The Black Witch

by Laurie Forest

  I flinch at the sound of Yvan’s voice and the feel of his hand on my shoulder.

  He’s so warm. I can feel the heat straight through the layers of my cloak, my tunic and my camisole. His warmth steadies me.

  It’s a cloud. Nothing but a cloud. I force down my panicked breathing.

  “Are you all right?” he asks, the angular lines of his face thrown into sharp relief by the moonlight.

  “The cloud,” I force out, peering into the night sky. “It moved.” I swallow, fighting back the memories. “I...I thought it was a dragon.”

  Yvan nods and looks up at the sky, his expression darkening. He lets his hand fall from my arm, leaving a void for the cold to rush back in. He looks tired. And worn.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask, the wind stinging at my face. “We’re supposed to separate.”

  “I wanted to thank you,” he says.

  I shake my head tightly in protest. “You don’t need to thank me.”

  “No, I do.”

  “For what?” I ask, incredulous. “For almost getting us all killed?”

  Yvan shakes his head in surprise and disbelief. “Naga’s alive because of you. I needed help. I couldn’t do it alone. Before you came here...before I met you...” He seems to be having trouble finding the right words. “Naga...she was...”

  “Your friend. I know.” I finish for him softly, feeling suddenly defeated, and as tired as he looks. I fix my eyes on his. “I know you can talk to her, Yvan.”

  He grows quiet, his expression turning carefully neutral.

  I study him in the moonlight, the vivid hue of his eyes muted to silvery gray. I remember how his eyes glowed a fearsome green. His inhuman strength. His strange language. His terrible hiss.

  “What are you, Yvan?”

  The line of his jaw hardens.

  Perhaps it’s the exhaustion, or the lingering fear that makes his stubborn silence feel so piercingly unkind.

  “I don’t understand,” I press. “After everything that’s happened...why can’t you tell me what you really are?”

  His face tenses with frustration, but he doesn’t say anything, and I’m inexplicably hurt by his silence. Tears sting at my eyes.

  “But the dragon knows what you are,” I force out. “And so does Wynter, doesn’t she?”

  “Elloren...”

  I bite my lip, horrified that I’m so close to bursting into tears. I struggle, to no avail, and pathetically start to cry right there in front of him.

  He just stands there, staring at me with those intense eyes of his, and I’m suddenly terribly aware of how my skin must shimmer in the darkness—highlighting how irreconcilably different we are.

  A cloud shifts, and the panic rears its head again. I struggle to fight it back, trembling. “I could have died...”

  “You didn’t.”

  “But I could have. We all could have.”

  Again, he retreats into silence.

  “They might catch us,” I insist, my voice growing shrill. He doesn’t respond, and his continued silence sends a flare of hysteria through me. “They might find us...and arrest us...and kill us...”

  His face grows hard, his eyes flinty. When he speaks, his tone is as hard as his eyes. “Yes, Elloren. They might.”

  I’m oddly steadied by his terribly blunt reply. He’s faced this fear and moved past it. It’s possible to move past it.

  And then his hand is on my arm again, his gaze searing, but his touch gentle and warm.

  “Go on,” I relent as I wipe roughly at my tears with the back of my hand. I gesture toward the twinkling lights of the University city with my chin. “Go get some sleep. You look exhausted. Your dragon will be fine. Ariel may be a bit...unstable...but she knows what she’s doing when it comes to caring for any winged animal.”

  He nods tightly, his face incredibly tense as if he’s desperate to say something, but just can’t. Unexpectedly, he steps toward me, eyes burning. “Elloren,” he breathes as he brings his hand up to cup the side of my face, his long fingers sliding back through my hair.

  I gasp. His hand is so hot on the cold skin of my cheek, his fingers threading back through my hair. His touch...it feels so good.

  He leans in, his face close to mine as if he’s about to kiss me, and for a moment it seems like everything is about to right itself.

