Noble Fae Academy: Year One Read online

  Noble Fae Academy: Year One

  (Noble Fae Academy, Book I)

  by

  Addison Creek

  Copyright © 2019 by Addison Creek

  Cover Design © ReGina Welling from Gotcha Covered

  This novel is a work of fiction in which names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, places, or events is completely coincidental.

  License Notes

  Thank you for downloading this eBook. This book remains the copyrighted property of

  the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial

  purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own

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  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Epilogue

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  Prologue

  I lived in the high mountains when I was a small child. Now, as a teenager, I no longer remember what province it was. I’ve run too far and tried too hard to forget.

  I didn’t live with my family, I lived with my mom’s friend Julia, and Julia’s mountain clan.

  The high peaks striping the kingdom of Whessellond were ripe with clans.

  My mother had left me with Julia and her fae under cover of night. No one had ever explained why. But I knew it was because I was a bastard child. The fae were long-lived, but my mother had an inkling that she wouldn’t make it to old age.

  I never saw her again.

  Julia and I were happy for a few years. Then one night it was raining, a hard driving downpour that felt like ice pellets falling from the sky. That’s when we were attacked.

  The clan was unprepared for the violence, or the viciousness. As far as the clan’s leaders knew, we didn’t have any mortal enemies. Yet every single member of my adopted clan was murdered.

  Except me.

  The run down the rocks that night was the most terrifying of my life. There was so much blood. Instead of washing it away, the rain just seemed to spread it far and wide.

  Maroon damp soaked through my clothing and ran down the backs of my hands. I raced through the freezing cold with terror hung over my shoulders like the warm shawls that were once worn by the women of the tribe I had been a part of.

  Before we were wiped out.

  Before destruction became the norm.

  Heavy, but not warm, was the shawl of terror I wore as I escaped. Smelly, but not of cooking spices and incense. Ugly instead of beautiful, unforgiving instead of soft.

  The soldiers hadn’t been looking for me. I wasn’t to let the secret out, the secret that I existed.

  As the years tore past and I lived on the streets, in places where not even shadows could be seen, I forgot many of these secrets. I forgot where I was from.

  The only part I remembered was my mother’s friend, Julia.

  As the years progressed I forgot most of my young life. Except that being a bastard was dangerous.

  In Whessellond you were killed for it.

  Chapter One

  My arms were wrapped around my knees, my chin buried in my thighs. I was cold, so cold, and dirty too, surrounded by the murky depths that I had come to know so well.

  I was a criminal. These dark depths had been my home for . . . I had lost count of how long I had been locked away in the Dungeon of Black Stone. They threw me down here right after I was caught. No trial, no discussion. Convicted. Left for dead.

  Every once in a while they remembered to feed me slop, but the timing wasn’t consistent. Sometimes it felt like days went by and I wasn’t given any food. Then, when it came, it was almost too disgusting to eat. But eat it I did; hunger drove me.

  There was nothing on the floor but some dirty straw. There was no light, no break from the incessant midnight.

  At first I thought they had to let me out eventually, maybe send me to a labor site. That’s why I had never worried. A labor site I could escape from easily enough.

  But this mud cage set in the ground was something else, and the fear of never leaving here was starting to eat away at me.

  All I knew was this deep darkness. At first I had tried to hang on to some semblance of who I was. I thought of happy memories of the old mountains, with Julia. I thought of the fae who had almost been my friends for a short while, before everything fell apart, before I had been forced to run on that rain-streaked night.

  But now it was just this. Me, alone: locked away for a lifetime of crimes I had managed to commit in a few short years.

  I rested my forehead again on my knees.

  There were eight provinces in the kingdom, each governed by a ruling noble family. Each province had its own land, a standing army, and a relationship with King Deffy. I’d been on the run for so long, I couldn’t remember which province I was from, except that I knew Julia had lived somewhere in Whessellond.

  But I remembered the mountains as if I were looking at them at that very moment, and Julia’s sweet laugh and the lines around her eyes and on her hands. All of that was clear to me still.

  Those thoughts were all I had left.

  A banging against the door startled me awake. My back was cramped and my bones felt as if they were scraping against each other.

  It had been so long since anybody had brought food that the noise surprised me. I crawled over to the door and waited. Finally, something was shoved through it.

  It was the usual plate of gross slop, but I fell on it hungrily. I supposed I’d get sick of this food as well, but not yet.

