Kissed by Wildfire: A Dark Academy Romance (The Cimmerian Cage Book 1) Read online

  Kissed by Wildfire

  THE CIMMERIAN CAGE BOOK 1

  CATE CORVIN

  KISSED BY WILDFIRE

  Cate Corvin

  All Rights Reserved © 2019 Cate Corvin. First Printing: 2019

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means with the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Cover Design by Melody Simmons

  Author's Note: All characters in this story are 18 years of age and older, and all sexual acts are consensual. This book is a work of fiction and liberties may be taken with people, places, and historical events.

  Dedication

  To Melora for always makin’ it happen, and to Katie and Tanja for going above and beyond reading- you are some damn fine ladies!

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 1

  Lu

  “Arms straight out, Miss Darke. When you burned down the house, did you stop to consider the humans living in the area?”

  Disembodied hands whipped a measuring tape around the salient points of my body: shoulders, bust, waist, hips. I complied with Headmistress Mallory Gilt’s demands without resistance. Her voice was soft with a touch of rasp, the tone of someone who wore kid gloves but would backhand you until your mouth bled.

  A single tear slipped down my cheek.

  “I- a ghoul was eating my neighbor and my witchfire broke away from me. I didn’t mean to do it.” How many times would I need to relive this? “No one got hurt.”

  Her eyes were blue like a summer sky, the white eaten through with tiny red veins. A multitude of lines framed her pursed lips. Frizzy, carroty curls were piled in a soft chignon on the back of her head, and onyx drops gleamed at her earlobes.

  The crest of the Cimmerian Reform Academy was picked out in gold thread over the heart of her austere gray suit jacket, her entire outfit neatly tailored to her body. When I dropped my mental wards, her psychic signature touched me- just a faint taste of copper and earth. She had her own wards up to mute her signature.

  “Indeed.” The file spread over her polished ebony desk detailed every facet of my life up until this moment. The hands with the measuring tape disappeared and I held my arms at my sides for a moment longer, but when they didn’t reappear, I allowed my hands to twist into a knot behind my back. “But a raging house fire, in the middle of the dry season… that nearly started a forest fire. Tell me about the barn, Miss Darke.”

  I kept my eyes on the papers, a painful lump growing in my throat behind the tears. I was trapped here, the file a damning account that I would never be able to outrun. The simple manila envelope condemned me with its existence. “I was upset that day, Headmistress. I’d argued with my coven matriarch and…”

  My words left me, my tongue bare of excuses. That wasn’t all that had happened, and Headmistress Gilt knew it, too. A copy of the Tribunal’s report was in that file, detailing every word I’d spoken in my defense.

  The paper lying on top of the Tribunal’s verdict was my sentence. Until I successfully achieved a mastery in witchfire, I would be considered a legally incompetent adult witch under conservatorship. If I refused a conservatorship, I could serve out a sentence in a witch-prison.

  And instead of taking on the task of helping me, my coven matriarch had handed those papers over to the Headmistress and washed her hands of me. My freedom was now in the hands of this austere, pointed woman.

  Headmistress Gilt scribbled a notation on my file with red ink that shone like blood.

  “Mmm. Emotional outbursts and witchfire are never a benign combination. You will be assigned to Discipline courses as the main study of your freshman year, Miss Darke, as well as Conjure and Exorcism. You don’t need to destroy your surroundings to kill a single ghoul.”

  Hot tears prickled the backs of my eyelids. I looked up at the antique bronze light sconces, blinking rapidly. “Yes, Headmistress.”

  “The house, the barn… ah. What of Jonathan, Miss Darke?”

  No amount of blinking would hold back tears when I heard that name. The lump squeezed my throat shut and my heart pounded in my throat, filling my hollow chest with its frantic thumping. I drew a deep breath into frozen lungs, forcing myself to swallow the tears back, detach my mind from the situation.