  I tilt my head up, my heartbeat erratic, suddenly wanting nothing more than to feel his lips on mine.

  He steps back sharply and pulls his hand away from my face as if he’s been burned.

  I’m so shocked, I don’t know what to do.

  He looks furious with himself.

  “Good night, Elloren,” he finally says, his voice strained.

  And then he turns and strides quickly away, leaving me to the ice-cold night, too hurt and dazed to react. I watch his darkened form recede, then disappear, swallowed up by the University.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Revolutionary

  The wanted postings appear the next morning.

  They’re affixed to the message boards of every tavern, lodging house and hall.

  I skid to a halt at my first sighting of the crisp sheets of parchment. A newly vicious cold has swept in with the morning wind, and it burns at my exposed skin and chills my lungs. It sets me shivering and hugging my winter cloak tight with woolen-gloved hands as I peer at the notice before me.

  It’s nailed to a board outside the apothecary lab. Across the street, three Elfhollen scholars slow then stop in front of another posting tacked onto a lamppost. Their circle tightens as they murmur gravely to each other, their faces growing troubled as they read.

  By joint order of the Verpacian and Gardnerian military forces, a search for those connected with the destruction of the Gardnerian’s Fourth Division military base is being aggressively conducted and a reward has been posted.

  Rebels... Revolutionaries... Resistance. As I skim the posting, these words stand out in sharp relief. Each of them sends a fresh stab of fear through me. I’m seized by a sudden, startling understanding that my brothers and I, our strange circle of friends...

  My stomach gives a hard lurch.

  We’ve become all of these things.

  I read on, light-headed, struggling to see the letters through a fog of disorientation.

  Information regarding those connected with the destruction of the Gardnerian Fourth Division base is to be immediately brought to the attention of the base’s newly appointed military leader: Commander Lukas Grey.

  Just above the poster hangs a fresh advertisement for the upcoming Gardnerian Yule dance. Next week’s end.

  He’ll be back, I realize, heart thudding. To bring me to the dance, and to find those responsible for the mayhem.

  My knot of fear pulls tighter.

  How on Erthia will we possibly evade Lukas Grey?

  * * *

  We’re avoiding each other, all of us. The stakes raised impossibly high.

  “Bring Tierney to Professor Kristian,” Yvan tells me in passing, late that night in the kitchens, his voice terse, his eyes averted, as if the very sight of me burns his eyes. He stalks off toward the other Kelts, and my heart aches.

  The way he’s avoiding me—it goes beyond what we all have to do for self-preservation. No, this is more than that. Something between Yvan and me has fractured, and I don’t know how to fix what we’ve broken.

  * * *

  I drag myself back to the North Tower that night, a dulled fear humming inside me. There’s a package for me there, Wynter handing it to me with no small amoun
t of alarm.

  “There was a soldier here,” she tells me in a small voice. “He almost saw her.” Her silver eyes dart toward Marina, who’s watching us intently, fear etched on her face.

  I take the package into my hands and turn it over, concern spiking.

  Another gift from Lukas. But small this time. I open the card first.

  Elloren,

  It seems our finest have misplaced a dragon. I’ll look for you when I arrive.

  Lukas

  I open the small package as Wynter watches with wary curiosity.

  It’s a necklace, and I pull up the silver chain, letting the pendant dance in the air between us, glinting in the soft lantern light of the upstairs hallway.

  A tree. Intricately carved in white wood.

  I grasp the pendant in my hand and breathe in a deep, startled breath as a huge, branching Snow Oak bursts into view, caressing my mind, sending out branches through my limbs, clear down to my hands and feet.

  It roots me right to the floor, this wood, steadying me, a pulsating echo of pleasure coursing through me.

  I release the wood, breathing hard.

  “Careful, Elloren Gardner,” Wynter cautions, eyeing the pendant in the same way I’ve seen her look at Ariel’s nilantyr.

  “I know what I’m doing,” I tell her uneasily.

