Chapter Ten

Farren

T he guys did not take my confession very well last night, which was honestly kind of surprising. I mean, only a few days ago, they wanted to sever our warrior Bond, and yet last night, they acted like they genuinely cared. Storm didn’t, of course; he just looked highly pissed off and yet bored at the same time. I don’t know how he manages to pull them both off simultaneously; it’s a gift.

Today is my first full day of classes, and I’m cautiously optimistic that no one is going to try to kill me; surely, the fates will grant me at least a day of no one with murderous intent coming for me, right? I haven’t seen Poca since yesterday, but that’s not unusual. He'll show up when he feels like it or if I’m in trouble, and the only time he hasn’t been able to was when he was somehow blocked from coming to my aid during the incident.

Walking the castle pathways with the guys gives me a sense of anonymity that I didn’t expect to have on my first full day, and that’s all thanks to Kill being the lost prince. That, coupled with his formidable reputation, is keeping all eyes glued to him, and for the moment, they’re skipping straight past me. I’m sure it won’t last for long, but I’m going to enjoy it while it does.

When we get to the door of my classroom, I turn to say goodbye, and they each reach out to touch me in some way while Storm pushes past us all with a dark glare on his face.

“Erm, bye,” I say again when they all start to follow me into the classroom and head towards the back of the room

“This is our class,” Loki says grinning on his way past me.

I huff, “Why did we all stop outside then?”

He just shrugs and continues to his seat, making me frown in confusion.

I don’t get the chance to mull over their confusing actions like I’d like to because now that they’ve all left to take their seat, everyone is now staring at me and my usual scowl slams into place. I’m not used to being seen; I spend most of my time in the shadows or locked in my father's castle's cells. The attention puts me on edge, and I practically stomp up to the professor to get my book.

“Farren,” I say bluntly when I get to the desk, and the professor looks up with a raised eyebrow. He doesn’t say anything as he hands me a thick textbook.

“Find a seat. You’re all adults now, so there’s no seating plan.”

I nod, taking the large textbook entitled History of Supernaturals and the Realms. That seems like a pretty broad spectrum of things for one class to discuss, although according to my schedule, this class is double the length of all my others, apart from combat and weapons, which we have every day—that one I can understand. We are supposed to be the protectors of the realms. Lifting my eyes, they immediately land on Killian, who’s scowling, his fingers twitching and his tail do the same like he’s desperate for one of his blades as a truly stunning fae leans on his desk, giving him a perfect view of her tits as she practically shoves them in his face, her dark hair blowing in a gentle breeze that only seems to be available to her, Air Fae then. It would be amusing to see how utterly bored he is with the entire situation if I didn’t know how much he hates people in his personal space. If she touches him, I know he’s going to snap. The fact that he doesn’t seem to hesitate around the guys shows me just how close he was to them and that there’s a level of trust between them that they’ve earned.

I get to where the guys have chosen to sit at the top of the stadium-like seating just as the fae woman reaches out her hand to place on his arm. Before she can connect and lose her head, my hand strikes out, grabbing her wrist in a tight grip.

“Nope, I wouldn’t suggest doing that,” I warn, manoeuvring myself so that I’m between her and Kill’s desk.

I let go immediately and stare her down, crossing my arms over my chest. I’m not here to make enemies, but I also won’t fade into the background. Unless I’m on a job, my personality simply doesn’t allow that. I may not like having so many eyes on me at once, but I’ve never been afraid to stand up for myself and apparently those I care about; that’s a new development; I’ve never really had anyone in my daily life that I’ve cared to protect. Most of them were involved in my torture and could rot in the fucking underworld for all I care. I am incapable of defending myself against my father though, he could end me far too easily, and with all the remorse he may feel being for the asset he’d lose, not me as his daughter.

The Fae sneers as she looks me up and down, “I don’t think he would’ve complained if I touched him.”

I sigh, glancing over my shoulder at Loki, “Damn, why is it always the hot ones that have the personality of a toad?”

His eyes spark with mirth as he lets out a loud laugh, “Not all hot ones have shit personalities,” his eyes trail over me, leaving heat in their wake, and I fight the blush, trying to pinken my cheeks by turning back around to face the bitchy dark haired beauty to distract myself.

Something flashes in her eyes that almost looks like regret, and I feel my curious nature perk up. Hmm, maybe she’s not what she first appears to be; possibly she’s just prickly and protecting herself?

She glares at me with no real heat, turns on her heel and stalks over to the other side of the room to sit with a group of equally stunning supernaturals. Keeping my eyes on her as I round Kill’s table and sit to his left, I see the fake smile she shows them all as they all start whispering. The look she sends me is icy, and the power I can sense from her is enough that I know I need to stay on my toes around her.

I need to keep an eye on that one. Whether she’s friend or foe is still to be determined, but judging from our interaction so far, I’m leaning towards foe.

“Thank you,” Kill mutters, barely audible over the sound of the other students talking, and I thread my fingers through his and squeeze.

