked like a modern day Xena, either that or something from The Matrix. I wore leather pants, leather boots, and a black leather jacket that actually might have come from a BDSM dungeon rather than a movie or TV show set. It clung to my chunky waist making it look even chunkier, then had leather straps that buckled all the way from under my boobs down to my hips. This strap ‘look’ was matched on my arms too. They ran from my elbow to my wrist, where the cuff actually extended into a weird glove that my fingers slotted into.

  I felt like a fraud. But Sol, that’s because I was one. I’d been a fraud since birth, had been lying since then to my people, and from the age of eighteen, I’d even been lying to my family. I should probably have ‘FRAUD’ inked onto my forehead. It might really tie this ensemble together because it sure as Sol wasn’t working for me now.

  “You wouldn’t have to pay to see it. She’d pay you,” Halle mumbled, the envy in her tone evident, “she wants you back.”

  My brows rose at that. “She said I’d never work in LA again.”

  Leaving my job hadn’t been pleasant. Jessica, always a bitch, had turned into even more of a bitch this past year as her Fall collection had hit some of the major fashion magazines. Her brand had spiraled, fame was hers, and she was used to getting her own way.

  For most of my time with her, I’d understood how Anne Hathaway had felt in The Devil Wears Prada, but equally, it had been a steep learning curve. Jessica had incorporated some of my ideas into her line, and even though I’d gotten no credit for my input, it had been cool to see my concepts working a catwalk.

  “Of course she did,” Halle said on a huff. “She didn’t want you to leave, and was furious at you for quitting. The only reason she made it this year was because of the ‘Jasmine’ bag.”

  “That’s not fair to her,” I countered uneasily, shifting in my seat. Of course, when I shifted, that meant the leather did too. It creaked and rustled with the movement, irritating the Sol out of me as it did so.

  Halle pshawed. “She took your design and made her name from it, Gabriella. I don’t have to be fair to her. What she did was so wrong. Everyone’s still fuming mad about it.”

  The ‘Jasmine’ bag was an undersized carpet bag that I’d brainstormed. It was a miniature version of the old-fashioned portmanteaus that had been popular back in the Victorian era, but mine were tiny pouches that were attached to a leather strap.

  They were cute, but I hadn’t foreseen them blowing up the way they had. One day, the concept had been zero, and thanks to a couple of Influencers on Instagram, it had become a hero. It had leapfrogged Jessica’s brand onto a whole other sphere.

  “Don’t worry about it, Halle. I’m not,” I told her, honest to the last. The bag was the least of my worries now.

  “You quit over it—”

  “I didn’t,” I retorted. “You think I did but I didn’t. Look, I have to go. It was great catching up but I have class in a minute.”

  “Class? You’ve gone back to school?”

  “The instructor’s just arrived,” I said with a lie. “Talk soon.”

  Cutting the call, I blew out a breath and settled back into my seat, uneasily taking the Forum in.

  The rooms were set up like the ones in college. Conical in shape with the instructor’s desk at the bottom and the students seated in the stands. Aside from the vacant seats around me, it was packed. Save for the desk where the instructor would be seated. He hadn’t arrived yet and wouldn’t for another five or so minutes but I didn’t want to argue with Halle. There was no point.

  She didn’t get it because she didn’t know what I was.

  Most witches didn’t enter the human world of work. They stayed among their own kind. At sixteen, we usually went to the Conclave, got our licenses, and where our magic was aligned, we were assigned jobs at eighteen.

  Because I couldn’t do that, because my family was determined to stay under the radar, we led human lives, and I’d gone to human school, human college, and entered the inhuman world of fashion—boy, that stratosphere was brutal. Fashion designers could teach the Fae a thing or two on bullying.

  To Halle, I should be pissed because my career had been derailed thanks to Jessica’s shitty move, but it wasn’t the first time a lesser designer’s work would be plagiarized and it wouldn’t be the last time either. My priorities weren’t human, however, and the second my mother had called to tell me she’d gotten the letter inviting me to this place, I’d pretty much forgotten about the ‘Jasmine’ bag and had worried about the changes heading my way.

  The doors to the Forum opened and I eyed the newcomer. Matthew vil der Soe. I’d only been here a week but I’d gotten to know all the students fast. The class was big but so was my memory, and to be fair, it would be impossible to forget Matthew.

  He looked like Chris Evans, except hotter. His hair was a mixture of light and dark blond that he had cut into a fade. At the crown of his head, there was a messy quiff with locks that tumbled here and there. He was the kind of beautiful that would make a male model sob.

  Sure, he was so pretty that a woman didn’t know where to look, but his personality? Gaia, what personality? He looked through everyone as though they didn’t exist in the same sphere as him, arrogant to the last with those damnably huge shoulders back, his long, heavily muscled spine straight, and those delicious lips of his pursed into a constant sneer.

  He was like the Jock in school. The one every guy wanted to be friends with, and the one every girl wanted to date.

  He wore a matching outfit to mine, except he looked like he belonged in it, and I just looked like I needed to lose weight. The leather clung to his long legs, the boots fit him too whereas on me, I looked like I was playing dress up. Sure, they were the right size, but some women could pull off shitkickers and I wasn’t one of them. He carried his jacket in a hand that made me wonder what it’d feel like rubbing against my skin, and the white tee he sported clung to his pecs and belly. Mine did too, revealing a couple of lovehandles I needed to diet off. On him? He looked hard as nails.

  I was used to male beauty. Jessica had a men’s line too, so we’d dealt with some hunks, but models, even the guys, tended to run on the thin side. There was nothing thin about Matthew vil der Soe.

  And yeah, I’d studied his package. That didn’t look thin either.

  As he headed along the walkway to the base of the staircase, I watched him climb the few steps to the central row. We didn’t have that many classes indoors, most were Phys-Ed shit that I hated even if my shrinking (aforementioned) lovehandles didn’t, but I’d noticed he always sat there.

  With one foot on the ne
xt step, his gaze clashed with mine. It was like he knew I’d been watching, knew it and had anticipated it so that he could keep his glued to mine as he climbed the stairs.

  My heart felt like it was going to explode even as I worked hard to make sure my face was blank. That was one thing that working with Jessica had taught me—how to have the best poker face imaginable. When she’d thrown tantrums, she’d done the craziest shit. I’d had a paper knife hurled at me once, and the number of shirts she’d ruined when she’d up-ended coffee on me were too many to count. If Matthew thought he could intimidate me, or even force me to look away, he was in for a big surprise.

  Funny thing was, I figured he sensed that. Those bitable lips twitched as he made it to ‘his’ row, and he was the one to look away as he found his seat.

  My throat worked as I stared at the back of his head, and there was no denying the deep heat that was burning away in my core thanks to a look. A single look. Good Gaia, what would happen if he tried to turn me on? Would I just combust into a spontaneous orgasm?

  Tapping my nails against the armrest of my seat, I smirked at the thought, but didn’t have too much time to ponder the idea as the instructor soon arrived, swaggering through the door like he was Elvis about to walk on stage.