  It’s the right thing to do, I reason with myself. To stay on Lukas’s good side and pretend that everything is fine and normal. I’ll wear it every day so that he finds it on me when he arrives.

  I can picture him now, spotting the chain, sliding his pianist fingers along my neck to guide the necklace into the open, closing his palm around the tree pendant as he smiles at me.

  A prickling flush heats my cheeks at the thought of him, and I’m instantly ashamed of my imaginings.

  I slip the pendant’s chain around my head, drop the tree inside my tunic and attempt to push thoughts of Lukas out of my mind.

  But I can feel the wood of the small tree pulsating against my skin, like a warm, unsettling heart.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Two Hundred and Fifty-Six

  An icy wind rattles the diamond-paned windows as I sit with Tierney in Professor Kristian’s cluttered office.

  It’s late evening, and a throbbing ache pulls at my temple like taut fishing line, the scar along my thigh tingling.

  * * *

  All day I’ve held my breath, waiting for an arrest that never came as my friends and I stolidly went about our usual lectures, work and tasks, all of us trying to blend in unobtrusively—nothing but harmless, hardworking scholars, the lot of us.

  But I saw the Verpacian and Gardnerian soldiers questioning scholars and professors, the military presence growing throughout the day. It sent a cut-glass fear straight through me.

  This is bigger than just us now. And we need help.

  Tierney and her family need to get out of here.

  Professor Kristian sits behind his desk, eyeing Tierney and me with somber concern. Tierney looks like a rabbit tensed for flight, her knuckles white as she sits forward, gripping at her chair, frozen in place.

  “What’s the matter, Elloren?” Professor Kristian asks me, his eyes flitting to Tierney and back to me again.

  Heart racing, nerves primed, I jump off the cliff. “Yvan Guriel. He told us...that you might be able to help someone who might be—” I take a deep breath “—glamoured Fae.”

  Professor Kristian’s brow rises, and he’s silent for a long moment, frozen in place like Tierney.

  “You know Yvan Guriel?” he finally asks.

  I blink at him, surprised by the question.

  A bit, I think, with wry hurt. He almost kissed me. I nod cagily.

  Professor Kristian spits out a sound of amazement and narrows his eyes. “Surprising. Yvan hates Gardnerians. Quite a lot.”

  It stings bitterly to hear it. I push the hurt aside.

  “We have a common goal,” I tell him, straightening.

  “Transporting glamoured Fae east, I would imagine,” he says matter-of-factly. “Is that what you’re getting at?”

  Tierney and I glance at each other, and the jumped-up fear in her eyes jolts me into remembering what the stakes are for her and for her family.

  “Yes,” I tell him definitively. “That’s exactly what I’m getting at.”

  He takes a deep breath, nodding, lets it out and clasps his hands together, his forefingers steepled in thought. His lip lifts with amusement as he sets his eyes on me. “Flirting with the Resistance, are we?”

  I let out a deep breath. “I’m afraid I’ve jumped clear into bed with them.”

  A bark of surprised laughter bursts from his lips, and I can’t help but cough out a small laugh, as well. I massage my aching head and look back up at him, resigned to the wild path I’ve veered onto.

  Laughter still swimming in his eyes, Professor Krisitan sits back in his chair and stares at me with amused incredulity. “That’s...not a very Gardnerian thing to say,” he says, still chuckling.

  I let out a resigned sigh. “I’m feeling less and less Gardnerian every day.”

  He nods with understanding, and then his expression goes odd, like he sees something in my face, something he finds troubling. He swallows audibly and then...his eyes sheen over with tears.

  “What’s the matter?” I ask him, immediately concerned.

  “Nothing,” he says with a shake of his head, his voice breaking. He clears his throat and leans forward to set out tea mugs for both Tierney and me from the chipped tea set ever-present on his desk. His eyes flick toward me, and there’s a raw pain there. “You...you reminded me of someone, just then,” he says, his tone still ragged. “Someone I used to know.”

