Cruel Magic (Royals of Villain Academy #1)(6)

I squared my shoulders. They’d brought me here for a reason. I’d be able to come up with a better strategy for getting out of here if I knew what that was. Know thy enemies. Dad used to say that, jokingly, when talking about working around the hospital administration.

A punch of grief hit me in the gut. I clenched my jaw, holding myself steady against it.

I didn’t have a clue what was going on, but I did know one thing for sure: no way in hell were these assholes getting away with what they’d done to my family.

“Okay,” I said, hugging myself against a chilly lick of breeze. “Let’s go.”

My parents’ murderer, who appeared to be in charge of this little squad, made a dismissive gesture with his hand, and three of his followers got back in the sedan. He, the young guy, and one of the women escorted me up the stone steps to the building. As I got closer, I could make out a crest carved into the peak of the stone arch just beneath the gargoyle. The crest was framed by prickly leaves, and at its center was a dragon’s head. Not ominous at all.

Our shoes rapped loudly against the polished hardwood floor inside. The huge front hall smelled like mahogany with a whiff of smoke, the former from the broad curving staircases on either side and the latter from the flames dancing in sconces along the stone walls. Their glow gave a wavery quality to the daylight that streamed from the high windows.

The man led us past the staircases and down a narrower, dimmer hall beyond them. It opened to a second entrance room with gold-gilded wallpaper and a single mahogany staircase directly in front of us.

Voices filtered from a side room, but we weren’t headed there. The man strode up the stairs. I climbed after him, fidgeting with the glass charms on my bracelet as I went.

“That’s right,” a smoothly amused voice rang out from above us. “Let’s see how you move with a real fire under your feet.”

My head jerked around. Down by the right-hand end of the second floor landing, four guys were standing in a cluster. Or rather, as I reached the top of the stairs and could get a better look, three guys were standing in a semi-circle around a fourth.

My legs stalled as I stared. If my hazel-eyed “friend” was striking, the three young men looming over their target were heart-wrenchingly gorgeous. The kind of stunning I’d have assumed had been tinkered to perfection in Photoshop if they hadn’t been standing before my eyes just ten feet away.

One appeared to have been built entirely out of muscle, with a chestnut-brown crew cut that emphasized the chiseled planes of his square-jawed face. Another held his lean body with a languid grace, his dark copper hair shadowing boyishly angular features that were made mature by lavishly full lips currently curved into a smirk.

Between them, directly in front of the scrawnier kid they’d caught, was the guy who’d spoken. I could tell it’d been him from the haughty tilt of his handsome face, which managed to look divinely innocent and yet devilishly hot at the same time, a mix of soft and hard lines so perfect that my fingers itched to try to capture them in clay. His golden-brown hair was just long enough to show a hint of curl, and his dark eyes, fixed on the kid, glittered with satisfaction.

The kid, who I’d have placed at sixteen or so, backed up a step, and the divine devil moved his hand. A spurt of fire shot up beneath the boy’s shoes. He yelped, scrambled backward, and lurched forward again as the flames seared higher and hotter at his heels. His eyes had gone wide with terror. His tormentors laughed.

Fearmancers. What a fitting demonstration of their talent. Horror twisted tight in my chest. My three escorts had started across the landing in the opposite direction, but the last shaky thread of composure I’d been holding onto snapped.

This morning I’d been totally useless while one asshole had flayed my family. I didn’t have to watch another one flambé this kid. I could at least create a distraction that’d give the boy time to flee.

“Leave him alone!” I said, marching toward them. “You’re hurting him.”

Three startled gazes leapt to me, the flames flickering down. The divine devil grinned.

“I’m teaching him a necessary lesson. Are you aiming to get schooled too?” His eyes skimmed down over my body, and I was abruptly aware of my wrinkled tee and loose jeans in comparison with the pressed dress shirts and slacks everyone around me was sporting. “You look like you could use it.”

My eyes narrowed. “You’re welcome to try.”

Before I’d even finished speaking, his lips moved and his fingers twitched, and a streak of flame darted across the floor toward me.

If he’d thought he was going to shock me, he had no idea what I’d already been through today. I stomped my foot down on the fire, restraining a wince at the flare of magical heat, and glared. “Is that the best you’ve got?”

The copper-haired guy let out a laugh. The divine devil’s mouth curled into a sneer, his expression as cocky as before, but a quivering sensation flitted through the air between us. It wriggled through my ribs and up to the base of my throat, sharp and heady, as if I’d bitten my tongue.

The guy whipped another lick of flame at me and the kid, and one defiant word crackled over my tongue. “Freeze.”

The quivering jolted out of me—and a sheen of frost raced across the floor, swallowing the flames and fixing the guy’s loafers to the floor with a glint of ice. The kid dashed away.