Four Kinds of Cursed (The True and the Crown Book 4) Page 2

  I wander across the room to lean in the doorway, where the stiff, cold breeze coming off the ocean tosses my hair. It’s always cold in the mansion, no matter how many fires I start; I might as well leave the doors open and blow some of the musk and rot away. The manor has been boarded up for years.

  Sometimes I think I can still smell the iron tang of blood rising from the floorboards, though.

  When I try to look out to the sea, the swells and dips in the grass draw my eye instead. Dozens of them, maybe hundreds. Graves of my father’s victims, used for his dark magic.

  If I could figure out how to banish his ghost, and still keep my mother here, I would. But all the spells I’ve found would break the bonds of every ghost linked to this house. It seems I have to choose between having both of them and having neither. I’m not ready to make that choice.

  Penny butts her head against my leg, as if she’s comforting me, and I rest my hand on her fur. I need to clear my head. That feels like an impossible task sometimes with these two ghosts.

  “Come on, Penny,” I say. “Let’s fly.”

  She bounds along beside me as I head toward the stables. When I walk into the barn, which smells sweetly of hay, my unicorn whickers at me, stretching her neck forward eagerly. I step to one side to pet her, avoiding the long, sharp horn that emerges from the bony top of her head. She’s as dangerous as she is beautiful. But when I pet her, she tosses her silver-white mane in ecstasy.

  After a little bit, I pick up the saddle that Rian gifted me along with the unicorn. His father has tried to break both him and the wild unicorns, but I don’t think he’ll succeed with either. “May I?”

  When she bobs her head, I slip the saddle onto her back and begin to tighten the buckles. She and I move together well, but it’s still helpful to have something to grip when we soar through the clouds. It would be a pathetic way to end, plummeting to smack into the village below. It feels wrong to saddle a unicorn, but she doesn’t seem to mind—not when it’s me.

  The saddle is rich black leather decorated with diamonds and emeralds in the pommel and the trim; it’s worth a ridiculous amount of money, but I still leave it slung over the stall wall. Anyone breaching the many wards and walls around this house would be here to kill me, not to steal. Comforting thoughts.

  “Let’s go,” I murmur to her, and she moves through the open stall door to the yard, stepping high, excited to soar. I never close her in, but she still waits for me before she flies.

  I can’t leave the ghosts behind me for long, but at least for an hour, Penny and I can take to the sky.

  Chapter 2

  I feel Mycroft coming long before he reaches the house. It’s late in the evening, but it’s hard for me to sleep in this haunted house, this mansion surrounded by wild-blooming roses and pockets of sunken grass where the earth has caved into the graves.

  I’m reading in front of the fire in the library, with Penny snoring next to me, when someone tangles in the lines of my magic strung around the grounds. My feet hit the hardwood floor and my book tumbles out of my lap, the thud reverberating in the quiet room.

  When he pushes through my wards, the lines of magic yank tight around my chest, stealing the breath from my lungs. As I draw a rushed breath in, I inhale that familiar warm, spicy cologne and the scent that is Mycroft’s own, full of earth and sunshine.

  The heavy velvet curtains are drawn over the floor-to-ceiling windows behind me, but I don’t need to open them. My magic spins a picture: the big shadow crossing under the low-slung, waving branches of the willow trees. He’s silent as a whisper, his boots barely crunching over the gravel. Then the vision shifts; now the house is in front of me, the stone mansion black and ominous under silver-gray storm clouds. As I see through Mycroft’s eyes, the wand is heavy in my hand as I sweep it back and forth, clearing the wards.

  I shake my head, which feels suddenly heavy, as if seeing through Mycroft’s eyes had drained my energy. Was this vision purely my power—returned after all these years with a vengeance—or is it my connection to Mycroft that raises his scent in my nose and curls my bare toes against the cold floor in anticipation?

  As anxiety snakes through my stomach, I glance quickly at my reflection in the mirror above the mantle, which is illuminated as much by the silver moonlight through the windows as by the two flickering lanterns.

