Faeling Hard: An Eight Wings Academy Novel: Book Two Read online

  “Or, maybe we need to start with something a little simpler,” Daniel stated softly. “You said yourself that what takes young witches a day to learn, it took you a week. To be honest, that was why I was so surprised when your witch magic made it respond. But it is older than your Fae magic. Makes sense that things would be a little rusty on this front.” Warmed by his attempt to cheer me up, I watched as he got to his feet, headed over to the fridge, and grabbed, of all things, a bottle of ketchup.

  Opening the cap, he spurted some onto the tabletop and dipped his finger into the splotch of sauce.

  As he took a seat, he began to draw some runes. “Okay, this one is for motion.” He drew an ‘M’ shape, except the tips of the stalks that made up the letter had flourishes on them that transformed it into a character all its own.

  Next came a lightning bolt, except this one had about five jagged points to it. Unlike the other runes he’d shown us, this one did have sharp edges. “This means energy,” he explained.

  After that, there was a ‘Z,’ but it was shaped like a backward ’S’, and he sliced right through its center with a backward ’r.’ “Those two combined mean altered strength.”

  “That supposed to mean something, bud?” I teased, amused at his expectant look.

  “Yeah. You’ll see.” He winked at me. “If it works.”

  I sucked down a breath and went to gather some blood. Amazed to see how the wound had begun closing up, I gaped at the drying remnants of purple that looked like I’d been in a paint fight.

  “We heal fast,” Seph reminded me, evidently sensing my surprise.

  Grimacing as I used the knife on myself again, I mumbled, “It’s a wonder you get anything done. I mean, you must be losing blood all the damn time.”

  Daniel snorted. “We work fast, and we don’t waste it. The runes are limited. It’s not like witch magic. You can do anything with witch magic so long as you know how to cast a spell. With Fae magic, it’s not the same.”

  “It is.”

  I shot my grandfather a look over my shoulder. “When did you sneak in?”

  “Wasn’t aware I could sneak into my own kitchen?”

  I wrinkled my nose at him. “Sneak.”

  His lips twitched. “I must say, I do appreciate your lack of fear of me.”

  Well, that took me aback. “Am I supposed to be scared of you?”

  “Not many Fae can do what I do,” he said simply. “It’s earned me a reputation in those that I want to remember it.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Seph rasped, his eyes wide at the implied threat in my grandfather’s words.

  “It means that if people remember me, it’s for a reason. If they don’t, it’s because I chose to make them forget me.”

  My throat grew thick as I recalled what Noa, Seph’s father, had said, as well as the myriad ways my grandfather had reminded me that we’d met several times—each occasion, of course, came up blank. He’d already said he wouldn’t, but things were different now. Things were— “Are you going to erase yourself from our memories?” I blurted out, because the thought hurt me more than I could say.

  It wasn’t like I didn’t already have a lot of family. Sol, it could be said that I had them growing out of the woodwork. Eight brothers? Each of them cute? They were gonna get married and make babies soon enough. I’d had my abuela on my mom’s side, a set of grandparents on my dad’s, and until last year, I’d had an aunt and uncle too, but my dad’s brother and his wife had died in a car crash.

  Family wasn’t something I had in short supply, and yet, this was a link to another part of my life. One that made me feel grounded. Since I was eighteen, I’d felt alone. So intrinsically alone because those damn wings had popped up out of nowhere, cutting me out of my family as they singled me out as weird, and I’d been left with no alternative other than to hide them from everyone for fear they’d…

  Shit, I didn’t know what they’d do. I wasn’t even sure why I’d hidden them from my mom.

  We’d always been hiding from the Conclave, but maybe she’d have tossed me to them if she’d known what a freak I was? At least, I realized now that had always been my fear.

  Linford, on the other hand, didn’t think I was weird.

  Or, if he did, he found me interesting. I could deal with that. Any day of the damn week, especially if it meant he wasn’t scared of me.

