Antebellum Awakening (3 page)

Startled by my sudden cry, the first witch jerked up, releasing the arrow. It went wild, landing with a dull thud in a sapling near the edge of the forest and splitting it in two. I plowed into him, knocking him onto his side. The collision made me lose my balance, and I rolled a few paces down the hill.

“What are ya thinking!” the witch bellowed, his face turning red. He pushed off from the grass and barreled toward me. “I had a perfect shot! Mangy girl—”

“Alvyn,” the second witch yelled, trying to extricate himself from the hedge. “Don’t do anything stupid! If we’re caught—”

“Don’t say my name, ya fool,” Alvyn yelled over his shoulder, nearly apoplectic. “We’ve got to get rid of her now. She’s a witness!”

“You can’t kill a forest dragon!” I retorted, leaping clear when he reached for me. The dragon let out a bellow behind me, sending a plume of fire into the air. A wave of heat rolled past my shoulders and stirred my hair.

“Really?” Alvyn sneered. The putrid smell of fermented ipsum rolled off his breath. “Who do you think you are?”

“I’m Derek’s daughter,” I hissed. Perhaps all this building power gave me a reckless confidence, or maybe I was terrified, but admitting who my father was wasn’t going to help. “If you lay one finger on me, he’ll kill you with his bare hands.”

“Derek’s daughter? Good!” Alvyn sneered, an odd light in his eyes. “I hate Derek as much as I hate dragons. The rest of the Central Network will thank me for getting rid of ya.”

For such a burly man, he charged toward me with surprising speed. But even he couldn’t match the force of the power boiling in my angry heart. I stopped fighting the magic and let it slip away from me in a current.

Time slowed. Every breath I took echoed in my ears. Alvyn’s thick face closed in, an arm’s length away, when Camille’s distant shriek echoed behind me. The world dimmed into darkness.

•••

Everything happened in one long blink after another. Alvyn reached for my neck.
Darkness.
A glowing white ball of heat formed in the air, forcing him a step backward. His eyes widened; his face turned away. He stumbled back a step, and then the light burst.
Darkness.
The world spun by in shades of green and blue.

Darkness.

“Bianca!” Camille’s shrill, panicked voice came from far away, as if traveling through water to reach me. “Wake up!”

Sharp pain burst into my head. My stomach roiled. I felt a pair of hands tug on my arm.

“We’re both going to die if you don’t wake up!” Camille screeched right next to my ear. “Wake up! I can’t drag you up this hill! I’m not strong enough!”

The fear in her voice roused me. Disoriented and dizzy, I pushed up into a sitting position to find the forest dragon standing ten paces away. Hot breath swelled from his chest and puffed out of his wide nostrils, caressing us both in a ripple of heat. His thick tail swung out like a rope loose in the wind. The narrow, sharp angles of his face moved closer, peering at me. When a low growl rumbled from somewhere inside his deep chest, I scrambled backwards, putting myself between the dragon and Camille again.

“No harm here,” I said to him in a low, soothing voice. He grunted, glancing between Camille and me. I couldn’t have been unconscious for very long. “What happened, Camille?”

“I ran back to make sure you were okay,” she said in a tremulous voice. “I screamed for the butlers, then when I turned around you were gone and I was scared that something happened to you. I-I didn’t know what to do so I ran back!”

“It’s all right,” I said in a calm voice, my eyes still locked on the dragon. “Where are the poachers?”

“Those two witches? They’re lying on the grass. I think they’re knocked out. They might be dead!”

“I’m going to stand up, and I want you to follow but stay behind me. Understand?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Here we go.”

We stood together. The dragon’s nostrils widened when he sniffed the air, but he didn’t move toward us.

Great job saving his life and nearly losing your own in the process, Bianca,
I thought.
Wonderful idea. Dragons really don’t care about morals, do they?

You saved at least one innocent creature,
my heart replied.
Even though you didn’t save—
I cut the thought off and turned my whole attention back to our sticky situation.

