The Shadow Student (Wraithwood Academy Book 1)

  * * *

  The Shadow Student

  Book 1 of the Wraithwood Academy series

  * * *

  By Teresa Hann

  Contents

  Dedication

  Content Notes

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Thanks for Reading

  Dedication

  To TSC, my first reader and favorite cute nerd.

  Content Notes

  This book contains strong language, violence, and sexual themes, as well as dark content in a variety of forms, including depictions of abuse and bullying. It is intended for older teen readers and up.

  The heroine eventually ends up with multiple boyfriends, some of whom also end up with each other.

  Chapter 1

  “You know what, I don’t want to do this after all,” Cly whined as the car turned off the highway. “We can still turn back. It’s not too late. Just make a U-turn and we’ll be back home in time for dinner—”

  “You will be attending Wraithwood Academy, Cly,” said her bodyguard Aegis, quietly but firmly.

  “Because my mother said so?”

  “She did, in fact, say so—”

  “Come on, Aegis, we’ve known each other since we were kids!” Cly’s tone turned wheedling as the car made its sedate, winding way down residential streets. “You saved me from that griffin! You didn’t tell on me when I broke Father’s auguring glass! Save me just this one more time, pleeeease?”

  “I know you don’t like the idea of school,” said Aegis. “And I know you don’t want to leave home. But with your father gone and the fate of the house on the line, you have to do your part for the family.”

  Cly scoffed. “Don’t be melodramatic like Mother. We’re House Redbriar. If anyone messes with us, they get crushed. Mother will keep everything running along just like she has forever. Why do I have to go out there?”

  “Think about it this way,” said Aegis with infinite patience, slowing to make a turn. “If another mage house tries to attack us, your mother has plenty of stockpiled strength and resources, of course. But it would be… messy. Unpleasant. Wouldn’t it be better if no one dares? Because they’ve seen the strength and aggressiveness of our House’s new head in person?”

  “Sure, when you put it that way,” Cly admitted. “But the school’s going to be filled with people jealous of my family. People who’ve heard the rumors about me. Total no-name trash who think they’re better than me.”

  “That’s the whole point,” Aegis said as gently as he could. “Many people in mage society wonder if your House is still worth fearing with you as the new family head.”

  “Oh, so it’s all my fault,” Cly snarled. “I’m the reason it’s going to be a filthy swamp of horrible people.”

  “You’re here to prove them wrong, Cly,” Aegis reminded her. “Do you want people to continue believing the rumors? Do you want them to look at you and see a weakling?”

  “But I—”

  “Or do you want to go in there and blow their minds? Because you will. With the magic you’ll have, you’ll make them respect and fear you for the rest of your life.”

  Cly’s breathing went ragged. The dashboard thumped as she punched it. “God, I’ll show them. I’m the only trueborn child of Priam fucking Redbriar.”

  “Yes,” said Aegis softly. “You are.”

  “I’m powerful now. I can do what I want. If they look at me wrong, I’ll rip their faces off.”

  “They won’t. Besides, don’t you think that’s worth a bit of unpleasantness? To create a place where you’re in charge and everyone knows it?”

  Cly’s sigh rattled the windows. “Fine. I’ll give it a chance.”

  “That’s all I ask for,” said Aegis, warm as sunlight. The car was picking up speed again. “I honestly think you’ll like it more than you expect. Don’t the stories about Wraithwood tempt you at least a little?”

  “The yards and yards of homework? The potion accidents?” But there was anticipation in her voice now, as if she were thinking about how it would all become hers. “The demon chained underneath the Great Hall—”

  The air briefly crackled as the car passed through the magical wards that hid the campus to outside eyes.

  Cly said, “Ooh.”

  And at that moment, I would’ve happily ripped out her eyes and shoved them into my own sockets, if it would let me see what she was seeing. Wraithwood Academy. My dream. My stolen future.

  I wanted to see Wraithwood with my own eyes, everything I’d only ever read about. For so many years, trapped in the gilded cage of Redbriar Manor, I’d longed to escape to its ancient halls and night-blooming gardens, libraries and bell towers.

  I wanted to see.

  But I couldn’t.

  Because I was lying bound and gagged in the enchanted trunk in the back seat, stacked under the suitcases.

  “Ooh, wow, look at that!” said Cly, her voice only a little muffled through the wood. And I gritted my jaw, tasting the foul, bitter metal of the gag clamped between my teeth, and told myself I’d sooner die than cry.

  Chapter 2

  The thing was, Priam Redbriar was a piece of shit too. Like their namesake, the entire Redbriar family grew strong in a deep, nourishing, fertile bed of shit. But with him, to my shame, I’d never have realized it if my mother hadn’t told me the full story.

  So Priam Redbriar had gone slumming it in a human bar one night, eighteen years ago, while his wife was pregnant, and ended the night in a back alley with a college student half his age. And then he’d wiped her memory of the night, so that by the time the evidence that she was pregnant against all odds became undeniable, she was already months and months along.

