Magic Academy (A Fantasy New Adult Romance)
Read Magic Academy (A Fantasy New Adult Romance) Online
Authors: Jillian Keep
Jillian Keep
Out of a young woman’s ambition comes a love triangle that
could destroy more than her heart.
Firia has always wanted to be a witch, but even though she’s
a natural in magic, there’s a problem: She’s human.
Considered by the elven elite to be inferior, Firia needs an edge
to be accepted into the Magic Academy. Out of sheer desperation, she
summons the demon Varuj, a terrifyingly gorgeous spirit who helps her
win the entrance competition. But at what price?
As the commanding demon does everything he can to penetrate every
aspect of her innocent life, Firia still finds herself drawn to her
study partner, Mae’lin. Not only is the sweet elf completely
different from the powerful Varuj, but their relationship is
forbidden.
How is she supposed to choose between the demon she owes her life
to and the innocent elf who makes her a better person?
This thrilling coming of age new adult romance is from fantasy
romance author, Jillian Keep.
Chapter 1
Her father worked nights, but that
suited her just fine. After all, he took her with him to hang out in
the dark corridors of the Arcane Academy. It was a place so few
humans had ever gone, and at night she didn’t have to deal with
so many of the sour stares of the high elves.
Instead she could simply wander,
admiring the history and architecture of the great buildings.
But she always went back to one in
particular. The Grand Library. It contained more knowledge than she
could ever hope or dream of, and the young woman felt truly alive
there. She’d spent her childhood poring over heavy tomes of
spells and secrets.
Yet her ambitions were growing with
every day.
No longer was she content to simply
read the night away, practicing harmless spells that served so little
purpose. The moment she had found the dusty, hidden black book she
knew it was calling to her. Begging for her to learn its contents.
For months she’d studied it in
detail, the yearning to know something of true value, beyond the
mundanities of her self-taught tricks, driving her to a
near-religious fervor. Finally, the evening had come that she would
cast her first ritual from it. No one she knew of had been able to
handle such a spell, and it was just what she needed to get into the
Academy. To make the elvish sorcerers sit up and take notice of a
desperate human.
Her black hair was pulled back in twin
pigtails, her bangs swept out of her expressive blue eyes. Her peachy
skin felt flush with excitement as she settled in.
She’d blocked the door of the
library’s study room, and had everything prepared to see her
through to the end of the casting. Yet as the first word of power
passed her lips, she wondered if she could ever be prepared for the
high she received.
It was something she’d never
truly experienced to the same intensity. “
Fush-nea klixak
hlinta
,” she continued, and with each word her body
trembled.
This wasn’t the stuff of parlor
tricks that she’d toyed with before: simple twists of light and
sound to amuse and confound viewers. Each word tapped into some dark
plane of existence and the raw magical energies there coursed through
her veins and made her skin buzz with electricity.
The closer she got to conclusion, the
more reality seemed to warp before her. It was as if the walls
changed shape, angles took on impossible dimensions that were not of
her world.
Gradually, it was as if a lightning
storm were brewing at the heart of the room. Crackles of energy
stabbing out from black wisps of nothingness that grew to consume the
air there. It was terrifying to watch, and a sense of foreboding
followed in its wake, but the high… the high of that power
coursing through her with each new word was so sweet. Too sweet to
give up.
She wouldn’t. She was so close.
She could feel how close she was, and her excitement made her stumble
on that final word. “
Punummra
,” she shouted,
praying to be heard over the crackle of power at the heart of the
word.
Her skin was flush and her light, white
shirt clung to her slender body. The black skirt felt sticky around
her thighs and calves, and she shifted to try to get the fabric off
her.
The tempest before her writhed and
swelled with a fury that belied the earlier display. Black tendrils
seemed to lunge out at reality itself in random directions! It wasn’t
long, though, before they began to take on some form, and as if from
through a gateway to hell itself, she witnessed the ruddy-black
visage of a man that was not a man, both step through to her side and
tear it open.
He was wrathful. He was monstrous! He
was beautiful, even in his fury.
Sleek muscle, he was bare. Not a stitch
of clothing, only the wisps of blackness that still clung to his form
gracing his body as he clenched his fists and let loose a cry that
beat at her ears. Hooves struck the floorboards, and his mighty,
obsidian horns nearly scraped the ceiling.
“
Kral’kron krizzixt
varuj
!” he exclaimed in his demonic tongue, almond-shaped
eyes that burned like cinders darting about the room before he
realized there was nobody to turn his rage on… nobody but her.
His bare chest heaved, his nostrils
flared. Tall and mighty, he was broad at the shoulders and dwarfed
her in every manner.
She’d never felt so small and
insignificant, physically.
Yet at the same time, she felt larger
than life, powerful beyond belief, and a smile spread across her
lips. Fear still coiled in her stomach and she took a step backwards,
away from the hellish thing she’d summoned.
That
she
had summoned. By
herself. Without any aid of elves and their haughty attitudes. He was
hers, bound to her alone.
Her body tingled with such perfect
disbelief.
