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I was bouncing so rapidly as I left my last lesson that I was practically vibrating, needing some outlet for my restless energy.
I needed a few supplies before casting the spell – it was a little more intense than just waving my wand – and while I knew that students were allowed to use any of the supplies from the storeroom, I also wasn’t supposed to be using magic at all.
If someone caught me, I wasn’t sure that they would buy that I was picking up materials for someone else.
I should have asked Willow to pick up the supplies, but I was so glad that she had agreed to cast the spell with me in the first place, I hadn’t wanted to push my luck.
I also hadn’t wanted her to ask why I couldn’t do it myself. She knew that the teachers didn’t want me using magic yet, but I didn’t want to remind her if I didn’t have to.
I didn’t want her to change her mind.
Thankfully, no one was in the storeroom when I arrived, and I quickly picked up everything I needed.
I packed it all into my bag, hoping that no one saw as I headed to the maze.
“Shit,” I muttered as I approached, and realised that I had no idea how to find the centre.
But then I stepped inside, and Willow was waiting for me by the entrance.
She smiled. “Ready to get started?”
“I take it you know the way to the centre?”
She nodded. “I’ve studied the maze a little. I’ve got a knack for nature magic, even beyond what would be expected for an Elf. My dad’s like that too. It’s why he got sent to be Fin’hathan, to teach him discipline. But I don’t know that I’ve ever been interested in being more disciplined.” She cringed. “Of course, that makes it a nightmare to try to live in the Human world.”
“Is there anywhere else you could go? After you finish school, I mean. I’m still not clear on exactly what the options are for magical beings.”
She sighed. “Most covens have to interact with Humans in one way or another. The only one that doesn’t is the Amazons, and they only take the best of the best. Then there’s the Underworld and Atlantis. Mers don’t really like outsiders and living underwater would cut me off from my element, so Atlantis isn’t an option, and only Dark Witches can live in the Underworld. I’ve not really shown an inclination either way with Dark or Light magic, and it’s too uncontrolled for me to stick to one or the other.”
“Is that a side-effect of having more of an inclination towards nature? Because it seems like mine does the same.”
She smiled as she looked me over. “You know, it might be. Which, of course, makes it even more difficult to find a coven, as so many of them are either Light or Dark.”
I sighed. “Yeah, it would be so much easier if I was just a Dark Witch.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Not Light?”
I suppressed a cringe as I realised what I’d said. “Is that preference a bad thing?”
“No, just unusual for someone without Demons in their family.”
I shrugged, deciding to change the topic. “So, if the Amazons are left as the only place where you can be yourself, does that mean you want to join them?”
She gave me a wry smile. “Yeah, but like I said, they only take the best of the best. I’m half-Elf, so my spellcasting is never going to be as good as that of a pure-blooded Witch.”
“But you can control air as well.”
“I wished more people cared about that, but they don’t. Magical factions look out for their own, Amelia. Being caught between them... It’s not pleasant.”
“I’m sorry. That must be tough.”
She shrugged as we finally found the centre of the maze, which was a stone circle, with a stone basin in the middle.
Willow moved over to it. “Are we going to need this for the spell? I’m assuming something like this requires a ritual.”
I nodded as I brought the book from my bag. “Yeah, but I don’t think we need the basin.”
Willow frowned. “Wait, is that Princess Helena’s grimoire?”
I froze. I hadn’t thought Willow would recognise it. She wasn’t even that close.
Maybe I should have just copied the spell...
But it was too late for that now.
“Well, it’s a copy,” I admitted.
She made her way over, staring at the book. “I didn’t think copies were allowed. Where did you get it?”
“It’s a long story.”
Willow frowned as she looked over my shoulder to read the spell. “And this was the curse used on your mother? I’ve never seen such a curse. Who would have cast it? They would have needed a copy of this book. And wait, here it says that we need an ‘Angelborn’ to cast the spell. I don’t know what that is, but I doubt either of us count.”
I cringed. There was no way I was getting out of this one, was there?
“If I tell you something, do you promise not to tell anyone?”
She frowned as she turned to me. “Anyone?”
I nodded. “Not even Lena, Natalie or Charlotte know.”
“Okay then.”
“Have you heard the rumours about Maria Brown’s tomb being empty?”
She nodded.
“She escaped. And she came after me. My mum was cursed in the attack...”
Willow frowned. “She came after you? Why?”
“Because I’m Angelborn. It means an Angel of Life helped my parents to, you know, have me. And I ended up with a portion of their power.”
She frowned. “And the only Angel of Life is Queen Freya. Is that why you want to be a Dark Witch?”
I sighed. “If I were a Dark Witch, I could go to the Underworld and she could keep me safe. But I’m not, so I can’t. I’m stuck here, trying to fix this myself.”
Willow reached over and placed a hand on my arm. “You’re not by yourself, Amelia.”
My gaze met hers and my throat tightened, tears welling in my eyes as I realised that she meant it.
“Thank you, Willow.”
She smiled. “Let’s get everything set up. Have you set up a spell like this before?”
I shook my head.
“Well, come on, I’ll show you.”
