Page 3 of Faerie Trials

“Exactly. Think of her as a tutor who will assist you and support you with your class load.” Wicks clucked her tongue. “It is my opinion you need all the help you can get, and this woman was the only one willing to step forward on your behalf.”

The only one willing to help me? What kind of crap was that? “I’m already going to school and working,” I insisted, leaning forward, hands gripping the edges of the folder. “How do you expect me to find extra time in the day for another commitment? I’m grateful, of course, but this takes time away from other things.”

Not to mention my mentoring with Onyx Grimaldi, who happened to be the only son of Kendrick Grimaldi. Onyx was another half Fae, half wolf shifter, who had been working with me several nights a week to help me master my transfiguration magic.

“I have no free time as it is,” I finished lamely.

I already knew that nothing I said would make a difference. The matter was decided and out of my hands.

Wicks shook her head, and the four walls of the office closed around me like a stone cage. She didn’t care. It wasn’t her job to care. She merely carried out the orders of her superiors, and as far as she was concerned her obligation to me terminated at the end of this meeting.

“There is no other option, Tavi. If you don’t get your grades up this semester before the Trials begin, you won’t just flunk out of Elite and lose your position of favor with King Tywin. You could end updeadin the process of trying to compete.”

Wicks looked like she hadn’t just dropped a bomb on me.

And although it wasn’t my first time hearing the warning—probably wouldn’t be my last, either—the word echoed through my brain during the entire walk into town once the meeting ended.

2

Dead.

It wasn’t like I was a stranger to the concept, having seen my fair share of deceased, decapitated, dismembered bodies. A little weird, right? Especially for someone just past her nineteenth birthday. Still, the whole thing about the Trials being so competitive, so dangerous that students had died in the past…that I could die…

But Counselor Wicks had decided a plan of action for me. I shivered, wrapping my arms around my midsection. I needed help and a shoulder to cry on and I knew just where to find them. Well, the shoulder anyway.

Which belonged to my best friend Melia Haversham. Melia rented an apartment in the town of Eahsea, close enough to the castle to keep an eye on me if I needed some guidance—when did I not need guidance?—or if things went south. I didn’t have the heart to tell her things were already south.Waysouth. It didn’t look like I’d be making a course correction anytime soon, either.

Melia’s place downtown was a tiny attic room barely big enough for her bed, a dresser, and a kitchen table. The two of us once discussed getting an apartment together and had even gone so far as to make plans and check on a few available places for rent within the town limits but still in close proximity to my school.

Until King Tywin put his foot down.

He’d refused to let me out of my room in the castle, on the grounds that he’d invited me and the other top students from the Halfling Academy to Faerie—early—and he intended for me to live and work in the palace while I attended school. The surprise nearly had my jaw dropping open in front of the monarch.

Of course I had no choice but to agree and quickly rescind my offer to share with Melia.

I hated being stuck in the palace. While I’d been assigned to the kitchen, which I also hated, for my work–study program, at least I liked my boss Raelynn, so it made the job bearable. The king only wanted me close because of the suspected murder charge. Nothing else. After all, he’d outfitted me with the tracking device, one which sent a signal to him whenever I worked magic of any kind. Thank goodness the tracker had been taken off of me a couple of months ago.

Bundled now against the fierce winter weather—Faerie mirrored the parallel mortal realm insofar as seasons—I climbed the stairs, my footsteps echoing on the rickety wood, and knocked once before pushing inside the apartment. Melia knew I was coming and had left the door unlocked for me. Outside, the world had turned dark, billions of diamond stars alight in the night sky. Many more here than I’d ever seen visible in the mortal world.

The entire land of Faerie was alive. The very earth itself here fed into the powers of the Fae, enabling anyone with fairy blood to use magic. It also meant when things went wrong, the land rebelled. For example, the weeks of thunderstorms that ravaged the town when I first arrived here. I still had no concrete evidence linking the phenomenon to my presence but it made a girl wonder. And worry.

Melia whistled her way around the kitchen, oven mitts covering her hands. Despite the freezing temperatures outside, it was hot in the little attic room, the oven putting off massive amounts of heat.

“What took you so long?” she said, her dusky gold skin covered in a thin sheen of sweat, and her wild brown curls bunched in a messy twist at the top of her head. “I mean, how did your meeting go?”

I shrugged out of my jacket, which had become much too heavy in the nearly oppressive heat. “It wasn’t good,” I admitted.

“Oh?” She turned around and gestured with a clear indication for me to spill the beans.

I spent the next fifteen minutes telling Melia about my meeting with the guidance counselor and the bad news about the new tutoring I was required to do to stay in the game.

“I’ve got my first session with the tutor tomorrow.” I thanked Melia when she placed a heaping helping of butternut squash casserole in front of me. “Guess they didn’t want to waste any time whipping me into shape.”

Melia took the seat across from me. If either of us moved too far back, we would run into the kitchen cupboards and the makeshift desk she kept closed against the opposite wall. There wasn’t a lot of walking room but the place had a great feeling. Security, warmth. A real homey vibe.

Those were all things Melia possessed in spades. I wasn’t sure what kind of universal lottery I’d won by getting her as my mentor when I first arrived at the Fae Academy for Halflings, but it was one of the only good things of my life from the last few years.

“What are you going to do? I mean, you are kinda backed into a corner, girl.” She twirled her fork in her fingers before spearing it deep into a cube of steaming squash. “If you don’t do the tutoring then you might not make it through your classes and those stupid Trials. Which, can I just say, I’m so happy I didn’t have to do because I would have obviously ended up six feet under. But your classes! I mean,damn.”

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