Outling Read online

  CrystalWing Academy

  Book One: Outling

  Marty Mayberry

  CRYSTALWING ACADEMY

  Book One, Outling

  Copyright © 2019 Marty Mayberry

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used

  Or reproduced in any manner

  whatsoever without written permission

  except in the case of brief quotations

  embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names,

  characters, events, and incidents are a

  product of the author’s imagination.

  Any resemblance to an actual person,

  living or dead, is entirely

  coincidental.

  ASIN: B07WF1ZD26

  Hummingbird Press

  Cover art by Black Bird Book Covers

  Find them on Facebook here

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  1. Chapter 1

  2. 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 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 1

  For Mom.

  You’ll never have the chance to read my books,

  but I know you would’ve been proud.

  Miss you.

  Acknowledgments

  For my children.

  Jes, Lee, Lana, & Stephanie

  Awesome critique partners.

  This book is infinitely better

  solely due to you.

  And for my husband

  and children.

  Thanks for sticking with

  me through this journey!

  Welcome to CrystalWing Academy…

  …where the magical Elite reign and Outlings are an endangered species.

  Magic doesn't exist in the human world. As far as I knew. But when I fling a fireball at a bully, my horrified Mom dumps me at CrystalWing Academy, a place straight out of my favorite fantasy books.

  They tell me I’m an Outling, a wizard born from non-magical parents. Mom’s human. Dad? I don’t exactly know who he is.…

  One thing I do know is I’m not an Elite—descendants of the original six families who split from the Fae ages ago. At seventeen, their children and despised Outlings like me attend the Academy to learn to control our power.

  I’m barely on campus when I’m targeted by a mean girl. Figures. Thankfully, the Academy’s not all bad. My pixie roommate’s awesome. I score a coveted moonstone during Stone Selection. And let’s not forget Donovan, a cute guy who seems to like me, not the mean Elite girl who’s determined to win him.

  Except something’s luring students into the forest and draining their power, leaving only shriveled husks behind.

  The Headmistress warns me not to investigate, but the killer’s after my friends. Big mistake there. My magical skills may be untrained and wild, but if a power-sucking vamp thinks he can harm someone I care about, he’s about to discover I’m a wizard unlike any other.

  Chapter 1

  Seven Years Earlier

  “I’m sorry,” Mom said after we both got into the car. She stared forward, through the windshield, and her shoulders shook as if she cried.

  “What are you sorry for?” There was no hiding the concern in my voice. What was going on?

  I had my suspicions. A week ago, I’d done something bad. What happened…It wasn’t even possible, was it?

  Magic wasn’t real.

  Her body tightening, Mom started the car and backed down the driveway, saying nothing.

  “Where are we going?” I asked as we drove across town. My beat-up, stuffed rabbit lay on the seat where I’d left it months ago, and I lifted it and held it close, barely resisting the urge to suck my thumb. I was ten, not two, well beyond the age where I’d do a thing like that.

  But something was wrong.

  Mom’s fingers blanched on the steering wheel as she took our old Honda up onto the highway.

  An hour later and after snaking along a series of smaller roads, heading north and deeper into the remote parts of Maine, she’d still hadn’t said a thing.

  “Mom?” Even I could hear the nervous edge in my voice. “Please. Where are we going?”

  “I…” She shook her head. “This is…the way it needs to be, sweetheart.” Utter defeat rang out in her words.

  My heart ground to a halt before jumping around in my chest. I clutched my rabbit closer. “What do you mean?”

  “Fleur. Please. I need to focus on my driving.” She turned the radio on and rock music blasted through the car loud enough to drown out any further questions.

  Dropping my rabbit, I clamped my hands together on my lap and tried to keep my feet from fidgeting on the floor mat, but they wouldn’t stay still. She’d never done anything like this before. Yet after what happened last week at school…What I might’ve done…I was scared.

  She turned the car onto a dirt road. The vehicle bumped along for thirty minutes or so while a dark, spooky forest grew closer and closer around us.

  A sudden fog fell, engulfing the car. It crept on spindly spider feet through the car. So thick I couldn’t see more than an arm’s reach beyond my window. Mom slowed but kept going, inching along the road, leaning forward, her face scrunched tight with tension.

  “Should we, um, turn around?” I asked. I’m scared, I did not say, though the words hung around my neck like a lead weight.

  “We’ll be there soon.”

  “Where?”

  The fog suddenly lifted and we reached a dead end. As I stared out the window, my palms sweaty, Mom parked in front of a huge arched gate spanning the gap between a long, spiky, black iron fence. A sign mounted beside the gate said, CrystalWing Academy in gilded letters.

