by Elena Lawson
I didn’t think she’d hold the position long, since, you know, the council was full of patriarchal twits with deeply ingrained misogynistic attitudes. But she was determined to keep the position, nonetheless.
If she did, she would be the first ever female headmistress, and the youngest one, too, if I wasn’t mistaken.
“No, I’m ready,” I replied to them both, straightening my spine and taking a deep, cleansing breath.
Granger nodded, and when she turned to lead us to the portal in the main office, Elias fell into step beside me. He brushed his fingers over the back of my hand, making gooseflesh rise like a wave up my arm and over the back of my neck.
I glanced back at the dorm room. Bit the inside of my cheek. I didn’t like leaving Bianca. She’d hardly left her bed and refused to go back home again.
She’d returned to the mansion in Oregon only to tell her brothers what happened in person and gather some things. Nothing had been officially decided about what was to happen to Sterling’s estate and his mass of wealth. So, for the time being, the days passed as they always had in the Sterling household; without him.
Bianca hadn’t said as much—hadn’t said much of anything at all—but I knew she loathed being there. And, well, pretty much loathed everything right now. She only left her bed to eat and shower, and even those things she didn’t do often.
Elias said I should give her space and time to heal. But I hated seeing her that way. She was always happy, smiling, bubbling with life. I didn’t recognize this broken shell of girl she’d become and it worried me.
“We should be back within the hour,” Elias said reassuringly. He was always reading my mind like that. Seeming to know exactly the words I needed to hear. “The origin spell won’t take long to perform.”
I didn’t care how long it took. I just needed it to tell the council what I already knew to be true; that Alistair Hawkins was my father. It was the only way for me to gain access to his estate property.
I would need access to find out what information was worth killing him over. If he’d kept anything, it could still be in there, in his home. There could be clues... or something. There had to be something there, right?
We stepped into Sterling’s office, or what was now Granger’s office. She’d already cleaned out some things and changed the drapes to a pretty purple. A smile tugged at my lips. She looked right in there.
Being headmistress suited her.
She began to open the portal, glancing back to make sure we were both ready to go through. I looked to Elias, who nodded at me. I nodded back. I didn’t know he was planning to request permission to attend with us, but I wasn’t surprised to see him there outside my door with Granger either. Of course, he’d come.
“Once we step through, we’ll be entering directly into the Department of Arcane Inquiry,” Granger said, finishing up the sigil. “We’re a bit early, so be prepared to wait a while.”
The portal opened up on a dimly lit room. Hushed murmurs sounded in the shadows. It was mandatory for two council members to attend the casting of an origin spell, to oversee and document its veracity. But there were definitely more than two people in the room.
I licked my lips and swallowed down the urge to turn and run away. What if I was wrong? What if somehow Alistair Hawkins wasn’t my father? I shook my head.
Don’t be ridiculous. You know he’s your father.
Ms. Granger stepped through first and beckoned for me to follow her. Elias brought up the rear, coming through the portal an instant before it fell closed.
“What is this?” Granger asked, her voice firm as she surveyed all the faces in the circular chamber.
In the middle was a raised platform. A pedestal table sat at its center. And all around the room were council members, sitting behind one enormous, raised desk. Looking down at us with cautious, curious stares.
There were seven of them. Seven of the eleven remaining council members had come to attend the origin spell. That didn’t seem right. Didn’t they have better things to do? It was only mandatory that two attend the proceeding.
The council member at the center of the raised desk, a balding man with a mustache, grumbled. “We haven’t got time to waste,” he said, narrowing his milky gaze at me. “You. Girl, step forward.”
I did as asked, moving to stand on the raised platform. A single shaft of sunlight illuminated the pedestal table in a perfect triangle of light. “You have requested a trial of origin, is this correct?”
“Yes,” I replied, my voice wavering.
“Do you understand the dangers, implications, and side-effects possible during the administration of an origin spell?”
I hesitated. Side-effects? I knew the information gleaned from an origin spell was irrevocable. And I knew it could be dangerous, and painful. He must’ve been referring to the exhaustion Elias had already warned me about. “Yes.”
