Sadly, I knew better.
“Unless Spells, Hexes, and Potions Class went hideously wrong today, I’m assuming that you’ve been adding to your Wank Count.” I raised my eyebrow.
I knew far more about wanking than a Victorian witch burned for wicked pleasures ever should. Hold on, maybe I should have known about that…? Either way, the Wank Count was a game played between my familiars for the number of students that they caught indulging in self pleasure, and as this was an academy for the bad boys of the supernatural world, it now ran into the thousands.
“Fuck me, I always thought that the Dark Fae were kinky.” Flair stilled. “But the fae prince—”
“Don’t you dare mention fae,” I snarled.
Suddenly, I was shaking. My dress billowed out into mist like I was fading, even more ghostly than before.
“Prince Lysander’s not his uncle,” Echo said softly. “He’s not Titus.”
“He’s still a prick though,” Flair muttered.
I turned away from them, staring once again at the academy. I ached to return to it.
Last term, an Immortal had arrived: an incubus. His craving for pleasure had been as great as mine. It’d called to my magic, feeding and strengthening it, until at long last, I too had been able to break free of the tree but only to reach him in the Immortal’s West Wing, when he’d summoned me.
I craved him now.
“As the bones fall, I heard the Principal and her daughter talking of something…someone…important.” Echo hopped closer. “A new student has been sent here and he’s special.”
With an effort, I solidified. Hello, ankles, my old friends.
I blew out a breath, as my heart (or what passed for my ghostly memory of one), slowed. I’d had over a century to understand that I wasn’t dead, but also that I still felt alive. The effect was horrifying. Perhaps, I’d been the one cursed?
“Special?” I asked, welcoming the distraction.
Flair snapped his bill together with a single sharp snap of irritation. “Just because your witchy bitch of a mum transformed our fuckable Fallen backsides into familiars, doesn’t mean that we can’t read.”
I blinked. “Thank you, I’m sure that your skill will become invaluable when I ask for my next bedtime story. Oh wait, I’m trapped in a tree. Well, do continue to list skills that for some inexplicable reason you think I doubt.”
“The new student’s file was open on the study desk, and I peeked at the first page, boss. His name’s Fox, and he arrives tomorrow morning. By the way, you make me shiver with all that sexy sarcasm.” Flair chuckled darkly.
“Special means…different,” Echo muttered.
Why did he sound so worried? All students were sent to the academy because they’d committed a crime or were too different for their own worlds.
What had this new student, Fox, done that made him such a danger?
All of a sudden, my magic pulsed brighter, tugging on me, until I knew — soul deep — burning and desperate, why Fox was both special and different. He wasn’t a danger to the academy: he was in danger.
Hecate, no…
The new student was a mage.
Right now, Fox had crossed the wards and was walking alone down the long path through the Dead Woods, which swept through the estate to the castle’s gateway.
I knew because I could sense him.
He had no idea what awaited him.
Not safe, not safe, not…
I could feel his heartbeat in time with my own, taste the fear on his sweet breath, and in turn feed him my own fizzing magic like candyfloss.
I wouldn’t let him be alone.
It took me a moment to register Echo thwapping his wing against my face.
“On my blood, you faded.” Why did Echo sound like he was weeping? “Don’t leave us, please, don’t leave.”
My voice was far steadier, than my ragged breathing, “Candles and cauldrons, I shan’t ever abandon you. The new Rebel doesn’t arrive tomorrow but tonight. He’s born of a witch family and he has magic.”
“Well, shit.” Flair blinked.
He always had a way with words.
Fox would be the first mage since my lover to be allowed through the wards into the academy. It’d become a rule: Mages were banned.
Why had it been lifted now?
I clenched my jaw. It didn’t matter because this time around, I’d keep the mage safe. I didn’t know how but I wouldn’t allow him to die, alone and in the dark, like Robin. If it took my second death and fading away for good to protect him, then I’d throw myself on the flames this time, I wouldn’t need to be bound.
Rebel Academy was mine and so were the Rebels. I might be wicked, but I protected those whose pleasure I could feel beating through me: a mage, an incubus, and a third Immortal whose godly power was just as fierce.
Then I shuddered, as warm pleasure unfurled through me. I was being summoned to the Immortal’s West Wing.
Who was I deny such a sensual call?
The lurch, like my magic was being wound on a thread, rushed to my head. I closed my eyes, only to open them again and find myself stuck in the portrait that mother had created of me on the night of the Enchanted Ball. It chilled me to be staring out of painted eyes.
Please don’t let me be hung still in the portrait gallery where Robin was walled up…
When I noticed the torch emblem over the archway that proved I was in the West Wing, however, I calmed. The bedroom was plain with an oak wardrobe and three desks that groaned with books. Then my heart sped up again at the sprawl of naked incubus in the center of the vast bed beneath the portrait.
The incubus had pushed back the sheets, but had nested in the satin pillows like a ruby eyed, alabaster skinned emperor. His silky black hair haloed his face, as if he wasn’t every sin that the witches had warned me about.
But what was the point of temptation if you couldn’t give in to it? I hungered to devour him.
I’d never seen Bask — or Crave as he’d been rechristened when he’d entered Rebel Academy — stripped bare before. Although, he still wore long pink gloves as was the law for all incubi. With one touch, they could read your deepest and darkest desires to both feed on your pleasure and to control you. A fed incubus was a dangerous creature, and yet, without your pleasure, they’d starve.
Did he desire touch as much as I did?
For a moment, I was distracted by the music that was playing. A woman sang hauntingly about craving, as a man rapped (Echo had explained to me that nowadays talking counted as music; I called it lazy). Echo was entranced by this popular music. It certainly had less dreary warbling than opera, and more the erotic sense that the singers were making love to you, as stripped naked as Bask was right now.
I bit my lip. Echo was right: this twenty-first century was electrifying.
Bask lay on his back, staring up at my portrait with an adoring intensity, which made me shiver. Then he trailed one gloved hand down his chest, circling his nipple, before tugging on it more roughly. He bit his plush lip to hold back his moan.