#
WILLOW AND I FOLLOWED the instructions, drawing with chalk on the stone to recreate the image that the book had shown.
Willow showed me how to take the herbs that I had taken from the storeroom, and mash them into a paste in the basin, before smearing it across specific points of the chalk on the ground, and then across our hearts.
I bit my lip, trying not to react to the sensation of Willow’s fingers brushing my skin.
Willow gave me a sympathetic smile, presumably sensing my tension. “I know that the texture isn’t pleasant, and if we could get away without it, I would have skipped it, but we’re going to need to channel a lot of power here. This will ground us.”
I nodded, glad that she hadn’t thought that my reaction was to do with her proximity. “I wouldn’t want to mess with anything anyway. This has to work.”
“I know,” she said softly before moving away. “Come on, there’s still one last thing. Did you bring a knife?”
I nodded, reaching into my bag to take out the last thing I’d retrieved from the store room.
A small, ceremonial blade wrapped in black cloth.
Willow held out her hand. “Pass it over and I’ll go first. After I sterilise the blade.”
I raised an eyebrow. “I thought everyone was meant to sterilise them before putting them away.”
“Do you really want to trust that?”
“No, I suppose not.”
I passed her the blade and she unwrapped it before waving her wand over it, blasting it with white light on both sides of the blade.
She then held her palm over the basin and sliced across it, dripping blood down onto the stone.
She passed the knife back to me.
I raised my wand, but she shook her head. “I used a long-term sterilisation on it, so it’s still safe. Using it has started the spell, and you can’t cast another one until we’re done.”
I eyed the blade cautiously, but figured that Willow seemed to know what she was doing.
And we did have healing potions if anything did go wrong, so...
I dragged the blade across my palm, dripping blood into the basin, joining it with Willow’s.
I gasped as magic rippled through me, though it was just existing within me, with no direction.
Willow smiled, though the slight glow of her skin told me that she was similarly affected. “We’re channelling as much magic as we can handle. If this isn’t enough to power this spell, then nothing would be.”
I nodded as I took my wand and dipped the end in the blood at the bottom of the basin before drawing it out into the symbols in the book, all along the side of the basin, chanting the incantation as I went.
Willow joined me in the chanting, though she left the drawing to me.
As we went, I felt our magic surge through me and I focused all my thoughts on my mother, directing the magic to her.
I gasped once more as I finally felt a familiar presence.
My mum.
She didn’t have magic that I could sense, but I knew that it was her.
I could feel her as if she were there with us.
Every moment of missing her slammed into my chest and I almost cried tears of relief.
I could almost swear that I could smell her perfume.
But it was wrong, cloying and sour.
The curse.
I kept chanting and drawing, keeping my mum’s presence tight in my mind, despite my discomfort.
I would take all the discomfort in the world if it would make her safe again.
The cloying smell stuck to the inside of my lungs, burning my chest from the inside, but I kept going.
I couldn’t risk stopping.
Of course, the curse would fight back, just as the protection spell over Mr Stiles’ books had fought back.
But I had to keep going.
I could feel it lifting.
The longer Willow and I went, the less the cloying smell and my mother seemed one and the same.
No, now I could feel her presence, separate from the curse.
As long as I kept going, she would finally be free.
“Ah, Amelia!”
My focus was pulled back to the present by Willow’s pained cry and I looked over to see her clutching her chest, black lines forming under her skin.
Across the same places I was burning, the break in focus highlighting the fire that had every muscle in my body tensing, including my lungs.
I could only draw short, sharp breaths through the agony.
It took everything I had not to double over like Willow.
I could take the pain, but was it fair to ask Willow to do the same?
The more I focused on Willow, the clearer she became. Not just to my other senses, but to my magic.
I could feel the curse creeping through her, trying to fight her off, just as it was trying to fight me off.
“No!”
I wasn’t even sure that I’d spoken until I heard the word, all of my focus on grabbing the curse from within Willow with my magic and pulling it from her.
The more I pulled, the more it retreated, and the black lines faded as Willow gasped for air.
And then I collapsed.
Pain consumed me.
I couldn’t think.
The curse was targeting no one but me now.
My whole body shook, and I couldn’t even sit up, never mind stand.
“Amelia!”
I coughed, the sound and feel too wet, and all I saw through the pain was a flash of red.
Blood.
As the last of my strength faded, so did my mum’s presence.
Just as the curse slipped back into her.
“No... No... It can’t...”
I coughed once more, doubled over on the ground.
Willow placed a hand on my shoulder. “I need to get you help... I’ll try to shift you to the infirmary, but I’m not used to shifting someone else...”
“No,” I managed between coughs. They would ask too many questions. “Ms Maltere... Take me to... Ms Maltere...”
My vision blurred and then went black as the world fell out from beneath me.
#
I AWOKE WITH A GROAN.
If I had thought my last bout of magical exhaustion had been bad, this was something else.
Every cell of my body burned, though the skin over my heart and down my left side and arm screamed with pain beyond anything I’d ever felt before.
The warming glow of healing magic washed over me, but it only dulled the pain. I was still acutely aware of its presence.
