Antebellum Awakening (42 page)

“Camille,” Papa said. “There’s a Captain waiting for you at the bottom of the turret. He’s concerned and wants to make sure you made it through the night. He said he won’t move until he’s heard from you.”

Camille’s eyes widened. “Really?”

“If I know Brecken,” Papa said with a smile, “he’ll wait all day.”

She disappeared down the stairs in a flash of bouncy blonde hair and watery eyes. Papa held me close.

“You okay, B?” he asked.

“Yes, Papa,” I said with a deep sigh, holding him close. The ties that had once bound me to death no longer existed. For the first time in my life, I could embrace him without question, without fear. “I’m okay.”

A Network At War

T
he crowd that gathered to pay their final respects to the High Priestess had one thing in common: determination.

The clenched angles of their jaws, their set stares, their tight lips all stood out to me. We’d been attacked on the pulse of who we were as a people. Even the gypsies shuffled by, a strange light in their eyes. They didn’t agree much with any authority, but it was obvious that they felt the fire as well. Mildred had always been a friend to their people.

I stayed tucked back in the shadows, my back pressed against the castle wall, watching it all unfold. Leda, Camille, and Michelle had all gone home to see their families, leaving me at Chatham Castle alone. I welcomed the chance to get all the events straight in my head and spent most of the past couple of days wandering through Letum Wood.

Most of the witches walked past the High Priestess’s stately, regal form with emotionless faces. Many of them, especially the foresters and gypsies, dropped springs of Letum Ivy. The growing pile threatened to overtake her.

Across the high bailey near the Ranks flickered a little shadow that sent my heart racing. Instantly on alert, I straightened to see better. A familiar pair of foggy eyes met mine, and then another. Isadora’s hunched frame stepped out of the shadows, followed by Sanna. Both of them looked right at me, and I wondered if Sanna could see after all. We stared at each other, and I could see the mourning in their eyes. Isadora set a white lily on the ground, met my eyes again, and nodded once before disappearing.

I kept my eyes on the lily for a long time before turning back to the High Priestess. I wanted to see her sit up, snap at someone to stop staring at her, and take her place on the castle balcony with her usual sallow haughtiness. I’d give anything to hear her reprimand my curtsy. I’d even learn the correct way to curtsy if she’d just come alive again.

I sat there, my knees pulled into my chest, my scabbed, bandaged feet tucked underneath me, waiting for her to move.

But she never did.

Once everyone left, after thousands of witches traipsed through the high bailey, Papa, Tiberius, and I stood on the Wall near the Gatehouse. A contingent of Guardians, led by Marten, marched the High Priestess out to a protected graveyard that was nestled deep in Letum Wood. The Captains had already amassed their Guardians in the lower bailey to give them verbal preparations for the flood of new Guardian hopefuls coming the next morning, motivated by the attack on our homeland.

“What are you going to do now, Papa?” I asked, a hollow feeling in my heart.

“We are going to train and fight,” he said. “The West will need time to gather themselves back together. Dane will have to figure out what to do now that Mabel, and the West Guards, have failed.”

The Western Network had attempted an advance on the Borderlands, hoping to seize it for their control, at the same time Miss Mabel swooped in with her bat-like hordes. The Guardians held them back with a supreme combination of magic, skill, and brute strength.

“Will the war end with Miss Mabel’s capture?”

He scoffed, a short, quick breath packed with meaning.

“No,” he said. “This war never did begin nor end with Mabel.”

“So now we fight Angelina,” I said with a frustrated sigh. “A woman more powerful than Miss Mabel but twice as invisible.”

“Yes,” Papa agreed, his jaw tight. “If she is as powerful as you think, that is.”

He doubted Angelina’s role in all this, I could tell. Part of me couldn’t blame him. Angelina was virtually unknown, more ghost than witch. How could they fear a witch they’d hardly heard of before?

Perhaps that was the most frightening part of all.

“We’ve got something she wants,” Tiberius pointed out. He meant Miss Mabel, and the very idea sent a chill through me, reminding me of something the High Priestess said last year after Mama died.

This is a lot bigger than just you or me, Bianca. It has been for awhile. I only kept the obvious wolves at bay when I overthrew Evelyn. Now is the time to flush them all out. It will be a painful, dangerous process.

“Marten will remain our Ambassador,” Papa said. “He’s hoping to go to Diego in the Eastern Network to discuss what all this means. They must take some kind of action before it’s too late.”

“The Mansfeld Pact is still in place,” Tiberius said with a dark mutter. “Diego isn’t going to break the contract to help you. Not to mention that Mikhail is running low on metals for his army and the West has them in abundance.”

“They’ll violate the Mansfeld Pact and form an alliance, won’t they?” I asked, and Tiberius nodded with a quick jerk of his head.

“What about the Eastern Network? Will they fight?”

Tiberius snorted.

“They aren’t going to do anything. Diego is in denial. He holds to the Mansfeld Pact more tightly than any Network ever has because it originated there. There are no rules in war,” Tiberius muttered. “Diego loves rules. Bloody fool.”

Tiberius had been like a bank of coals since the night of the ball, burning and hot. Any attack on the Network enraged him, but such a successful campaign was a personal insult. Papa’s eyes narrowed, but I knew he wasn’t seeing the lower bailey, the formations, or the shouts.

“And the North?” I asked. “Who is going to warn them?”

“No one,” Papa said. “The North doesn’t care about what’s going on down here. They’ll take care of themselves.”

“But—”

“We’re going to fight this war the best way we can, B,” he said, intercepting my thought. “We’ll exhaust every avenue.”

“Including Angelina and the missing
Book of Contracts
?”