  And Priam hadn’t bothered to take responsibility for the college student single mother whose life he’d upended. At least, not until his daughter by his wife turned seven, old enough to make it clear that her magical ability was far weaker than it should be. He and his wife Leda tried everything—artifacts, potions, tutors—but nothing worked. Clytemnestra Redbriar struggled to cast even the simplest and smallest of spells.

  To Priam Redbriar, tyrant of the magical world, one of the strongest mages in generations, that was utterly unacceptable in an heir. So unacceptable, in fact, that he remembered he might have a child elsewhere, hidden in the world of ordinary humans.

  This wasn’t him swooping in like an incredibly belated Prince Charming to rescue Cinderella from the ashes. My mother had moved on in the years since then. She’d had to drop out of college, and her religious parents had disowned her for having a child out of wedlock, but she’d worked hard to make a life for us. We clipped coupons and shopped thrift stores, but we had enough to live on. We were happy. My mother was starting to find success as a freelance translator.

  Then Priam Redbriar came in and ruined her life again.

  In a way, it was my
fault, because he’d found me just in time to witness magic that impressed even him. In my second grade classroom, the sunlight kept getting into my eyes where I sat during the afternoon, and the teacher wouldn’t let me switch seats. So I’d subconsciously rotated the entire school about twenty degrees on its foundation so the sun would stop bothering me.

  There was no letting us go after that.

  I sometimes wondered if Priam had other half-human bastards as well, besides me, because a man like him wouldn’t stop at one college student. I’d read that the vast majority of half-bloods didn’t manifest any magical abilities at all; they needed to have some dormant magical ancestry on their human side, from an earlier half-blood who’d passed for human, to get the right combination of genes for magic. Maybe I had other half-siblings out there, passed over because they were useless to him, and therefore beneath his generosity.

  They said many things about Priam Redbriar at his funeral, as my mother and I watched from a distant window, forbidden to mingle with the guests and dignitaries. He was brilliant, and talented, and ambitious, and charismatic. For twenty years, he’d held the fate of mage society in his hands. But no one ever claimed he was kind.

  And yet, our lives were better back when he was still alive. He liked me. He thought I was useful. And he’d never left me tied me up in a trunk for seven hours.

  #

  The car rolled to a stop. I heard the thump of doors, footsteps crunching on asphalt, and the metallic rattle of a moving cart. More thumps, as the suitcases on top of me were lifted away and dropped onto the cart. I was savagely pleased to hear Aegis grunt when he picked up the trunk with me inside; at least I was making him pay in this petty way for the amount of hardware they’d put on me.

  “We’re supposed to be in… Rowan Building, Room 205-1 and 205-2,” said Cly, with a rustle of parchment. The cart began to move, jostling me painfully against the hard, lumpy equipment strapped to the inside lid of the trunk.

  The enchantments on the trunk got rid of my bodily needs, such as food, water, proper circulation, or trips to the bathroom, which made my imprisonment slightly less terrible than it could have been. Still, the trip to Rowan House made me curse the very existence of cobblestones. By the time we stopped and I heard the scrape of a key into a lock, I knew my back was going to be covered in bruises tomorrow.

  After that, I spent another half hour or so lying there, staring into darkness, as Cly and Aegis explored the room, set up wards, and unpacked the other suitcases. It might have been longer; I was starting to lose track of time. I kept seeing Mom with the dagger held to her neck. Don’t listen to her, she’d yelled at me. Don’t worry about me. Run! She’d tried to smile at me—even then, she’d tried to smile at me, give me courage.

  But she couldn’t hide the fear in the gray eyes that matched my own.

  I’d never seen her afraid before.

  The dagger had drawn a trickle of red, red blood, smoking against the black metal of the blade.

  In the claustrophobic darkness, I swallowed down my fear, praying that she was all right, back at Redbriar Manor. Were they treating her okay? Most of the servants liked her, but Cly’s mother, Leda, had hated us from the start. I wouldn’t put anything past her. The only reason she hadn’t killed Mom already was that she needed her to control me.

  And I felt a bitter surge of hatred for Cly, chattering outside about where to hang up her dresses, as if that were her only concern in the world.

  At last, silence fell outside. “I guess it’s time to deal with that,” said Cly. She gave the trunk a bone-rattling kick.

  Latches clicked. The lid swung away, leaving me blinking in the sudden brightness.

  “Do you have to?” Cly whined, as Aegis lifted me out of the trunk and removed my gag. “Can’t we just… keep her in there?”

  “Sustenance trunks run out of charge,” said Aegis. “We have to let her out sometime.” His hands were gentle, but the gag had already scraped raw patches into the inside of my mouth. I prodded at them with my tongue, tasting the blood.

  I got to my feet, looking around at the room. Cly had received a nice little suite all to herself, as befitting a Redbriar, with a smaller adjoining room for Aegis. The place had come pre-furnished, with bed, mirror, desk, lamp, chair, sofa, and wardrobe, all in a dark, expensive-looking antique style. A tall, narrow window was set into one wall. I could only see blue sky through it from this angle, but I automatically tried to take a step toward it anyway—and failed. Shackles still bound my arms and legs, engraved deeply with magic-suppressing runes.

