House of Mages and Raven (Shades of Ruin and Magic #4)

Chapter 25

25

Barbie

“ C ease and desist, Barbie!” An authoritative voice full of icy fury boomed across the hall as Headmistress Ethel strode toward us.

The sentinels of the academy flanked her. She didn’t go anywhere without them these days, especially since her druid had turned rogue. The heirs’ security details had increased as well. I used to have security detail too when I was in the House of Chaos. Somehow, I still felt Rock and Archer shadowing me daily, even though Killian had dumped me.

I didn’t drop my grin. “You’re late to the party again, headmistress.”

I adopted a cheerful look despite the throbbing pain from the particles of dark material in my blood. Sy had taken most of the pain into her, but the poison was coursing through my veins, and it’d take time to purge it. I’d need to get to Underhill as soon as this was over.

“You forgot your place again!” Headmistress Ethel barked in hot anger. “But this time, you won’t be able to get away with cruelly attacking a student. I’ll make sure that your time at Shades Academy ends today.”

The headmistress would never warm to me, unlike the heirs. I’d disturbed the hierarchy and the order she clung to so tightly in this elite magical school, and I’d exposed the druid and made her look bad. IMHO, she should be thankful that she’d come out of the druid scandal unscathed. But she wasn’t grateful at all. Instead, she wanted me gone more than ever.

“Rorrwow!” I imitated a lion cub’s cry. “You’re really going to do that, aren’t you? I thought I was following the rules of the duel, which the princess initiated.” I wiggled my ass, which was parked solidly on Grace. “See, she’s up and about, so she can testify to it as a fellow rule follower.”

“Get off Princess Grace now!” Headmistress Ethel commanded.

“Okay, okay, chill,” I said, easing off my defeated opponent with a contented sigh. I beamed at the headmistress. “Happy now?”

Louis chuckled, which did not help me ease the tension.

Bellona and two demonesses rushed to help Grace up. A healer came and helped her sit on a chair. It was good to be a princess, since she got the best health care. No one offered to check on me. I just had to hang in there a little longer.

Sy donated all her juice to keep me standing tall.

Headmistress Ethel glared at me. “You’ll have to answer for your new crime.”

I widened my eyes. “Another crime?”

“Barbie attacked Princess Grace and then openly declared her intention of bringing our houses down, Lady Ethel,” Fake Blonde offered. “Everyone heard her. She must hang!”

It seemed that the mob all agreed that I should be hanged. I might have to check the history and laws of Mist of Cinder and see for myself if they still practiced such a barbaric death sentence.

It wasn’t peachy when almost the entire school was against me. The peer pressure, the fear of public humiliation, and the hostility from the crowd wove a suffocating net around me. If I was less strong, if I didn’t have Sy with me, I would walk with my tail down all day long. Even so, the constant challenges and conflicts had started to wear me out.

One small comfort was that Bea wasn’t here to be put on the spot with me—if she’d been here, she’d never have left my side.

Headmistress Ethel jerked her chin toward her goons, and two sentinels pushed through the crowd with Wyatt between them.

Wyatt was a half-human, half-demon geek. We’d become friends after he offered me a breakfast burrito. Everyone had shunned him and every house had rejected him until I got him into the House of Chaos. He’d been my ace supporter, but now he lifted his one unswollen eye and peered at me in fear. There was dried blood in his ink-black hair streaked with green. His face was covered in purple bruises, his nose was broken, and his top lip was split down the middle. His school uniform was tattered with dirt and blood.

Rage burst in me at seeing him like that, and I stepped toward him. He recoiled, as if I were a cobra about to bite him.

Two sentinels stepped between us, signaling me to back off.

“Wyatt,” I demanded, “who hurt you?”

“You!” he said accusingly, hurt and fear in his unswollen hazel eye. “You beat me for hours and left me to die!”

“Until we found him in an abandoned cabin off campus,” Grace growled from the chair where she was being tended to. She was healing at a rapid speed, and I could sense her queen’s power pouring into her.

“That was why our princess dueled you,” Bellona shouted. “You fight one of us underdogs, you fight all of us!”

They’d staged this to frame me, and my former friend Wyatt had joined them to play a willing victim. But why was there fear in his eyes? Did he really believe that it was me who had attacked him?

“It wasn’t me, Wyatt,” I said.

“What an actress.” Grace snorted.