  Magical worlds were my go-to reading material. I might only be in the fifth grade, but I’d read everything I could get my hands on, even adult fantasy books. CrystalWing, plus the word, Academy, sparked my imagination. Despite my worry about what we were doing here, I couldn’t help wondering what exciting things lay beyond the gate.

  “Wait here,” Mom said as she shoved open her door and got out of the car.

  Since the incident at school, she’d been short with me. I’d heard her crying late at night. How could she blame me for the fire? I hadn’t had a lighter or matches, and everyone knows you can’t start a fire without creating some sort of spark. But leave it to Mom to find a way to pin what happened with Tristan on me.

  Mom’s door slammed shut, and she strode over to the gate where she paused to study the sign. Her shoulders lifted and fell and she hesitated before pushing a button that must engage a bell somewhere deep behind the fence because a distant gong shivered through the air.

  The woods were dense around us, hovering on both sides of the road. Vines crept and draped, hanging so low they brushed the top of the car.

  We’d found our way inside a shaggy beast’s belly.

  As if by magic, the steel gates creaked open, the grinding, rushing sound raking down my spine and making me lean forward, almost afraid to find out what might come next.

  The sound must’ve scared Mom, too, because she stumbled backward. Then her hands clenched into fists and her back ramrodded. Nodding, she hurried back to the car and slipped into the driver’s seat. She ground the starter and the engine fired. Again, without saying anything, she drove through the gate and it thudded closed behind us.

  My mouth drier than a desert, I shrunk into my seat, too frightened to beg Mom for more information.

  As she took the vehicle up a long, paved drive, I leaned against the vinyl door and stared out the window at the blur of woods we passed. The forest gave way to sunshine and an enormous lawn with flower beds, benches, and paths weaving through clusters of trees. Just beyond the lawn, a series of connected, tall stone buildings with turrets and towers and even what looked like a broad moat waited. The Academy had been constructed of cinder-gray stone that looked cold enough to freeze my fingers if I touched it.

  Mom shut the car off in front of a steep granite staircase that reached toward a platform extending over the moat. The platform ended at two matching, tall wooden doors with a silver knocker shaped like the head of a dragon.

  After releasing a whoosh of air, Mom turned to peer back at me. “You know I don’t want to do this.”

  She hadn’t told me what this was yet, but I didn’t like it. Not one bit.

  “Are we…” I shook off the quakes pinching my bones. “Why are we here?”

  “Get out.” Mom thrust open her door again, and we both soon stood outside on the hot pavement. The head of the sun made sweat slither down my back.

  One of the huge doors opened, and an old man strode out. To greet us or to send us away?

  He wore a robe. Whenever I got out of the shower, I put on my pink slippers and matching fluffy robe. This man’s robe was black, and it had a shooting star and a dr
agon head on the right pocket. His graying hair gave way to a long, silver-flecked beard that hung partway down his chest. His pointy nose arched over his thin lips. And his wrinkly face contrasted with sharp, deep green eyes centered beneath bushy eyebrows.

  He took the stairs quickly for an old guy and joined us on the drive.

  “Someone at the hospital said I could bring her here,” Mom said before he could open his mouth.

  Leaning sideways, his emerald gaze pinned me in place behind her.

  Cringing, my eyes flitted away from his, and I shuffled my sneakers, wishing I could sink deep beneath the ground.

  “I see,” he finally said.

  What did he see? Probably a scared kid who had no clue what might happen next.

  “You need to take her. I…can’t.” Anguish bled into Mom’s words. Reaching back, she snagged my arm and dragged me forward, thrusting me in front of her. Exposing me in front of her. I tried to huddle into her to steal comfort, but she shoved me away as if I’d been dipped in poison. She gripped my arms tight enough to make me wince and nudged me closer to the man.

  When my sneaker snagged on something, he caught me before I fell.

  Reeling away from him—a complete stranger—I strained to reach my mother, but he held me back. “Mom! What’s going on?”

  Sadness flickered in her lavender eyes that were just like my own, but the sadness was quickly replaced with steely resolve.

  “She…” Mom shook her head, and her shoulders slumped as if she’d given up on something. Me? “I could ignore the odd things that went on during preschool, the way she made impossible stuff happen—”

  A jolt went through the man at the word preschool, but he continued to grip my arms, saying nothing.

  Mom’s hands trembled. “But that boy? There’s no way I can reconcile what she did in my mind. It’s…wrong.”

  Was she leaving me here with someone I didn’t know? I drooped against the man, and he cupped my shoulders in his wizened hands. What was Mom doing? She couldn’t be…This wasn’t…

  “I won’t do it again, Mom,” I said in a shaky voice, not even sure what I’d done wrong. Preschool, I didn’t remember. Tristan, I did. But I hadn’t done anything. Really. I’d just…pulled on the colorful strings in my mind then released them with a wish.