  Let’s be honest here; I haven’t been expecting visitors. The woman who stares back at me in the mirror has golden-brown hair pulled into a floppy bun and wears an oversized sweatshirt that says It’s Corum University Not Decorum University.Hey, even a university of magic has spring break. Stelly sent it to me in a care package, hoping that I’ll be back in the dorm before spring break.

  This is not how I want to greet an old flame. I yank my hair tie out and shake my hair back from my shoulders before stripping off my clothes. Once I stand naked in the library, shivering, I reach out for the magic that dances in the air. As I visualize a warm, soft sheet of magic, I wrap it around my body. Airren taught me this trick, but I don’t need him anymore.

  When I turn back to the mirror, I'm wearing an iridescent rose-gold dress that clings to every curve—such as those curves are—before flaring into a dramatic skirt. The ground shifts under my feet. I reach out to catch myself on the edge of the desk as delicate heels rise, lifting my feet, the straps of the shoes like tendrils wrapping around my ankles.

  I’m my own fucking fairy godmother.

  Mycroft is arrogant enough to come in the front door, so I head for the foyer, an enormous stone two-story room, as cold and dark as the night outside. My heels are a faint clicking, lost in the expanse of the corridor.

  A crack of lightning fills the foyer with bright light that's imprinted in my vision, and the rumble of thunder follows. The hard wind catches the door, slamming it against the wall. Mycroft fills the doorway, his big shoulders and tapered waist silhouetted as lightning strikes again, closer, filling the world with a painful golden glow before the night darkens once more. His hands hang loose at his sides, not that it matters. I know how fast Croft can reach his wand.

  “I didn’t think they’d send you,” I say, by way of greeting.

  “Why’s that?” His voice is a low, sexy rumble.

  “You’ve never had much of a way with words.” As I finish speaking, I slip through the shadows thrown by the balcony above, raising magic between us so I’ll be lost to him in the dim. Then I pause. “Unless you’re here to kill me.”

  “How could you think that?” There’s an edge of something in his voice. Anger? Anguish? I can’t tell.

  “You’re the one I’d pick for that too,” I say.

  He doesn’t take the bait.

  “You’re not being smart.” He closes the door behind him, shutting out the steady, oppressive beat of the rain and the driving wind.

  “You’ve just now noticed that? I fell in love with multiple assholes who pretended to be something they weren’t—”

  “We lied to you,” he interrupts, his voice curt. “We didn’t pretend.”

  “That’s a fine line of semantics. But I was the idiot. I knew you were spies. I should have known you were spying on me.”

  “We lied about why we were in your life. We didn’t pretend we loved you.” His voice is rough. “We meant it.”

  “We?”

  “Airren. Cax.” His voice softens, just slightly, when he adds, “Me.”

  “You need to get out of my house.”

  He takes a step forward. “This isn’t your house.”

  “It is.”

  “Tera, it’s dangerous to stay here. There are rumors about the house being occupied. People are scared…they think the place is haunted.”

  “They’re not wrong.”

  “Come home with me. Back to Corum, where you belong.”

  Typical Croft. He doesn’t know how to ask. All he does is order.

  “You need to go.”

  “You’re coming with me.” He says it firmly, but then, C
roft is always firm. “You stay alone, you’re going to get yourself killed. You have enemies…”

  “I have you,” I say, my voice low and fierce. “I knew not to trust anyone. The worst enemy is the one you never see coming. The one with the gifts and the kisses…”

  “And it was never more than a kiss, was it?” He takes a step closer to me. This close, he smells of the rain, the clean scent of the outdoors. His white shirt beneath the open coat clings to his chest. “Did you ever think about why?”

  “You didn’t want to waste yourself on a girl you didn’t love?”

  “I didn’t want to be intimate when I had to lie to the girl I do love,” he says. “You fucking idiot.”

  People in Avalon don’t curse much. I’ve brought Croft over to my dirtside ways, though.

  There’s something wrong with me, but hearing him call me a fucking idiot warms my heart.

  “I’m not going with you,” I say, my voice soft.

  “Don’t make this hard.”

  I take a step back away from him, intent on melting back into the shadows, but he reaches out and catches my wrist. His grip is bruisingly hard.

