Rescind

by Shawn Knightley

  I screamed bloody murder as Rodrick held my arm by the wrist, doing his best to control my first attempt at master shifting. It was his genius idea to morph my hand into my brother’s form. Now I was wishing he chose someone whose physique was more like my own. Maybe Alina or even McKenzie. But no! He had to tell me to shift my hand to my brother’s likeness.

  “Make it stop!” I yelled. He gripped my wrist tighter and practically pinned it down to the table. He started releasing his magic and letting it touch my skin, helping me along when I got stuck. “Not like that,” I growled.

  “Then how?”

  I yanked my arm out of his grip and held my half shifted hand in my lap. My eyes were shut, trying to focus all my strength on the way I wanted my hand to look. Only this was my first time ever trying a trick of being a master shifter. It felt like I was being thrown right back into one of the cells in the Bloody Tower with the moonlight striking down at me like a force ripped right out of the depths of hell. I was nothing but a helpless initiate again, hoping to pass the trials and live to see another day and wanting the pain to stop all at the same time.

  Hot tears rolled down my cheek and hit my trench coat. I forced my fingers to unshift, one at a time.

  I couldn’t look at Rodrick. Not when I was like this. Vulnerable and in a tremendous amount of pain.

  “That’s it,” Rodrick instructed me, getting up from his chair and moving around his desk. He knelt before me but was careful not to touch my skin. “If you won’t accept my help them use your magic. Push it out of your palm and let it finish the job. You’ve done well enough today.”

  I did as he said and pushed my magic out of the creases on my palm. It spun around my hand, circling between my fingers and relieving the agony of my hand breaking and remolding one microscopic piece at a time. Raging gasps rattled my lungs as I tried taking a normal breath of air. I couldn’t help but whimper once it was done and my hand was back to normal. It didn’t matter if it was over and I could no longer feel the pain. The memories of shifting for the first few times and the terror I felt during those long nights were back and fresh in my mind, reminding me of all that I went through just to get so far as being able to take my first class at L.I.T.

  When it was over, Rodrick didn’t move. He remained in front of me while I sat on the chair opposite his desk. He was at equal height with my eyes when kneeling before me, reminding me of just how tall he was.

  “Why wouldn’t you let me help you?” he asked.

  I stared at him. “You know why.” One final tear dropped from my cheek, letting me know that the pain was officially over and I could relax again. I leaned into the chair and held my hand over my chest, cradling it as if it was still hurting. “You left it on me.”

  “Left what on you?”

  “Your scent!”

  He stood up from where he was kneeling and let his face slip into a hardened grimace.

  “And don’t even try denying it,” I scowled at him. “Both Alina and Lothar could smell it.”

  “He noticed did he?”

  My mouth just about dropped to the floor. “So it wasn’t an accident? You did it on purpose?”

  ‘And to think, I was damn near being able to breathe normally again a second ago.’

  He went over to his desk and sat back in his large study chair, placing both hands on the arms. His demeanor went from encouraging to authoritative in a matter of seconds.

  “First you disappear right when we get back,” I hissed. “You didn’t even have the nerve to say goodbye. Then you freely admit that you covered my whole body with your scent? Are you trying to give the entire school reason to think me a whore? Especially when it was you who kissed me?”

  “That’s not going to happen,” he said calmly.

  “Forgive me if I’m not reassured.”

  “I don’t do many things without a very intentional purpose, Miss Blackburn. I’m not burdened by a lack of purpose.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Yes, I intentionally marked your skin with my scent.”

  A lump formed at the back of my throat. I tried swallowing but it remained there, choking my words until I had to force them out. “You wanted Lothar to notice?” Now it was my turn to act superior. “Of course, you did. Your version of diverting my attention until we get the curse broken is to make sure Lothar is jealous.”

  “Not so much jealous as properly motivated,” he confessed. His chair scooted on the floor as he pushed it out and stood up. “That will be all for today,” he said coldly. Then he walked around me and toward his mirror in the far corner with the swirling blue light. He pulled the tapestry covering it aside. “I trust you can show yourself out,” he said without looking back at me.

