Heir to the House (Wraithwood Academy Book 2) Read online

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  Heir to the House

  Book 2 of the Wraithwood Academy series

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  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

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Thanks for Reading

  Dedication

  To my readers, who are giving me the opportunity of a lifetime to pursue my passion. Thanks for supporting me and my wild ideas!

  Content Notes

  This book contains sex scenes, strong language, and violence, as well as dark content in a variety of forms, including suicidal behavior, mentions of child abuse, and gore. It is intended for mature readers.

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

  Chapter 1

  It was the last day of finals week, and I was pretty sure Acubens Nightfeld wasn’t even trying anymore.

  We circled each other in the dueling ring while Professor Sarva stood outside, grading us for Practical Education. “You had an opening to counterattack,” I said.

  “I did,” he said cheerfully.

  I eyed him. Which turned into regular old looking at him, because Acubens Nightfeld was a distractingly cute boyfriend. He had the face and body of a fallen angel, and the fashion sense to show both off mercilessly. Since we’d started dating, his shirts had only grown subtly tighter, his dark hair more artfully tousled. Only the faint flush of exertion in his cheeks softened his handsome looks, but that had its own appeal. It made me want to reach out and—

  Okay, so maybe I’d been cockblocked by a sentient school for the past two months. And maybe it was starting to get to me.

  He pounced before I could recover my train of thought. “And you say I’m not paying attention,” he taunted, knocking me against the back wall. He grabbed my wrists, pinning my hands.

  Smirking at each other, we had a little contest of lower magic, both of us enhancing our strength and seeing who’d give out first. Then I twisted in his grip, taking him by surprise. It was my turn to grab him and throw him to the ground.

  I climbed atop him before he could get up. “You were saying?”

  Somehow he looked even smugger on the ground. “You win,” he purred. “Have your way with me, Cass.” His body was devastatingly warm and strong under my own. His silver eyes flicked deliberately to my cleavage.

  I leaned in. “Oh, believe me, I’m looking forward to winter break,” I said into his ear. I could see his pulse speed at his throat, his gaze grow even hotter.

  I could tell he was about to say something really filthy when Professor Sarva gave a polite cough beside us. The transparent walls of the dueling ring had gone down. I’d kept Acubens pinned for a count of ten. “Both of you pass,” she informed us.

  I scrambled to my feet, sense of embarrassment restored, and he followed with a sigh.

  Acubens Nightfeld was an awful influence when it came to how to behave in public. He’d grown up second in line to inherit one of the strongest of the Great Houses that dominated mage society, sheltered by an incredibly powerful and incredibly overprotective older brother. He could probably get away with murder, and he had gotten away with a dozen lesser sins. Wraithwood Academy swirled with rumors of his misadventures, some of them dating to before he was even a student here. He’d spent the three years before this one as his brother Arcturus’s “bodyguard,” a transparent excuse for keeping him on campus where Arcturus could watch over him until he was old enough to attend himself. Rumor said that he’d picked drunken fights with half the other Great House students here—and won basically all of them.

  As much as he was trying to shape up, as many good qualities as he did have, I didn’t think I could’ve dated just him and stayed sane.

  Now that we were done, we went over to Darshan’s dueling ring. “You still need to improve your footwork!” Acubens called out.

  The copy of Professor Sarva watching that duel gave him a disapproving look. “Please refrain from giving students advice during their duels.”

  Acubens pretended not to hear. It wasn’t like Professor Sarva could do anything; the Nightfeld family practically owned the school.

  But regardless of Acubens’s feedback, Darshan Jain was holding his own. He was a no-name scholarship student, a commoner by mage standards, and his specialty was magical research, not fighting. Still, he had strong enough magic to win most fights, especially with the pointers that Acubens and I were giving him, as long as he wasn’t being pitted against someone with a much more powerful bloodline. Thanks to Acubens’s string-pulling, he was consistently getting matched with other no-names, vassals, and weaker Great House students nowadays. Even when he lost, he wasn’t getting beaten up the same way he used to be.

  And when he won, he was merciful. He pinned down his opponent, a vassal boy, neatly and cleanly. The walls came down after a count of ten, and I ran over to check on him.

  “I’m fine, Cass,” he laughed, but his brown eyes went warm and gentle behind his glasses as he looked at me. He was thin and angular, with dark skin and black hair that, unlike Acubens’s, was unruly by nature rather than nurture. He was tall enough that he had to lean down to kiss me, a little shyly, affection overcoming his natural introversion. Together, we headed out into the sunny December afternoon.

  “Well, that’s our first semester at Wraithwood. You’re going home after this too, right?” I said to Darshan, hooking my arm around his.

  He leaned into me a little. “Yeah, I’ll get to see my sister again. It’s been a while.”