“Very well. You may proceed.”
Granger was to perform the actual spell. She was the most adept at sigils, and from what I understood, the spell was very complex. She’d been called to do this type of trial for the council before.
Elias moved to stand at the edge of the platform, where he would be in my line of sight. His jaw clenched, and a muscle twitched at his temples. He clasped his hands behind his back, and I saw his biceps bulge under his sharp suit jacket.
Ms. Granger walked up to the balding man and reached up to accept the small vial he handed her. The origin spell required all three main forms of alchemical magic to work. A potion. A sigil. And an incantation.
She brought the vial to me, moving to stand on the opposite side of the small table. The streaks of bronze in her hair glowed umber in the sunlight filtering down on us. And her warm gaze calmed the erratic thrumming in my chest.
“It’ll only hurt for a few moments,” she said, as though she somehow knew what it felt like. “Then we’ll all see your bloodline. It’s different for everyone—what the spell shows. But it’s always definitive.”
I nodded, my nails digging into my palms. “I’m ready.”
She handed me the potion, and I considered the reddish colored substance within. It seemed almost alive, the way it shimmered and pirouetted within the vile. I blew out a breath and tipped the contents back, trying not to think about how the taste reminded me of blood and rot.
It took only seconds to start to work. My magic rushed into me, surging and swaying. The potion pulling it to the surface, keeping it in a lulled, trance-like state beneath my skin. And then the burning started. First in my chest, and then in my legs. My shoulders. My arms. All the way to my toes and fingertips. My veins were on fire.
I clenched my teeth, sucking in a breath that sounded more like a whimper. Just a few minutes. I only had to withstand it for a few minutes.
Granger began to draw the sigil, taking great care to get each and every line, curve, and shape exactly right. When she was finished, light flared out from its center in brilliant undulating branches of red and gold. She reached for my arm, and I gave it to her, letting it rest against the table.
I was not the type to become faint at the sight of blood, but I found myself turning away as she dragged the runed dagger across my forearm and spoke the ancient incantation. “Originis veritatem.”
The spell echoed through the chamber, entering me, swirling through my core until I came unbound. My feet left the floor, and vaguely, I felt the blood dripping down my arm, but I was blinded by pure white light. My head was light and spinning.
The first image came slowly, like a developing photograph in an old Polaroid camera. I saw him first as a man, and then as a boy, and then as a babe. My father in all his stages of life. I sobbed through the burning and the onslaught of images.
I berated myself for believing for even a second that I was wrong about him being my father.
Then the images came faster, showing his mother before him, and her parentage, and her family, and their family before that. Faster and more violently, the i
mages came.
Back, back, and back my bloodline went. Until there was a woman on a ship, crazed and in chains. And then a man before her, laughing as he burned. The final image was of a man, dripping wet as he hauled himself out of a turbulent white-capped sea onto craggy black stones. His eyes were bright green and frenzied, and his hair was red as flame. On his breast, he bore an insignia of two swords in a rose.
The burning peaked, and I screamed, falling back to the ground in a heap as the magic of the spell left me all at once. Detaching from my body in one great ripping pull.
There was an outbreak of astonished whispering, and I fought to regain my vision, recoiling when someone tried to help me stand.
“It’s only me,” Elias said, and I let him drag my arm around his neck and lift me so my weight rested against his side.
“It’s impossible,” I heard one of the council members say.
“That bloodline ended with Cyprian over a thousand years ago!” another shouted.
I heard Granger asking for them to calm down. Calling for order.
As my vision began to clear, I found Elias’s eyes staring down at me. My head lolled to the side. I was barely able to hold it up.
“What is it?” I asked him, my voice weak. “What happened?”
His lips parted and his breaths shallowed. “It can’t be,” he replied, looking at me as though I was something other than the girl he knew. Like I was a foreign creature he’d never seen before.
Like I was... dangerous.
Follow Harper’s story in OF MAGIC & MOONLIGHT, Arcane Arts Academy Book 2!
Get it here: mybook.to/OMAM