  My belly grumbled and rumbled as I ate. Once the food was gone, I scrabbled at the plate, looking for more, my fingers nearly numb with cold. There was no warming them here. I was skin and bones.

  Then my hands touched something that wasn’t food.

  No, it was something else, something even more precious. My heart started to race as I listened for the steps that had brought the food to recede.

  I was alone again.

  There were other prisoners somewhere in this pit, but I had only seen any others once. Once or twice I’d heard them. They’d gotten into a fight, with the guards or each other I wasn’t to know.

  At first I had tried to speak with the guard who brought my food. When would I get out? What was coming to pass in the kingdom? Had King Deffy chosen a successor to rule
Whessellond when he was gone?

  But the guards never answered. I asked them questions, like: How long would I be locked up? When was the trial? One of them had merely laughed, a cold sound. She had known what I didn’t, which was that I was not going to get a trial. She had known that there was no going back from where I had gone, from the blood crimes I had committed.

  In my heart of hearts, I knew that too.

  But now I had in my hands a jagged piece of metal, almost like a twisted knife. Was this an accident? How could they have been so foolish as to leave me here with this? I waited and waited, biding my time. I didn’t want anyone to be around when I tried the locks.

  Now I had a single hope of getting out. At last.

  Finally I had waited long enough. I tapped my finger against my elbow to keep track of time. When I knew I was ready, I used my hands to feel along the doorway, looking for the opening, the small keyhole, the dividing line between hope and despair.

  There it was. I used the jagged piece of metal to saw into the lock. Then I twisted it a bit, listening for the click.

  I twisted the lock with such force that I cut my hand, then whispered the curses I’d learned on the docks in the Middle Sea and the insults from the slums of Gundara.

  Hot blood tickled into my palm. That wasn’t good, since it would make it easier for me to be tracked. But it didn’t matter now. I could run faster than they could. Without another thought I was up and opening the door, my heart twisting inside my chest. If they caught me they would surely kill me.

  Slowly, I pushed the door open.

  For a brief moment I kept my eyes closed, scared that none of this was real.

  When I opened them, I saw that there was no one in the hallway.

  The light made me blink, even though it wasn’t that bright. It had just been so long since I’d seen any lights that my eyes had trouble adjusting.

  Slowly I crept down the muddy hallway on bare, silent feet, my ears up and sharpened for the slightest sound, listening intently for any noise that would signal that someone was coming. If a guard came, I would melt into the shadows.

  The metal in my hand would be good for that eventuality as well. I would wait until the guard appeared, then pounce.

  I had done it countless times before. What was once more? This was my last stop, this most infamous of dungeons, the Dungeon of Black Stone.

  I was beginning to think that nobody who came here ever left.

  Until now.

  I heard the noise of a guard, the sound of footsteps coming. I waited, heart hammering.

  Then the guard turned the other way. Because of that small decision, his life would be spared.

  I kept going, relieved. But it was in that moment of unconscious relaxation that something slammed into me. I landed hard against the wall. In an instant, fingers went around my neck.

  As I scrabbled wildly against the hands that were trying to choke me, my eyes met another girl’s eyes, piercing and dark. I saw a wild cold.

  I recognized the look. The expression was one I had seen on my own face all the time, back when I had a way to see my reflection.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she growled.

  “Escaping,” I grated out, managing to get my hands around her wrist even as I spoke the word.

  I shoved her back and her eyes widened in surprise as her feet skidded along the floor.

  I was stronger than I looked.

  Even with the shackles hanging off my wrists, I couldn’t be entirely stopped.

  It was an advantage for me in fights. I slammed the girl back against the wall, knocking the wind out of her. My hands went around her throat, and she scrambled wildly against me.

  Even as I was choking her, I realized something that made me loosen my grip just enough to let her breathe. I leaned in to her ear and whispered, “We can escape together. It makes it more likely that one of us will get away.”

  For a second she stilled, long enough for me to confirm to myself that I had never seen this girl before. That wasn’t surprising, since we were all kept in solitary confinement.

  After a moment’s thought she nodded, ever so slowly, acknowledging the wisdom of what I was saying. She knew I was right.

  “We aren’t partners. The second we’re out of here we split. I don’t want to hurt you, I just want to get away,” she told me. “Any other day I’d kill you.”

  “You would try,” I said, my words sharpened to a threatening point.