  Headmistress Gilt watched me hold back sobs with clinical detachment, no more human than an insect eyeing its next meal. A perfectly manicured nail tapped the report. “Save me the waterworks. I already know all there is to know about Jonathan Arrow.”

  I closed my eyes and several more tears slipped free.

  “What happened out there doesn’t matter in here.” Wood moved over carpet, cloth swished, and the soft tread of her footsteps moved around the desk. When I opened my eyes again, she was only inches away, studying me intently. “What’s done is done. The Tribunal has declared you unfit for society, and your matriarch has signed rights of guardianship over to me. You are now part and parcel of the Cimmerian Reform Academy, and I fully intend to… make something of you.”

  “I never meant to do those things,” I whispered, wishing with all my heart that I would close my eyes and this would all be a terrible nightmare, and I would wake up at home in my bed, in Ashdarke House.

  But it wasn’t a nightmare. My covenmistress and matriarch, Alicia Darke, had finally had her fill of me. An hour ago, she’d left me outside the gates of Cimmerian with a suitcase and a rowan wand, looking at me from behind impenetrably black sunglasses. I hadn’t even been able to read my own mother’s emotions as she said goodbye, dropped an air-kiss over my cheek, and vanished into the back of our coven’s black car.

  Nausea roiled in my stomach like a hot pool of acid. I looked down at the floor, at the Headmistress’s gleaming black pumps, anywhere but at her cold blue eyes.

  “Of course not, Miss Darke.” Headmistress Gilt’s soft tones wanted to be kind, but the steel beneath them was apparent. “Unlike your incompetent matriarch, Cimmerian will see what kind of raw material you’re made of. From the moment you step foot outside this office, your new life begins. We will break you down and mold you into something new.”

  I took a sniffling breath, ashamed that I’d been here for less than an hour and had already been reduced to a sobbing mess. At nineteen, I was an adult witch in my own right. I shouldn’t have been sobbing like a child.

  But she’d had me committed. My own mother.

  Deep down I knew she was right to do it. I was a deadly wild card, good for nothing but destruction, my body eaten up from the inside by untamed witchfire.

  Instead of training me in control herself, as matriarchs were meant to do, she’d held up a shiny brochure last night at the dinner table. Lord Ember of the Emb
erfire coven had his hands full with other apprentices and couldn’t take me on. So, she’d found another avenue.

  I would be entrusted to the care of a reform university for troubled witches and warlocks, a private boarding school hidden in the depths of Moira’s Forest, three hours to the north.

  They would teach me to contain my witchfire, and maybe one day I could leave. “Maybe you could come home after, Lu,” she said, a muscle in her jaw twitching.

  Her maybe had sounded so false and hollow, I knew the moment it left her mouth what she really meant. I was no longer hers. The minute I stepped foot inside the academy, I’d stopped being her problem.

  She’d be free, without the burden of her fire-eaten daughter, to pursue another warlock or spend coven funds on another car instead of training for me. Not your problem, the brochure had screamed in her red-nailed hand. Drop your worthless daughter with us, Alicia!

  I’d packed a suitcase in silence and hadn’t slept at all. By the time morning came, I’d made my peace with her decision. She’d never been the warmest mother. Maybe I’d find a better mentor, and a better chance of a normal life, inside Cimmerian.

  This morning she’d left me in front of the wrought-iron gates of Cimmerian Reform Academy, lined on either side with a twelve-foot tall cobblestone wall that extended into the forest for an indeterminable distance. The walls were wreathed with iron spikes, and just looking at them gave me an uncontrollable shiver down my spine.

  Mist covered the forest in a soggy white blanket, nearly hiding the menace of the iron-spiked wall. After my mother had driven off, I’d stood in front of the gates for several long minutes, debating picking up my suitcase and walking off into the world alone, never to be seen by any covens again.