“Alright, everyone, quieten down.” The professor calls the class to attention, “today, we’re going to be discussing the history of the Warrior Games.”

Whispers go around the classroom at his words, and I feel my eyebrows raise. I have never heard of the Warrior Games before, but from the reaction of the rest of the class, I must be the only one who doesn’t know what the professor is talking about.

A shifter in the front row puts her hand up, and the professor’s eyes dart to her as he nods. “Yes, Miss Benner?”

“We haven’t finished learning about the last Fae war. Why are we moving on to something different already?”

Her question brings a murmur of agreement from the rest of the class. The professor seems to tense for only a second before he continues as if the woman never asked the question in the first place, causing her to frown at the dismissal. This is my first lesson with him, so I can’t say for sure that his behaviour is odd; I mean, for all I know, he could refuse to answer student’s questions all the time, but a quick glance around shows the unease on the other student's faces which quickly squashes that theory. Something else is going on here.

“As I was saying, today we’re going to be talking about the Warrior Games. Do not let the name fool you; they are not fun, nor are they something to be taken lightly. They are brutal and deadly tests of strength, intelligence and strategy. All things that determine the ultimate warrior.”

I lean forward in my seat slightly at his words, excited to learn more about the Warrior games despite his warning. It sounds like fun to me.

“They were a centuries-long tradition that the realm itself used to determine the warriors that were capable of protecting our realm from outside forces. The Fae were always called from this academy, which was the entire purpose of the academy when it was first founded. The last games were over one hundred years ago, and the Realm hasn’t started another Warrior Games since.”

Well, that’s one hell of a coincidence. The games disappeared around the same time that the war on the Centre’s and their Bonded happened. For some reason, I don’t think that the games disappeared because the Realm no longer needed protection. I think something happened that blocked Realm from pulling the Fae at the academy into the games. I internally roll my eyes; of course, what the fuck do I know? It is a pretty hefty coincidence, though.

“Did you have a choice whether you participated in the games?” a guy off to the side asks.

The professor eyed him, “No, everyone who was in attendance at the academy got called. However, when they got called it was staggered.” At his words, students look around at each other with a mixture of unease and relief that they don’t have to go through it anymore. The professor ignores them all and carries on his explanation, “the teams that the spear assigned to you would get pulled into the games together. Those who had incomplete teams would get pulled in and find their other members already in the games.”

“What about people who had no other members on their teams? Would they get pulled in, too?” someone asked.

“No, back when the Warrior Games were still active, there were no single-member teams, only incomplete ones. Each round was different for each team and was specifically designed to play on their weaknesses and strengths. It wasn’t rigged, so winning was impossible, although, at times, I’m sure it could feel that way. The length of the rounds all depends on the environment they were transported to and their swiftness in identifying the objective and completing it. Sometimes the objective was clear, and sometimes the participants had no idea what it was. No round was ever longer than twenty-four hours though. If the objective wasn’t completed in time, then the realm deemed you unworthy.”

His already severe face darkens even further.

“What happened if the Realm deemed you unworthy?” I surprisingly hear myself ask.

His eyes land on me, sparking with recognition for a second before he nods slightly in approval, “The Warriors that failed were brought back here and given to the temple, where the gods and goddesses decided their fate, usually death.”

Exclaims of shock surround me, and I sink back into my chair. Failure wasn’t an option for the warriors that once trained at Black Onyx academy. It would result in certain death. Looking around at the students now, I see a fair few that still carry the need and drive of our ancestors to be the best warriors, warriors that are capable of protecting our realm and capturing the rogue supernaturals that stalk the many Realms. However, there’s more than there should be that have gone pale at the mention of the games and the death that would follow if they didn’t succeed, and for me, it’s easy to see how the academy that once prided itself on training the strongest warriors has become this.

The warriors of the past fought in wars, which was a grey area to begin with since all warriors trained at Black Onyx, so when a conflict between the different courts of the Fae Realm arose, it all depended on where the loyalties of the individual warrior lay. That’s one of the reasons that the academy sits on neutral ground between the Summer Court to the left and the Shift Court to the right. However, there hasn’t been a war since the one that exterminated the Centres and the Bonded. The warriors here are now trained as a kind of security force that deals with rogue supernaturals and acts as a mediator between those having boundary disputes as well as all things in between, one of the most sought after jobs is to become a protector in one of the Royal courts or with one of their dignitaries. There are nine courts with multiple dignitaries and high-end officials in each court; therefore plenty of opportunities for the best graduates to get positions but not enough for everyone to have them; the school trains thousands at a time. Not to mention that some of those being trained here wouldn’t actually want those positions of safety; they want to join the assassins or be on the front lines helping the people, not in an ivory tower. Although there is still danger involved in all of these positions, the threat level is significantly lower, especially since the games are no longer a threat to the Warriors, who don’t put their all into their training. This means that parents who still have control over their children until they turn twenty-five that previously would have hesitated to send their children here in the past because of the very real threat of death no longer deem it a risk. I know some high-ranking families use it as a form of reform school for their unruly and thoroughly spoiled children.