If I had the strength, I suspected I would be heaving.
I groaned once more as I forced my eyes open to see that I was lying on a desk in Ms Maltere’s classroom, with Ms Maltere casting the healing spell, though she was standing back, and Willow was at my side, sitting on one of the chairs.
“Amelia,” Willow said as she saw me wake, grasping my hand as she stared at me like she was seeing a miracle.
“That bad, huh?” I managed, my voice coming out as barely more than a croak.
She glanced down at my blouse and I followed her gaze, seeing that it was stained red with blood.
A lot of blood.
“Oh,” I managed. “Yeah, that looks bad.”
I then spotted black lines trailing over my chest and reached over, despite my screaming muscles, to pull away my blouse, exposing the black scars across my left side.
“Yeah, definitely bad.”
I returned my gaze to Willow and she winced.
“I’m so sorry, Amelia. I... I wasn’t strong enough. If I had just handled the pain...”
Ms Maltere finally spoke. “If you had, you would both be dead.” Her gaze was hard, and she refused to look at me. “This wasn’t about a lack of strength. The curse has been refined since the version you were looking at, to prevent exactly this kind of tampering. You tripped a secondary curse, directed at whoever attempted to lift the original. It’s crude, and clumsy. A hasty rewrite made out of fear that magic may have surpassed even her while she was asleep.” She gave a cold smirk. “It seems that the great Maria Brown isn’t as brilliant as everyone remembers.”
I snorted, though it came out as a strained sound, followed by a bout of painful coughing.
When I finally recovered, I shrugged, trying not to look as bad as I felt. “Crude as it may have been, it worked.” I sighed. “How long is it going to take me to recover this time?”
Ms Maltere didn’t answer, instead turning to Willow. “Perhaps you should get some rest and give us a little privacy.”
Willow didn’t look happy, but she nodded before turning to me. “Thank you, Amelia. When the curse was hurting me... You’re only this injured because you took it on yourself. Because you saved me.”
“I couldn’t bear watching you hurt.”
A moment later, her lips were on mine, and if I wasn’t in so much pain, I would have grabbed her, and never let her go.
But I was, so I settled for kissing her back with everything I could muster.
When she finally pulled away, she gave me a soft smile. “I’ll see you later, okay?”
“Yeah. Later.”
She hesitated for a moment before leaving the room.
And leaving me alone with Ms Maltere.
The knowledge that I had just kissed someone in front of her was quickly overshadowed by the guilt of breaking my promise to her.
And then the fact that she hadn’t answered my question about how long it would take me to recover.
She moved over to the chair Willow had left, sitting beside me, though she didn’t speak.
She also didn’t meet my gaze, instead looking over my new scars.
“So... It’s going to be a while before they heal, huh?”
“They won’t heal.”
Deep down, I had known that, but I had hoped that I was wrong.
“Ever?”
“Ever.” She finally met my gaze. “I’m sorry. I should have... I should have known. I shouldn’t have...”
“It’s not your fault,” I said. “You made me promise not to use my magic, and I did it anyway.”
She shook her head. “You’re a teenage girl. Of course, you weren’t going to listen to me. If you had just come to me... But I made you promise, so you didn’t feel like you could.”
“It’s not your fault that I was stupid enough to break my promise. That I was stupid enough to think that I could save her...”
“You could have. If not for that secondary curse, you and Willow could have done it.”
I wasn’t sure how to feel about that fact, so I stayed silent.
She sighed. “I know how to get past the secondary curse. I can’t heal it, but I can stop it before it attacks.”
I stared at her for a moment as I processed her words.
“You can help me save my mother?”
She nodded. “I can. But I need help. I wasn’t sure if you were ready, but you could have done this, so... I have a curse of my own that I need to get past. My sisters were cursed, and I’ve been trying to get them free. I had planned to do it on Samhain, and I’m hoping that you can help. Once they’re free, they can help me to free your mother.”
I winced. Samhain was only a week away. “Will I have recovered by then?”
“You’re mildly exhausted, but you mitigated that by using the maze, and Willow is powerful in her own right, so she helped. No, your pain now is from the curse, and what will heal will heal quickly.”
“And what exactly won’t heal?”
She moved her wand over to the black scars, gently prodding them.
I screamed, agony overtaking me.
I gasped as it faded, and awareness returned to me.
“I barely touched you,” she said. “Numbing salves might help, but they’ll only take the edge off. Otherwise, those scars are permanent.”
“And they’ll always hurt like this?”
She nodded. “I’m so sorry, Amelia.”
I didn’t respond, not sure that I could.
Not sure that my mind could comprehend it.
The scars seemed fine with the light touch of my clothes, but they snaked across my chest and side and upper arm.
Would every touch knock the wind from me? Every nudge in the corridor? Every hug?
Yeah, that wasn’t something I was ready to think about.
“You’ll be fine to cast another spell on Samhain, and if you help me to save my sisters, I can help you save your mother. Deal?”
I nodded, the memory of the curse overtaking my mother once more still fresh in my mind.
I couldn’t let her down again.