The dragon’s ears quivered. His great head swung to gaze back over his shoulder. I took advantage of the break from his stare to check on the poachers. They lay prostrate on the ground, their arms thrown wide and eyes closed. A few streaks of black smudged their faces.

Blessed be,
I thought with a flutter of fear.
I really might have killed them.

“Bianca?” Camille asked again, her face averted to the ground to avoid the large eyes peering down at us again. “What about the dragon?”

“He won’t hurt us,” I said, my eyes flicking up to meet his intense gaze. “He won’t. I can feel it.”

“Are you mad?” she breathed. “It’s a dragon!”

“Maybe,” I whispered, and thought that maybe the grief had finally taken my last ounce of sanity.

Guttural shouts broke the tense silence. Five Guardians appeared in the air surrounding Camille and me, pressing their backs to us. Two witches in plain clothes appeared near the edge of Letum Wood carrying the corpses of forest creatures. The dragon, smelling the decaying bodies, instantly ducked his head and swiveled toward the offering.

“That’s it,” one of the witches taunted, shaking the dead animals and side stepping into the woods. Zane. A Protector that often worked with my father. “Come get this nasty little skunk. Whatta treat, huh, dragon? Just for you!”

The forest dragon slipped into the trees after the carcasses, disappearing with nothing more than a rustle of leaves.

“Are you all right, Miss Bianca?”

Brecken, a Captain of the Guardians, called to me from near the poachers. His curly dark brown hair bounced as he stepped toward us with a determined stride, his bright blue eyes looking us over in concern. His wide set of shoulders stood out from beneath the half-armor of leather and metal that Guardians wore on patrol. The Guardians were a massive, all-male force that protected the castle and the Network, a veritable army of witches trained to fight and defend.

“Yes. I’m not hurt.”

“Ya don’t belong here!” a weak voice cried. “Coven Leader Clive is right! They should exile ya and yer father and send ya to the Northern Network where liars belong.”

I looked up to find Alvyn shaking a fist at me from where he lay in the grass, his face pressed into the ground by the heel of a Guardian. Another stood over him, a drawn bow and arrow pointed at his head.

“Silence!” the Guardian barked, then kicked Alvyn in the ribs. “Traitors don’t get to speak to anyone but Derek.”

I turned to Brecken.

“Traitors?” I asked, grateful to turn the conversation away from Papa and I. Ever since the Central Network found out Papa’s secret—that he’d flouted the unbroken tradition that the Head of Protectors give up family life—hatred for us had run deep in some regions. Witches could be unusually attached to the traditions of old. Some believed that upholding the rules laid down by our forefathers established safety in our land. I agreed with them to some extent, but not on every account.

Despite Papa’s unpopularity, the Guardians remained steadfast in their loyalty to him. “I thought they were just poachers?”

Brecken’s lips formed a grim line.

“Trying to kill a forest dragon when we teeter on the brink of war?” he asked. “The act of a traitor. They probably work for the Western Network.”

And Miss Mabel.

The thought tightened my fists so hard my nails bit into the skin.

“Let’s get you back,” Brecken said, with a glance at both of us. He held out an arm to motion us to the castle, and I saw the tattoo of a shield on his inner wrist. Instead of a circlus like mine, Brecken bore the Mark of the Captain. “Your father will be hearing of this by now, no doubt, and will want to see you himself. I’ll walk you back.”

He motioned for us to follow with a jerk of his head. Camille, who had remained mostly silent, bounded forward to walk at his side, her eyes bright.

“I’m Camille,” she said, eyeing him with an appreciative little grin. “I don’t believe we’ve met before.”

Her rambling voice died into the background as I trailed behind the two of them. Thanks to Brecken’s grim reminder of Miss Mabel’s presence, my mind fixated on the one place I didn’t want it to go.

