Quaternion

  Book 3 of the Bad Boys of Bevington College

  A WhyChoose Romance

  E. J. Frost

  Quaternion

  Copyright ©2022 E. J. Frost

  Cover Design by Haelah Rice Covers. All stock courtesy of Depositphotos, used under license.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of the author. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable for criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  Quaternion is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, locales, business establishments or organizations is strictly coincidental.

  The quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Essays is in the public domain.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem, “The Splendor Falls,” from which some chapter titles are derived, is in the public domain.

  WARNING: This novel contains mature themes which may considered offensive by some readers. This book is for sale to adults only, as defined by the laws of the country in which the purchase is made.

  DISCLAIMER: This novel contains descriptions of practices which may be injurious to the practitioner’s health. It is not intended as a guide or handbook. The author is not responsible for any loss, harm, injury or death resulting from the use or demonstration of the acts or practices contained in this book.

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other electronic means without the permission of the author is illegal and punishable by law. By purchasing an authorized edition, you are supporting the author’s rights and encouraging the creation of more books. Thank you!

  Created with Vellum

  For the ladettes. Carry on, girls, carry on.

  For the ladies of the Calamity Room who continued to hold me accountable through the long nights when I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to do justice to Teddy and her boys.

  For Michelle Gong and Julia Fortune who helped me wrangle Darwin. Sometimes, a cheerleader is all that’s needed.

  For Gwen Jarvis, who shouldered many of my promotional burdens cheerfully and efficiently.

  And in memory of Anne Rice, who taught me not to be afraid of what lurks in the mind’s dark corners. Those monsters are an author’s friend.

  R.I.P., Grand Dame. You are much missed.

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  1. Darkness’ Call

  2. Broken Bridges

  3. Your Undoubted Mr. Black

  4. Sorer Losses

  5. The Chronomancer’s Brother

  6. Incompletion

  7. Achieving The Dream

  8. Soft Spots

  9. The Troll-Hammer

  10. Red Rage Falling Down, Falling Down All Over Me

  11. Darwin the Devil

  12. Bittersweet Sympathy

  13. Sometimes, A Beanie’s Just A Beanie

  14. Ski Lift Wisdom

  15. An Unexpected Party, Without Dwarves

  16. Drunk-Logic

  17. Rebar

  18. Pink Toothbrush Blues

  19. Apologies on the Half-Shell

  20. The Color of Contrition

  21. Faeding Grace

  22. The Teddyclysm

  23. The Controlling Crow

  24. A Midnight Meeting

  25. Award-Winning Flexibility

  26. A Place To Put A Pillow

  27. Practice Imperfect

  28. The Fire-Bird’s Secret

  29. A Dearth of D

  30. Going Bananas

  31. Teddy’s Punishment

  32. Academic Panic

  33. The Acta Capricornis

  34. The Wrong Kind of Ball

  35. Up A Pond Without A Paddle

  36. Shared Ferocity

  37. The Barefoot Prince

  38. False Starts

  39. Bangers and Mash

  40. We’ll All Fuck Up

  41. Salt and Gold

  42. There Is No Normal

  43. Aggressive Cheer

  44. Breath of the Murder Pony

  45. The Hall of Shadows

  46. Thinking Aloud

  47. A Visit From The Winter Prince

  48. The Quaternion

  49. A Father’s Heart

  50. Doctor Prince’s Tail

  51. False Faces

  52. The Other Winter Prince

  53. Under The Crow’s Wing

  54. The Splendor Falls

  55. On Castle Walls

  56. And Snowy Summits

  57. Old In Story

  58. Blow, Bugle, Blow

  59. Set The Wild Echoes Flying

  60. And Answer, Echoes, Answer

  61. Dying, Dying, Dying

  62. The Last Dragon

  63. A Final Farewell

  Epilogue: A Tale Of Two Parties

  From Capricorn

  Glossary

  About the Author

  Also by E. J. Frost

  Author’s Note

  Quaternion (/kwe’te:nien/) – in mathematics, a numbering system that has been applied to mechanics in three-dimensional space; rarely, a set of four people or things.

  Quaternion is not a standalone. It is the third and final book in the series. Teddy’s Boys and Gabe’s Girl should be read first.

  Teddy, Charlie, and some of their friends speak a dialect of British English known as Manc. For readers not familiar with Manc, I’ve provided a glossary at the back of the book. Hopefully, most of the Manc-speak is clear from context, but I thought some readers might appreciate further explanation for the more obscure words and phrases.