The look upon the demon’s face
said he believed otherwise. Though some strange amusement tickled his
fancy.
From out of his chest his words rumbled
forth, dark and ominous, so full of masculine menace. “It was
you who summoned me?” he asked, part disbelief in his voice,
part amusement. Though she could see the strands of darkness flicker
out and fade, they swept away from his body, leaving him more
apparent to her. Her eyes able to see his reddish form, the dark
hairs of his chest that formed a V-shape on down to a trail across
his stony abs, that ended in a tuft above his loins. By the gods!
Those monstrous loins of his were enough to snap her in half!
It struck her dumb for a moment and her
voice came out as little more than a squeaked “yes.” It
was an odd sensation, of feeling utterly powerful and utterly
insignificant, all at once. Yet she controlled him, so shouldn’t
she feel unstoppable?
The small, young woman forced her eyes
away from his massive package and looked instead to his face. “You
are here because of me.”
The mighty demon before her snorted
with derision and then unfurled his fists. She saw then the long,
hooked nails that looked perilously sharp. “Because of you,”
he repeated, touching one hand to his chest, letting the dagger-tips
of his claws scrape over his own dark flesh, raking across abs as he
eyed her with curiosity.
“Why?” he demanded more
than asked, brushing back some of his long, black hair with the other
hand. The glossy pitch strands flowing about his neck and shoulders,
framing his face.
“Because I could!” she
replied, trying to sound strong and brave but feeling anything but.
She should have felt that same high she’d experienced casting
the spell, but instead, fear was beginning to turn her blood cold.
He was too large. Too unwieldy of a
weapon. How could she hope to have the mental fortitude to hold him
back? Greater mages than her had tried and failed.
Her eyes narrowed at her negative
thoughts and she forced herself to stand straight. No. She summoned
him and she would control him.
The towering beast before her smirked
and a low rumble of a chuckle emitted from his chest as he rubbed his
hand up and down across it and his hard belly. “Is that it
then? You tore me from my realm, my home, simply because you could?”
He stepped closer to her, his hoof hitting the ground noisily and as
if time meant nothing to him, he was suddenly several steps closer to
her, looming barely two inches from her body.
She couldn’t help but inhale the
scent of cinders, sweat, curiously alien aromas and masculinity with
him up in her face like that. He pricked beneath her chin with one of
his hooked nails, pointing her face up at him slowly. “Nobody
summons one of my kind without a reason. Maybe you don’t know
it yet,” he mused aloud.
How was it possible that she felt like
her pulse was racing and her heart stopped, all at once? His touch,
his nail was so sharp and unpleasant, yet his scent was nearly
intoxicating in a strange way. “I have to prove myself. You’re
my proof.”
Something flickered in those fiery eyes
of his. Mischief? Perhaps, she couldn’t tell, for he looked
full of wickedness no matter what he did.
He bent down, which was quite a
journey. He towered up to nearly seven feet! And was built wider and
stronger than any man or elf she’d seen with her own two eyes.
She saw him up close, the pointed patch
of hair on his chin. The hard lines of his jaw. The handsome yet
frightening features that made him so alluring and scary all at once.
It was so bizarre an experience,
especially once he shut his eyes and sniffed at her. Actually sniffed
at her! Letting his eyes shut as his nose grazed her hair, tasting
her own natural human scent off the air. “You’re young,”
he said, continuing his investigation. “Too young for such an
accomplishment to be believable.”
That was what she’d always been
told. That humans did not have the lifespan to learn magic –
true, powerful magic – yet she’d done it, hadn’t
she? She’d proved those snooty elves of the Academy wrong,
right?
“Without proof it wouldn’t
be believable! But you’re here. I summoned you on my own, and
there’s nothing they can say to take that away from me.”
She couldn’t believe it. Even
he
was doubting her
abilities, and she’d brought him here!
His thick lips spread wide across his
face in a wickedly handsome mockery of a smile. The pungent aroma of
his masculinity so strong still as he tilted her head one way, then
the other. He inspected her delicate female form, and though his
manhood twitched and swelled before her, he was slow. Methodical.
Thoughtful.
“You aspire to be a sorceress
then,” he said, taking the prick of his finger from beneath her
chin and stroking his hot thumb across her cheek, as if he were a
lover or a doting parent. “And you summoned me to prove you are
better and more worthy of that title than your years attest.”
He nodded slowly. “Daring. Or foolish.”
“They don’t let humans in
here,” she hissed bitterly. “So I either carry on in my
family’s footsteps or I do something daring and foolish. And in
the end, I get more powerful than any of
them
are worthy of.”
“None of them could have summoned
and bound me,” he responded with wry amusement on his face, his
private joke not shared with her. “Only one other ever
succeeded in doing as such, and he was great and powerful by the
standards of mortals.” He let his gaze slip down over her full
body, and she couldn’t help but notice the frightening
creature’s massive girth was stiff and jutted out directly
towards her. “You’ve dared big, little conjurer. Dared
big and won, perhaps.”