Zodiac Academy 6: Fated Throne
Fated Throne: Chapter 42

A flash of gold caught my gaze and I nudged Seth as I spotted Tory strolling across the room with shadows coiling all around her arms and her gaze vacant. At least they’d made it back without us having to cause some kind of distraction.

‘Is it me or is she scary as fuck when she goes all shadow freak?’ Seth muttered and I snorted.

‘A bit,’ I agreed. ‘But she can be scary as fuck without the shadows too.’

‘I guess she’d need to be to keep Darius in line,’ he joked.

‘Is that so?’ Darius’s voice came from behind us and I turned to look at him with a less than innocent shrug.

‘You’re high maintenance, dude. You gotta admit it,’ I teased.

‘Yeah, everyone knows brooding bad boys are the hardest work when it comes to boyfriends,’ Seth agreed. ‘But all the angry fucking usually makes it worth it.’

‘Usually?’ Darius asked, looking amused.

‘Well, I don’t have first hand experience of your cock to judge by, so I can’t be sure unless you wanna go somewhere more private?’ Seth teased and irritation prickled down my spine.

‘If anyone is going to be pinning you beneath them tonight, mutt, it’ll be me,’ I warned him, flashing my fangs and watching as Seth’s smile widened.

‘Wanna bet?’ Seth challenged, always so cocky about his ability to fight me off and yet whenever we played this game, my fangs always ended up in his skin.

‘Are you challenging me to chase you around the palace like we’re a bunch of badly behaved kids whose parents can’t reel us in?’ I asked.

‘No. I’m challenging you to chase me around the palace like a bloodthirsty Vampire who spends his nights dreaming about the taste of me,’ Seth goaded, tipping his drink back into his mouth and grinning as he looked towards the door.

‘You wanna come play with us?’ I asked Darius. ‘You can help me hunt if you like, but the prey is all mine.’

‘Nah,’ he replied, using his chin to point across the room to where Max’s step mom was standing, looking like she had a bad smell beneath her nose while Max remained stuck in her company. ‘I think I’m gonna go over there and let her feel my contempt for her with my gifts and then steal Max away to get drunk with me while I keep an eye on Roxy.’

‘Catch, you later then, dude.’ I raised my drink to my lips as I headed away from him with Seth at my side, the two of us cutting each other looks as we snuck off to get up to no good. My pulse hitched with excitement at the idea of doing this here.

We escaped the stuffy party and strode away down echoing corridors, casually taking turns left and right until we were lost in the depths of the palace and I had no idea where the hell we even were.

‘Are you ready?’ Seth teased, nudging me hard enough to knock me a step to my right and I flashed my fangs at him as I released a primal growl.

‘I’m really thirsty tonight,’ I warned but instead of balking in fear, his eyes flashed with excitement.

‘Let the hunt begin,’ Seth said with a taunting smile that had my fangs tingling and my tongue running over my lips. ‘This is fast becoming my favourite pastime.”

‘Are you sure?’ I asked, cocking my head at him as he started unbuttoning his grey dress shirt. ‘It seems like the rules of the game are changing.’

‘You know me, Cal,’ Seth purred, finishing with his buttons before pushing his shirt wide and letting it roll off of his broad shoulders as he revealed his muscular body. I caught it as he tossed it to me and tucked it into the back of my pants. ‘I never played by any rule in the first place. So if you wanna change the limits you’re putting on yourself then I’m ready.’

I swallowed thickly at the implication in his tone and my heart pounded as I watched him unbuckling his pants.

‘Why bother shifting?’ I challenged. ‘You know I’ll catch you anyway.’

‘Oh really?’ Seth taunted, a smirk lifting his lips and drawing my gaze. ‘Come and get me then, if you think I’m such easy prey.’ He began to back up, fastening his belt again and offering a taunting grin which made my pulse skip with the desire to hound after him.

