Magic Academy (A Fantasy New Adult Romance) (11 page)

Yet she wanted so much more than that.

His beautiful, masculine lips lit up in
a smile, and he nuzzled his nose to hers as he reclined back on her
bed, keeping her body close to his with his strong arms. “That’s
all I needed,” he said softly, holding her petite form against
his nearly bare chest. “We will go far together, sweet Firia.
Much farther than any master and demon ever went.” He kissed
her so lightly, just a soft little prolonged peck on her forehead, “I
promise.”

“Please don’t make me
regret this,” the small woman whimpered, already feeling so
tense. Yet he’d been freed, hadn’t he? And still his
sweetness, the warm feel of his lips remained. She found herself more
and more thinking of him in this form, forgetting the terrifying
visage that she first drew through the portal.

It was hard to remember that first
impression with how his beautiful male physique now held her so
tenderly. Even with her control broken – she assumed? –
he was delicate. Caring. Holding her against him, letting her rest
herself to his chest, laying between his legs as he stroked her dark
hair and kissed her peached skin.

“What is there to regret?”
he said softly. “You are on your way to being recognized by
your peers, and together… together you and I shall do great
things, sweet Firi. Great things indeed.” His warm lips skirted
hers, but came so tantalizingly close. “You performed
brilliantly today. Worthy of the woman who summoned me from across
the void.”

“Firi,” she whispered.
That’s what her dad called her. It was filled with such
familiarity and warmth, and she wanted that more than anything. She
needed his comfort.

“Varuj… Where will you
stay?”

“Beside you when I can,” he
said to her softly against her ear. Then his one hand went to her
chest, resting softly above her breast, over her beating heart. “Here
when the situation calls for it.” It was so strange, that
touch, so casual, yet intimate. So near to her breast, yet warm and
comforting over her beating heart.

It wasn’t necessarily sexual, and
yet it made her skin prickle with excitement and she had to look away
from him. Her pulse quickened beneath his touch and she prayed he
wouldn’t notice.

“Will you always exist like
this?”

“Will you always exist as you
are?” he replied in his usual enigmatic way. Though he relented
without her pursuing it further and murmured softly, “More or
less. I won’t change significantly again without a great deal
of effort.” He nuzzled against her ear. “Would that
please you best?”

It had been so nice to have him always
there, comforting her. Rooting for her.

She was surprised to realize just how
much it had meant to her, though, as she nodded. She liked him like
this.

She liked him a lot.

Varuj kissed the corner of her lips and
smiled. “Then so it shall be,” he stated firmly. “You
brought me into this world, beautiful Firi, and I shall respect your
wishes, and cherish you for it.” The soothing stroke of his
fingers through her dark hair was supremely comforting. “There
is a long road ahead for you. Even I cannot make magic simple and
easy for you, but I will stand by you, beside you… inside you,
wherever I may, as you make your journey.”

Firia awoke the next day to the sound
of someone pounding on her door. The demon Varuj still held her,
nestled to his chest as she lifted her head and looked about.
“Morning,” he murmured to her softly. “You should
probably get that. Sounds urgent.”

It was startling to wake up in
someone’s arms, but she found herself disappointed to be torn
away. She lingered for a moment, feeling her small body press into
his before she pulled away, red-faced and embarrassed. Pulling on her
dressing gown over her clothes, she ran to the door.

When she opened up the door she was
greeted with the sight of a very official-looking elf, donning a
tunic bearing the sigil of Gaul’di-mere Academy in bright gold.
He didn’t appear to be all too pleased with where he was, at
the footstep of a human peasant’s home, but he spoke crisp and
formally: “Madam Tunst?” he asked.

“Yes, that’s me,” she
said as she stepped aside, allowing him in if he chose. “What
can I do for you?”

He didn’t take the offering,
though he extended a scroll to her. “This is for you. You’re
not to open it until the time arrives,” he said vaguely.
“You’re to be at the Commons Trade and Tax Office at
sundown tonight.”