  I’d just worked up the nerve to do just that, but when I tried to lift my foot it remained glued to the gravel drive. Panic had almost swamped me as a figure appeared from the mist on the other side of the gate, silent and drawn, and the unnamed witch had opened the gates and brought me inside Cimmerian. She wore an old-fashioned smock-like dress, her hair pinned in a neat bun. Something sank in the pit of my stomach as she looked back at me with emotionless eyes, her psychic signature a flash of needles and faded thread.

  My feet only unglued when I tried to move forward into the gates.

  That was how they managed to herd me inside. The gates had tolled like a funeral bell behind me as they clanged shut, and I’d accepted my fate as the silent witch led me to the sprawling monstrosity of a Victorian mansion nestled within the grounds.

  I swallowed the lump in my throat and the rest of my tears. For better or worse, I belonged to Headmistress Gilt and Cimmerian now. Alicia Darke had signed me over into her care. In the eyes of the Tribunal, it was perfectly legal.

  “Do you want to see the outside world again, Miss Darke? Do you want to join a coven, and make your mark on this world for the better?” She gave me an encouraging smile that looked out of place on her sharp features.

  I nodded, my eyes scratchy but no longer weeping. “Yes, Headmistress.”

  “Then hold on to those desires for dear life, Miss Darke. So many young hopefuls enter these gates harboring those same grand visions of a normal life, and never live to achieve it. It’s such a small goal, and yet unattainable for so many.”

  She would get along with my matriarch, I thought. Doom and gloom, no hope to be found. Headmistress Gilt paced back around her desk, settled herself in her carved, velvet-upholstered chair and pulled a contract from a drawer. It shimmered with golden light, the makings of a binding spell washed over it.

  She also pulled out a small, leaf-shaped blade and a quill.

  “Sign here, Miss Darke. Your full name, in willingly-drawn blood.”

  This was my final moment to make a stand. My stomach swooped.

  “And if I don’t?”

  She smiled up at me, but it wasn’t friendly or welcoming anymore. “You’re well aware that your matriarch also left the Tribunal’s findings with us.” She tapped the Tribunal’s Proclamation of Conservatorship with a glossy, pointed nail. “You sign, or you go before the Tribunal to plead a case you already lost.”

  The bitterness of defeat filled my mouth, acrid and choking. Cimmerian or a witch-prison.

  Maybe they were one and the same, but the chances of fulfilling the Tribunal’s verdict of witchfire mastery were far better here.

  I stepped forward and took the small blade, pressing it into the soft underside of my arm until a large drop of blood welled.

  Dipping the quill in my blood, I signed my name on the line: Lucrezia Darke, Ashdarke Coven.

  The golden binding spell moved through the blood of my name, stinging my fingers through the quill until I dropped it on her desk. I stepped back and surreptitiously pressed my thumb to the wound in my arm.

  Headmistress Gilt held up the contract and inspected it, then smiled with what was the most genuine expression that had crossed her face this entire time.

  She looked hungry, all teeth and appetite, and like she’d just won another meal.

  “Here is your official welcome to Cimmerian, Miss Darke,” she said. She slid a folded paper across the desk to me. “Your course list, assigned room, and room key. I do hope you make the most of your freshman year. My coven, Giltglass, has been known to offer personal apprenticeships to worthy students.”

  I took the paper, the thickness of the parchment as heavy as a ball and chain. “Are we… confined to the grounds?”

  The Headmistress slid the contract into the manila file. “I would not recommend that you attempt to leave the grounds without express permission, Miss Darke. It’s possible to earn a town pass, but we’ll need to see significant acclimation before that becomes an option.”

  She knew she was dangling a carrot on a stick in front of me, or in this case, freedom on a stick. Her cool smile was tinged with malice.

  “You will wear the assigned probationary uniform until further notice,” she said, nodding to the silent witch in the smock-dress. In the time that Headmistress Gilt had given me the spiel, she’d been using stitchwitchery, fitting the uniforms to my measurements. “This is the only set you will receive until sophomore year, so you will be responsible for any and all lost articles or damage incurred. I would suggest making friends with a good seamstress.” She made it sound like that was an inevitability.

