Page 79 of House of Mages and Raven

Rage burst in me at seeing him like that, and I stepped toward him. He recoiled, as if I were a cobra about to bite him.

Two sentinels stepped between us, signaling me to back off.

“Wyatt,” I demanded, “who hurt you?”

“You!” he said accusingly, hurt and fear in his unswollen hazel eye. “You beat me for hours and left me to die!”

“Until we found him in an abandoned cabin off campus,” Grace growled from the chair where she was being tended to.She was healing at a rapid speed, and I could sense her queen’s power pouring into her.

“That was why our princess dueled you,” Bellona shouted. “You fight one of us underdogs, you fight all of us!”

They’d staged this to frame me, and my former friend Wyatt had joined them to play a willing victim. But why was there fear in his eyes? Did he really believe that it was me who had attacked him?

“It wasn’t me, Wyatt,” I said.

“What an actress.” Grace snorted.

“It was you, Barbie! It was you,” Wyatt insisted. “I wouldn’t get it wrong. I’d recognize you anywhere.”

“You do know someone else looks like me, right?” I asked, desperate to clear my name.

“No, it was you,” Wyatt said. “Princess Grace has a different eye color. I saw your mismatched eyes when you punched my face and then kicked me over and over when I was down. You left me for dead!”

I drew a cold, sharp breath. Could Grace have used her mind power on Wyatt when the beating happened? She could’ve had her minions beat him up while implanting a false memory.

“Why would I attack Wyatt?” I shook my head. “He’s my friend, and I wouldn’t hurt any of my friends.”

At least, not intentionally. Never would I intentionally hurt any of my friends.

“You aren’t my friend, not anymore,” Wyatt said.

“You don’t have friends anymore, Barbie. You’re toxic and violent.” Jinx pushed to the front of the crowd, her face tight and hard. This was the first time she had stood against me openly. “Everyone has left you. You have been stripped of the leadership of the underdogs, as we’ve all seen your true colors. You’re nothing but an attention-seeking fraud.” I laughed at being labeled as an attention seeker even though my chest ached,as Jinx and Wyatt’s betrayal cut deep. “Princess Grace is now our rightful, kind leader. You’re so jealous of Her Highness’s popularity that you stooped so low as to beat one of us up to frame Princess Grace.”

It was time to write off the underdogs that had become my foe’s attack dogs.

“Congrats on your new status, Jinx.” I wrinkled my nose in distaste. “You now smell like chicken shit, just like those little shits. I hope it’s worth it.”

She flinched before her expression hardened to anger and disdain.

Why was the world filled with so much hate? The mob demanded justice and pushed toward the heirs at the front, ready to charge me with their magical pitchforks and stab me. The princes turned their heads toward the angry mob, their power lashing out. Several rows of the assembly tumbled to the ground and piled on top of one another.

“Back the fuck off!” Silas snarled.

The heirs’ security details started to shove the rest of the mob back.

“I’ve finished examining the abused student’s memory,” Headmistress Ethel said. She didn’t even care to remember his name. “He was telling the truth. Barbie assaulted him to frame Princess Grace of the House of Underworld. She almost succeeded, but the dual colors of her eyes betrayed her true identity and her hideous crime.”

“You’re a funny lady, Headmistress E,” I said. “If I wanted to frame the princess, wouldn’t I at least change the colors of my eyes? I might be many things, but being that dumb doesn’t sit well with me.”

“You failed,” Grace said from the chair, the healer still hovering around her. She’d mostly recovered, her lip sealed. There was no blood on her anymore. “You’re a defect, a failedproduct. Copy me all you want, but everyone knows that you aren’t a pureblood. It won’t help your popularity to be obsessed with me.”

I laughed. “I’m not even obsessed with myself, Princess Demoness.”

The mob, who ate up Grace’s lies like toddlers wanted more candies, yelled at me for my lack of respect toward their favorite princess.

The air rippled, and I brushed off the spiderweb of Grace’s persuasive mind power, but the mob was in her thrall. The heirs, however, frowned. They shifted their dark gazes from me to Grace, then back to me. My counterpart had just made a mistake by trying to influence the heirs. Power called to power, but hers didn’t call to the heirs’ power, unlike mine.

“I believe you, Barbie, since you said you didn’t do it,” Louis said. “Not that I give a fuck if you beat up anyone. Some beatings are a good thing—exciting even.”

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