The request didn’t make sense to
her, for everyone in the village knew the sole government office in
their small village shut down before sunset.

“But it’ll be closed.”
She accepted the scroll anyways, blinking her eyes free of sleep.
Perhaps she had simply misheard.

He tipped his wide-brimmed hat to her
and cracked a wry smile, “Be there, madam. You’re allowed
to bring one servant. That’s all I can say!” He turned
with a bit of a flourish then headed off away from her home at a
brisk pace, rounding the gates and then… his walking speed
became something of a blur as he took off down the road, as if
defying time itself.

“A servant,” she scoffed as
she shut the door. Was this some type of hazing? She put the scroll
down and let out a groan as she went to fix her hair. It seemed like
her pigtails were in a mess, and she brushed her bangs aside.

As she looked at herself in the humble
mirror the visage of her demonic companion slipped behind her, his
strong, reassuring hands resting on her shoulders, his charming smile
evident as he leaned in, inhaling her scent near her hair.
“Beautiful. You slept well?” he asked, and she was
reminded of the night’s dreams.

The jarring awakening had shaken it
from her with the urgency of the moment, but she’d dreamt all
the night through. Peacefully, somehow, but she remembered many long,
obsessive fantasies acted out in her dreamscape of her and…
and Varuj. Walking the forest paths she knew. Sharing stolen moments
at her old school house. Her guiding him through the village. Even…

It made her blush to think of it. Of
him in his original form, holding her.

She wanted to avert blame for her
fantasies onto him, but he had spent the whole night outside of her.
Even if he had wanted to… it wouldn’t have been possible
for him to influence her dreams like that. Would it?

“Yes,” she managed to
whisper, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes. Not with that on her
mind.

Clearing her throat, she moved away
from him, shrugging off the gown and placing it over the back of the
chair. “I’m to go to the government office today after
sunset.”

“So you’ve received your
summons to the Academy already?” He said with a raised brow,
moving casually out into the main room, his two hands upon his exotic
robe’s belt. “They’re prompt at least. I thought
they might keep you waiting for a while,” he mused as he looked
about, his long, sleek black hair shifting with the smooth motions of
his head.

It was odd to see him wandering about
her home, odder still to see him doing it in the bright of morning.
“How about I make you some breakfast?” he said with a
cheeky smile, his ruby eyes turning back towards her.

“Sure, though I doubt there’s
anything good.” She slipped into the chair, looking at the
scroll but not opening it. “I don’t know that it’s
the summons. It feels like I’m being set up.” But maybe
it was just paranoia at work.

He held out his hand for the scroll.
“Give it to me,” he said simply, though she could read
the concern on his face as he eyed the thing.

“I’m not supposed to open
it yet. Hell, this thing might be a trap too,” she said even as
the corner of her lip pulled up into a half smile.

“Just give it to me, please,”
he reasserted, holding out his hand and giving her a pointed look. “I
won’t open it,” he insisted.

He took the scroll and held it
delicately in both hands, lifting it up to his face and inhaling
along its length with his eyes shut. He went through some series of
odd tests, holding it before the morning light that filtered through
the window. Then holding it in the shadow of his robe – which
also gave her a generous peek at his leanly muscled abs – to
give it another look over.

“It’s ensorcelled,”
he stated firmly, offering it back to her. “And there is some
faint trace of mischievous intent associated with it. Though not by
its original creator. Most likely by whoever handed it to you,”
he stated. “It is, however, a very minor mischievousness I
detected.”

“How can you tell?” she
asked, staring at it curiously. “I guess he wanted me to open
it at the precise point they all come out and douse me in water or
something, is that it? Something to make me look like a fool?”
She felt her pulse quicken, and her face flushed.

“Perhaps,” he said with a
light shrug as he turned and went to the kitchen and began to prepare
a meal for her once more. “And I told you, I’m a sorcerer
in my own right. A very capable one, I might add,” he said with
an impish grin over his shoulder as he rooted through her pantry.
“You weren’t kidding when you said there wasn’t
much.”

