Phoenix Academy: Forged (Phoenix Academy First Years Book 3) Read online

  Phoenix Academy: Forged

  Lucy Auburn

  Contents

  Get Updates

  Author’s Note

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Read Next: Fae Like Me

  Read Next: Three for a Witch

  Also by Lucy Auburn

  About the Author

  Copyright 2019 Lucy Auburn.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Created with Vellum

  Get Updates

  Want three free books? All you have to do is sign up for my mailing list.

  I’ll email you a free book bundle as well as new release alerts, book sales, and the occasional fun newsletter.

  Download now!

  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/2mmiulv36m

  Join my Facebook group to interact with me and other fans. It’s where I do cover reveals, spoiler discussions, and post deleted scenes and bonus material from my series!

  Thank you to all my lovely readers.

  You make writing the best profession possible.

  To keep in touch, don’t forget to check out my website:

  www.lucyauburn.com

  Readers can sign up for advanced copies of soon-to-be-published books on Booksprout.

  Author’s Note

  This book contains some violent scenes, especially in the climax.

  Phoenix Academy contains a reverse harem romance. I hope you enjoy!

  Chapter 1

  “Forget.”

  The word seems to echo inside my mind, heavy with meaning. My heart aches. I don’t want to forget; I don’t want to start over. Every precious second I’ve had with my guys is meaningful, and getting them back is the most important thing I’ll ever do.

  I mouth the words to the spell over and over again, blood dripping from my hand, desperate to undo what’s been done to us.

  Then Mateo continues, “This soon-to-be-dickless prick.”

  I blink.

  Mateo smirks. “Dickless prick. Get it?”

  I wish I didn’t. It’s a joke so bad that I’m tempted to tell him off in response. But when I glance up towards him, I see Lynx just over his shoulder, shaking his head slowly back and forth. He has a length of corded rope wrapped around his hands, and is sneaking up on Meyer from behind, eyes full of anger.

  The spell worked. It wasn’t for nothing. I’ve somehow freed my guys.

  The world starts to make sense again.

  But the battle isn’t even close to over. Laena's body, stretched out on the ground behind Meyer, is proof of that. So is the growing paranoia on his face as he watches Mateo with me.

  “Did you hear me? Make her forget everything that has happened. I want to start fresh with my daughter.”

  He holds out his right hand, fingers writhing with black energy. His steps bring him closer to us, close enough that Mateo can no longer mutter jokes to me in a low voice. I feel Ezra tense, his sword pulled away from my neck as if he’s contemplating putting it through Meyer’s middle and gutting him.

  Meyer narrows his eyes at Mateo. “Obey me. Obey."

  “Nah.”

  Before Meyer can react, the boys act as one. Moving with impossible grace, Lynx whips a length of rope around Meyer’s neck and pulls tight. Sebastian lets go of my shoulder and draws two poison-tipped knives. Ezra shifts his sword to his side and steps in front of me, easing into a fighting stance. Mateo drops his hand from my forehead, turns around, and levels his gun in Meyer’s direction.

  “Step aside, Lynx,” Mateo says. “I’m thinking I’ll just shoot the bastard in the heart, and I don’t want to take you down with him.”

  “You can’t.” The sneer that twists Meyer’s lips is cruel. Black energy surges up his wrists towards his shoulders, heavy and powerful. “I may have lost control of you temporarily, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m a Grim, and you’re nothing but a lowly demon. You exist to be controlled. Your free will is—”

  Lynx tightens the rope around his neck until his voice cuts off completely in a harsh cough. But Meyer’s eyes don’t lose their cruelty, and his power spreads around him. I can feel it surge towards me and find myself taking a step back, even as my own black-and-orange power responds. No matter how I feel about his Vader-like proclamations or seeing him rip Lana’s heart out of her chest, some part of my powers innately recognizes our similarities. Like to like.

  Daughter to... well, let’s call him my DNA donor. “Father” is a word for men who show up.

  “We need to end him now,” Ezra says. “He’s got something up his sleeve, I just know it. A bullet to the heart would be perfect.”

  Sebastian reaches out to brush his fingers against Meyer’s cheek. “He should die painfully, if possible.”

  Mateo glances back at me. “Dani.” He flicks the safety off his gun and edges his finger close to the trigger. “Is this how you want it all to end? It should be up to you, after all.”

  “Agreed,” Lynx says, muscles bulging as he fights to keep Meyer in his grasp. “But decide quickly. I don’t know what spell he’s got cooking, but I can’t hold him forever.”

  I hesitate.

  Meyer’s black energy grows.