Money is what gets them in, and it's as simple as that. They, of course, still have to go through the testing, but results can be manipulated when the right price is paid.

There’s an evident divide in the classroom between those who have gotten in using family money and connections and those who have put in the effort and hard work to be here. It doesn’t escape my notice that everyone would most likely assume I was part of the first group.

“Alright, that’s enough,” the professor snaps, making everyone quieten down and bringing me out of my own thoughts, “there were worse things than their lives being forfeited for the Realm. The Realm at least would take them within seconds, and they’d feel nothing. But the terrains and situations that the warriors were up against were very real. Some of them are not even in this realm. After all, how can the Realm be sure that the warriors were up to the duty of protecting it if they were only tested against things that they were familiar with?” he pauses to let that sink in before continuing, “anything in these rounds could and would take great pleasure in killing the participants. Some of the beings that they were put up against would simply take them prisoner, instead. Since the failed participants wouldn’t be able to be brought back here when their time was up and held in the temple for the gods and goddesses to deliver their punishments, they were simply abandoned to whatever realm and creature they couldn’t defeat.”

“That’s harsh a fuck,” someone muttered, and the professors eyes snapped to the speaker in the third row.

“Yes, it was barbaric, but it was the way things were done, and every warrior had a purpose and a goal to strive for. Those that made it through the games were deemed heroes, warriors worthy to serve this Realm and were often given gifts from the gods themselves.”

My eyebrows rose at that. The gods and goddesses are talked about a lot in the Fae Realm, we learn about them and their roles when they were on this plane, but they haven’t been seen for a long fucking time, so long in fact that they’ve become more myth than reality. Especially for those of us that were born after the great war.

Something niggles in the back of my mind, almost like something I’ve forgotten is trying to push its way forward, but as soon as I acknowledge the strange feeling, it immediately dissipates, and I'm left wondering whether I imagined it.

“Why did the games stop?”

“No one really knows for sure, a lot of things happened around the same time, and there’s a lot of theories floating around that someone or a group of someones put it all into motion and that it's all connected, but as no one has come forward to claim it nor has the reasoning behind the attacks on these particular factions been found all we are left with is guesses.” The professor answers as he leans back on his desk. His words confirm some of my own thoughts but also bring a fuck load of questions to the forefront of my mind.

I listen as he answers a couple more questions, but I can’t seem to focus on what he’s saying. It’s only when I take a deep breath trying to centre myself, that I realise why I’m having a problem listening in the first place. My magic which usually resides in the centre of my being, is buzzing just underneath my skin.

I tune in, trying to figure out why it suddenly appeared without me telling it to do so. I feel on edge, almost like I’m in danger, but not quite. The conflicting feeling makes me frown; that makes little sense. Trying to keep my outward appearance calm and unaffected, I stretch my senses around the room, trying to find something, anything that could be out of place and causing my magic to react this way. Nothing seems to be triggering the reaction though, and as quickly as the feeling comes on, it dissipates.

Loki leans in slightly, “Are you okay?”

Keeping my voice low like his, I try to think of the best way to describe what I was feeling as I reply, “Yeah, I just had a weird feeling for a minute, almost like I was being watched, but I couldn’t find anyone looking at me.”

“It’s probably got something to do with the conversation we were having. It doesn’t exactly bring out happy thoughts, does it.” He tries to reassure me.

I shrug, “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

Before he can say anything else, the bell chimes, and the room suddenly becomes a flurry of movement as everyone packs up their shit and gets ready to go to the next class. The guys and I seem to all be on the same page and take our time packing up, in no rush to get to the next lesson. I’m not even sure what it is.

“Strategy next,” Rival mutters as he moves behind me to follow the flow of students out of the door.

“It’s like you read my mind,” I grin, and he chuckles quietly.

“Didn’t read your mind, I just looked at your schedule and I have that class with you.”

“When did you look at my schedule?” I ask curiously.

“We all did,” Loki replies, “you left it on the coffee table in the main room and we wanted to see what classes we shared.”

I smile, but don’t reply as we continue our onward journey. I like that they cared enough to want to know. Eventually the others all split off to their own classes leaving me alone for the first time with Rival.

“So, what’s strategy?” I ask.

His smile is warm as he looks down at me, “It’s pretty much what it sounds like but I personally think it’s a bit outdated now. It’s all about war strategy and things like that so it's fairly difficult to transfer that into the modern version of what we do now.”

“You mean enforcement, no wars and dignitary protection detail,” I smirk.

“Well don’t get me wrong, I think it’s an important job we do especially since we’re deployed across the realms, but more and more now the important members of our society seem to be sending their spoilt kids here to be reformed.” He shrugs.

“If that’s what strategy is about then what class do we learn the best strategy to take down the many supernatural creatures we come across?” I ask with a frown.

“Funnily enough that’s in a class that’s simply called supernaturals.”

I raise my eyebrows and he chuckles as he opens the door to the class room.