  My heart pounded in my chest as I waited on his answer, the organ pounding like a drum as each second passed.

  “No.”

  I swallowed. “No, what?”

  “No, I won’t erase your memory. I have no need to. I’ll not be long for this realm.”

  “Shut up,” I rasped. “Don’t say things like that.” The thought of losing him when I’d only just found him, and not through some inconvenient amnesia, scorched me from the inside out.

  His laugh was a little ragged, but he tipped his chin at me. “I forgot how sentimental witches could be.” He surprised me by striding over to the table and resting a hand on my shoulder. Squeezing, he murmured, “Runes are rudimentary to be sure, but if you gather enough of them together, then they can be exquisitely complex.”

  “Complex enough to erase memories and craft portals?” I queried.

  When he hesitated, Daniel blurted out, “I wasn’t taught anything like that.”

  “Just how to cheat at chores?” Linford interjected, amused.

  “Huh?”

  Linford shot me a look. “The marks he made on my table, in ketchup of all damn things—the runes are a spell to cleanse the surface.”

  My mouth rounded, and with a grumble, I saw the damn cut I’d made had closed up again.

  “This is getting annoying,” I mumbled.

  “Trust me, it comes in handy out on the field,” Linford teased, and I glared at him.

  Apparently, working in the garden with his flowers had cheered him up, because in all the time I’d been with him—a whopping forty hours—I’d never seen him so chirpy.

  Dipping my finger into the purple blood, I mimicked the designs Daniel had made with the sauce.

  When a gust of wind appeared from nowhere, I gasped and watched as it morphed into a vortex of light. There was no gold, like I was used to seeing with the Fae who used magic, and I didn’t call on the wind like I did when I normally cast a spell. This came from… nowhere.

  Within seconds, the table was clean.

  Empty too.

  “Where did the dishes go?” I wondered, my tone astonished.

  “In the cupboards, of course,” Linford replied easily. “Those four runes crafted that spell. But to create more in-depth magic? It takes thousands of characters.”

  I shot him a startled look. “That’s a lot of blood.”

  He shrugged. “Small sacrifice to pay.”

  8

  Matthew

  “Is it?”

  A few hours later, I squinted up at the ceiling as I processed Riel’s question. But when I drew a blank, I had to mumble, “Huh?”

  “Is it really?”

  “Is what really, Riel?” I queried around a yawn this time.

  “Is it worth the sacrifice?”

  When I thought back to how Linford had ended our conversation by shuffling us out of the kitchen, declaring that we’d invaded it for long enough, I yawned again.

  “Blood is easy to come by,” I said dryly. “I mean, let’s face it, I don’t know as much as Daniel, but blood is definitely easier to get than ink.”

  “Doesn’t mean that it should be sacrificed. Especially if it can do… dark things.”

  “And witch magic can’t?” I replied. “Witch magic can stop invasions,” I pointed out. Sol, just look at what her grandmother had achieved in her lifetime with all the weird spells that none of us had even realized witches could cast.

  “True.” She curled onto her side and murmured, “I feel weird.”

  My brow puckered. “Good weird or bad weird?”

  She hummed. “Bad weird, but n
ot in pain or anything like that, you know? Just on edge.”

  “You want to go sit outside for a while?” I questioned, my voice low. The others hadn’t stirred from their sleep, so I saw no point in waking them.

  “Yeah. I think I do,” she rasped, and I heard the tension in her voice more than ever now.

  As we rolled out of bed and headed out onto the terrace, I curved my arm around her. It felt odd to do that. Odd because I’d never done it with a woman before. I could never have been called demonstrative in the past. Focused? Sure. Determined? Yep. Even in relationships. I knew what I wanted and didn’t, and wouldn’t budge. But demonstrative or affectionate? Nope.

  She pressed her hand to my bare belly, and the simple touch had the skin where every single one of her fingertips rested feeling like it was tingling.

  When I peered down, I saw the glow, and my lips twitched—at least the tingle made sense now.