  His face reddens as Lynx cuts off more of his airflow and Sebastian digs his fingers into him, multiplying his pain many times over. He tries to catch my eyes, to make me meet his gaze, but I avoid looking at him completely.

  I want to open my mouth and tell Mateo to shoot. It’s the least I owe the headmaster, and the boys themselves, who have been held captive by the man for months now.

  Somehow, though, I can’t do it. Instead I find myself saying, “Those Grims who tried to kill me were taken to some island prison or something. Maybe... maybe he can go there too.” Ashamed, I can’t quite look at any of them. I search for an excuse for not killing him. “In case he proves to be useful.”

  Ezra says, “To take him there, we’ll need some way to nullify his powers, the way we did to the White Phoenix. And we have to do it now.”

  I nod sharply. “The first half of the spell I prepared severed his connection to all of you. The second half should reforge it, if I did it correctly. Once that happens we can figure out what to do with him. There’s got to be some
way to weaken him enough to imprison him. Just... don’t kill him. Yet.”

  To his credit, Mateo only sighs a little as he lowers the aim on his gun, so it’s squarely pointing towards Meyer’s general crotch area instead of his chest. “Fine. But I’ll kneecap him if he does anything.”

  “Fair enough. He can live without knees.”

  He can also give me answers about who and what I am—and what he’s talking about when it comes to my parentage—from inside a prison cell.

  I tell myself that I only want to spare him because of how useful he’ll be. In reality I know he snared me the moment he said the word father, and I’ll never be able to look at him the same because of it.

  After everything, I should see him for the monster that he is. And the truth is that I want him to suffer. But not enough to watch him die.

  What a fucked-up thing family is.

  My mind is jerked away from thoughts of blood ties when I feel the magical, very non-familial ties between me and the four demons snap into place. As the spell settles around us and reforges our bond, I wonder how I was ever ignorant of its presence. I can feel Lynx’s strength, Ezra’s determination, Sebastian’s sadistic rage, and Mateo’s keen predatory intent. They pool inside my belly, four points to a compass that I can turn to at any moment for anything that I need.

  I’m no longer alone in this dark, strange world.

  “It’s back,” Sebastian says, eyes fluttering briefly closed in bliss. “You did it, Dani. Now he won’t be able to enslave us ever again.”

  Meyer struggles against his bonds; it’s unclear if he’s angry that my spell worked, or nearing the end of his ability to hold his breath. The air around him is a black cloud of dark Grim energy, surging and moving like a living thing.

  “I’m going to have to let him breathe,” Lynx warns us. “When I do, he might be able to perform spellwork.”

  Ezra grips his sword and slides the blade towards Meyer’s neck, pressing the sharp tip against his skin. “Do it. I’m ready if he steps out of line.”

  I take up a fighting stance, even though I’m not sure what I would do if Meyer starts up another spell. In theory I should be able to fight him Grim-to-Grim, but in reality the more I consider our classes the more I realize he took great pains to make sure I’d be no match for someone like him.

  Mateo takes up a similar stance just in front of me and a little to the right. Sebastian does too, his fingers sending pain through Meyer even as he draws a small, poisoned knife with his other hand, prepared to weaken him if necessary.

  With a grunt, Lynx eases the rope around Meyer’s throat, giving him just enough slack to gasp and cough. Dark red bruises are already forming beneath his chin, rubbed raw by the rough surface of the rope. He winces at Sebastian’s murmur of, “Double the pain.”

  I should feel nothing but triumph at the sight of him like this, eyes watering as he catches his breath, lungs straining with panicked air. But I just feel confused and angry, caught between absurd childlike longing for a father, and the desire to strangle him to death with my bare hands.

  As Meyer sucks in another breath of air, Lynx’s eyes harden, and he tightens his hands on the rope. Ezra gives him a short nod of assent, and he leans forward to choke Meyer’s breath again.

  He doesn’t get the chance to tighten the rope enough to cut off the Grim’s breathing a second time. Before he can, Meyer spits out a strange word. “Brandwond.”

  There’s a pop. A sizzle. And all at once the rope in Lynx’s hand catches on fire. The flames are contained but fast-moving, turning the length of cord into ashes and dust in seconds. Lynx curses and drops the two flaming ends of the remaining rope. In a blink, Meyer takes the brief moment of confusion to twist away from both Ezra’s sword and Sebastian’s knife with his impossible Grim speed.

  Ezra shouts, “Fire!”

