AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Grandmom reaches for me, but I dart out of the way, holding tight to my dagger.
“Now.” I tighten my core, tuck my elbows, and urge my toushana through me entirely. Cold seeps into my bones, flowing to my every extremity, into my arms and then to my hands. The darkness around me thickens. The barrier groans against the strain of my magic. Destroy it. I bite down and exhale, sinking into the lull of cold, keeping every muscle in my body relaxed to avoid fighting the expelling of my toushana in any way.
The barrier bubbled around the stage shatters into a cloud of smoke.
I’m breathless when I jump off the stage and shove my way between the barrage of people clamoring over each other. Vases shatter. Tables topple. Shouts and cries blare like a siren. But I tune it all out. I’m not finished. With my dagger tip to my chest, I call on my toushana again. She rushes through me into my hands, icy, ready, and waiting. I urge her into the blade, and it throbs with light.
Now push it in.
My hands shake.
Through the haze, I spot Jordan, stilled with shock. He holds my gaze. I can’t bear to look away from him, to let go of this last glimpse of what we were, what I hoped we could be. I hold him in my sights and push the hilt of my dagger into me, sealing our fate. It pierces my skin without even a pinch. Its hilt slams into my chest bone with a shudder.
Exhale. I try to, timidly, expecting it to hurt as my toushana rolls through me. But when the breath leaves my lungs, there is no pain. There is no feeling at all. Fog forms at my lips at my next breath as a numbing chill as cold as death settles over me like the comfiest blanket. The dagger hilt dissolves into nothingness in my hands.
The world darkens at its edges, and I stumble sideways, catching myself on a table. I swallow, blinking, patting myself down, inspecting the place the dagger disappeared. I run my finger over the jagged scar there, which has already healed. As the cold settles in my blood, suddenly the colors of the ceremony ripen. The voices in the room swell and somehow untangle. I can hear each conversation and all of them at once. And the smells, so many. I’ve never felt more alive.
I gape at my empty hands but am distracted by my dress. Its pale pink fabric has turned black, its sparkled embellishments shining like stars. The tulle on my arms has shifted into leather, and I reach for the diadem on my head, feeling a few new gems as I dash for a glimpse of myself in a polished plate.
My black diadem sits on my head.
I look at the spot where Jordan just was. But he’s gone.
Get out of there.
I grab a shawl from a chair, throw it over my head, elbow my way through the chaos, and shove the ballroom doors open. I’m two steps from the broom closet when a hand hugged in rings reaches for my throat.
FIFTY
I jerk backward and grip the wrist at my throat. It starts to blacken. I blink at the face attached to the arm trying to apprehend me. Headmistress Perl. She winces, releasing her grip.
“I know what you’ve just done,” she says, eyeing the shawl over my head, clutching her hurt hand. I put distance between us, keeping my hand raised in warning, and realize my fingertips are bruised. Whatever I did to her, I also did to me. But I’ll do it again if I must.
“You mistake me,” she whispers, glancing in both directions before handing me a note. “Alea iacta est.”
The die has been cast.
“If you ever need refuge,” she says. “My address.”
I glance at the paper before rushing off through the broom closet door, hoping to find Abby, Mom, and Octos waiting for me.
The forest is chilly under the moonlight. The shock of everything that’s happened hits me and I have to steady myself on a nearby tree. The trail to the Tavern cuts its way through the forest up ahead. Abby isn’t anywhere in sight. I realize my debacle cut the ceremony a bit short. My fingers prickle, yearning with a thirst stronger than I’ve ever felt before. I have time.
I dash toward the Secret Wood. I arrive, panting. How many have come here terrified and desperate to hide a secret they never wanted? How many died because they couldn’t?
A rustle in the leaves pins me in place.
“You said if I got you in to meet with Marionne,” a guy says, “you’d be on that stage tonight debuting as her heir.”
I creep along lower, careful to stick to the shadows, to see who’s there.
“And I tried. You told me you’d get rid of the girl that Headmistress Perl was after.”
I peer around the tree I’m hiding behind and see Shelby. And Felix.
“You could have tried harder to befriend her instead of letting your feelings get in the way.”
She shoves him, and I dig my nails into the tree that covers me.