“Congratulations, now you know
what it’s like to be poor. Glamorous, isn’t it?”

She couldn’t understand why she
was being so bitter, but being dragged away from him, from her
pleasant dreams… She shouldn’t lash out at him, but
somehow she felt it was his fault. That he could have protected her
from the rude wakeup call.

Of course, nothing could be further
from the truth. He could not show himself. Even if he weren’t a
demon he couldn’t do it. The talk that would erupt about her if
a strange young man was seen answering her door in the morning!

He took it fine, however, and continued
his focus upon the food. He finally found something to his liking.
“Aha. I thought I smelled some meat,” he said, pulling
out some older, salted pork and bringing it to the stove. “The
scroll itself is magical, as I said,” he explained to her as he
went about his intricate preparations. He cooked capably, though in a
different manner than she was used to. “Opening it activates
its powers in part. So doing so before you need to use it could
deplete it’s power. So… in that regard the timing issue
may not be a trick at all.”

“Well, I’m sure it will be
the first of many trials I’ll have to deal with working with
those elves.” Her words were half angry, but all determination.
It was motivation to spite them, knowing how much they’d hate
her and her powers. “Until they learn that they cannot trifle
with the human girl.”

Her words brought a grin to Varuj’s
face, and his ruby eyes met hers from across the room. “I knew
I hadn’t chosen wrongly. You make me fancy you deeply with that
kind of talk, darling Firi,” he mused so sincerely. He tossed
back his long hair and beginning to crack open some eggs, frying them
as the meat sizzled.

She wish he’d stop saying things
like that. She blushed as her gaze fell and she drew her lower lip
between her teeth for a moment. “I don’t understand you,”
she admitted. “You’re a demon, aren’t you?”
Of course he was, she chided herself. She summoned him!

“Like I said, that is
your
word for us, not ours,” he rooted through the spices and herbs
of her kitchen, finding some he liked the scent of and adding them to
the eggs. “It’s a wholly strange term from our
perspective, however,” he explained, going to her pantry again
and taking tiny tastes of what he found there before he mused over
the goat cheese.

He carried it back to the stove and
mixed some of the cheese with the eggs as he scrambled them up. “It
would be like calling humans, elves, orcs, trolls and all other walks
of life on your world simply “angels” or some nonsense. I
mean, what do
you
have in common with a troll, lovely Firi?”

“Not much, I’d hope,”
she shrugged. Those large, brutish things that lived in forests and
practiced their strange, superstitious nonsense weren’t even
allowed to compete for the Academies.

They were too uncontrollable.

“So fine, what do you call
yourself? The angel from hell?”

Varuj laughed again. “Once again,
that would be
your
term, not ours.” He sighed a little,
but began serving up the food. He didn’t seem to like his food
cooked very much, she noted. “Would you call your world heaven
then? Even the slums of your greater cities? Or would you say it is
simply your world, with bad, good and everything in between?”

He took up the plates and walked over
to the table with them, setting them out then pouring some water for
them both. He pulled out a chair for her in a very gentlemanly
fashion, holding it and waiting for her to sit then pushing her in
comfortably.

“You said your world is mostly
bad. That you couldn’t wait to get away from it. So I’d
say that yea, this place is looking alright compared to that,”
she retorted, her head tilting to the side and daring him to
contradict her.

“Certainly not heaven, but we do
have some good here.”

He went and sat down at the table
beside her, very carefully laying out a napkin over his lap like the
princely lord he so resembled. “Where I come from it, it was
rather bad, yes,” he remarked with a faint, wan smile. “It
would be like you residing in the orcish slums. You would be far
better off than they, certainly, but their sickly state, their
poverty and depression would make you ill. Wear away at you each and
every day,” he said before biting into his own food with some
small relish.

“I would take my chances here
with you. This world is richer in opportunity from what I’ve
seen,” he stated firmly.

“But that still doesn’t
answer my question. What do you call yourself, if not a demon?”
As usual she was slow to begin eating, trying to savour the moment.