  The gun goes off as Mateo empties several rounds in the direction of Meyer’s torso and legs, but he nimbly dodges most of the bullets with a smirk dancing on his lips. He’s so fast that he’s a blur, even to my eyes, moving from one place to another in a surge of power. Black energy swarms around him, coursing up and down his arms. I can feel it grow in weight and strength as the seconds pass, his mouth forming silent words as he draws from... something.

  Squinting my eyes, I spot where the energy is coming from and fight my revulsion. Laena’s recently dead body, returned to her human form in death, is being siphoned off. He’s taking death energy, not from the natural passing of plants or animals, but from the murder of a powerful shifter. And unlike the black powder stuff he’s taught me to use to increase the power of minor spells and curses, this energy is powerful and incredibly dark.

  It also violates the sanctity of her noble sacrifice. I can feel the wrongness of it in the air. The energy of her death resists his pull even as he yanks power from her cooling body. It’s a perversion of everything Yohan has taught me about peace in death, and everything I’ve learned in my meager studies of what a Grim is—and what a Black Phoenix might be if given the chance.

  But I don’t know how to stop him, or even how to fight him. I sent away the only person I know who might be powerful enough to resist him—or burn him into ash. If I did it right, she should be healing even now and almost ready to return. If I failed... well, then it’s just me and my guys against Vader himself.

  Mateo reloads and fires again, and Lynx pulls out another length of rope from his satchel, aiming to take him down once more.

  Ezra steps away from Meyer’s black whirlwind. He leans in close to me, hands on the grip of his sword. “Dani. Do you think you could drain his power like you drained Victoria’s?”

  “That was necromancy,” I point out. “She’d been risen from the dead.”

  “How is what he’s doing to Laena any different?” His eyes flick in the same direction as mine, seeing what I saw. “It’s better than nothing.”

  “He’s moving too fast for me to put my thumbprint on his forehead.” I swallow nervously. “And we don’t even know if it’ll work.”

  “Let me take care of slowing him down.” There’s a gleam in Ezra’s clever green eyes. “As for the rest—give it your best shot. We won’t blame you if it goes sideways. But we’ve got to try something.”

  I nod sharply, trying to have his confidence in myself. I didn’t figure out that Meyer was tricking me, much less that he was keeping other secrets. But, as I remind myself, I came here to fight, and I’ll do it if I have to. Especially if it means getting revenge for what he did to me and the guys.

  Anything to protect what the five of us have.

  There’s just one little part of it that makes me grimace. “I don’t want to—”

  “Do it,” Lynx says sharply, as he tries and fails to tie up Meyer once more. The Grim is deftly avoiding all their blows and draining more power from Laena’s body by the second. “Bend us to your will. We’ll make the four points. Just let me...”

  Eyes narrowed, muscles flowing with impossible grace, Lynx slides to his knees, hobbles Meyer and ties him down at the ankles. The restraint won’t last—already Meyer is scowling, black energy surging to his fingertips as he reaches down to burn the rope—but it’s enough for the demons to move into position.

  Four points. North, South, East and West, the last point taken up by Mateo, who stands confidently in front of me and reloads his gun one last time. Lazily, he shoots Meyer in the knee, a grin playing on his lips as Meyer jerks in pain. It’s enough to slow him down even more, though the wound is already slowly healing, stolen death energy swarming to the spot.

  It’s now or never.

  Taking a deep breath, I reach out to the four bright spots of the demons' energy, and speak in a strong, clear voice. “Obey.”

  Chapter 2

  “Use your dark energy,” I say, as I feel their strength and raw emotions surge to bend to my will. “Weaken this Grim’s connection to the power of death.”

  I’m making it up as I go along, but there doesn’t s
eem to be any other option. How does a spell get written, after all, if not by someone desperate to make it work? I just hope it does—work, that is.

  If I can’t weaken him this way, there may be no other option but to kill him. For the good of the academy, and all the students he’s had under his thrall for months. They matter more than my deathly street rat curiosity or the sickening feeling of familiarity I get when I look into his face.

  So after I say the words, putting all the force of my will into them, I stare at his connection to Laena. Even now, shot and hobbled as he is, he’s still siphoning off the energy of her death. It streams towards him, somehow creating an empty nothingness right above her body.

  But I can feel my words—my spell, if I dare call it that—working. My hybrid phoenix eyes show me the nexus of Meyer’s strength: a shadow next to his soul, made of dark energy, like a fainter version of the White Phoenix’s second soul that kept her animated long after her death. It pulses in time with his dark Grim energy.

  Together with the four demons, I reach towards it, trying to find a way to weaken and drain it. Desperate to take him down without killing him.