Crown of Thorns: a Fae Urban Fantasy (Dark Fae Assassins Academy Book 1) Read online

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  DARK FAE ASSASSINS ACADEMY ONE

  CROWN

  OF

  THORNS

  A FAE URBAN FANTASY

  From THE WORLD OF FANTOM

  MELLE AMADE

  CROWN OF THORNS

  Copyright © 2019 by Melle Amade.

  All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations em- bodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For information contact:

  www.melleamade.com

  [email protected]

  Book and Cover design by Amaliach Book Cover Design

  First Edition: November 2019

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  Dutch born, Matilde, the estranged niece of Lord Van Arend, barters with her scheming mother to spend the summer with the only friends she’s ever had, the Ravensgaard at Castle Brannach. The only problem is, what she has offered her mother is information, information that will break her friends’ trust and begin the downfall of the regime that governs them all. https://www.instafreebie.com/free/XvXmY

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  2 - Crown of Ash

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  Free Novella – HERITAGE

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  1

  “You’re late,” Miss. Granger’s voice ran harshly up my spine as she stared up at me. Her arms folded across her body like a brick wall as if she wasn't going to let me enter the building. I knew better but I still had to play her game. I brushed aside my purple hair, still covered in sweat from running through the underground, and tucked it behind my ear.

  “I’m sorry my MMA class ran late,” I explained hurriedly, unzipping my backpack. “It was belt testing day.” I grinned as I pulled my brand-new black belt out, but she didn’t even glance at it.

  “Well, I’m late for lunch and the children are screaming for you,” she said.

  I nodded. They could already smell the sweets I had in my bag for them and their steps were racing towards the door. I might have had my magic stripped, but there were some physical traits you simply couldn’t remove from a fae. My hearing was one of them.

  “I’ll be back in an hour,” she said, her cheeks jiggling as she grabbed her purse and headed to the front door. I knew she’d only be going around the corner to her favorite deli, but Mrs. Granger didn't mess around with showing up late. She was worse than most of my professors at Columbia.

  “I’ll be here,” I said with a grin. It’s not like I needed the parttime job for money, in fact, my anonymous donations had helped keep the doors open and moved the orphanage to this location, but I needed some type of social life. Even if they were humans, and kids at that.

  The doors to the common room burst open and screaming kids came running towards me. My smile broadened. I needed this. They gathered around me some hugging, some asking questions about my belt test, some trying to get into my backpack to grab the candy they knew I had brought for them. You could smell the sweet fae pollen from across the room.

  “I saw the belt!” James, one of the taller boys exclaimed. “You got it!”

  “I did indeed,” I grinned, pulling it out fully and snapping it at them. “Back ye awful beasts.” I laughed as I gently fought them off one at a time, but there were too many and they knew I had tiante. They searched for it like a pack of ravenous kittens. Soon they were pulling the sweet treats out of all the hidden places in my clothes and retreating, unwraping the goodies and shoving them gleefully in their mouths.

  “How does your candy tastes like a million rays of sunshine?” asked a chubby little blond thing, her eyes closed in delight.

  “Magic,” I grinned ruffling her hair and helping the other kids empty my pockets until each child had a piece of tiante. It wasn’t far from the truth. Their bodies calmed, and they all moved to the cozy corner and relaxed onto the cushions.

  “I don’t know how you do that,” Miss. Granger folded her stick-like arms over her chest and pursed her lips. I wasn’t about to tell her fae candy wasn’t like human candy. We didn’t worry so much about the flavor of the sweet, but more the result. It was made to interact with the children’s endorphins and cause a mild feeling of euphoria that relaxed them and made them ready to learn or listen. I never showed up for work without it.

  “Now settle yourselves in the corner.” They settled themselves into the chairs and bean bags that filled one corner of the common room. This hour was one of the happiest of each day.

  After school and MMA practice. I came here to spend time with these kids; kids without homes, without parents. It was probably the closest I came to having a family, well anymore, and definitely the safest. An unforgiven fae couldn’t afford to have friends, but if they decided to track me down, a part time job should go unnoticed.

  “Tell us a story,” one of the tall boys called. He had sad brown eyes that looked like he was never going to make it in New York once he left the sanctuary of this orphanage. It was hard to think about sometimes, but I knew, like me, these children had nothing else.

  I had spent a pittance of my inheritance to improve the environment. Mrs. Granger never knew I was one of the primary funders of the house and I wasn’t about to tell her. All I wanted was to bring some joy to these children but there was no way it could be traced back to me. I needed to remain invisible.

  As an Unforgiven, I had been stripped of my magic and thrown out into the human world. Something I was just fine with. I didn’t want to spend another minute with those assholes anyhow. I felt lucky to get away with my inheritance and my life. Now if I could just stay invisible and do some good in the world, life would be okay. Staying invisibile was the key though. Because if they Fae decided they wanted to find me, well, there was no way that was going to be good.

