Chapter One
Rebel Academy, Saturday September 14th 1891
Magenta
I knelt before Hecate’s Tree in the Dead Wood, ghosting my gloved hand across the trunk that pulsed with magic.
“Sweet Hecate, I crave…” What didn’t I crave? Safety for every student in Rebel Academy, for Robin to love me with the same fierceness that I loved him and not simply as my best friend, and for father to escape mother’s cruelty. I clenched my fists. “…freedom.”
I breathed hard, waiting for the lightning crack, earthquake rumble, or at least the frogs to stop hopping over my feet with mocking croaks.
Sunlight speared through the branches of the trees. Lily of the valley wrapped the glade in its intoxicating aroma. Butterflies flitted between violets, which held both the deadly power to kill or cure.
Like me, the entire wood hid both sides within it.
I hissed in frustration, as tears smarted my eyes. It wasn’t like the goddess Hecate had helped me before. But tonight, I’d be wed to a fae prince who I’d never met. Mother was only using me to make alliances.
I’d never even been kissed. How could I marry a stranger?
I was the single Blessedly Charmed witch to have been born in the last five hundred years. My magic as a baby had reached with its pink roots through the castle’s grounds to bond with Hecate’s. It’d created the wards that my mother, Henrietta Crow, had then used to establish the Rebel Academy. Perhaps, I didn’t deserve freedom myself when my magic had led to the imprisonment of wicked supernatural males as Rebels within the academy. Yet I didn’t believe the Rebels wicked but rather rejected, abandoned, and broken.
Since I’d turned twenty-one last week, my magic craved to protect, venerate, and love the Rebels who my magic had trapped.
If I wasn’t free, how could I do that?
Mother would’ve been spitting crows’ feathers for a week if she’d known that I loved any of the Rebels.
Please, please Hecate free me…
“Aren’t your ancient powers mightier than the House of Crows’?” I goaded the goddess. My heart thudded in my chest at my daring. “I belong to you. Take me!”
A rush of wind howled through the glade that was cool even in the warm afternoon. I gasped, as natural magic thrummed through the yew tree, lighting it up like a firework. I could sense its roots reaching through the estate and underneath the academy itself. Then it burst into me with searing strength, and I howled, falling onto my back amongst the foxgloves.
My black velvet dress with its billowing train, which mother had gifted to me for the Enchanted Ball tonight (where I’d first meet my fiancé, Prince Titus), would no doubt be stained.
It appeared that I’d be closer to Cinders than Cinderella at the altar.
My long blond hair broke free of its clips and tumbled around my shoulders. My own magenta magic glittered around me like fairy dust, just as it had since I’d been in the cradle, which is why I’d been announced Blessed.
It was father who’d named me Magenta, and I’d always been grateful for that.
Certainly, goading a goddess had been foolish. But had she just rejected me with a witch slap?
I pulled myself onto my elbows. “Now see here…”
Then I yelped, as Hecate’s Tree wrapped her glowing branches around my middle and dragged me struggling into the air. She yanked me above the canopy, slithering her branches down me, until I was dangling by my ankle. I blushed, lifting my dress away from my face.
My crow familiars who were twins, Flair and Echo, flapped around my head. They’d been another gift from my mother for the ball and just as unwelcome. Their midnight feathers thwapped across my nose, as they cawed like they were snickering.
“Pretty stockings, petticoats, and drawers,” Flair’s mocking London voice broke telepathically into my mind.
“For a witch,” Echo added with a tilt of his head.
As captured vampires (which were in fact Fallen angels), my mother had only transformed them into familiars on my twenty-first birthday. I didn’t blame them for gloating now. After all, they’d been forced into becoming my familiars. Although Echo was too gentle natured to derive satisfaction out of my misfortune. When their freedom had been stolen because of me, I almost wished that he could enjoy the reversal.
I flushed, squirming harder.
“Kind of you to notice,” I wheezed. “Could you be awfully chivalrous and help me to escape?”
Flair settled with a flourish on my boot like it was a perch. “Not a fuckity fuck’s chance in feathered hell, boss.”
Black cats, chivalry was dead.
Although, if that meant riding on horses and waving a sword around like a big manly prick, pillaging, and boasting about holding doors open for maidens in between slaughtering dragons, then I imagined that was a good thing.
“Excellent view, this. By my blood, you can see all the way over the river Thames to Oxford.” Echo’s tone became achingly wistful. I hadn’t even asked him where he’d lived before his capture, but had he been snatched from the Oxford vampire court? “If you don’t look down, you don’t even have to see your scary academy.”
Of course, I looked down.
Mage’s balls on a stick… Too high, too high, too…
My pulse thundered in my ears, and I clenched my fists in my bunched dress. The Gothic gray walls of the ancient Rebel Academy, which hid the truth of what lay inside, bulged alarmingly as my vision blurred.
A witch who doesn’t cope with heights is like a werewolf who doesn’t cope with howling. That was Number 73 in my mother’s Principal’s Motto Book.
I hated mottos with a witchy passion.
When I glanced up, Echo was peering at me. Was that concern in his beady eyes?
“You look pale. As I have Fallen, are you quite well?” He asked, softly.
“I’m hooked like a worm. It’s the perfect answer to all my prayers.”
“You’re up shit’s creek all right, and sarcasm is useless as a paddle. Did no one teach your bouncy bosom to be careful what you pray for?” Flair’s voice became steely. “What’s freedom for one, is a prison for another poor bastard. Did you wish freedom from your corset, opera, or…?”
My eyes widened. “True freedom is death.”
That was Number 21 in the Principal’s Motto Book.
I screamed, as the branch slithered around my ankle, loosening. I jolted down a couple of inches.
Had I risked everything to sneak out today only to ask for my own death by mistake…?
Well, Merlin’s prick.
My life flashed before my eyes: cup of tea — embroidery — cup of tea — piano lesson — cup of tea — reading — cup of tea.
My goodness, that was boring.
I clenched my jaw and forced myself to look up once again at the academy. Inside there, the men — Immortals, Princes, and their whipping boys like Robin — were allowed a magical education at Oxford’s secret college where the most dangerous witches from across the world taught those in most need of reform. An education that’d been denied to me, even though I was more powerful than all of them combined.
Today, the Rebels would be studying a class in Shifter and Familiar Training. Flair was lucky that I’d missed that. He wouldn’t like the methods, which the covens used to break unruly familiars like him.