  The silent witch handed me a stack of clothes to go with the parchment. Crisp white button-down shirts, embroidered with Cimmerian’s crest, and several red plaid skirts made up the majority of the pile.

  She had me try on one of the jackets, and when she made an adjustment the needle jabbed my wrist. I hissed with pain, bringing my wrist to my mouth. “Sorry,” she said, not sounding sorry at all.

  I glared at her, suddenly sure she’d jabbed me on purpose- my wrist had been nowhere near the hem of the jacket- but the office door slammed open. A human servitor in dark blue coveralls dragged a struggling, crying witch into the office, grunting when she tried to kick him in the crotch.

  The servitor was covered with occult tattoos, black ink over burly arms. His shaved head gleamed under the soft office light. In contrast, the young woman was a crying mess, her long brown hair tangled as she struggled against him, school uniform in disarray. Red scratches streaked her pale legs. The sleeves of her jacket had been hemmed to her elbows, and her skirt was bleached in places. She looked like she’d been through a war zone.

  Headmistress Gilt let out a soft sigh. “Miss Bitter.”

  “Caught her trying to grow a bridge over the wall by the garden,” the servitor grunted, wrestling the witch into a chokehold. Her wild brown eyes stared up at me, but I was frozen in shock, only able to stare back.

  “Again? I’d believe you enterprising, Miss Bitter, if you hadn’t attempted the same trick a month ago. Put her on the wall, Anthony.”

  I blinked, surprised by the order, and the servitor dragged her to the far side of the Headmistress’s office and pushed her face-firs
t against the mauve floral wallpaper. A vaguely human-shaped shadow marked the wallpaper there.

  A ball of ice formed in my stomach, and my brain felt like it was mired in syrup, unable to comprehend what I was seeing.

  Miss Bitter was shrieking now, struggling against him, but the Headmistress’s servitor was much stronger than her.

  “What are you doing?” I gasped. The swirling curlicues of the flowers warped under the witch’s cheek, which was pressed flat to the wall. Headmistress Gilt’s arms were crossed over her chest, her thin lips pressed in a thin line. She moved a large chunk of quartz crystal on her desk to the side, revealing a sigil inscribed on the wood, gleaming a faint pink.

  “Please don’t!” Miss Bitter screamed. Her scream became a sob almost instantly.

  Headmistress Gilt touched the sigil, looking almost regretful.

  “What a shame. Bittervine produces such talented greenwitches.”

  The wall under Miss Bitter shuddered and she let out the most ear-rending shriek yet. If I hadn’t been so numb, I might’ve done the same thing.

  Hands pushed from the wall, patterned with the same elaborate floral ropes as the wallpaper, the skin a dry, paper mauve. They wove around her, gripping the back of her head and handfuls of hair, winding around her arms and legs and waist.

  Anthony released her and jumped back, unable to hold back his own yelp. The hands pulled her forward, a soft shushing sound filling the sudden silence in the office. If Miss Bitter was still shrieking, it was completely muffled as she was absorbed into the wall.

  My hands were a quaking mess as she disappeared, the writhing hands swallowing her whole until only a flat surface remained. Unless my mind was playing on tricks on me, the human-shaped shadow on the wall was a touch darker now. “You killed her.”

  “No.” Headmistress Gilt brushed off her hands and moved the chunk of quartz back over the sigil. “Anthony, go trim down whatever damage Miss Bitter caused. Do not destroy my roses.” Her servitor inclined his head and silently retreated.

  “That was just a taste of the punishment we’re capable of delivering here, Miss Darke. If Miss Bitter accepts her wrongdoing and gets the message through that thick skull of hers, she will be permitted to carry on with her academic year. I’m really quite pleased you got to witness an atypical punishment. If you think for a moment that you can use your witchfire to destroy my covenstead, well… believe me, my Helping Hands are the least of the pain you will know.”