I shrugged like I wasn’t a predator on the verge of attacking then lurched towards him, jolting back hard as I yanked against the vines he’d managed to snake around my jacket. I cursed, pulling my arms free of the material before shooting forward again only to crash into a solid air shield. I hadn’t even seen the asshole cast and I snarled as I bared my fangs at him in clear warning of what I was going to do when I got my hands on him.

Seth barked a laugh then turned and ran off down the corridor in his Fae form, lifting a hand to flip me off over his shoulder as he went and howling the moment he was out of sight around the next corner.

I brought fire to my hands and started punching the air shield with the speed and ferocity of my Order, striking it again and again until it finally shattered and I was able to shoot down the corridor.

I focused my gifts on my sense of hearing, cursing as I failed to detect anything. Damn asshole must have had a silencing bubble in place. But if he thought that was enough to stop me then he had another thing coming.

I shot back and forth as fast as I could, throwing open doors and speeding around the rooms I found as I hunted. He might have been sneaky, but his speed had nothing on mine and there were only so many places he could hide around here.

I threw open the door to an enormous music room and paused. It had a vaulted ceiling hand painted with effigies of the constellations and instruments were laid out around the space, making plenty of hiding places for a sneaky Wolf.

I almost turned away again, but as I looked back towards the door, movement in the corner of my eye gave him away and I whirled around as he leapt out of the shadows from the top of a grand piano. I shot aside as he landed, skidding in his fancy shoes with a laugh spilling from his lips as he stood his ground and magic crackled through the air.

I shot towards him, throwing fire at the shield he’d created then darting out of the way as he tried to catch me in a net of air magic.

‘I think you’ve gotten too comfortable thinking you can get a drink from me every time we play this game,’ Seth taunted, his eyes tracking my movements as I sped around him, looking for an opening.

‘I think you like it when I bite you,’ I tossed back. ‘You like the rush.’

‘Oh yeah?’ he asked, smirking as the air magic he was wielding tossed his long hair around his shoulders.

I kept shooting from place to place, aiming fire magic his way over and over again as I looked for a weakness in his defences and I quickly cast an illusion of myself into existence before hiding behind a giant horn.

Seth fell for it as the fake me shot towards him and as he directed his magic that way, I sped out of my hiding place and threw a javelin of fire at the back of his shield.

He wasn’t dumb enough to have weakened it while focusing on the fake me, but with his attention taken from the area I was attacking, and the full weight of my power thrown into the strike, I managed to break through.

I slammed into him, knocking him from his feet and sending the two of us rolling across the floor as we laughed and fought, punching and kicking as we both struggled to get the upper hand.

We were so caught up in our scrap that we didn’t even notice we’d rolled right over to the carefully lined up instruments. We crashed into a cello which went flying into a tuba and the next thing we knew, the whole orchestral line up came crashing down like a row of dominos.

The two of us froze, lips parted and staring at the carnage we’d caused as Seth pinned me to the wooden floor and the sound of a guard shouting in the distance caught my ear.

‘Come on,’ I hissed, shooting to my feet and wrenching Seth onto my back before zooming out of the room and away through the palace corridors as fast as I could run.

I picked a door at random once we were far enough away and I burst into a dark kitchen as we fell about laughing.

‘You should have seen your face,’ Seth mocked. ‘You looked about ready to shit a brick, Cal.’

‘You think?’ I grabbed him and flipped him around, shoving him back against the worktop and fisting a hand in his hair as I tilted his head aside to bear his throat to me. ‘Kinda like the way you look when I have you at my mercy like this then?’

Seth snarled, grabbing my waist and shoving me around until he was driving me back against the counter instead, moving his hand to grasp a fistful of my blonde curls too. ‘Maybe you need a reminder of who you’re playing with,’ he warned.

I snorted a laugh and lunged at his neck, but I crashed against an air shield he’d constructed tight against his skin and he smirked at me.

‘Cheat,’ I grumbled, the ache in my fangs growing to a desperate throb as I eyed the thump of his pulse beneath his skin.

