Shadowborn Academy_ Year One (Dark Fae Academy #1) - G. Bailey Page 0,70

out party Sage and I are hosting. Sage is wrapped around her teacher as they dance together, and I’m sure they are five minutes away from needing a private room. Pitch is strangely quiet in my mind, as he has been since the tryouts, and I need to talk to him.

I think.

At some point my shadow and the reality of the real guys in my life is getting complicated.

“I still can’t believe we found the prize first,” I mutter, and Jonah shakes his head at me as he grabs a beer off the side. I sip on my vodka and coke as I smile at Ronan dancing with a girl from our class and how dorky he is as he nearly stands on her feet. As no one is sitting in the corner of the room near the window, I walk over and sit by the glass, watching the forest with a sort of ease. To my surprise, Jonah moves and sits right next to me, his thigh and arm pressed into mine.

It’s something I’d expect Zander to do, but Zander isn’t here tonight, or he didn’t want to come, as he never answered his door earlier. Considering I haven’t seen Gage, either, I assume they are still catching students off the beanstalk. I sip on my drink, enjoying the quiet even with Jonah looking at me.

“Do you want to ask me something?” I question, turning to face him, knowing he is looking at me without having to see.

“Nope,” he replies and we both grin at each other.

“So who was the shadowborn that brought you up?” I ask, wondering if I can find something out about Jonah while the tryouts clearly have him in a good mood.

“I haven’t told anyone about this, but fuck it, it’s Professor Greyhorn. He’s my uncle,” he tells me with a long groan as my mouth drops open. I nearly cough on my drink as I take in that new piece of information. “And I was only close to my cousin Gage because he isn’t a dick. Though he isn’t Greyhorn’s biological son, so that’s likely why.”

“Gage? As in the therapist?” I ask with wide eyes.

“Yeah, but don’t hold it against him. He is actually all right,” Jonah says, bumping my shoulder. I wonder if Jonah would still think the same if he knew I’d kissed his cousin.

“I guess,” I mutter, so totally in shock that I don’t know what to say. A million different questions flitter across my eyes as I suck in a breath and wonder which one to ask first.

“Why aren’t you close to your uncle?” I ask, because surely after he and his wife took them in, Jonah and his sister must have been thankful.

“After Gage’s mum died suddenly, my uncle was never the same. Gage’s mum was a light fae and amazing, and I’m not even joking when I say that. She truly was the nicest woman I’ve ever met,” he explains to me, and now it makes sense that Gage is so good looking. He is half-fae. “Uncle Greyhorn became obsessed with dark magic and finding a way to bring his wife back to life. One night, when he was drunk as fuck, my uncle told me he used to be a light fae but he was stripped of his magic and forced to be what he is now.”

Processing all that takes me a moment. “Is he still trying to find a way to bring his wife back?”

“Nah, my uncle stopped that shit years ago and dedicated his life to this school instead, which is for the best.”

“Right,” I mumble, looking at Jonah’s silver locks as they fall onto his forehead. How could someone like Jonah be related to professor Greyhorn? He is cruel, and I have a really bad feeling about him. I wonder if he is still trying to use dark magic to bring his wife back, and if he might be using the students that went missing somehow. There is something wrong with him, that’s for sure, and I’m going to find out.

“Come and dance with me, Vina,” he whispers to me, picking my hand up and linking our fingers. Somehow our hands just perfectly fit together.

“Now, why would we dance?” I ask him, looking up to see him staring right back at me. For a second I forget what we were even talking about as I look into his pale blue eyes that remind me of the ocean, and possibly what I imagined it would