  “You’ll die here,” he growls. “I’m not going to let that happen.”

  “You don’t get a say,” I tell him, “and you don’t get to touch me.”

  Croft is as predictable as he is powerful. He tugs my arm, pulling me toward him, already bending forward to push his shoulder into my abs and lift me onto his shoulders like the lost lamb he thinks I am.

  When he stumbles forward into empty air instead, he looks around, confusion written across his handsome face. I’m just out of reach, smiling at him as I flick my fingers and raise the shadows around me.

  His jaw sets. “I’m not lying now. Not about loving you and not about what’s coming.”

  “I’m not a powerless little girl anymore. I’m not afraid of what’s coming.”

  Despite my attempts to cloak myself in the dark, suddenly his body is against mine. He pushes me against a stone column, which is as hard and cold behind me as he is hard and warm in front. His chiseled lower abs brush against my stomach. Some small, crazy part of me almost twines my arms around his neck out of habit.

  His hands wrap hard around my wrists again, but his breath is a soft flutter against my ear. “You were never powerless, even when you didn’t have your powers.”

  Does he—the most powerful magician in Corum and a warrior beside—really believe that? I wish I did.

  He presses so close to me that his knee between my thighs pins my skirt to the wall. His broad shoulders fill my gaze. So many times, I wrapped my hands around those shoulders playfully to tug him close for a kiss. I daydreamed about sinking my fingers deep into those shoulders as he pumped into me. Just the thought, while his breath flutters the strands of hair loose around my throat, makes my nipples pebble under the silky fabric.

  “You won’t say you love me back, will you?” he murmurs in my ear. “Who’s pretending now?”

  “You and I are nothing to each other.” I press my palms against his chest and try to shove him away from me, but of course, Croft is as hard and unyielding as stone.

  “And now you’re a liar too.” His lips graze the corner of my jaw. He inhales softly, as if he’s breathing me in, as if he’s missed me the same way I missed him.

  Desire sparks—raw and base—and my core clenches. Despite myself, my face turns toward him. As our lips hover a breath apart, his gold-flecked brown eyes meet mine. For all Croft’s bossiness, there’s something pleading in his gaze.

  If I send him away—if I can even get him to go—he’ll lock his hurt away as he strides back through the rain, and I’ll find myself on my knees on the cold stone floors, more alone than before he came. My lips graze tentatively against his.

  When his eyes widen, my chest tightens and I jerk away. He didn’t want me to kiss him. God, he’s made a fool of me so many times.

  This time, I use my magic when I shove him away. This time, he slams into the column across from me. Another crack of lightning illuminates his face. His expression is stoic and calm as ever—damn him—but his eyes are full of wonder.

  “You are really powerful,” he says. “I’m so glad, Tera.”

  “Are you?” I take a step toward him. My wand slams into my palm; I must have called it in the back of my mind, without thinking of it consciously. “You hurt me, Croft. You shouldn’t be glad I’m just as powerful as you now.”

  The familiar lines at the corners of his eyes deepen. Croft rarely smiles; that’s his version of a cocky grin. He doubts I’m just as powerful.

  “Then let’s see it, girl,” he says. “You want to hurt me? Hurt me. You want to kiss me, kiss me. I’m here now.”

  “You’re so sure you’re going to walk away unscathed.” I shouldn’t lie, but I can’t stop the angry words forming on my lips. I could never hurt Croft, not really. I want him to feel as lost as I have. And I want him to see me as I really am now: strong, powerful, dangerous.

  I’m no longer the girl who needed him to keep me alive, but I still need him.

  “I’m sure I’m going to walk away with you.” There’s that familiar warm arrogance in his voice.

  As I jerk my wand up, my magic slams him into the column again. He raises his own wand too. Ribbons fly from the end of my wand, gleaming scarlet and gold, hot and brilliant as the anger humming through my blood. They collide with the arc of his magic, which is bright and blue and cold as the ocean on a winter’s day.

  He pushes against my magic, and I step forward, matching his pace. I’m not going to run from him or hide in the shadows.