“It was you, Barbie! It was you,” Wyatt insisted. “I wouldn’t get it wrong. I’d recognize you anywhere.”

“You do know someone else looks like me, right?” I asked, desperate to clear my name.

“No, it was you,” Wyatt said. “Princess Grace has a different eye color. I saw your mismatched eyes when you punched my face and then kicked me over and over when I was down. You left me for dead!”

I drew a cold, sharp breath. Could Grace have used her mind power on Wyatt when the beating happened? She could’ve had her minions beat him up while implanting a false memory.

“Why would I attack Wyatt?” I shook my head. “He’s my friend, and I wouldn’t hurt any of my friends.”

At least, not intentionally. Never would I intentionally hurt any of my friends.

“You aren’t my friend, not anymore,” Wyatt said.

“You don’t have friends anymore, Barbie. You’re toxic and violent.” Jinx pushed to the front of the crowd, her face tight and hard. This was the first time she had stood against me openly. “Everyone has left you. You have been stripped of the leadership of the underdogs, as we’ve all seen your true colors. You’re nothing but an attention-seeking fraud.” I laughed at being labeled as an attention seeker even though my chest ached, as Jinx and Wyatt’s betrayal cut deep. “Princess Grace is now our rightful, kind leader. You’re so jealous of Her Highness’s popularity that you stooped so low as to beat one of us up to frame Princess Grace.”

It was time to write off the underdogs that had become my foe’s attack dogs.

“Congrats on your new status, Jinx.” I wrinkled my nose in distaste. “You now smell like chicken shit, just like those little shits. I hope it’s worth it.”

She flinched before her expression hardened to anger and disdain.

Why was the world filled with so much hate? The mob demanded justice and pushed toward the heirs at the front, ready to charge me with their magical pitchforks and stab me. The princes turned their heads toward the angry mob, their power lashing out. Several rows of the assembly tumbled to the ground and piled on top of one another.

“Back the fuck off!” Silas snarled.

The heirs’ security details started to shove the rest of the mob back.

“I’ve finished examining the abused student’s memory,” Headmistress Ethel said. She didn’t even care to remember his name. “He was telling the truth. Barbie assaulted him to frame Princess Grace of the House of Underworld. She almost succeeded, but the dual colors of her eyes betrayed her true identity and her hideous crime.”

“You’re a funny lady, Headmistress E,” I said. “If I wanted to frame the princess, wouldn’t I at least change the colors of my eyes? I might be many things, but being that dumb doesn’t sit well with me.”

“You failed,” Grace said from the chair, the healer still hovering around her. She’d mostly recovered, her lip sealed. There was no blood on her anymore. “You’re a defect, a failed product. Copy me all you want, but everyone knows that you aren’t a pureblood. It won’t help your popularity to be obsessed with me.”

I laughed. “I’m not even obsessed with myself, Princess Demoness.”

The mob, who ate up Grace’s lies like toddlers wanted more candies, yelled at me for my lack of respect toward their favorite princess.

The air rippled, and I brushed off the spiderweb of Grace’s persuasive mind power, but the mob was in her thrall. The heirs, however, frowned. They shifted their dark gazes from me to Grace, then back to me. My counterpart had just made a mistake by trying to influence the heirs. Power called to power, but hers didn’t call to the heirs’ power, unlike mine.

“I believe you, Barbie, since you said you didn’t do it,” Louis said. “Not that I give a fuck if you beat up anyone. Some beatings are a good thing—exciting even.”

Quite a few students gasped, but none dared to contradict the vampire prince.

I sighed. The more I denied the accusation, the more I’d paint myself black. This was Rule Number Seven I’d written down for myself a long time ago—when being accused wrongly, the worst you could do was explain yourself.

“I appreciate it, sir.” I spread my arms. “And think of it, why would I want to pounce on a bug when I can take on a dragon?”

I almost heard a growl rumble from Kilian’s chest even from this distance, sounding furious and turned on all at once. He had a dragon in him, and I didn’t care if I provoked his beast.

“That’s the spirit,” Silas said in approval.

“Didn’t you tell me to be more ambitious, high prince?” I asked.

“Ambition won’t kill you,” Silas said encouragingly.

I darted my gaze around at the other princes. “Do you sometimes wonder why you can never get a break?”

“All the time,” Rowan said, and the other heirs nodded.

“Barbie has a history of violent behavior,” Headmistress Ethel said firmly. “She’s dangerous to everyone in Shades Academy.” She gestured at Wyatt. “I won’t allow this to happen again.”

