Academy for Courting Curses - Tara West Page 0,5

up in the dreary prison her mates called school and not enough time at her ancestral home, Siren Island. These past two weeks cramming for finals had been dreadful. Thankfully she was almost finished. All she had to do was pass final exams, and she’d be a high school graduate. Sounded easy, but she was still terrified of failing and repeating yet another senior year, especially since she could very well forget everything she’d learned while battling her grandfather.

That’s why she was riding on Ladon’s back, flying north to her grandfather’s hideout, also known as Gae’s Island. They’d finally been called to war. About damn time, too. Third Realm’s Prime Minister, Sir Gais Goblingout, had been stalling their planned attack, saying Fae and witch spies were gathering more information. Apparently some sort of blast had flattened her grandfather’s island several months ago, and the spies hadn’t seen any signs of life there since.

A pang sliced through her heart at the thought that the brother she’d never met was most likely dead. She’d heard whispers among Goblingout’s witches that they were going on a recovery mission. Perhaps her grandfather was dead, too. She hoped so. That evil wizard had already killed enough witches and shifters, and he’d even tried to have her killed so he could frame the dragon princes and start a war with the shifter race. If he’d perished in the blast, there was just one question. Who’d set off the blast and how? There was only one wand she knew of that could have discharged such a blast, and her mates’ fathers had it. The wicked Mage Eagleheart had created two destructive wands, but her mates had assured her the other one had been incinerated. She prayed it was so and the blast had been caused by the island’s volcano.

After they landed on the rocky shoreline, her mates shook ice off their wings, their golden scales reflecting prisms of color. Dark clouds loomed, blanketing them in shadow. Behind them cliffs led to snow-capped peaks. To the north, endless rolling waves moved toward a small finger of land rising in the distance. From here Gae’s island didn’t look imposing at all, though Teju warned her it had been a monolith of mazes, with thousands of underground caverns and a network of tunnels. She wondered if the blast had collapsed them all or only those on the surface. She saw evidence of the blast on this shore, too. The mountain pines were flattened at a weird angle, as if a giant had stepped on them. The cliff was dissected by a dark line that was at least three dragons in height, the lower half revealing black moss stuck to crumbling rocks, as if a tidal wave had struck there. If so, that wave had been massive. Could one volcano have done all that?

She let the magic bubble pop and rubbed a cramp in her wrist from holding the wand too tight. Ladon craned his long neck, gently lifted her off his back, and set her on the ground. Wrapping a fur tightly around herself, she stood under his wide throat, leaning against him for warmth. Draque and Teju flanked them, both still in dragon form while they scanned the gathering crowd, steam pouring from their nostrils.

Fae flew above them in winged chariots toward clouds in the distance. Witches landed their brooms on the beach, some carrying wood for a big bonfire in the center. Others set up patchy tents. A few had even constructed giant, lopsided bubbles that floated a few feet above the ground, though none looked as good as Teju’s. Her mates’ fathers and brothers landed, dropping timber with their talons and setting it on fire.

Let’s join our family, Draque projected to them through thought.

Ladon placed her on his back again, and she held onto a scale while they stomped across the shore toward them. Witches scurried away, swearing as the dragons’ barbed tails swept a path behind them. Her mates didn’t seem fazed, and she wondered if shifters and witches would return to being mortal enemies after Goldenwand was defeated. The thought made her sad.

No need to be sad, Thelix huffed. Those sneaky witches have wands shoved up their asses, and I don’t trust them.

Not all of them are bad, Serah admonished.

Has their parliament recognized the shifter realm yet?

Her shoulders dropped. No. One of the conditions of their truce was that the witches of the third realm acknowledge the shifters’ realm as legitimate. It still hadn’t happened.