Papa pulled in a deep breath. Zane had personally scoured every inch of the ballroom and was unable to find the
Book of Contracts
. We had no idea where it went after the chaos on that devastating night.

“Yes, B. Every option. Don’t worry, okay?”

But I did worry. I worried about him, about me. About the Central Network and my friends. Would Michelle’s brothers go to war? Would Leda’s father still be able to support his family? What about Tiberius and Merrick?

“Yes, Papa,” I said. “I’ll try.”

Papa and Tiberius walked me back to the Royal Hall, where we parted ways. They went to join the broken Council, already tasked with replacing their dead, and I veered off to our new apartment.

Busy maids and attendants bustled inside, trying to find something to do to keep busy. I slipped past, ignored, as I wanted to be. Except for several swords, a few pairs of armor, and four heavy chests that no one but Papa could open, we had very little to bring with us to the new lavish rooms. I stepped out onto the large balcony jutting off from the High Priest’s chambers and drew in a deep breath.

The dying summer heat settled in a sticky layer on the rolling emerald hills of the Central Network. They unfurled in front of me like the white banners rippling from every turret, signaling Chatham Castle’s mourning for our lost High Priestess. From the Witchery flapped our own white flag. The words
The Wits
were invisible from so high in the air.

A lonely, empty ache gnawed at my bruised and brittle heart, keeping me company. From such a beautiful summer evening, I drew very little joy. The solitude left my thoughts free to roam to the High Priestess, replaying the moment of her death again and again and again.

There’s always more room for pain, isn’t there?
I thought.
Joy is so fleeting.

“Mildred hated the summer.”

I looked up to find Marten come up to my side, his hands resting on the stone railing separating us from a fall several stories high. Guardians bustled in the lower bailey below. Witches moved back and forth on the wall, some of them laughing, some of them talking. It all seemed so normal. Didn’t they know what all of this change meant? The flapping white banners, the Council assembled in the West Wing, discussing what should be done with the Southern Network and the Borderlands. Would the East help? Would I be able to convince Papa that we should fear Angelina the most, that we should find the
Book of Spells
first?

Why didn’t they see the battles we faced?

“I don’t blame her,” I said, feeling a trickle of sweat fall down my spine. “The heat is relentless.”

His lips twitched in a little smile. “She didn’t like the winter either. Too cold, she’d say. She didn’t like waking up with a chilly nose.”

The High Priestess’s voice, full of snap and vinegar, played through my mind, bringing a small smile to my face. I couldn’t imagine feeling any humor over her passing, and then realized that I was smiling to keep from crying.

“She wasn’t an easy woman to please.”

“No,” he agreed with a deep breath. “But she was the best leader we’ve had since Esmelda.”

The little stirring of pain in my heart agreed.
I’ll miss you, High Priestess,
I thought. The magic whispered. I left it alone, neither using it nor pushing it away. My powers and I now lived with a mutual agreement of tolerance.

Marten stood next to me for several minutes in a companionable silence, surveying the landscape. I wondered if he sought the inevitable dark wings rising from Letum Wood that I did. The forest dragons had been circling Chatham Castle every night and morning since the High Priestess’s death. We might have had Miss Mabel locked away, but the danger had only increased.

“I loved Mildred almost the moment that I saw her, you know,” Marten said in a musing tone. “Our life together was far from conventional, but it was worth it.”

I caught a gasp.

“You—”

His eyes twinkled just a little as he looked down at me.

“You’ve proven to be an exceptional secret keeper. I heard you in the gardens that morning. Mildred didn’t. At least I don’t think she did.”

A blush crept up my cheeks, along with a feeling of relief that I’d kept their secret.

“Why didn’t you say something?” I asked.

“I knew I wouldn’t need to.”

The lingering smile on his face disappeared as his chin quivered and his forehead wrinkled. “I don’t know what I shall do without her. Mildred and I could never officially vow our hearts to each other the way your parents did, but she had mine all the same.”

I observed him in silence, recognizing the same sorrow in his eyes that Papa tried to hide in his own. Marten shook himself out of his bleak, morose thoughts.

“I came to fulfill a promise,” he said. I looked up at him in question. He held a small piece of rolled parchment in his hand, sealed with a dollop of wax and a piece of tied twine. “The High Priestess has asked me to explain to you why she chose to have Miss Mabel kill her, and so I shall. The very night she made the vow with you she tasked me with the job of finding a way out of your Inheritance Curse. I searched for months, but found nothing in the way of magic to remove it. Eventually we grew desperate. I went to the West as an Ambassador and spoke with Miss Mabel.”

My breath caught. “You went to her? Why didn’t you just kill her right then?”

“As an Ambassador under the Mansfeld Pact, I am bound by a very strict magic. I could not bring harm to Miss Mabel while bringing the message from Mildred, as much as I wanted to. It’s an unalterable law.”

His eyes narrowed on the horizon with a deep breath.

“Mildred knew that Mabel would bargain for the chance to kill her, but likely not much else. I gave Mabel a couple of options, one of which was Mildred’s life in exchange for yours. Mabel said she’d let us know.”

My mind returned to the ballroom. I heard the High Priestess speaking again.
If you won’t settle our matter in private, then you will have three seconds left until I kill you on the spot.

“Miss Mabel didn’t respond to your offer, did she?”

Marten shook her head. “No. She disappeared. We were at her mercy, for Mildred refused to let you die or to kill Mabel.”

My eyes widened in shock.

“Why? Why would she refuse to kill her?”

Marten drew in a deep breath. “Mildred believed that we need Mabel in order to end this. Mabel wasn’t the beginning or the end of the evil grasping for control of Antebellum, but she may be our only chance to end it.”

“Angelina,” I whispered. “The High Priestess knew about Angelina.”