She hadn’t been willing to go toe-to-toe with Killian, since he was too ruthless, but now that I wasn’t in his house, she believed that she could finally do whatever she wanted with me.

“Arrest Barbie,” she ordered her men. “Seize the snake in the garden!”

The academy sentinels advanced toward me, and I pulled my lips back and bared my teeth in a vicious grin. No one fucking took me without my allowing it, even though I no longer had Killian’s protection. He hadn’t left as he’d said he would. The chaos prince lounged at the heirs’ table at the front of the hall. He hadn’t bothered to move his ass one inch since the fight between his new squeeze and me had started. His betrothed leaned toward him, saying something into his ear, while they both looked in my direction.

Before the sentinels could reach me, a ring of fire shot up from the floor, surrounding me. At the same time, a shockwave of fire and wind tossed the sentinels away from me. Even Headmistress Ethel staggered back a few paces, her eyes widening in surprise.

Cade stepped into the ring of fire, joining me, his fashionable scarf flapping in his magical wind.

“Who permitted you to take a new mage in my house, Lady Ethel?” Cade asked, and flicked his wand like a conductor. I moved to his two o’clock, since I didn’t want him to hit me with his wand by mistake. He wasn’t as calm as usual. He’d barely said a word until now.

“Not you too, Prince Cade,” Headmistress Ethel said in dismay.

“Yeah, me too,” Cade said coldly. “My house affair, my rules.”

“What about Barbie’s crime?” Headmistress Ethel demanded.

“What about it?” Cade asked lazily.

“Will you also turn a blind eye like the others?” Headmistress Ethel followed up like a dog with a bone.

“Innocent until proven guilty,” Cade said. “That’s my house’s golden rule. And it’s for my house to investigate whether Barbie assaulted that boy or not. He looks like a bad liar to me. But make no mistake: no one touches Mage Barbie.”

I beamed. I liked the sound of Mage Barbie way better than Chaos Barbie , or Wicked Barbie .

Cade tilted his head and glanced at the other heirs outside the ring.

“We respect and support Prince Cade’s decision,” Rowan said, then darted his gaze around. I knew he was hoping to spot Sy, and I had to clamp my mouth shut to prevent her from shouting out: Here I come, sugar Rowan!

“It’s a mage house affair,” Silas snarled.

Louis raised his fist, and then all the heirs, except the chaos heir, raised their fists to show solidarity.

Cade turned to look straight at the chaos heir across the expanse of the dining hall. All eyes turned to him, as did mine. Killian’s gaze homed in on me. Even from this distance, I could feel his wrath raging underneath his skin. My breath hitched. Was he going to put me in my place for beating his new plaything? I pulled my lips back and bared my teeth in a silent snarl.

Killian’s gaze dipped to my mouth briefly, a faint smile seemingly ghosting his lips, sensual and amused. Anyone else would’ve missed his fleeting expression, but not me. It only made me madder. He didn’t take my challenge seriously. He turned to Cade and nodded at the mage prince.

Queen Lilith glanced at him, but the chaos heir’s emotions were shuttered now. She then turned to look at me, her expression utterly blank.

“Barbie belongs to the House of Mages now,” Killian said, his voice carrying no emotion. “She’s no longer my responsibility but my brother’s, and no one shall tell the heir of the House of Mages how to run his house or discipline his new member.” The chaos prince’s predatory gaze fell on Wyatt. “That weasel no longer has the protection of my house. We don’t want a fucking weakling in the House of Chaos.”

Killian had actually sided with me openly. I blinked. Did he still give a fuck about me?

He gives a fuck. Sy beamed smugly. I told you that he gives a fuck about you. He still wants to fuck you, and that’s sweet.

Wyatt wailed, and Jinx’s face paled. They’d thought I was done for and no one would ever back me up. The mob gasped. Whispers traveled. Headmistress Ethel’s mature face hardened, and she stared at me like a vulture waiting for the next hunting season.

I smiled, my teeth bared, and waved at her. I was no one’s prey, and she was just too small a fish for me to bother frying.

Killian rose to his feet, his betrothed with him. Then the golden couple strolled out of Jubilee Haven.

Bile rose to the back of my throat and stuck there.

Grace tilted her head and regarded me. “I was doing you a favor. You’ll wish you never stayed. The second trial of the Brides Selection is coming for you.”