Page 41 of Gemini Hunted (Dark Witch Academy #5)

Zara

“I might be queen of the witching world,” I tell the small group of friends and lovers clustered close around me in the musty-smelling darkness of the tunnel’s creepy confines. “And yeah, me wrapping my head around this whole royal destiny gig took a minute. I’m queen. But I’m not, like, a god.”

“We don’t need divine intervention to find our way through these catacombs,” Mallory says patiently, her freckled face lit up from underneath by the comforting beam of her flashlight. “Just a really good location spell. I have one all teed up.”

Vasili, who’s still looking pale and kinda rough around the edges but who totally rejects any hovering over his head injury, gives Mal a suspicious look. “When precisely did you become such a powerful witch, McSnicker? You’ve certainly shown no aptitude for witchcraft in the classroom.”

Somewhere behind me, Mal’s Cajun werewolf lets out a warning snarl—a warning clearly aimed at V—that makes my scalp crawl.

Jae Labête’s prowling at the rear of our Scooby gang, guarding our backs and seemingly not needing any light for that assignment beyond the wicked green glow of his own eyes. TBH, he creeps me out. Both Mal’s guys are kinda freaky, especially the absent Draco. But I’m not the one fucking them.

These days, I’ll gratefully accept any political allies I can get.

Plus I’ll need those powerful bloodlines, like the exotic loup-garou werewolves of the Louisiana bayous and the brutal protection of the telekinetic Mars clan mafia, standing at my side when I ascend.

Queen or no queen, that’s one truth I’ve internalized. My free agent cat burglar days are history.

And I can’t queen it alone.

“I can do common magics.” Mal clutches the Book of Flame and Breath defensively to her skinny chest and sidles away from Vasili.

He used to bully her and the rest of the student body, same way he bullied me, so I can’t blame her for being nervous about being trapped in this tunnel with his malignant self.

“That’s all a location spell is. Common magic.

I left my sweater in the Academy library—you know, accidentally but on purpose? —after class to anchor the spell.”

“Oh, wow.” Neo pushes his glasses up his nose and looks impressed. “The library is directly above the Vault. That was so clever, Mallory.”

Mallory looks a little awkward at the praise, which she doesn’t tend to hear much around this Academy, given her class geek status. She ducks her carroty head to hide a blush. “Uh, thanks. Anyway, a simple location spell will lead me—and all of us—right to the Vault.”

“I agree with Mr. Mercury. That’s a very resourceful strategy. I’ll ensure you receive full marks for ingenuity per the exam rubric, Ms. McSnicker.” Lucius gives her an approving nod that makes my Goblin King sneer. Lucius tends to fall back on formality when we’re around other students.

But V only gives him a hard time when Lucius goes all Old World formal with us .

My headmaster’s grisly thigh injury is thankfully healing, like Neo would say, shifty-swifty.

So fast that Lucius has not only stopped limping, but slipped back into the role of exam proctor.

(I honestly don’t think he can help himself.) He’s started recording marks for our individual contributions to solving the Dean’s Challenge with a neatly sharpened pencil and the leather-bound grade book he’s produced from our backpack.

I mean, at least he isn’t toting his oxblood leather briefcase around these catacombs.

Honestly speaking, I need to exert all my willpower not to ogle my wolf, all shirtless and furry-chested, with his thick thighs and muscled butt filling out Ronin’s leather pants. Maybe that’s the tail end of my heat talking.

Or maybe that’s just Lucius.

“So… catacombs. Who knew?” Reining in my runaway libido, I force myself to turn away from Lucius’ yumminess (for now) and play my own flashlight over Exhibit A.

A truly grisly row of human skulls.

All yellow-toothed and hollow-eyed and gnarly with age, the cranium collection grins at me from a cobwebby ledge set high in the tunnel wall. Directly beneath on either side, a lattice of ancient femurs and tibias and ribs—all the major bones in the human body, I guess—frames a narrow arch.

A funky-smelling breeze drifts from the dark passage to tickle my face like a ghostly finger.

By sheer force of will, I manage not to shiver.

Step up, showgirl, you’re the queen here, I tell myself sternly. No shivering.

Lucius stops scribbling notes in his gradebook long enough to give me a serious look with his lovely sherry eyes.

“As a matter of fact, I knew. These catacombs loom rather large in the history of this academic institution. This place is where the witching races secretly interred their dead in Roman times, while we were persecuted by the Empire, much like the early Christians. Frankly speaking, I would have preferred to avoid the place entirely. But it seems that is not to be our fate.”