  ‘So that’s it? We’re back to you being distant again?’

  I was left alone in his study with only two possible conclusions running through my mind. Either Rodrick was absolutely terrified of getting involved with me and thought the only solution was to force Lothar to make a move, or he led me on and didn’t feel anything real at all. It was all the curse. And I was left with the myriad of thoughts racing through my mind, making me more confused than ever.

  I got up from the chair, walked out of his office and down the hallway to leave. All the while I shook my hand a few times to discover that it didn’t hurt anymore. There wasn’t a single sign that I had shifted it into my brother’s form. Only the memory I had lodged in my brain of the agony I felt when I was doing it.

  The sole truth that remained was the one I came to long before Rodrick and I ended up entangled with one another in Margaux’s large four-poster bed. Getting involved with Rodrick or Lothar would be a mistake. My classes and training were the most important thing. And if I couldn’t focus on my lessons at all times, I would focus on breaking this curse. It was the only way to get through this thing with any sort of dignity.

  Rodrick claimed he wasn’t burdened by lack of purpose. Well, I could relate on one level. I wasn’t burdened by lack of value. I knew my worth. I wasn’t the best of women. I wasn’t the prettiest, smartest, fittest, or charming. But I had talents. Music, songwriting, perseverance, and a will to trudge through the worst of situations with my head held high. I was English after all.

  Or at least that was what I kept repeating to myself as I walked out of the courtyard and joined the Vontex standing just outside the fortress’s entrance. After two long days of waiting with itching anticipation, it was time to meet Adeline and explore the ritual site again. I couldn’t decide if the meat still digesting in my stomach was dancing about from nerves or excitement.

  When I turned the corner and saw the guards move their weapons away from the entrance so I could pass through, one detail stood out to me. Only Lothar and Jake were waiting for me. Alina was missing.

  I was about to ask where she was when Jake recoiled the second I was within smelling distance.

  “Good God!” He explained, placing his hand over his nose and looking at me as if I had just threatened to blow up the entire fortress.

  “What?” I asked.

  Jake exchanged a look with Lothar. “You weren’t kidding, were you mate?”

  I groaned and threw my hands into my large trench coat pockets. It didn’t matter that my blood ran warmer than humans and it kept me toastier in the winter. A chill ran through my back and tickled the smallest hairs on my arms. I didn’t need further explanation for Jake’s reaction toward me. He smelled Rodrick’s scent.

  “Can we just get on with things?” I snarled at him.

  “Don’t worry, love. This one tells me you insist nothing happened. Although, that smell suggests otherwise.”

  Lothar pretended to be uninterested in what Jake was saying as he opened his trench coat and reached for a dagger hanging off his belt to give to me.

  “Then I guess I don’t need to give an explanation given you two seem to enjoy gossip.”

  Lothar handed me the dagger with a little more force than he usually did, practi
cally dropping the handle into my hand. “The two of you shut up. We need to get moving.”

  “What about Alina?” I asked. “Shouldn’t we wait for her?”

  “She’s on the continent doing research. It will be just the three of us tonight. And Adeline.”

  ‘So Alina gets a pass from the Vontex and I got a lecture when I was going to Paris. Got it!’

  I followed behind the two of them in silence as we crossed the bridge and Lothar placed a small piece of paper with a droplet of vixra blood on his tongue.

  “Not into sharing?” Jake asked expectantly.

  “No. Not tonight. We’ll have Adeline with us. That’s all the extra help we should need. I intend to ask her for more but for now, we have limited supplies.”

  Lothar dragged his long finger through the air and opened the vixra tunnel. I had to squint my eyes from its near blinding light piercing through the darkness of the night. He didn’t take my hand this time. I followed him with Jake close behind and we walked through the tunnel to the other side. The drop to the exit didn’t take me by surprise this time but I braced myself nevertheless. Somehow I managed to lightly step out of the tunnel as Jake came through a couple of paces away. I didn’t even feel the slightest bit nauseated this time around.