‘No rules, remember?’ Seth taunted.

My gaze moved up from the constant thrum of his pulse, sliding over the roughness of his jaw and lingering on his mouth for several long seconds before I lifted my gaze to meet his.

Seth’s eyes were the richest brown I’d ever seen, like the deepest, warmest tone of chocolate with little flecks of gold buried amongst them and a soul so rich and caring lying within them.

‘You know…’ I said slowly. ‘The whole world thinks you’re an asshole. In fact, like ninety nine percent of the people you meet would agree with them because you can be a total Alpha mega dick when you want to be.’

‘Keep talking like that Cal and you’re gonna get me weeping,’ he teased but I only lifted the corner of my lips in a smile at him.

‘I’m just saying that beneath it all, you’re actually the best of us. Once you let someone in, you feel their pain like it’s your own. I’ve heard you howling for Darius and Tory, seen you sleeping in with Darcy night after night just because you know she’s sad and all alone without Orion. And you let me hunt you because you know I’m weak and I can’t resist it, and you know what it would do to me if I hurt someone the way I have before-‘

‘Or maybe you were right the first time,’ he teased, seeming a little uncomfortable at the compliment I was giving him. ‘Maybe I just like the way it feels when you bite me and I’m really just a selfish motherfucker, using the excuse to get your mouth on my skin.’

He delivered it like a joke, but it fell flat somehow and my gaze shifted down his bare chest slowly before I met his eyes again.

‘Maybe you don’t need an excuse,’ I said carefully. ‘Maybe if that’s what you want you should just say it.’

Seth swallowed thickly, his eyes flicking back and forth between mine like he was hunting for some answer from me even though I knew full well I didn’t have one. But I liked the way his hands felt on my skin and I liked the way he tasted. Shit, I just liked every fucking thing about him and maybe I was crazy, but I was starting to wonder if-

Seth used his grip on my hair to tug me down to his neck, baring his throat to me and dropping his air shield so that I could feel the warmth of his blood reaching through his flesh against my lips.

I inhaled slowly, not biting down, just running my mouth up the curve of his neck to the corner of his jaw.

I loosened my grip on his hair, my fingers pushing into it gently instead of fisting it roughly and a shiver ran through his body as I dragged my fangs back down his throat.

‘By the stars, Cal, you’re gonna be the fucking death of me if you don’t get to the point soon,’ he said in a rough voice and I chuckled against his skin, nipping lightly but not puncturing it.

‘And what’s the point?’ I questioned, wanting to hear the answer to that way more than I should have.

Seth hesitated, a soft, canine whimper escaping his throat.

‘Don’t tease me, Caleb,’ he murmured. ‘Not if you don’t really…’

‘Don’t really what?’ The movement of my mouth on his neck made him growl softly and I felt that noise all the way through my body.

His grip in my hair tightened and he drove my head down harder, demanding I get on with this and I gave in to him, sinking my fangs into his skin and groaning as the delicious richness of his blood and magic spilled over my tongue.

He was still pinning me back against the counter and he ground against me forcefully, the hardness in his pants rubbing against my hip.

He tried to move back, but I dropped my hand from his hair and caught his waistband, yanking him close again and holding him there as I felt his arousal driving against me and found I liked that a whole hell of a lot.

My other hand slid down the hard ridges of his chest and he drew in a ragged breath which made my skin prickle.

‘Oh, erm, sorry – I didn’t mean to interrupt,’ Xavier’s voice came followed by a horsey snort of embarrassment and I drew my fangs back out of Seth’s neck as I looked over at Darius’s younger brother with a flare of irritation.

He was standing by the door to the kitchen and had a half eaten sandwich on a plate which he waved at us as Seth growled beneath his breath.