  When she saw where I was looking, a gasp escaped her, and her hand shot back. Quickly, I grabbed her wrist and put her fingers back where they’d been.

  “You didn’t hear me complaining, did you?” I questioned lightly, inherently pleased that she was happy again. That glow could only mean that, right?

  “N-No,” she replied, but her voice was shaken.

  “Happy again?” I asked, needing confirmation. Sol, needing affirmation. I wanted her to be happy with me. So basically content that her magic could manifest for no real reason or out of a potentially dire consequence.

  Her silence was contemplative. “I’m happy to be with you, confused about other stuff.”

  “Figures.” I shrugged. “Lot going on.”

  “Understatement of the century,” she grumbled, as I steered her toward a swinging sofa that overlooked the paradise that was Linford’s backyard.

  Seriously, the old guy had a major green thumb. I’d never appreciated flowers and shit in the past, but seeing just how expansive this tropical paradise was? I’d have to be a freakin’ robot not to be impressed.

  Of course, I’d been accused of being a robot in the past by exes, so…

  When she slumped down on the seat, I maintained my hold on her, realizing I needed the connection as much as she might.

  There was something strange going on with her, and where she was concerned, it wasn’t like strange with other women. She wasn’t thinking about how I wasn’t great at second guessing her needs, or wondering if I was only into her for sex.

  This was a whole other ball of wax.

  This wasn’t a relationship where the woman was insecure in my feelings for her. Riel knew, point blank, what we were to one another, knew we were going to allow her to claim us, so her thoughts were in a different stratosphere to most women’s. She wasn’t focused on us, but on what was happening with her, and that was a major concern.

  Because, in that too, Riel was different.

  Not necessarily bad, even if the clusterfuck hovering over us had ramifications I couldn’t predict, just… different.

  “What are you thinking?” I rasped, brushing my lips against her temple, even as I wondered why I wanted to do such a thing.

  The Matthew of just a few weeks ago and this Matthew were so alien to one another, but then, from what she’d told me, the Virgo bond itself was alien. I figured that it would stir things in me that had never been requisite before, too.

  The urge to be with her, constantly, the need to touch her, at all times, to protect her, always, was like an ache in arthritic bones.

  “I feel different.”

  The short statement had my brow puckering, even as the word she used to describe herself and the word I’d used were exactly the same. “Different how?”

  “Different as in the magic did something to me.”

  “You only cleaned the kitchen table, honey, it wasn’t like you opened a portal or anything,” I half-chided, trying to stop my amusement from bleeding into my voice.

  She pinched what little there was on my belly to pinch, but when you’d been sliced and diced by a sword since you were a kid, pain tolerance became a natural part of anyone’s self-defense. She’d squirmed and squeaked when she’d cut into her forearm earlier. Daniel hadn’t even flinched. I wasn’t saying that pain was something we sought, but it was something we accepted, and our bodies adjusted to it over time. She was softer than us, and like she’d vowed from the very start, not a warrior.

  Before all this had happened, I’d thought her weak for that. Now? I didn’t want her to be a warrior. I just wanted her to be herself.

  “I know that,” she grumbled. “But the magic felt different, and it called on me in a different way.”

  “Only natural.”

  She gulped. “Maybe.”

  “I definitely want to work on using Fae magic more. It seems to have other capabilities than the witch magic offers us,” I mused.

  “You’re only saying that because Daniel can do it and you can’t.”

  From her snort, I knew she was teasing, but my words were deadly serious as I told her, “If it’s another means of protecting you, I want to learn it.”

  “You want two types of magic and combat skills to protect me, hmm?” she asked softly, her voice a low hum as she stared out into the beautiful garden. It wasn’t well lit, but there were lights that illuminated certain parts, casting long glows and deep shadows on certain areas. The palm trees were all sprinkled with string lights, and there were a few spotlights here and there that beamed upward through clusters of plants, the names of which I didn’t know.

  “I think you need it,” I replied.