  “Don’t try to shout or escape, mongrel,” said Cly, her blue eyes bulging with nervousness. She had her mother’s eyes, and her limp blonde hair, garnishing her aristocratic Redbriar features. “If you get me into trouble, my mother’s going to end your mother.”

  “I’m not stupid,” I rasped, staring at her. The hope of keeping Mom safe bound me more tightly than the shackles. “Get on with it.”

  “Well, stop glaring at me, then!” Cly snapped, shrinking behind Aegis. “Why do you always look at me like that?”

  I laughed incredulously. She was keeping me prisoner, and she complained that I looked at her wrong. “Let go of my mom and me, and I promise I’ll never give you a second glance.”

  Cly scowled. “Just do the transfer, Aegis. Hurry up so I can get out of here.”

  Aegis nodded and slid a few thin metal tools out of the trunk. I obediently bared my throat, allowing him access to the rune-engraved silver chain around my neck. His calloused fingers were warm and steady as, bit by bit, he worked a coin-sized ruby out of its setting at the front of the necklace.

  I stared at his clean-cut face, framed by short brown hair. His brows were furrowed in that familiar way as he made delicate adjustments, his dark blue eyes narrowed in focus. Hints of tattoos peeked from the collar and cuffs of his shirt. I hated everything the tattoos stood for.

  When I’d come to Redbriar Manor eleven years ago, he’d been my first and closest friend. He came from a vassal family, sworn to House Redbriar. His parents had died in Priam’s service when he was a baby, and in return the Redbriars had taken him in, raising him alongside their own family.

  He’d taught me my way around the manor, showed me which servants were kindly to children and which were mean. He’d taught me, a city girl who’d never seen a real frog, how to climb trees and fish. I’d thought he was handsome when he was a gangly, awkward tween with scabs on his knees; at twenty, he was stunning, tall and strong and broad-shouldered.

  But in between, the Redbriars had given him Spellbreaker tattoos. Things had never been the same since then.

  He was still loyal, dependable, competent. But he wasn’t loyal to me. He wasn’t dependable for me. And he’d put that competence to use destroying my and my mother’s lives.

  I’d liked him, once. Maybe more than liked. But now, the touch of his hands stirred a deep, painful rage.

  At last, Aegis lifted the gemstone free of the necklace. Cly was putting on her own silver necklace, covered in a different pattern of runes, but with a matching empty socket at the front. “Be gentle with me,” she said, pouting at Aegis.

  “It’ll only take a moment,” Aegis said. With the same tools, he inserted the ruby into her necklace.

  Cly gasped pleasurably as the ruby flared with an unearthly light.

  The Redbriar family owned thousands of years’ worth of magical heirlooms, and this pair of necklaces was one of them. The ruby served as a battery, temporarily draining magic from the wearer of the source necklace to charge up the wearer of the destination necklace.

  There were strict limitations on their use, of course. The necklaces could only be used by a pair of blood relatives. Moreover, given that magic was said to come from the soul, mages considered it a violation of the worst kind to transfer it directly to another mage—worse than giving somebody your arm or leg. That was why Leda couldn’t get one of Cly’s other full-blood relatives to share power with Cly, even when
Priam was starting to look toward a half-blood bastard for an heir.

  But Priam was dead. And guess who was half Redbriar and willing to do anything to save her mother?

  My stomach twisted as I watched Cly send the pages of her orientation packet swirling around the room with a wave of her hand. “Whoo!” She was laughing, eyes aglow with hunger, like a thief with her hands overflowing with stolen gold. She waved her hand again, and an illusion came over her face, adjusting the angles and proportions until they were as perfect as a doll’s. Another wave, and her hair grew glossy and voluminous. She was giving herself a makeover with a piece of my soul.

  Cly summoned dresses from her wardrobe, picking a red, high-collared minidress that hid the necklace. Great House students were allowed more leeway with clothing than the no-names, who were required to wear business casual, and she wanted to stand out. “Okay, I’m feeling great!” Cly said, admiring herself in the mirror. The pages drifted to the floor around the room.

  “Ready to start introducing yourself?” Aegis smiled at her encouragingly.

  “Well, I’ve come all this way, so it had better be worthwhile,” said Cly. “You know, I’m starting to think it might be fun, even.” She stuck her chest out, striking a laughable pose. “Showing the world what the latest Redbriar can do.”

  “Should I go with you?” asked Aegis.

  “I'll be fine,” said Cly, rolling her eyes. “For once, I’ll get to do all the intimidation. I’ll do it outside so you can watch from the window, but let me have my fun.” She flounced out of the room impatiently.

  Aegis started toward the window, but hesitated, turning to me.

  “Hello,” I said. “I’m glad you remember I exist even when you don’t need to use me as a living battery.”

  Aegis sighed. He hesitated, then, to my surprise, bent down and unlocked the shackles around my ankles. “I know you won’t try to escape without your mother, Cassandra,” he said, shifting to unlock my wrists as well. “Just… be understanding with Cly, okay?”