‘Dudes, I totally thought I just caught you doing something else,’ he laughed, looking at my fangs as I licked the last of Seth’s blood from my lips and banished them. ‘I came in here looking for more mayo because they’re all out in the main kitchen and here you are in the dark, half dressed and all over each other and…’ He cleared his throat as neither of us spoke and gave us an awkward smile. ‘But err, you’re obviously just feeding – is there like some protocol I’m missing here about interrupting a Vampire mid feast or-‘

‘Nah man,’ I said, slapping on a grin as I reached up to heal the bite from Seth’s skin. ‘Like you said, I was just feeding and Seth was gonna shift before – which is why he’s shirtless.’

My gaze met Seth’s and a soft whine slid past his lips before he turned and grinned at Xavier too, but it looked all kinds of false and I couldn’t help but feel like I’d just said the wrong thing. But what was the right thing? ‘Yeah I was just biting him, but it felt like a lot more than that and if you’d interrupted us ten minutes later then I’m not really sure what you would have found.’ That was fucking crazy. Right?

‘Yeah. If you’d caught us fucking, Cal would have been pinned beneath me screaming my name in ecstasy,’ Seth joked.

‘Err, I think you’ll replace Seth would have been on his knees moaning something that could be my name, but you wouldn’t be sure because his mouth would have been so full of my dick,’ I added with a dark grin.

‘Haha, yeah,’ Xavier said, laughing a little too loudly as his cheeks pinked. ‘One of you would have been all like ‘oh baby put your mega dick in my…ear while I recite the alphabet to make sure I don’t come too quick and then I’ll totally destroy your…knees on the hard floor…”

‘Shit, dude, don’t ever say that to someone you wanna fuck,’ I said laughing as he flushed from strawberry to scarlet and quickly yanked the fridge open to replace his mayo.

Seth looked at me with a question in his eyes and I frowned, unsure what he was asking for one of the first times ever. I tugged his shirt from the back of my pants, handing it over to him in offering and he frowned as his gaze fell to it.

He snatched it from me kinda roughly and shoved his arms into it like the thing had offended him.

‘Do you guys want a sandwich?’ Xavier offered, holding out a bag of carrots and I opened my mouth to reply, but a pain-filled scream met my ears before I could, making me freeze where I was standing.

‘Did either if you hear that?’ I asked in a sharp whisper.

‘Hear what?’ Xavier asked, looking back at me around the fridge door with his cheeks a little less red.

‘Someone screamed,’ I murmured, training my gifted hearing on everything all around us as I frowned in concentration.

‘When I was on the moon,’ Seth began. ‘There was sometimes this sound kinda like a scream when-‘

I shushed him aggressively as I heard it again, but this time there was a man begging for someone to stop what they were doing alongside the scream.

‘Come on,’ I commanded, running from the room and hurrying along the corridor outside before taking a sharp turn onto a servants’ staircase that led to the underground portion of the palace.

‘Where are we going?’ Seth growled, seeming kinda pissed at me and I shot him a frown.

‘Someone down there is screaming for help.’

That wiped the irritable expression from his face and he hurried his pace as I led them down to the foot of the stairs before pausing to listen again.

‘Are you sure there’s someone here?’ Xavier asked, looking a little concerned but determined to stick with us all the same. He still had half a carrot and mayo sandwich in his hand which he quickly ate as I glanced at it.

‘Yeah,’ I said, waiting for the screams to come again and frowning when they did. ‘It’s still coming from beneath us.’

‘I’ve explored the palace a fair bit and I haven’t seen a level beneath this one,’ Xavier said in a low voice as he swallowed down his snack.

I frowned as I looked around us, placing my hand on the stone wall at the foot of the stairs and ignoring the impulse to shoot off and take a piss as it crept over me.

‘There’s a repulsion spell here,’ I grunted, focusing hard on trying to pull it apart as the need to pee made me feel like I was about to piss myself. ‘Someone strong created it.’

‘Father?’ Xavier asked in alarm.