  Darshan had opened up a lot more about his own life as we’d gotten closer, venturing past the subjects of nerdery that we’d first bonded over. I knew now that he had a much older sister, already married, who normally lived on the other side of the country. “Hope you can survive that brand new nephew of yours. This one makes three, right?”

  “Oh, the older ones won’t be so bad, at least,” said Darshan with a grin. “I’ve been picking up random gross facts about the alchemical uses of demon poop just for them. They love me. If only you could distract babies with trivia too…”

  I laughed. “Good luck, and try not to get puked on.”

  The air was chilly, but the sun shone warm on my face through the bare branches of the trees that ran down either side of the lane. I shut my eyes, letting a rosy glow filter through my eyelids.

  As the half-human bastard daughter of Priam Redbriar, the most powerful figure in mage society before his death, I’d spent most of my life confined inside the gilded cage of Redbriar Manor. Just a few months ago, I’d been a prisoner at the mercy of my stepsister Cly, enduring abuse and exploitation while her mother Leda held my mother as hostage. The only freedom I’d been able to find was through pretending to be Cly and taking her plac
e at school whenever she decided it was too hard for her, and even for that I’d paid in blood.

  But now, through my desperate gambit, my mom and I were free at last from the clutches of House Redbriar. I was attending Wraithwood Academy under my own name, dating two amazing guys who made me feel happier than I had in years.

  It was hard to believe, sometimes, how much my life had changed for the better.

  I reached out and pulled them closer, Acubens on the left, Darshan on the right. I just wanted to feel them, solid and warm and real.

  “You’ll like Nightfeld Manor,” Acubens assured me. “I’ll show you all the cool places and secret passages. Most importantly, Arcturus is going to be gone the whole time.”

  “For the Winter Council, I’d imagine?” said Darshan.

  “Arcturus says he expects a long meeting this time,” said Acubens, pleased. “Especially with the current member situation.”

  “Three new members,” said Darshan, with quiet pride in his voice. “And there will be more to come. That’s something to be happy about.”

  Mage society was obsessed about bloodlines and magical power, so of course the governing council was structured around both. Seats were normally passed down through families, but they could also be won through a duel by someone whose family didn’t already possess a seat. Originally, in ancient times, every magical family had a seat in the Winter Council and a voice in governance. But even as family trees sprouted offshoots and the total number of legally recognized lineages increased, the Council had ruled not to increase the number of seats on the council. The decision was deliberate—they wanted to keep power in the hands of those who already held it, and out of the hands of the bastards and cadet branches.

  This situation had worsened as some families grew increasingly prominent, using their greater magical strength to seize political strength. They dueled for seats on the Council and gave them to their vassals, creating voting blocs loyal to them while technically obeying the one-seat-per-family rule. As of last summer’s Council meeting, the Great Houses and their vassals held a combined one hundred and two seats. Everyone else, the no-name families that made up the majority of mage society, had managed to cling to a grand total of six.

  But earlier in the fall, forced to fight against Arcturus Nightfeld, Darshan and I had come up with the first viable way to use inscription magic in duels. By applying geometrical transformations to the designs and printing the result on the humble human technological convenience known as sticker paper, powerful magic circles that would’ve been impossible to draw in mid-combat could now be slapped into place in a matter of seconds.

  The wider world had taken note, no-name families most of all. Being able to use inscription magic in duels was like bringing a gun to a knife fight, mitigating the massive difference in raw magical strength between them and mages from the Great Houses. Sure, the gun still had to be assembled and loaded on-site, but at least it didn’t have to be forged from scratch. Suddenly, no-name mages had a shot at winning duels against Great House mages.

  Some tried and failed. Great House mages could also use our magic circle stickers, after all, even if it didn’t give them as much of a comparative advantage. And the Great Houses had many advantages outside of the dueling grounds, from superior training to strengthening magical artifacts to strategic bribes.

  But a few, just a few, had succeeded. Enough that it had sent ripples of shock through mage society, detectable even from within the insulating gates of campus. Enough that three no-names had snatched seats on the Winter Council from the vassals of the weakest Great Houses.

  Three seats might not sound like a lot, but they mattered, with the Council currently split between the Redbriar and Nightfeld factions, and neither holding a majority. Both sides were forced to court the remaining members for votes. And the stakes were high, given—

  My steps slowed at the commotion next to us.

  A girl stood on the other side of the path, her shoulders trembling, her cell phone fallen at her feet. Her friends were trying to comfort her. “Oh, Kel. I’m so sorry—”

  “Shut up! Leave me alone!” Kel screamed. She reached for her phone. It slipped back through her shaking fingers. She grabbed at it again. By that point she was crying openly. She turned and ran away through the trees, stumbling.

  I heard murmurs around us. “Redbriar vassal family… her mother… raid last night… must have…”

  The feud between House Redbriar and House Nightfeld had been going on since before I was born, but it had seen drastic escalation in the past few months under Arcturus Nightfeld, Acubens’s older brother, heir and acting House head. His hatred of the Redbriars was legendary, and his ruthlessness was only matched by that of Leda Hastings Redbriar, my stepmother and acting head of the House in my stepsister Cly’s stead.