Zephyr prowls up like the feral predator he is and runs a professional eye over the row of gaping sockets and grinning teeth. With a hiss, he peers into the low passage with his keen Fae eyesight. He’s the smallest of my guys, but even he has to stoop.

The crossed swords jutting over his armored shoulders keep him outside that scary hole, which I totally don’t mind.

“I’ve never understood this morbid mortal custom,” my Dark Fae murmurs, “of encasing your dead in rock to molder. In the natural order, a rotting corpse returns nourishment to the soil and the wild creatures who inhabit it.”

“Oh darling, that visual. So picturesque. Rather like the way you buried your cousin’s head in our rose garden.

” Vasili smirks, but the comment lacks the barbed wire sting of his usual malice.

Either my Goblin King is still struggling with that alarming head injury he claims doesn’t bother him, despite the numbing potion and Seelie herbs we’ve doctored him up with…

Or there’s been a fucking miracle in this harem, and my dominant alpha truly has softened toward Zephyr.

At least temporarily.

I mean, a girl can hope. Can’t I?

“Tight fit in there,” I mutter, bending to aim my own beam over Zephyr’s dragonscale-armored shoulder, and already missing my catsuit. “We’ll have to squeeze in single file and all hunched over. That’s assuming we’re all going.”

My voice echoes and re-echoes weirdly inside, like the walls are murmuring.

I can’t see shit beyond a crumbly stone stair that slopes down around a sharp curve.

My dragon stirs and grumbles unhappily in my skin.

She doesn’t like being underground and encased in a sleeve of rock too tight for her to shift.

That makes two of us.

Neo slips an arm around my waist and cuddles the white kitten to his chest. He’s just fed her, with Mordred’s interested assistance, so she’s all sleepy and limp and purring against my bookworm’s brawny shoulder. “We can always turn back, babe. Try another way.”

I suck in a lungful of the dank-smelling air. “No, we can’t. This tunnel led straight here. The only other way to go is back. And since we gotta find the Vault before the AIB finds us— ”

“Back is not an option.” Draco Mars emerges from the darkness behind us with a suddenness that makes me gasp.

Zephyr spins and unsheathes both his swords with a snarl that bares his tiny fangs.

Draco wraps a casual hand around the butt of the big-ass rifle propped over his hulking shoulder and gives my menacing Dark Fae King his own unfriendly look.

“Something you gonna do with those swords, Unseelie?” Mal’s guy growls in his guttural accent, sounding like Schwarzenegger in his Terminator days.

Now I’m just waiting to hear him say, Hasta la vista, baby.

Lucius and Vasili—both my currently available alphas—step protectively in front of me. That protective shit used to bother me, but I’m working like fuck to let my alphas do what their instincts demand. Protecting me is a genetic need for them, so I gotta learn to accept it.

At least sometimes.

I’m more surprised to see a reaction from Mordred (who’s no alpha and is barely even an ally, but OMG, that kiss!

Even in our current crisis, I can barely stop thinking about it.) He muscles up behind my alphas in backup, his broad shoulders filling the narrow tunnel, silver trident magically appearing in his hand.

Still toting the Horn of Ceres in that sealskin bag slanting across his bare bronze back.

“I’m commonly addressed as Your Radiance,” Zephyr says coolly to Draco. But at least he sheathes his swords over his shoulders. That move defuses the worst of the tension.

Though definitely not all of it.

“I don’t give a fokk how you’re addressed, Unseelie.” Draco eyes him warily. “You’re not Mallory’s king. And you’re definitely not mine.”

This is the first I’ve seen of Mal’s Icelandic mafia warlock since he loped off with the others to deal with those hyenas.

Draco Mars is alarming enough in normal circumstances.

Seeing him now, with dried blood spattering his spiked biker jacket and the side of his rugged face, cold eyes glittering like arctic ice under his pale buzzcut, and a rifle slung over his shoulder?

He looks like a total psycho.

I mean, even more than usual.

“Hey, amou , we missed you, oui? ” Jae slips up behind Draco and rubs his face familiarly into the side of the guy’s neck to scent him. Totally undeterred by the blood and the rifle and the crazy, natch. The Cajun werewolf’s black-rimmed eyes gleam liquid gold at me in the dim light.

Mallory rushes over with a cry and cuddles up against both of them, exclaiming over the blood. Draco assures her it’s not his, slings his thick arms around both of them, and generally lets his two mates love on him with a lot more patience than I expect.

That reaction makes me temper my original diagnosis about him being cray cray.

I mean, he’s definitely crazy. But his mates make him sane.