‘No,’ I said as I forced my magic into the spell and broke it with a shove of power. ‘It would have been harder to bypass than that if it was him. I can feel a space beyond the wall now.’

Seth moved to my side, his arm brushing mine as he ran a hand over the wall too, feeling it out with his earth magic and I nudged him slightly in the way he normally did when he could tell something was up. He glanced at me for a moment, a smile catching the corner of his lips as he nudged me in return. It turned into a grin as he found the catch holding the door in place and pressed the brick into the wall.

There was a sound of grinding stone as a doorway was revealed and flickering orange light from somewhere below lit up a curving staircase.

I threw a silencing bubble over the three of us then looked at the others. ‘Whatever is down here isn’t good. Last chance to turn back.’

Seth scoffed dismissively, but we both knew my offer had really been for Xavier who raised his chin defiantly.

‘I’m coming,’ he said, stamping his foot like it was a hoof and I was gifted a vivid memory of him doing that exact thing when we’d all been playing together as kids. How no one realised he was a Pegasus before he Emerged was a mystery to me in hindsight.

‘Alright then, let’s see what you’ve got, pony boy,’ Seth joked and I smirked as I led the way into the dark stairwell.

We jogged down the stone steps, the cold air seeping into my skin and making me use fire magic to warm myself. I reached out for Seth’s arm behind me and gifted him some fire too as he was the only one amongst us without it, and he leaned forward to lick my cheek in thanks.

I batted him off with a snort of laughter but quickly forgot our playful crap as another scream came to us from much closer this time and the two of them sucked in gasps of alarm.

We broke into a run, heading down to the foot of the stairs where the firelight burned brighter and a huge room opened up before us.

Seth threw a concealment over us as we stayed hidden in the shadows at the foot of the stairs and we looked out over the stone chamber where several medical tables were laid out with surgical equipment beside them.

A short man in long red robes stood over a guy who was strapped to the table in the centre of the room, his white hair almost shining in the firelight as I looked at the back of his head.

‘I know him,’ Xavier hissed, horror lacing his tone. ‘He’s the Order Conversion Therapist Father got for me after I Emerged as a Pegasus. His name is Gravebone.’

‘What the fuck is that when it’s at home?’ Seth asked.

‘A sick motherfucker who tried to make me believe I was a Dragon and not a Pegasus. I never could work out what the point of it was, but his methods were scarily effective. For a while, I almost began to believe the shit he was feeding me.’ The rage and disgust in his voice was clear and I laid a reassuring hand on his arm as I gritted my teeth in anger at the way he’d been treated just as Gravebone started to speak.

‘Rats are such dirty creatures,’ he purred, his voice as slick as oil and his attention fully on the man who was struggling against his bonds beneath him. I spied a pair of magic restricting cuffs around the man’s wrists which were clearly being used to stop him from fighting back. ‘Such little, pointless, scheming vermin. No one would wish to be such a lowly Order. You certainly don’t.’

‘There’s no shame in being a Tiberian Rat!’ the man on the table hissed. ‘You won’t convince me I’m a fucking Medusa so stop trying.’

‘The procedure will go much more smoothly if your mind is in alignment with it,’ Gravebone said, sounding resigned. ‘But if you won’t even try to adapt to your new reality then there is much less chance of success-‘

‘Fuck you!’ the Rat snarled before spitting right in Gravebone’s face.

The creep flinched back, growling loudly as he swiped a red sleeve over his cheek to remove the spittle. ‘Let’s try this again.’ He lifted a scalpel from a small table beside him, but Seth threw a hand out before he could use it, casting a thick web of vines into existence which snapped tight around his hands and immobilised his magic.

I shot forward in the next breath, earth magic pulsing in my veins as I sped around Gravebone several times while he cried out in panic, binding him in vines of my own. He yelled out for help before falling to the ground with a hard thump but with my silencing bubble surrounding him there was no chance of that coming.

‘Oh my stars, are you here to rescue us?’ the guy on the table gasped, his pasty blonde hair sticking to his forehead as he looked at me like I was some kind of hero.