  Kel’s mother might’ve been the victim of a Nightfeld raid on the Redbriars. Or she might’ve been participating in a Redbriar raid on the Nightfelds. I didn’t know. I did know that, if the Redbriars had ordered her to hurt my mother, she most likely would’ve followed their orders.

  I stared at Kel’s jerkily retreating back. When the Great Houses fought, everyone else got dragged into their orbit.

  Chapter 2

  “I can’t help but feel partly responsible,” I said, once we’d seen Darshan off at the bus station. “If I hadn’t gotten Arcturus involved in saving my mom, things wouldn’t have ended up so out of control.”

  Acubens rolled his eyes. “Believe me, it was only a matter of time. He’s been preparing to kick the Redbriar’s asses for ages. If you hadn’t given him the opportunity to set his plans into motion, he would’ve found another. And besides, don’t tell me that you regret any of it.”

  “No,” I admitted. I remembered the glare of white bandages around my mother’s mutilated hand, and my own hand clenched at my side. “I only regret not being able to drag him in sooner. And damn if part of me doesn’t enjoy watching the Redbriars burn. Whatever else, your brother is definitely kicking their asses as planned.”

  “Heck yeah.” Acubens looped his arm around mine, grinning rather bloodthirstily. “He’s good for something, at least.”

  “I just wish there didn’t have to be collateral damage.”

  “Vassals’ fortunes rise and fall with their House’s,” Acubens quoted airily. “Besides, it’s out of our hands. My brother and Leda Hastings are the ones with agendas. Let’s leave them to it, while we have some fun.”

  I grimaced as we went up to my dorm room. I wasn’t noble-hearted enough to truly grieve over a Redbriar vassal’s mother when I worried every day if I could truly protect my own.

  The suite was empty when we entered, both the main room and the side room that my mother lived in nowadays. I checked the bathroom, my pulse accelerating.

  “Katherine said she was visiting friends off campus,” Acubens reminded me.

  I reminded myself to breathe. “Yes,” I said. My mom was making human friends with the eagerness of someone who’d just escaped eleven years of captivity, and nowadays she was spending more of her days off campus than on it. She even had a boyfriend, and talked my ear off about him. That was good, I told myself regularly. That was what I wanted. She was making a new life for herself, a normal life, to make up for the one my father had stolen from her when he’d spirited us away to Redbriar Manor.

  But when I thought of her going out alone, with so many mages around, my gut reaction was fear. Bloodstained memories surged to the front of my mind. She’d been taken from me once already. Taken hostage and tormented. The Redbriars would love to get their hands on her again, and this time—

  Acubens poked showily around the bathroom counter, sending bottles and bits of jewelry clinking. “I don’t see the shielding chain, so she must be wearing it.”

  “Yeah,” I said, fighting back the panic.

  “Or the other signaling amulet. You’ve got yours right there.”

  “Yeah.” I reached into my pocket. The amulet, a c
hunk of rune-engraved sunstone, remained cold and inactive. Acubens had given that to me, too.

  Are you sure that’s all right? I’d asked him. Even the crudest magical artifacts were worth their weight in gold, with the sheer waste and difficulty involved in creating them, and these ones glittered on every facet with a cold, delicate precision.

  Acubens had rolled his eyes. Arcturus gave them to me, so they’re mine to give away.

  I’d raised an eyebrow. There’s two signaling amulets.

  Fine, Arcturus gave most of them to me, he’d admitted. But what am I supposed to do with them, keep them around and give him extra ways to hover over me? They’re your mom’s now. Least I could do to thank her for having such a sexy daughter—ow!

  I pinched the bridge of my nose. The fear was receding—under control, but not fully gone. “She also has the inscription stickers I gave her. I know she’s as well protected from mages as an ordinary human can get. But she should be back by now. She isn’t usually this late. She knows we’re supposed to leave soon.”

  I scowled at my mom’s phone, lying on the couch. I wished she wouldn’t keep forgetting it, but I suppose that she hadn’t owned one since before Redbriar Manor. After all, why did glorified captives need phones? My phone was new to me too; I was just paranoid enough to remember to bring it.

  “Give it another half hour,” said Acubens. “This time of year, everyone’s probably handing out gifts and talking about their big holiday plans. Also shopping. Easy to run overtime.”

  I sighed. That was the far more likely scenario, I had to admit. The Redbriars would be too busy with preparations for the Winter Council for petty revenge just yet. “I can’t believe you’re being the voice of reason for once.”

  “I am perfectly reasonable,” said Acubens loftily. “I am the most reasonable person in my entire family.”

  I hadn’t met any of Acubens’s family beyond his brother, but I thought of what advice Arcturus would’ve given in this situation, and winced. “Quite possibly true.”