Her long blond hair flowed around her shoulders, and she wore a velvet dress with tulle like cobwebs. Her swan-like neck was adorned with a pearl choker necklace. Gloves covered every glimpse of skin up to her elbows. I loved that she must understand how I felt being forced to wear them.
Fox shifted back into his human form in a spray of overexcited sparkles. Then he humped my thigh, whining. His eyes gleamed with an intense need, need, need that had washed through me when I’d first seen the portrait. Was it her desire for me or only his amplified that made him reach for me as a lover?
I snickered, lying back. Fox could put on a decent show. Sleipnir shot me a judgey look (I considered reminding him of the incubus saying never look a gift hump in the mouth, but then decided that it sounded vaguely too kinky), before nudging Fox with my elbow.
The tips of Fox’s ears flushed red, as he scrambled away from me. “Woah, sorry. What the….?”
“Behold the mighty Dick Power of the Ghost Immortal.” I smirked. “Although, if it pleases you, my sexy behind is at your service.”
Fox glanced away, even as his breath quickened. “I already have enough sexy behinds begging to serve me, cheers,” he muttered. “I had to turn down Selena Gomez just yesterday.”
Sleipnir cocked his head. “Huh, do you ever start to believe your own lies?”
Fox shrugged. “Sometimes, if I’m lucky.”
I crawled to the portrait with a sinful slink of my hips (on purpose to outdo his memory of Selena), before kissing the painting on the cheek. For a moment, I smelled the wild forest.
“Night, Ghost Immortal,” I whispered. Then I glanced over my shoulder at Fox. “It’s like this, see, she has no one else to care for her, and somehow, she’s trapped here the same as us. I’ve felt her more strongly since you arrived.” I scrutinized Fox, and he squirmed. “At least I can kiss her each night. I’m a romantic.”
I threw myself back on the pillows dramatically.
Sleipnir arched his brow. “Obsessive.”
I nodded. “Obsessive romantic.”
Why did the Immortals have such a connection with death?
My lover in the portrait needed us now. I’d do anything to set her free.
“Who was she?” Fox asked.
Suddenly, I doubled over in agony, as the I brand on my hand heated. It hurt worse, however, to hear Fox’s howl, as his brand heated as well. He waved his hand frantically like that would cool it. Wide-eyed, he stared at Sleipnir and me like we could make the pain stop, before realizing that we were also clutching our hands and grimacing.
It’d been brilliant to pretend that the whipping boy was truly mine to keep safe. But outside the walls of this room, there were the Princes, the professors, and the Rebel Cup. It didn’t matter how hard I worked to keep my arse pettable, I couldn’t save even myself from them.
“Did we break one of the witch rules like ‘no talking about spooks or your brands will torture you’? Because that’s the sort of thing I should’ve been told in my induction,” Fox rasped.
“You’re kind of a tightass, you know that?” Sleipnir gritted out, leaping off the bed. “Induction’ll cover Orientation, Control of Powers, How Best to Avoid Dying—”
“What?” Fox stumbled after Sleipnir with far less enthusiasm after his casually thrown in dying.
“The burning is a summons meaning battle or danger.” Sleipnir’s grin was all teeth. “Trust me, this’ll be exciting.”
Sleipnir’s hair bristled into sharp spikes. He looked more dangerous and wilder than any creature I’d seen or imagined, as the werewolf tattoos on his arms threw back their heads and howled.
I forced myself to smile, even though my knees felt like buckling with pain. Yet I knew that look on Sleipnir: it meant he’d set a reckless plan in motion. After all, where had he sneaked off to earlier, whilst I’d enjoyed the best wank of my life?
Sleipnir had been threatening all summer to bring the chaos moment. Did he even know how risky it was for him to fly his da’s freedom and rebellion flag in an academy like this? Now on my new whipping boy’s first night, we were being summoned to face an unknown danger.
Chapter Seven
FOX
When the dragon swooped overhead with a screech that made my ears ring, I dived for a snowbank. Then I spluttered, as I swallowed a mouthful of freezing snow. The brand on my hand throbbed like a pulse.
When I’d arrived only a couple of hours earlier in the bailey, I’d been frightened that the witch professors could’ve been using my dick for target practice. Yet all along I should’ve been worried that the dragons hungered for my cock and balls and not in the kinky Witches Who Swing party way, which Aquilo had whispered to me he’d overheard was his sister’s style.
It’d turned out that Damelza had been telling the truth about mum’s donation…truth: bribe to the dragon polo team. Unfortunately, that meant dragons existed. Then it meant that candles and bells, I’d be forced to ride one.
Wasn’t it enough that I’d had to travel through the dragon gargoyle perched outside the West Wing, who’d licked me with his stone tongue? The only licking I wanted was from Rebel Ghost.
This time, when I’d stumbled to my knees outside the castle’s walls, I had puked in the snow. Pan knows, I’d snuggled on Bask’s lap as a fox, which meant that I’d already broken too much of the House of Jewels’ etiquette to stand a chance at that good first impression.
Then Sleipnir had yanked me up, bouncing with excitement like we were on our way to a punk concert, rather than heading into danger, and pulled me past a host of mysterious buildings that I’d barely been able to make out by the light of the moon.
What other secrets did the Rebel Academy hold?
From the outside, the academy had looked rugged with gray walls. The witches hid the truth of their colorful inside just as well as they hid their lies with their charms.
The closer that I’d walked over the crunching snow towards a huge building, which appeared with its barred stalls and smoky scent to be a cross between a prison and the gateway to hell, the more tender the brand became.
Voldemort in panties, was the brand like a screwed-up Bat-Signal?
“The stables,” Sleipnir had muttered, whilst something dark had flashed in his eyes.
Truth: I know the danger that we’ll discover there.
My powers of Confess had blasted me with the nu metal roar of Adema’s “Immortal”. Either Sleipnir had missed his Mortal Kombat sessions with his dad (and I’d have given anything to be a fly on the wall to those), or he’d been certain that we were going into battle.
How did he know? Why hadn’t he told me?
It’d been a godly kick in the balls that Sleipnir had promised I wasn’t a stranger, but he’d kept me in the dark like one. I’d been treated like that by my own family. After Sleipnir had gifted me a coat and scarf, before I’d followed him to the gargoyle, I’d allowed myself to think of him as better than my mum and sister because only dad had ever risked giving a shimage gifts.
Bask had told me that whipping boys weren’t handed out their own coats because in witch tradition they didn’t feel the cold. I figured that Damelza had a catchy bullshit motto about it.