And I guessed maybe that was exactly what we were here for, even though I hadn’t given it much thought until this exact moment.

‘Us?’ Xavier asked as he rushed over, heading straight towards the Rat dude like he intended to unstrap him, and I held an arm out to slow him down.

‘Hang on a second,’ I said, my palm hitting Xavier’s chest as he looked at me in alarm. ‘We can’t make it obvious we were here.’

‘Fat chance of that!’ Gravebone shrieked from his position on his back on the floor. ‘I’ve seen your faces – your father will hear of this Xavier!’

Xavier snorted in fury, kicking out at Gravebone’s head and making him shriek in pain as his nose shattered. I caught Xavier’s shoulder to stop him before he could do any more, still unsure of the best way to proceed.

I filled Gravebone’s mouth with dirt to stop him from speaking again and smiled cruelly down at the terror in his eyes as he fought to breathe around the obstruction.

‘Untie me!’ the Rat begged. ‘Please – I know who you are. You’re Caleb Altair-‘

‘Everyone knows who he is, buddy,’ Seth said, moving to stand beside me with a contemplative frown on his face.

‘Yes, but, I went to Aurora Academy with Elise. Please, my name is Eugene. Eugene Dipper. I swear I didn’t do any of the things they said I did. I didn’t steal the midnight amethyst stones from anyone. I was just a collector, I never hid that, I swear!’

I exchanged a look with Seth, the guy having even more of my attention now as I wondered if I should try to call bullshit on his claims by replaceing out if there was any truth to them. If he’d known Elise then I guessed that gave me even more reason to help him out, but I didn’t have any intentions of leaving him here anyway.

‘Calm down, man,’ I said. ‘No one is leaving you here. We just need to figure out how to cover up our involvement in this little incident. I need it to look like you got yourself free somehow.’

‘H-he – Gravebone has the cuff key in his pocket,’ Eugene gasped. ‘Perhaps if it looked like I got a hand free then maybe it could seem like I’d gotten hold of it and freed myself and my magic without help.’

‘Doesn’t help us with the witness issue though,’ Seth mused, giving Gravebone a casual kick which drew a muffled grunt of pain from him.

‘That’s why we need to kill him,’ Eugene growled and I was surprised to hear such savagery from the little dude, but he was more than clear in his thirst for blood here. And I guessed if I’d been strapped to a table and tortured while some freaky asshole tried to convince me I was a Medusa, I would be out for blood too.

‘What the fuck is the point of all this anyway?’ Xavier asked indignantly. ‘Even if you believed you were a Medusa, you wouldn’t suddenly become one so-‘

‘Gravebone and V-Vard have been doing experiments,’ Eugene said, a sob catching in the back of his throat. ‘C-cutting Fae open and trying to steal their Order forms before re-replacing it with another. I’ve been down here for weeks and watched them kill countless Fae of my kind with their twisted experiments. It’s never even come close to working but they just start again as soon as they fail. They’re sick.’

‘There are more of you here?’ Seth asked sharply and Eugene bobbed his chin towards a door on the far side of the open space.

‘M-more than I can count. Tiberian Rats, Sphinxes, Minotaurs – all of the Orders the Dragon King has deemed lesser than whatever he requires for supremacy. You have to help us. You have to!’

‘We’re getting to it,’ Seth said, glancing at me and I gritted my teeth as I tried to think about the best way to do this.

‘We need to cover our faces so they don’t all see us, in case any of them are caught,’ I said, glancing at Eugene and wishing I’d thought of this sooner. ‘Then we let them out and give them a chance to run for it. They can punish Gravebone however they see fit.’

Gravebone started to thrash and kick on the floor at my feet, knowing full well the victims of his torture wouldn’t be merciful if we let them decide his fate. But that really wasn’t my problem. If they wanted to get revenge on him for what he’d done then they had the right to.

