Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 77293 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77293 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Avery
Being gay in the magical world means hiding who you are—or paying the price. I’ve learned to keep my head down, stay close to my coven, and survive the football team's cruelty one insult at a time. But nothing prepared me for Saint, my new roommate. There’s a haunted look in his golden eyes... and a monster under his skin.
A Cursed Drake lives inside him—possessive, obsessed, and terrifyingly fixated on me. He whispers of “cuddles,” but there’s violence in his desire. I should be running. Instead, I’m drawn to both the boy and the beast.
Saint
My whole life, I’ve been taught to fear what I am. To hide it. To fight it. But the curse burning inside me grows stronger every day. And when Avery came into my life—brilliant, brave, and already carrying wounds of his own—the fire inside me turned to obsession.
He soothes my madness. Calms the chaos.
But the Drake is hungry… and it wants him.
If I give in, I’ll lose myself. If I resist, I might lose him.
At Nocturne Academy, love is forbidden, dragons are cursed, and being different can get you killed.
But some things are worth the danger
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
1
AVERY
It’s not easy being a gay teen in the magical world. The human world has moved on a lot in terms of same-sex relationships and become somewhat more progressive. But the magical world is still stuck in the Middle Ages. In most of the Realms, being same-sex oriented is viewed with varying degrees of horror to homophobia.
Take my own family, for instance. My magic manifested early and so did my sexual orientation. My father was not pleased about either one. He’s a big shot, super powerful Warlock, working on serious issues like Climate Change and no doubt he was hoping his only son would follow in his footsteps. Unfortunately, the very first time my magic manifested, he knew right away that wasn’t to be.
I was an early flamer—in every sense of the word. But in the magical world, the world of witchcraft, specifically, when we talk about someone “flaming up” we mean the first time the magic in their blood comes to the surface and manifests in the outside world.
Most boys with witch powers—Warlocks—flame up in very manly ways. I had a childhood friend, Brandon,—(well, I was mostly friends with his sister, but we were around the same age)—who wanted really badly to do well on his Little League team. He was working on his batting and catching and whatever else it is you do in baseball every day, but he just couldn’t seem to hit the ball very far.
Well, when Brandon’s magic manifested, it came out at a big game. He hit the ball so hard he knocked the cover off of it and it flew some ungodly distance—right out of the Little League park they were playing in—and crashed through some woman’s bay window about a mile away.
Of course, there was a lot of work to do, convincing the Norms—which is what the magical community calls regular humans with no magic—that it had all been some trick of the wind—a freak accident that could never happen again. But his family and the rest of the magical community in our little town of Frostproof, Florida, knew what had really happened and his father could not have been prouder. Seriously, I remember hearing him brag to my own Dad constantly about his little super slugger and seeing the envy in my father’s eyes as he nodded and congratulated his friend.
Another boy around my age, Andrew, started a truck with his magic when it manifested, because he wanted to drive “like the race cars on NASCAR.” Another one I know tamed a poisonous snake—a water moccasin—and made it his familiar when his magic came out. And the list just goes on and on. Guys with witch blood tend to have dramatic and very masculine magical manifestations.
But not me.
No, the very first time my magic manifested, was when my mother sewed herself a dress that I, in my six-year-old wisdom, considered too plain. (Yes, I was fashion-forward at an early age.)
Anyway, my mother is a Null. That’s what the magical community calls someone who comes from a magical family but has no magic themselves. My mom’s Null status means she has to do things the hard way but she hasn’t let that stop her. She’s the most determined and positive person I know and she’s also my biggest cheerleader—I love her so much.
So mom had sewed herself a little black dress for an upcoming cocktail party but when I saw it hanging there on her dress mannequin, I remember thinking that it needed some decoration. Just something to brighten it up a bit. In fact, I could almost see what it needed in my head—the colorful pattern that would take it from blah to beautiful.
And as I stood there, seeing these shapes and colors in my head—(my magic has always had a very visual component)—my fingertips began to tingle. And before I knew it, the pattern I had been imagining was happening—colorful threads were appearing from nowhere and decorating my mother’s little black dress with a gorgeous profusion of flowers and geometric shapes and even a huge, red dragon—which my “magic needle” as I call it—sewed onto the front of the bodice.
It was just that easy—I willed the pattern to be there and it was. Lots of witchcraft involves spells and incantation that take a long time to set up and gather all of the ingredients for. But my magic needle has always just been there for me, with almost no effort on my part. It’s like breathing and I still love it for its simplicity and the way it comes so naturally.
Anyway, I came from a magical family, so I wasn’t amazed or horrified by this strange thing I had suddenly done—I knew it was just my magic finally coming out. But I was absolutely delighted that I could now “fix” problem clothes without having to try and use my mom’s clunky sewing machine—(which she was trying to teach me at my own request.)