  She sighed. “Considering I’d make a useless spy, it’s strange the AFata want me on their side. Especially as they probably know more about my skills with magic than I do.”

  “Well, they don’t know that,” I said reasonably.

  A laugh escaped her. “Maybe we should send them a text?”

  Snickering, I said, “That’s definitely one option.”

  “What’s another?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t think anything will convince them that you don’t fit into their plans. Let’s face it, this is generational. They’ve been waiting for you for a long time, and they expect you can do one thing, and because they expect it—”

  “That makes them more dangerous to me if I can’t deliver. And, let’s face it, I won’t be able to, will I?”

  Grimacing, I admitted, “I doubt it. Not the way you are now. I mean, if I hadn’t seen you cast that day, I’d never have added you to the troupe.”

  She sighed. “I mean, I got through the exam somehow. I doodled. Doodled. There’s no way in Sol I should have passed that exam, and yet, here I am. In a troupe because of that test.”

  Hesitating, I asked, “Do you think someone on the faculty is in league with the AFata?”

  “Until recently, nope. But my grandfather told me that most witch born Fae he’s managed to squirrel out are all instructors. None ever became warriors, and none were admin.”

  “Sol,” I breathed. “So, there could be several spies at the Academy?”

  “Maybe. They might not be spies for the AFata but—”

  “The Conclave. If they do have spies at the Academy, they, along the way, might have had suspicions of their own if they saw a hint of magic about you. Let’s face it, you have started glowing bright pink all of a sudden.”

  “Yeah.” She grimaced. “Not easy to keep incognito when you look like a bright flamingo in stressful situations. Plus, it would make sense for there to be spies at Eight Wings. Good way to keep an eye on the Fae, right?”

  “It’s certainly one way. The Assembly doesn’t exactly reveal hidden secrets to the student body though.”

  “No, but they don’t need to, do they? All the instructors have a nice gleam of respectability about them. They’re the teachers of the future generations of warriors. They’re respected, even if they’re not well liked. It gives them a certain gravitas in society, which makes them perfectly placed to spy and get closer to
people who count,” Riel reasoned.

  A sudden surge of feeling appeared in her voice, and it amused me because I knew exactly where it was aimed. “You’re hoping Leopold is one too, aren’t you?”

  She snickered. “Maybe. The douche. Although, with the way he treated me, it makes him more of a dick than a douche.” As her laughter died, she twisted so she could press her face into my side, then she whispered, “I never needed things like this before.”

  “Like what?”

  “To sit with someone in a quiet garden at night, to talk about things that matter, to be held and to hold.” She blew out a breath. “It comes as a surprise, that’s for sure.”

  “You won’t hear me arguing,” I admitted softly, tilting my head back to stare up at the sky.

  “You didn’t need it either?”

  I snorted. “No. Of course not.”

  When she smacked me in the stomach, I didn’t bother faking an ‘oof’ sound. Her fingers spread out to cover the area she’d hit, and I felt them pressing down against the muscle, testing the strength there even as she murmured, “Why not?”

  “Because I had no intention of getting wrapped up with a woman,” I told her simply. “That wasn’t my goal.”

  “No, your goal was to bring the vil der Soes into a new period in the line’s history, am I right?”

  Her moody tone had my lips twitching. “Yeah, you’re right. Not so much anymore, of course, but that was my original purpose.”

  “I’ve even wrecked that, haven’t I?”

  I reached for her hand and raised her fingers to my lips. As I pressed a kiss to the tip of her pointer finger, I informed her, “Yes.”

  She snorted. “Way to make me feel better, Matt.”

  Laughing, I nipped the same tip I’d just kissed. “Goals change, Riel. You wrecked that, but you made a different goal for me. That’s okay.”

  “Not for your family,” she pointed out.

  “You know I believe in kismet,” I rasped. “It’s obviously not the line’s time to be forgiven. That’s okay. My uncle should never have done what he did, and I shouldn’t have to be the one who makes up for his sins.”