Zodiac Academy Fated Throne - Caroline Peckham Page 0,81

my heart sank as I considered the girl who had given him that chance. Roxy had forced my father to accept Xavier’s Order and had effectively broken the shackles that would no doubt have still been binding him to a life locked up and out of sight if she hadn’t. And now she was the one chained to that monster and I couldn’t even free her in return.

My mood soured as it always did these days and I placed a kiss on my mom’s head before heading towards the study once more.

I cast a silencing bubble as I approached it then felt out ahead of me for the detection spells Father no doubt would have placed along the corridor to sense anyone approaching.

As expected, I found them placed like trip wires across the floor and primed to inform him if anyone walked through them.

With a twist of my fingers, I cast water beneath my feet and raised myself up to float over them, moving along the corridor and stopping outside the door next to his study. He’d have cast a silencing bubble to block the door from the outside, but I knew him well enough to know the best ways around his habits.

I entered the door to the small smoking parlour beside his study and headed inside, crossing the space and moving to the door which connected this room to the one he was in.

I moved to stand beside it, smirking as I slid into the outer edge of his silencing bubble as expected before pressing my ear to the door and casting an amplification spell so that I could hear what was being said inside.

“-go on this way,” a woman’s harsh voice came. “Our kind have been denied our rightful magic for too long. We swore allegiance to you because you promised that our needs would be met. That we would no longer have to suffer on the edges of society but would have the opportunity to flourish and prosper. And now we are dealing with some rogue Nymph hunters too who are destroying friends of mine whenever they get the opportunity.”

“As I have said, Drusilla,” my father’s crisp tone came next and I could tell his temper was fraying. “What you want is not so easy to give. I have told my kingdom that your kind is under control. If the Nymphs start attacking Fae again then it would undermine my hold over the people. And there have always been hunters of your kind among Fae. You have dealt with them up until now, so I suggest you find a way to deal with them now.”

“They’re hungry, Daddy,” Clara moaned, a pout in her voice. “It hurts me to feel them starve.”

“I had assumed you wanted a strong army,” a man growled. “Not a bunch of heathens who don’t even hold any magic.”

Father sighed in frustration and I could picture him pinching the bridge of his nose as he fought a losing battle with his temper. When meetings went badly for him like this, someone usually ended up bloody for it. Maybe that was why he’d summoned me home. He did love to force me to take a kicking after all, using his hold on Roxy to compel my cooperation.

“Perhaps we could come up with something,” Stella’s voice came next, her tone placating like she was working the peacekeeper angle. “Some outlying town that no one would miss…”

“Ooooh I like that idea!” Clara cried, clapping excitedly.

“Perhaps,” Father conceded though I could tell that wasn’t an actual agreement. Whatever this was about, he was considering it though. “I’ll look into it. But I don’t wish to discuss this any further now. See our friends out, Clara.”

The man and woman grumbled as they were dismissed, but they went all the same, the sound of the door opening and closing calling to me as Clara began singing happily out in the corridor.

I waited for them to pass the door that led back out there and then eased it open a crack to get a look at them, recognising Drusilla and Alejandro as they muttered irritably and Clara pranced ahead of them like some excitable kid.

The sound of voices drew my attention back to the study as I slipped out into the corridor again and I realised that Father had dropped the silencing bubble.

I moved to stand outside the door, the amplifying spell I’d cast still working so that their words sounded clearly through it.

“I miss you, my beast,” Stella purred seductively