  Quaternion was initially released in serialized format, with short chapters (called “episodes”). I’ve kept the chapter headers and short format to preserve the serial reading experience. I hope it’s not distracting to readers of the ebook and paperback versions.

  Quaternion is a dark, MMMF reverse harem romance, which means the heroine has multiple love interests and does not have to choose between them. It also means the heroes have relationships with each other. Quaternion contains elements of power-exchange and is intended for mature readers only. For a full listing of content warnings, please see my website, https://emmafrostuk.wordpress.com/warning-here-be-monsters/, BEFORE reading this book.

  Chapter 1

  Darkness’ Call

  “Teddy, you need to eat something.”

  With a sigh, I stick my finger on the parchment page to mark my place, rub my burning eyes, and look up at my husband.

  He gives me a soft smile, tinged with sadness. The same smile he’s been giving me since I showed up with my other husband days ago, demanding his help to get back to my own Time. Today, deep lines score his forehead. Although Gabe’s a decade older than I am in this timeline, he’s not that rugged yet.

  This is his worried face.

  I smile back to try to alleviate his worry. “I’m sorry. I lost track of time.”

  His smile twists, turning wry. Any mention of Time right now evokes that wry smile. It’s Time that’s brought us together, a year after he lost future-me.

  If my magic ever comes back, it’s Time that will pull us apart.

  Gabe taps the tray he brought me, probably several hours ago, with a bowl of tomato soup and a roast beef sandwich on sourdough. My favorites. With an apologetic smile, I pull the tray towards me, shift the Arcana I’ve been reading to the side, and eat.

  The fae prince sitting across from me at the long trestle table snags a cracker off the plate under the soup and munches it down while he continues to read. He doesn’t share his son’s aversion to Saltines, evidently.

  I don’t object to Callan stealing my food. I don’t object to anything he’s done since I appeared in his court. I’ve had serious issues with his treatment of his son in the past, both in my Time and in his. But Gabe and Darwin tell me their-Teddy settled those differences and became Callan’s favorite princess.

  The fact that their-Teddy killed her own father in front of Callan probably didn’t hurt; the fae prize ruthlessness.

  I haven’t killed anyone in my Time, and my Da’s murder is one of the mistakes future-me made that I have to find a way to correct. Otherwise, this future, where I’m dead and my boys are alone, could become mine, too.

  But first, I have to find a way to return to my own Time.

  A shiver, like an earthquake, only shallow and localized, runs through the hard-packed dirt beneath my feet.

  The fae prince glances up at me before stealing another cracker. “Stop thinking about it.”

  I hide my grimace in the now-cold mug of tea Gabe’s brought me.

  Another temblor runs through the cave, causing the precious stones scattered across the table between me and Callan to rattle. Most of the stones glint in the amber witchlight illuminating the cave. But a few are dark and cracked.

  Enchanting stones is my oldest, strongest talent. My first connection with my Element and the one I’m most comfortable with. Even that’s abandoned me. All I’ve managed so far is to destroy a handful of gems and create a v
oid stone, which Callan grabbed and disappeared with before it sucked out our souls.

  He promised he placed it in containment, but knowing him, he probably stuck it under a rival’s pillow.

  Although I’ve created more than a few null stones while mastering my Earth-magic, I’ve never created a void stone before, either by accident or purposefully.

  I’m a little worried that I’m creating them now, and what that might mean.

  Gabe gently rubs my shoulders while I finish my dinner, the heat of his body warming my back as he stands behind me. When I’ve polished off the last crumbs and Callan’s stolen the final cracker, Gabe kisses the top of my head. He takes the tray and walks away toward the cave’s entrance, nodding at the two fae knights standing at attention in their golden armor. Given that I’m sitting with a prince of the Thistlemist Court, you’d think they were his bodyguards.

  You’d be wrong.

  Since I can’t do magic—other than accidentally producing soul-stealing stones—and since future-me had enough enemies that she was murdered a little over a year ago, Callan decided I needed protection. I have a retinue of six fairy warriors who follow me from the houseboat where I spend my nights with my husbands, to the cave where I spend my days researching how to heal the magickal injury I dealt myself and return to my own Time.

  There’s even a female warrior among them who has proven she’s happy to protect me in the loo. Now that I’m away from the fae court and just shuttling back and forth between the houseboat and cave, hopefully we won’t have a repeat of that experience.

  “Before you go back to it,” Callan says. “Try another stone.”

  He’s just as high-handed as his son, but I don’t argue. I pick up a polished rose quartz, the cheapest stone on the table, and hold it in my hand while I reach within, to my Element, the source of my magic. I’ve always thought of it as a tap I could turn on. After I merged my magic with my boys’, it became a bubbling wellspring. The well was so deep and our connection so strong that I even wielded Gabe’s Air-magic to close a portal to another dimension.