  “Which story do you want to hear?” I grinned at the kids soaking in their sparkling human energy. The fae had it so wrong. These beings were so alive with excitement. My people were just too snobbish to recognize it.

  “Grim Raven!” Talia, a girl in the back lying on a green bean bag, her arms resting behind her head.

  “No! No! No! Do Grim Snow,” Jacinta called out, her lisp making the word rose delectable.

  “Oh, come on.” James waved his hand dismissively at the girls. “I like the tower where the hero saves the girl.”

  “The girl who’s a curse on the kingdom,” scoffed Talia.

  I grinned hearing the names of the tales I’d grown up with. These kids thought I made them up as fairytales, but the Tales of the Dark Fae, were so much more than that. They were dark and real. Somehow, they’d passed through the veil and been softened for human sensibilities.

  But I wasn't feeling the room was really in the mood for any of these stories. “Grim Rose,” I grinned at the kids. “Because today I got my black belt and Rose Red was bad ass.”r />
  “Ohhhhhhhhh,” a chorus of laughter went up from the kids.

  “She gets her black belt and all of a sudden, she’s breaking Mrs. Granger’s rules,” James called.

  Shit. I’m not supposed to use words like ass around them. I shook my head. “Shush, you know how hard I worked for this.”

  “Girl power!” Talia called out.

  “Defos” I said, nestling down onto a cushion my legs crossed. I pulled my bright purple hair back into a ponytail quickly so it wouldn't get in the way. Kids still thought I dyed it. They didn’t know that was my natural color. Dark Fae could come out of the womb a million different shades. Mine had just happened to be shocking purple. Fortunately, humans didn’t seem to care. They just seemed to think I was another teenage rebel trying to find my style. They had no idea I was already twenty-three and would probably live well over another two-hundred years.

  I leaned forward my gaze serious as I slowly looked around the circle of kids. “It was in the time before the separation of the clans. Before the Ljósálfar and Dökkálfar had separated. It was before the Frost Fae had sworn to the Dökkálfar and the Blood Fae became endentured to the Ljósálfar. It was long before the wars of the Light and Dark Fae had ripped the world apart.”

  “She makes it sound so real,” Talia whispered to Jacinta.

  “I know, I love it.” Jacinta nodded back.

  They didn’t know how real it was. The wars had destroyed our people and all the bullshit mending they were trying now, well, it was never going to work. I was sure of that.

  “They don't really exist," James said to the girls.

  I shot him a look with a sideways grin. "Of course, not,” I said, denying my entire people with a single cast-off sentence. “This is just a tale.”

  “Get back to the story,” Jacinta begged.

  “In this time,” I said, “People’s lives were simpler, and they often lived at great distances from each other under the care of a single Lord or King.”

  “So, New York didn’t exist?” James asked, cracking all the kids up.

  I laughed, too. For the fae New York still didn’t exist, even though Crown Academy was only five-hundred miles away in what the humans called Quebec. Fae rarely crossed into the human world. It was too crowded, too noisy and, well, too full of humans.

  “Right.” I shook thoughts of the fae out of my head and returned to my story. In a forest in the farthest corner of the Lord Leopold’s realm there was an old lady who lived in a cottage. She was as ancient as the tallest mountains of the region and seemed as much a permanent fixture of the forest as the trees themselves. Only, she had one very, very important job. She was raising two daughters.”

  “If she was so old how’d she have kids?” asked a new kid who was sitting right up front, eyes wide and full of wonder.

  “They weren’t her kids,” Talia called out.

  “Shush, let Gaia tell the story,” Jacinta swatted Talia.

  “Talia’s right,” I agreed with a smile. “The two girls were sisters, daughters of the great Lord of the realm who had heard something bad would happen to them if they were raised as children in his castle. There names were Rose Red and Snow White,” I whispered their names because even with my people they were sacred names. They were the sisters who gave birth to the Frost Fae and the Blood Fae and the terrible wars that followed.

  “Did he pay child support?” James asked, for a laugh.

  I gave him the stink eye. “Snow White grew up docile and sweet working around, while Rose Red grew up a huntress, running wild through the forests.”

  A hyena shriek startled both me and the kids.

  “What is that?” The new girl shrank back in fear.

  Shit. My phone. I hadn’t shut it off. “Nothing,” I soothed her, digging my phone out of the depths of my backpack where it had slipped beneath my textbooks. The hyena cackle ran unnervingly up my back. I had to answer it.

  That was the special ring I’d given my asshole of a landlord.

  “Just a second,” I said to the kids and despite their moans, I clasped my phone and jumped up to go into the entry hall.

  “What the hell is going on in your loft?” My landlords voice was worse than the ring I’d given to her calls. I ripped the phone away from my ear. I might have had my magic taken away, but there were innate fae skills that could never be removed; acute hearing was one of them.

  “I’m not there,” I said. But I could hear the caterwauling in the background. It was Tat, my werecat. And I had never ever ever heard her scream like that. Not even when she’d watched them rip my magic from me.