  Until I met him, and Cax, and Airren, and the Fox, it felt like I was invisible. Then I was glad to feel seen, but even so, I was seen as weak. Vulnerable. I was their girl, their asset, but not their equal.

  I’m not weak now.

  The force of our magic pushing against each other grows hotter and more powerful, a thing between us that begins to take on a life of its own. The colors tumble over each other, bleeding to purple where they meet, racing into a hot pulsing ball threaded through with ice-blue and fiery red. The rain beats a steady maddening staccato on the windows, and the magic between us bursts.

  I don’t know if I stumble into Croft or he stumbles into me, but his arm circles my waist, his hard forearm like a bar against my lower back. I grab his stupid, handsome face in both hands, my thumbs under those eyes that looked down at me with such certainty. Part of me still isn’t sure if I wanted to pop his head like a bubble or if I wanted to close the distance between us.

  “I hate you now. I trusted you like I never trusted anyone.” And all the while, I’d been nothing but a mission.

  “I know.” He doesn’t bother to apologize again—has he ever apologized? Instead, his lips meet mine. His mouth is hard, claiming, his lips searing-hot.

  I kiss him back just as intensely. His lips part, and his tongue sweeps the inside curves of my mouth. He tastes like whiskey, as if he’d had a drink before he faced me, and I pull back.

  He groans, leaning his forehead against mine. “Do we have to fight, Tera?”

  My hand presses to his cheek, to the wide, hard edges of his cheekbone and the hollow beneath. I pat his clean-shaven skin hard enough to sting my palm, but his gaze remains fixed on mine, those wide, kissable lips unchanging.

  “Do you think you deserve to be forgiven?” I duck under his arm.

  He grabs a handful of my swirling skirt behind me, but the magic turns to golden ash in his fingers and slips through his grasp.

  I flee behind one of the columns—when I glance back, his face is intent, his steps calm and measured—and then use my magic to slide behind a different column. When I peek out from behind the white stone, I glimpse his cloak, flying out from a column ahead, as he turns and hides too.

  Then his big body is suddenly behind me, pressing against me, his lower abs against the curve of my ass as his hand slides across the smooth fabric of my dress
. Into my ear, he murmurs, “No.”

  I spin in his arms, letting him trap me again—for now—against the stone. “Then why are you here?”

  “Just because I don’t deserve you doesn’t mean I’ll let you die alone.” His brows knit together. “At Corum, you’ll be safe. Your powers can grow.”

  Corum would feel as haunted as this house to me, with all the memories crowding in with every step across campus. There’s the sidewalk where Airren took my hand in his while everyone else stared at me. There’s the eight-story window I jumped through in a spray of glass knowing that Mycroft would catch me. There are the places where Cax kissed me under the pink-blossoming trees.

  His lips graze my forehead. “We’ll stay away from you, if that’s what you want. You can’t stay here, Tera.”

  “That’s it?” I push him away from me, and this time, he lets me taking a step away. “You’re not going to fight for me?”

  His eyes fill with heat. There’s that familiar, defiant Croft posture as he crosses his arms. “I’m trying to respect your wishes.”

  “You haven’t even said you’re sorry.”

  “Is that some kind of magic?” His voice is heavy with sarcasm.

  “Yes!” I explode. “Yes, sorry is a magic word. When you break a girl’s heart and then march back into her life, issuing orders as usual, it doesn’t suggest you’re very sorry.”

  He cocks his head to one side. “Of course I’m sorry.”

  His eyes sharpen the second before I flow under his arm like silk—half magic and half the way those men trained me—but he’s too late to catch me. I sprint for the twisting stone stairs to the balcony.

  With my heart pounding in my chest, I lean over the edge of the balcony, the polished rich wood smooth under my arm. My gaze seeks his. “Not good enough.”

  And yet—even as I demand he apologize the way I want him to—as he stands in the center of the hall looking up at me, I’d be devastated if he actually turned and walked out the door.

  But I have to be willing to let him walk away and not run after him. If he doesn’t choose me—if he doesn’t humble himself, for once, after breaking my heart—I’ll never move past what happened.