  Then I tried to channel Fire and burned my wellspring dark and dry.

  I still can’t feel a tap. It’s more like a locked door separating me from my source. But magic’s seething and surging behind that door, rattling the hinges. With the little that leaks through, I channel light, the first spell I learned, into the stone.

  A soft glow builds around my fingers.

  “That’s right, Teddy. Let it build. Channel the glow. Who’s the master?”

  With a violent pop, the light goes out. I shake my palmful of stone fragments and dust onto the table before wiping my hand off on my jeans. Well, future-Teddy’s jeans, since I showed up naked. Fortunately, future-me was as much a fan of kickboxing as I am, and the jeans are only one size too big.

  Callan shrugs like it doesn’t matter. “Next time you say, ‘I am.’ It’ll never work if you don’t say the magic words.”

  In the past week, I’ve learned that Darwin’s three-hundred-year-old, fae prince father is obsessed with Eighties movies. He’s thrown quotes from everything from Say Anything to The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai at me. This one’s from The Last Dragon, which I watched obsessively for a year when I was eight and wanted nothing more than to use “the glow” on my arsehole older brother. Callan’s also taken great delight in telling me all the actors who were actually fae, including the Goblin King himself. I think he’s trying to lighten the mood but really, he’s ruining my childhood.

  I shake my head at him. “My name’s not Leroy.”

  He flicks a few fragments of stone off his page and goes back to reading.

  I pull my Arcana in front of me, rub my eyes, and do the same.

  When Gabe returns a few hours later, my other husband is with him.

  Darwin sits down on the bench next to me and pulls me into his arms for a kiss. His mouth leaves my lips scorched, my skin tingling, my mind blank. It’s hard to bear the force of his magic when I don’t have any of my own. That’s one of many reasons mages tend to stick to their own. A magi’s aura doesn’t interact well with anything non-magickal. Darwin’s not even doing it on purpose, and he’d be horrified if I told him his aura was injuring me.

  I pull lip balm out of the pocket of my jeans and rub it on my swollen lips.

  “Find anything?” he asks.

  I shake my head.

  “Well, I have some news. Doctor Prince will be here tomorrow.”

  I lift both eyebrows. He and Gabe concocted this scheme between them—to assemble a “dream team” to get me back to my own Time—and they contacted several of our old Bevington professors. I staged a token resistance, embarrassed by the idea of calling in favors from people I already owe a great deal to. But I caved after a few days of reading got us nowhere. Doctor Prince and Madame Serpa both promised to come, but I thought it would take them more time to extricate themselves from their teaching responsibilities.

  “Does that get me a smile?” he asks.

  I smile and pull him in for another searing kiss. I’m sure he can taste my sadness, but I pour as much gratitude into the kiss as I can. Darwin and Gabe have done nothing but comfort and support me since I arrived uninvited in Darwin’s bedroom. I owe them more than words could ever say, so I try to tell them with my kisses.

  “I also have some news,” Callan says, closing the Arcana he’s been reading after marking his page with a silver ribbon that’s probably from the sleeve of his silk robe.

  His son lifts his perfectly shaped eyebrows at his father. Darwin admitted to me that until we met, he did his father’s bidding out of fear. After he became part of their trio and his-Teddy killed Da, he refused to have anything to do with his father or his court for years. But once he married his-Teddy, they reconciled. From what I’ve seen in the past few days, they’re not friends, but they’re at least allies.

  “There are no verified accounts of successfully getting a message to the past,” Callan says.

  Darwin exhales in disappointment. But I hear what Callan hasn’t said.

  “No verified accounts,” I say. “There are unverified accounts.”

  Callan nods. “A handful. They all believed they got a message through to the past, though they couldn’t prove it.”

  “How?”

  “Dreams. They all believed they created a dream bridge with someone in the past.”

  “I’d still need my magic to create the dream bridge,” I say, feeling defeat nip at me again. I’m so grateful for the research Callan’s been doing, that he volunteered to do without me saying a word. While I’ve been frantically researching how to restore my magic, Callan’s been looking for a way to get a message back to my boys.

  My boys, who must think I’m dead.

  “You would,” Callan confirms. “But Gabe and Darwin both have their magic and are there in your Time. They could create the dream bridge with their younger selves.”

  I turn to look at Darwin and Gabe with eyes that I try to keep from being desperate.

  Without hesitation, they both nod.

  Chapter 2

  Broken Bridges

  We’ve fallen into a pattern, my husbands and me.