It was a place far from the spiral staircases and wide stone halls of Chatham Castle. The little old manor in the shadows of Letum Wood, Miss Mabel’s School for Girls. The whole drama of my last day at the school unfolded in the space of two breaths. Me in the attic with my evil teacher Miss Mabel, using defensive magic against her in a battle for my life. Then Mama stepping in to protect me, and Miss Mabel killing her in one decisive move.

No.
I stopped the flashback before it re-ignited the restless powers within me. The magic had had enough exercise for one day.

An Internal Weapon

I
passed through the opulence of the Royal Hall later that evening with a feeling of trepidation. The impending meeting with the High Priestess had loomed in my mind for hours. Would she be angry with me for defending the forest dragon? Had I done something wrong? Papa would be waiting as well, and it would be a relief to have him at my side. He was the only thing left that made me feel safe.

Two Guardians lingered near the staircase, protecting the deserted hallway I started down. I didn’t mind the solitude because it gave me an opportunity to think.

Paintings of past High Priests and Priestesses covered the wall in gilded frames. All wore the same shade of crimson in the portraits, the Central Network’s color. Their faces held similar echoes of the stoic determination that I saw in our current High Priestess. Perhaps they all knew something that the rest of us, who didn’t lead, never would. Something besides the strange desire to tie themselves to a desk and sit through meetings for their whole lives. I shuddered at the thought.

I checked to make sure the nearby Guardians couldn’t see me, then crept up to the High Priestess’s door and pressed my ear to it. It was the perfect eavesdropping opportunity, and since I was the topic of conversation, I suppressed the pang of guilt rather quickly. I whispered a spell under my breath to magnify the sound and used my exceptional hearing to tune into the room.

If an important, secretive meeting had been going on, or if the castle had been unusually full of witches and visitors, the High Priestess would have cast a protective incantation to block nosy witches like me. Since I had little to do with Network security or the fear of upcoming war, I hoped she wouldn’t have taken such precautions.

The gravelly voice of the High Priestess worked through the elaborate door first.

“—the natural result of Marie’s death.”

I jerked away. The sound of Mama’s name shocked me, as if they’d touched a poker to my heart. It had been several weeks since I’d heard it spoken out loud. My heart thudded in my chest as I attempted to recover my calm. I let out a long, slow breath and tried again, placing the shell of my ear back on the cool wood.

That’s what you get when you listen to conversations you aren’t invited to,
I thought in a moment of self-chiding.

“She misses Marie . . . how do I help when she won’t even speak of her? I’m not sure . . .”

Papa’s muffled voice moved in and out. His back must have been to the door. I could picture him pacing in front of the desk, trying to figure out why his daughter wanted to save a dangerous dragon. I didn’t blame him. Even I wondered.

“I’m most concerned about her safety,” the High Priestess said in a grim tone. “Things are getting ugly here.”

“We could leave . . . Go north—”

“Absolutely not. What would leaving do?”

Her words trailed off and I clenched my fist in frustration, only able to make out a low murmur with a few words in between. The High Priestess would never let Papa leave. Her vow to save me from the curse was proof she’d do just about anything to keep him here.

“Yes,” Papa said, pulling me back into their conversation. “Some outlet . . . I haven’t pressed her into getting a job because I wanted her to have space. . . Doesn’t run anymore.”

My heart twisted again. So Papa had noticed.

Just two months ago on the day Mama died, Miss Mabel blackmailed me into signing a magical binding, a contract in which I agreed to complete one unknown task. After I signed the binding, she killed my mother. She hadn’t assigned me a task yet; I’d been waiting for two months without word. I figured she would assign me to kill the High Priestess. What other reason could she have had? But because the binding’s protective magic prevented me from speaking about it to anyone, no one knew of my tie to Miss Mabel. At one point, the High Priestess had had her suspicions that Miss Mabel was going to put me under a binding, but I didn’t know if she still suspected it was done. If she did, she didn’t let on. Unfortunately, if I didn’t complete the task, I’d die.