  “Come, child,” the man said, stooping down to speak softly by my ear. “We’ll find the right place for you.”

  A tall, rounded woman with deep chestnut hair and about fifteen to twenty years older than Mom joined us. Weird how she’d randomly arrived, because there was no other vehicle in the drive and the doors to the Academy hadn’t opened. Where had she come from?

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  This. Was I a thing to be disposed of?

  Her high-pitched voice suggested she was as upset as Mom had been after the school called her about Tristan.

  “We’ve got a new girl, Justine,” the man said. “Sent by…our contact at the hospital.”

  “She’s much too young, Cloven. You know they’re useless until they turn seventeen.” Justine glared at Mom. “Bring her back in a few years.”

  “I can’t. I tried. Truly, I did,” Mom said. “Heaven knows I did everything I could to…restrain her, but she’s cursed. The woman at the hospital said…” Her attention drifted to the imposing stone building behind us that stabbed all the way to the clouds and then farther. “She suggested you might be able to contain her here.”

  Contain? My throat choked off with pain, making it impossible to swallow.

  “Mommy,” I whispered. I hadn’t called her that for years, but she was wrenching me apart.

  She didn’t look at me. Couldn’t look at me, I supposed.

  Justine narrowed her brow and mumbled something I couldn’t understand. Papers and a pen appeared in her hands. Appeared. Had I blinked at the wrong moment? She must’ve pulled them from her pocket because things zapping from mid-air didn’t happen outside of my books. She strode over to the car and thrust the papers in Mom’s face. “Sign, please.”

  “What?” Mom lurched backward, and the word came out breathless, almost bewildered.

  “Sign,” Justine said firmly, “And we’ll take care of this matter forever.”

  Forever? Wait. My pulse leaped in my throat. What did Justine mean by forever? I wrenched against the man’s hold, but I couldn’t break free. I needed to run. Not toward my mom—the sole person I’d trusted for all of my life—but into the forest. The dark, gloomy space surrounding the Academy called to me. I could stay there until this terror disappeared.

  Mom’s gaze lingered on me before she nodded and, with pursed lips, yanked the papers from Justine’s hands. After dropping them on the hood of the car, she scribbled without bothering to read what she was signing.

  “The father?” Justine asked in a sharper tone. “Will he step forward to demand custody?” Her heavy gaze fell on me, and I couldn’t help it, I squirmed.

  She’d told me my dad…

  Mom shrugged. “No one has claimed her so far.” Her attention drifted toward me again, and fear crept into her voice. “You’ll…hide her away from everyone else? She’s not safe to be around others.”

  “Hide her?” Justine snorted as if this was the funniest idea in the world. Her entire body shook when her laughter took hold. “No, no, no. Here, outling children like this one are welcome. Always welcome.”

  What was an outling?

  “Thank you.” Mom stumbled forward and stooped down in front of me. She grabbed my hands and squeezed hard enough I winced. “You understand, don’t you, sweetheart? This is the way it has to be. I just can’t handle it any longer.”

  “No. Mom. Please.” For the first time in my life, I begged for something that truly mattered. Not a new book or to stay up past my bedtime but for my very existence. “Don’t do this.” Because I knew. She did plan to leave me here with strangers. She’d signed me over to them. Forever. “I won’t do it again.” Whatever it was, I’d find a way to stop it.

  My belly rolled, and I bit back my scream.

  “You won’t be able to help yourself,” Mom said sadly. “And next time, it could be directed at me.”

  The fire? “I won’t. Really!”

  “Be good.” After a quick kiss on my cheek and a hug that didn’t last anywhere near long enough, Mom pivoted and raced to the car.

  “Mom!” I bolted after her, but Cloven snagged the back of my shirt and held me in place. Tears streamed down my face. I felt like Mom had reached inside my chest, grabbed onto my heart, and squished all the blood out of it. “Don’t do this,” I cried as she opened the door and settled in her seat. She started the car and without a glance my way, shoved the vehicle into gear, and floored the gas. The tires spun and small rocks clattered around us as she flew down the long, sloping drive.

  “Wait! Don’t leave me. Please,” I whimpered, my body sagging against Cloven. My legs wouldn’t hold me up. Crushed, all I could do was sob.

  Mom. Please. Come back.

  “Well,” Justine said as the car was swallowed by the woods. “The child cannot remain here. She’s much too young.”

  “Agreed.” Cloven leaned forward and gripped my shoulders, his intent gaze meeting mine. “Tell me your name.”

  “Fleur.”

  His fingers tightened and he blinked before his face cleared. As if he’d confirmed something in his mind. “And you’re ten?”