Chapter One

“It will be just like changing schools,” he said.

“We need to go home, our place of origin,” he said. It would be good for me to know where I am from.

I just decided that my father is suffering from a lot of things, but I should add one more to the list: memory loss.

There is absolutely nothing similar between the human school I was attending and this glorified prison yard with a lot of criminals. In here, the Faery, an alternate realm not on Earth, it was deemed as a very good way to best your opponent. It makes children strong.

Welcome to Arcanes Training Institute, ATI for short. It is the best school that exists in Faery and does not discriminate among the top five species that live here. It did not matter that I am crossbred because a lot of halflings come here too. Oh, sorry—half and half. Halflings referred to children who have one human parent. This happens when their fae parent goes to the human world and somehow creates an unintended baby, as my dad explained to me. Although, I wonder how someone could create a new life unintendedly.

I hated this, and I have a very strong dislike for my father right now. I mean, why, just why, would he uproot the last fifteen years of our lives, where he taught fairytales and folklore in one of the universities in the city I grew up in, just to come back to this realm and help someone who abandoned us when I was two.

His explanation about me being the heir of her throne and that I was not ready to rule came to mind, but I brushed it off. I needed to be angry at him. It would take my mind off this clusterfuck situation that I found myself in.

I’m the new kid in the final year, with no idea of how school is here. Don’t get me wrong, my father did his best to fill me in on this world of ours, but high school, regardless of the world it exists in, always changes.

“Don’t worry, Iristendale. You will fit in in no time,” my father said beside me as we sat at the principal office. We had to come in through a back entrance because, apparently, there was some test I needed to perform on the school stairs, but no one would tell me what it was.

“You are not allowed to talk to me. I am still very pissed off at you,” I replied to my dad, ignoring him as much as I could. This looked like how I imagined a fictional headmaster's office would be, which was insane since this was my life and certainly not fiction.

When someone sucked in their breath, I remembered that we were outside, and I was supposed to be respectful to my father, not just because he gave birth to me, but also because he happened to be one of the rulers of the prominent five species.

My mother was the leader of her sector too, and although the Dad and Mom’s side of the family usually don’t interact, I was a product of my father’s one-night loneliness and my mother’s power-hungry schemes. This is something I have always known, no matter how much my father tried to hide it from me. What does it say when your mother abandoned you at the age of two and your father was the go-to parent for any injury or issue.

“Ignore my daughter's words. I have raised her to freely express herself, a quality which I believe the Folks need in their next leader,” my father answered smoothly, covering my faux pas.

“But Your Majesty, she was being downright disrespectful. Heir or not, she should be disciplined,” the man said.

I was supposed to be on my best behavior, I mean, I was going to try, but his words rubbed me the wrong way. “I would like to see you try,” I scoffed. And I meant it. Through all my years in school, my father never once allowed someone else to discipline me. Every slight I did was taken care of by him, but when I pushed the envelope too much, I suffered heavily for it.

My father shot me a glare, and I shut my mouth, aware that I was heading towards dangerous territory. I did not want to offend this man more.

“Speaking of disciplining, my daughter is not to be disciplined by anybody other than me, not even her mother.”

The man nodded. “Of course, as it is with the case of every high-ranking heir that we teach here. All reports go to you, and you tell us the acceptable behavior that you are grooming in your heir, so we do not undermine your efforts,” he stated, and my father nodded.

“Good,” my father replied before turning to me. “Iris, why don’t you get started on school.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but his brows furrowed, the universal sign that I have pushed too much today, and I should not even think of it again. I hugged him tightly, knowing this would be the longest time I would spend away from him.

“You will visit, right?” I asked.

“Every chance that I get, and when it is safe, we will see if you can continue attending from home,” he replied before he kissed my hair.

Tears gathered in my eyes, but he shook his head at me. That would not set a good example. I was a future queen; I should not be going about crying about the separation from the only face that I knew after being spirited away to another realm. I sucked the tears in and turned to the principal.

“Where should I go and what should I do?” I asked him.

“Take the tunnel back. You will come out before a huge building, and you might not see a lot of people on the stairs, but people milling around it or sitting on the lowest ones if they are brave. I want you to take the stairs… you will eventually get tired before you reach the top, but when you do get tired, I want you to come down. Someone will be waiting for you at the bottom,” he explained.

“If I am not going to finish climbing the stairs, why do I need to try at all?” I asked. When no reply came, I sighed. “That is the test somehow, isn’t it?” I asked, two nods came my way. I stood up and waved bye to my father, knowing that if this were some sort of test, he was right behind me to see how I would do even if I wouldn’t see him.