  “Who?” I ask, confused. “My grandmother?”

  “No, someone else,” he says cryptically, now closed off. “It’s nothing.”

  He shakes his head again and pours tea for us, the steam rising in the air.

  It’s comforting, the familiar burble of the tea as it’s poured, the scent of minty steam on the cool air, a chill seeping in from a strong draft around the windows.

  Professor Kristian eyes Tierney as he pushes a cup toward her. “You would be the glamoured Fae, I presume?”

  Frightened, Tierney looks sharply toward me, eyes wide, and I nod encouragingly to her.

  “I can help you,” he tells her, his voice low and kind. “You’ve come to the right place. You have nothing to fear.”

  Tierney stares at him blankly for a long moment and then bursts into tears, her thin shoulders heaving, her body bunching up into a protective ball.

  “Oh, my dear. It’s all right.” Professor Kristian gets up and comes around to lean against the front of his desk. He hands his handkerchief out to Tierney and places his hand gently on her arm.

  Tierney takes the handkerchief with a shaking hand.

  “What are you, dear?” he asks her. “What type of Fae?”

  “Asrai,” she chokes out.

  “That’s a lovely thing to be,” he says reassuringly. “Maybe not here, but it will be when you and your family get to Noi lands, hmm?”

  Tierney chances a look up at him and starts crying harder, nodding her head in pained assent. She looks small and scared and so young.

  “Have some tea,” he tells her with a pat to her arm.

  “Thank you,” she manages. She roughly wipes at her eyes, gets hold of her staggered breathing and takes the mug he’s patiently holding out to her, sipping at it as Professor Kristian sits back against the desk.

  His expression turns oddly amused as he turns his attention to me. “Well, you have been busy, haven’t you?”

  “I don’t like to be idle,” I reply tartly.

  “Hmm,�
�� he says, eyeing me with friendly suspicion. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about a missing dragon, would you, Elloren?”

  My breath catches tight in my throat.

  Professor Kristian looks to Tierney. “Or a freak snowstorm that fell only on the Gardnerian Fourth Division military base?”

  Tierney’s eyes fly open wide, and she almost chokes on her tea.

  Professor Kristian nonchalantly removes his glasses, fishes another handkerchief out of his pocket and begins to clean them. “You’ve both probably heard by now that over a hundred military dragons flew straight into Valgard yesterday evening and headed straight for their Dragon Master—Mage Damion Bane.”

  I swallow hard. “Yes. I heard...something about that. It’s...surprising.”

  “Is it?” he asks, his brow cocked. He goes back to cleaning his glasses. “Surprised Mage Bane as well, apparently. It took him and seven additional Level Five Mages to kill most of the dragons and subdue the others. Mage Bane is likely to be under a physician’s care for a few months to come. He sustained a nasty claw slash down the side of his face and neck, I’ve heard.”

  I struggle to keep my face impassive.

  “The Gardnerians rarely talk about...embarrassments such as these.” He chuckles as he slides his spectacles back on. “But more than a hundred dragons—that’s not so easy to sweep under the carpet now, is it? And it happened just in time for the glorious celebration of Damion Bane’s rise to Commander of the Fourth Division base.” Turning slightly, he points his thumb toward the window. “Coincidentally, that’s not too far from here.”

  He knows. He knows. My heartbeat picks up speed. And if Professor Kristian knows, who else might?

  There’s a perfunctory knock at the door.

  “Come in,” Professor Kristian says nonchalantly.

  Vice Chancellor Quillen sweeps into the room.

  A new surge of fear shoots through me, and I shrink back against my chair.

  Ignoring Tierney and me, Vice Chancellor Quillen removes her winter wrappings, hangs them on the worn, wooden stand already crowded with our cloaks, then takes a seat near Professor Kristian. She smooths out the black silk of her skirts, a silver Erthia orb bright around her neck.