  “You've got to get home immediately.” The strain in my landlord’s voice ripped at my ears. “That cat of yours sounds like it’s dying.”

  Or being killed, I thought, judging by the thumping and crashing and hissing I could hear even from the landlord’s loft, which was just below mine. My heart caught in my throat and my palms went sweaty. I could barely breathe.

  Tat, my werecat mockingly named after the Light Fae High Princess Tatiana, was the last gift my parents gave me, and something was attacking her.

  I touched my hand to my forehead trying to get in touch with her, but the signal was weak. Even though I didn’t have any formal magic left, Tat and I were bonded. Her magic should have been enough to connect us, but all I could feel was pain and agony. I ripped my fingers from the pressure point at the side of my skull.

  “Is everything okay?” Talia had followed me out into the entry hall.

  “No,” I said. There was no way I could hide my concern. “You and James have to watch the children until Miss Granger returns.”

  Talia swallowed hard. “Ok. Alright. We can do that.”

  “Just have them read books,” I said, glancing at my phone. “It’s only twenty minutes left until she’ll return. Don’t do anything. Don’t get into trouble.”

  James stood at the door holding out my backpack as if he knew I’d need it. I nodded at him. “Thanks.”

  I grabbed the bag and headed for the stairs, feeling their gaze staring quizzically at me. It didn’t matter what they thought. I had to get home fast. One thing was clear, the fae had found me and Tat was paying for it. I knew they were punishing her to trap me, but there was no way I was going to let anything happen to her. The fae had taken my parents, my sister, my magic and wanted to turn me into an assassin to serve the crown.

  I’d be damned if I was going to let them take my werecat.

  2

  Parkour wasn’t what we called it in the fae world, for us it was just getting around. We’d done it for millineum in trees, rocks, mountains and it seemed well suited for the rooftops of human cities also. It gave me two advantages, less obstacles and a greater ability to use my innate speed. That’s why I was racing up the stairs instead of out the front door.

  I strapped my backpack on as I took the stairs two at a time, bursting out onto the roof of the seven story Brighton Beach building in record time. I didn’t pause to gauge my location, even though I rarely did parkour to get home, my building was only ten blocks away. Most of the time I walked it, trying to be as human as possible, but now Tat’s life relied on me arriving in minutes.

  I took a running leap towards the next building. Most of the Brighton Beach buildings weren’t that high, but the red brick building next to the orphanage was a pretty good hike up. I squatted down at a running pace using all of my strength to push off, sail through the air and grab at the next roof, my fingers barely making the red brick ledge, my legs swinging up in a curving arc and I landed in a crouch on top of the adjacent roof.

  Without pausing I was off and running again. I’d timed this distance before, just to make sure if an emergency arose, I’d be able to know exactly which steps to take to get home. The fastest I’d ever done it had been four minutes and forty-five seconds. This time I was landed on the roof of my warehouse in a breathless three minutes and twenty-three second.

  But I wasn’t very smooth about it. I la
nded with a thud that made the screaming and crashing inside my loft suddenly stop. Breathing slowly to steady my body and balance my nerves I stalked quietly towards the nearest skylight. There was no way I could barge through the front door, but at this stage, whatever was in there attacking Tat, knew where I was coming from. There’d be no element of surprise.

  There was a hissing sound as I approached the nearest skylight and by the time, I tried to look through it, it was glazed over instead of clear glass. I touched it and it was so cold it tore skin from my fingertip as I ripped my hand back.

  A fucking frost fae.

  Things were about to get ugly.

  I didn’t even bother trying for the other skylights. I snatched my black belt out of my bag, wrapped it around my hand and smashed through the window with all my strength. I let my body follow my fist, twisting through the air, anticipating the icicles that would be shooting at me as I entered.

  I knew every nook can cranny of my loft and instead of plummeting to the floor as the frost fae would expect, I did a double twist and perched at the top of a massive bookshelf that lined one section of the wall. I hadn’t just rented the loft for chic looks. I’d furnished it for battle. The massive vases at the top of the bookshelf gave me ample coverage to move as the frost fae hurled ice shots at me. They were dangergous as fuck. Of all the fae these were the only ones that could throw a weapon from their palms, stab you in the heart and leave no trace of the dagger once it melted.

  Someone wanted me dead without a trace.

  Crouching low I raced behind the vases, which shattered with each frost fae frozen dagger. I scanned the room and saw the enemy. A classic white-haired frost fae dressed in all black leather, with gold threads. There was some insigna, but I didn’t take the time to figure it out. I needed to find Tat.

  She wasn’t hard to miss. Clearly, she’d put up a fight, she was on her hind legs, teeth bared, claws outstretched but she was still in her cat form. There’s no way in hell she’d be a match for a frost fae, and she hadn’t been. She stood in a frozen block in the center of the room. Her Russian blue coat was almost turquoise in the ice that surrounded it and her piercing blue eyes were open and staring wide-eyed as if she were truly dead.