  ‘Maybe I’m getting used to the vixra tunnels. Finally!’

  My eyes adjusted back to the darkness and I saw Adeline waiting near the tree line. The moon gleamed behind her just above the branches, shining down light over her white-blond hair and giving her a radiant glow. She stood there waiting patiently with her hands in the pockets of her perfectly tailored coat. The thick wool material told me the air was much brisker than my skin could feel. I could see her breath curling out of her nose as we got closer.

  “Miss Prescott, thank you for joining us,” Lothar said.

  “You’re most welcome,” she replied.

  Adeline offered him her hand and he leaned down to kiss it as though they both had walked right out of a 19th century period piece drama for television. I had to remind myself that Adeline might have been used to a different sort of greeting. One that she grew up with in a century before I was born. Or perhaps it was because of her place above us in the witchling hierarchy that made Lothar so formal with her. Jake did the same, giving her hand a light kiss then bowing his head. I saw Adeline’s mouth twist as she pulled her hand away the second Jake let go, eager to have the formality over and done with so she wouldn’t have to bear touching Jake any longer than necessary.

  I couldn’t help but chuckle in silence.

  The man was good looking. All lycan were. But apparently, Jake’s leering eyes proceeded him in far more than reputation.

  I stepped forward to greet Adeline, unsure of what to do after seeing the way Lothar and Jake treated her. I knew there was much more to the witchling hierarchy than I understood. And unbeknownst to me for most of my time knowing her, Adeline’s family was at the top of it. But to me, she was Aunt Adeline. My mother’s best friend and my confidant when I was a teenager. The woman I went to with most of my problems that I knew were too heavy for my mum to handle or too personal for me to share. She knew things about me that I never told anyone. Was I supposed to greet her with a curtsy or a bow?

  Adeline answered my question for me and met me halfway with her arms outstretched, giving me what was quite possibly the most longed for friendly embrace I had experienced in quite some time. There was kindness and concern. I embraced her back for a second or two then let go, knowing Lothar might get on my case if I lost track of why we were there. It was Vontex business. Nothing more.

  ‘Hopefully being a vixra doesn’t give Adeline a keen sense of smell too.’

  She didn’t appear to recoil like Jake did, so I assumed not.

  “You survived your exams, I see,” she said.

  “Just barely. I don’t know all my marks yet.”

  “You’ll be fine, I have no doubt. You’re a hard worker.”

  “There hasn’t been any sign of Margaux?” Lothar interrupted our moment.

  “No,” Adeline answered. “ I placed a protective circle around the area for fifty yards. No one will disturb us. Except for maybe a few forest animals.”

  She faced the ritual circle and walked toward the line where the trees ended, spreading out her arms and peering back at the three of us. “I’d move back a bit if I were you,” she said.

  We did as she asked and waited for her to work her magic over the ritual space. An owl flew through the trees above us, making me aware of everything else in my surroundings. The light breeze, the thin clouds wafting overhead, and most of all, the sound of Adeline’s magic as bright green light began to circle her hands and pour out of her body like an aura reaching out from inside of her.

  My experience with vixra magic was limited. I got the distinct feeling that only a small amount of people had the privilege of seeing it. I was one of them now.

  Adeline’s magic was more stunning than the chaos of my crowning magic. I only had a touch of it. Whereas Adeline was the real deal. A pure-blooded witchling. And as she twisted her magic through the air like ocean currents tumbling over the stone with a tidal wave of power, I understood what that meant.