‘If we just let them make a run for it they’ll be caught again,’ Xavier protested angrily and I ran a hand over my jaw, knowing that there was a fair chance he was right about that.

‘I don’t see what else we can do,’ Seth said. ‘I mean, the Rats could shift and maybe sneak out, but the Sphinxes and Minotaurs…’ He shrugged. ‘At least this way they’ll have a shot.’

‘That’s not good enough,’ Xavier demanded, stamping his foot angrily again and I opened my mouth to argue just as the sound of stone grinding on stone announced another secret door opening behind us.

I whirled around, fire blossoming in my fists as I felt Seth’s air shield lock into place around us and my heart nearly fell out of the pit of my stomach as a door slid open in the wall and Gabriel stepped through it.

‘I saw that you needed my help in getting some people out of here,’ he said with a cocky grin which he totally deserved to be sporting.

‘Fuck yes,’ Seth whooped and Xavier sagged with relief as I set my focus on setting these Fae free.

I bent down and hunted Gravebone’s pockets while he bucked and fought beneath me, but he was so well tied that there was no chance of him getting away. I pinned him down with an irritated grunt, replaceing the key to the magic restricting cuffs in his pocket followed by a thick metal key which I was guessing would set the Fae beyond that door loose.

I swiped a hand over my face as I cast the concealment to hide my identity and Seth quickly did the same for him and Xavier. Gabriel followed our lead and once I was certain no one would recognise us, I grabbed hold of the leather cuff tying Eugene’s wrist to the table and tugged on it with a surge of my Vampire strength. The damn thing almost didn’t give but with a grunt of effort, I broke it, leaving Eugene to unbuckle the rest of his limbs as I raced towards the door on the other side of the room.

The key I’d stolen from Gravebone opened it and I found a row of cells full of Fae who all shrieked and cringed away from the bars at the sight of the door opening.

‘I’m here to get you out,’ I called, my voice disguised by the concealment spell as I moved to the closest cell and quickly unlocked it.

I decided that them knowing I was a Vampire wouldn’t really risk my identity and quickly shot around using my gifts to unlock the rest of the cells as fast as possible. The Fae inside all poured out, calling their thanks, some of them sobbing as they ran for the exit and a freedom I was guessing they hadn’t expected to ever see again.

By the time I returned to the main room, Seth had unlocked most of their cuffs and Gravebone was well and truly dead. His blood was seeping over the floor and his mangled body so pulverised I was willing to bet they’d beaten him to death instead of wasting magic on him.

I dispersed the vines I’d created to hold him and Gabriel ushered the escapees towards the dark tunnel he’d emerged from.

‘Go now,’ he barked at us. ‘Caleb needs to run you back to the party within the next thirty seconds or you’ll be missed. I can get everyone away from here safely. Hamish will help them hide from there.’

I didn’t need telling twice so I gave Gabriel a firm nod before shooting forward and hooking an arm each around Xavier and Seth before speeding out of the hidden chamber.

I only paused to close the concealed door again then hoisted the two of them into my grasp and carried them back to the party, skidding to a halt at the side exit we’d used to escape it.

Xavier looked half inclined to puke from the speed we’d just travelled at and Seth shook his head like he was trying to stave off some dizziness. I dispelled the illusions over us and we pushed the door open, slipping back inside.

My heart was thundering as I led the way towards the buffet and my mom’s voice drew my attention to her as she called my name.

‘I’ve been looking for you!’ she chastised half-heartedly. “Come on – I want you to speak with the leader of the Falhurst company. He’s doing some really impressive things with predictive charts that I just know you’d love to hear about.’

I smiled politely at the Falhurst dude who Mom was clearly trying to impress for some deal and painted on my Heir face as I moved over to join them.

Had we just gotten away with freeing a bunch of prisoners right out from under Lionel’s scaly nose without anyone even realising we’d ducked out on the party?

Hell yeah we had. And it felt really fucking good.