  She looked me up and down as if trying to place me. But I was so muddy and dirty, she might not have recognized me even if she’d known me. Throughout parts of Whessellond I was infamous. The loops around my wrist usually gave it away, and even my hair color was a distinctive, silver mess. But right now the color might be more accurately described as grime, and anyhow, none of it was clear in the state we were in.

  We moved along the hallways, neither of us really knowing where we were going. I was just following the light. The other girl didn’t appear to understand what I was doing, but she didn’t argue.

  She did keep giving me sideways glances, probably wondering if this was some sort of trick. When we rounded a last hallway I heard voices. When I stopped short, she grabbed my arm.

  “They sound young. I don’t think they’re guards,” she said.

  She pulled me forward so hard that I had no choice but to follow. We rounded the last corner and found three more prisoners, two guys and a girl, probably about our age.

  They looked toward us and their eyes went wide, fearful. They were even more afraid than the girl I was with. They didn’t look like they were as equipped to fight as I was. One of them started to bolt, but another one grabbed his arm.

  “Who are you?” they asked us.

  “We’re escaping too,” I said.

  But something in the back of my mind was issuing a warning signal. What was this? Why were five of us escaping at once? Could the guards possibly have given us all sharp objects that let us unlock our prison doors? It was as if they were trying to help a whole group of us escape at once.

  That was very hard to believe. In this kingdom, guards didn’t help prisoners. You just stayed in the dungeon prison forever.

  But now I was suddenly on the other side of that prison door, a situation I had dreamed about for as long as I’d been lost and alone in these murky depths. Something I had never thought would happen had happened. Before I had landed in the dungeon, I had never believed I could be imprisoned; I was too good. But that had changed, and I had been locked away, and that had been that.

  “Let’s go. We don’t have time to lollygag. If we stand around, the guards will come,” I pointed out.

  The others were inclined to agree with me, and as if we were being controlled by one brain, all five of us started racing down the hallway together. With so many slapping feet (the others weren’t as quiet as I was), it was more difficult to hear guards coming, but I kept my ears tuned, and still there was nothing.

  We were escaping easily.

  Too easily.

  A deep foreboding blossomed in my belly and started to rise up through my body. I just hoped we’d get to freedom before the bad feeling reached my throat and choked me.

  “Do you think this is a problem?” asked the first girl I had run into. “I’m Senny, by the way.”

  “It might be,” I said. “Are you sure you were meant to escape?”

  “Found a shard of metal in my mush and used that. Is that what happened with you?”

  I nodded.

  When we reached a door, one of the guys tried to open it. Unsurprisingly, it was locked. I was about to kick it open when he pulled out his piece of metal and jimmied the lock.

  We rushed through and met a cold blast of air in our faces.

  It was dawn, the sun just scraping the tree line and casting a muted light over the world.

  A barren landscape surrounded us, at the sight of which I set my jaw. I had missed this. But how could I possibly have missed this? B
ecause where I had been was worse.

  “Should we split up now?” Senny asked.

  I shook my head. “I don’t think we can split up yet. We have to make it to the trees.”

  I glanced around and saw a guard tower about fifty feet away. The guard was looking in the other direction from where we had paused, but I knew he’d turn around soon.

  I looked back at the prison, at the two stories of black rubble that had housed us for so long. Even above ground it was most depressing building I had ever seen, and I had been living in the dungeon.

  “It’s now or never,” said one of the guys. “Let’s go.”

  He started to dash cross the empty yard. I had just opened my mouth to call him back when I saw the guard in the tower start to turn. As the runaway reached open ground, two more guards appeared at the base of the building, huge muscled men dressed all in black.

  “Run,” Senny screamed.

  We ran.

  Just as the third girl started to follow the guy who had first broken away, the guard in the tower took aim. The first guy fell with a thick arrow through his body.

  The third girl skidded to a stop and raised her hands, but it was too late. Another arrow was already flying.

  The other guy had gone in a different direction, keeping to the shadows. He looked more athletic than the first one, and it turned out that he was also smarter. He was trying hard to stay out of view.

  Senny and I looked at each other.

  “Good luck,” she murmured.

  “I don’t need it,” I told her. I took off without waiting for a response, sticking close to the building, trying to stay out of sight.

  As I ran, I realized that several more prisoners had escaped besides the ones I’d come out with. One was being led out of the woods even as I watched.

  Other guards were busy tracking some of the other prisoners as they ran, so they weren’t paying any attention to me coming their way. Instead of running away from them, I decided to go right at them. Unless they turned, they wouldn’t see me coming until it was too late.