  The beams of silver light that nearly killed us when I first brought the Vontex with me activated, shooting into the sky like large pillars beaming through the air. They hissed and oozed smoke as Adeline’s magic tore them to shreds. They evaporated into thin air as if they never existed. That didn’t stop the stones in the ground from trying to fight back. Her magic spun about in circles over the symbol of the Dolch Erbe carved into the stones, making them shift and move as her magic pushed into them, forcing the laser beam like silver pillars to stop dead in their tracks before they could shoot out again. Then when I thought things couldn’t get more intense, her magic let out a pulse of energy. It surrounded us in a circle and made the entire forest light up. The sound was nearly deafening. At least to the ears of lycan. Lothar, Jake, and I covered our ears as the magic protecting the coffins below pushed out more energy to fight against her. She threw her arms up into the air and spun her magic around in an enormous spherical shape, binding up all the beams of silver light and trapping them so they had nowhere to shoot out and no victims to find and destroy.

  The ground beneath us shook as the stones did exactly what they had done in my dream. They moved only to reveal a star-like shape with walls between the coffins below.

  Adeline forced the sphere of green light high above the trees and manipulated it until it was spinning so fast that I thought it might combust. But it didn’t. It caved in on itself and cast a glow of light around the entire ritual ground. The outline of the cathedral that once stood there appeared before our eyes. At the center of the stones was the altar. The very spot where the cauldron brewed the potion that allowed Dirk’s luxra witchling enough power to link our lives.

  “Get down!” Adeline cried.

  We knelt to the ground, unable to tear our eyes away.

  The force of her magic ripped into the ritual ground as it shook hard under our feet, just like the earth trembled in my dream. When I realized that I had stopped breathing, the shaking came to an abrupt halt. The beams of silver light were no more. Adeline’s magic disappeared in a haze of green smoke and eventually faded from sight. There was nothing but the burial crypt with the coffins down below and the hole at the center where I placed the silver box in my dream.

  Adeline lowered her arms and turned her attention toward me. “Your turn,” she said softly as if she hadn’t just performed the light show of the century. It was just another day of being a vixra witchling to her, I suppose.

  I got up from the ground and moved my hands away from my ears. “Are you sure it’s safe?”

  Her expression contorted as though she was insulted. It wasn’t my place to question whether or not she had performed her job to perfection.

  “You knew about the coffins but didn’t show my dad?” I asked, remembering how he cam
e and got the silver box from Devon’s corpse but didn’t seem to know anything else about the ritual site.

  Adeline shrugged innocently. “Your dad keeps secrets. I’m rather skilled at doing the same. When you told me I wanted us to investigate it on our own.”

  I couldn’t help but smile.

  ‘I freaking adore you.’

  “In my dream, the box opened everything up and revealed the coffins,” I said. “Your magic already did that.”

  She peered down at the coffins below. “I believe that might have been a part of the illusion. My magic disarmed the traps and the traps alone.”

  “You mean there’s more than what I saw in my dream?”

  “I suppose so. Give it a try.”

  I moved forward and walked by her, seeing nothing but the walls towering between the coffins below and giving me only a few inches to walk. I placed one foot before the other as if I were walking a tightrope. I refused to look down even though I knew what was going on just under my feet. Adeline placed her magic on either side of me, giving my steps more room should I lose my balance. When I reached the circle at the center, I eyed the rectangular box below me. I dropped to one knee and unfolded my fingers on my hand, allowing the silver engraved box to unshift from my body and appear out of nothing.

  “Someone’s learned a few new tricks,” Jake teased.

  I ignored him and took a deep breath.

  ‘Here goes nothing.’

  I placed the box into the rectangular shape and pushed it in. The stones continued to move as I expected. Only I didn’t hear them moving all around me. The coffin of the top point of the star jolted awake. The coffin of the grandmaster drifted to the side revealing another one just beneath it. It rose above the dirt and sat just beside the stone coffin of the grandmaster.

  I glanced back over to Adeline as Lothar and Jake walked around the circle to the point where the two coffins sat side by side.

  Adeline followed them but took it a step further, using her magic to help her float down to the coffins and standing above the new one that just appeared. The green light surrounding her soaked back into her body once more. Only a small flicker of light remained just inside her palm. She aimed it down toward the coffin and let it gently glide over the stone lid.