by Tasha Black
As Anya led the horse past the labyrinth and toward the stables, I lifted one hand from her waist and waved it at the boxwoods, reminding them whose subjects they were.
There was an answering rustle of leaves, and I knew my will would be carried out.
The witches might help me, but I didn’t answer to them. Those poor shrubs were under my auspices.
And besides, I wasn’t even sure the witches could actually help me to return home. Even the guardian’s blood probably wouldn’t have done the trick, not without my blade.
The real reason I was here was the girl in my arms. I wanted to understand her presence in this realm, and the strange pull between her soul and mine.
We reached the stables at last. The slate roofline still pitched steeply up to a weathervane. But I was pleased to see that they looked half-haunted now, as if they had pined for me in my absence.
Anya wiggled free of my arms and slid off the stallion.
I followed suit and we stepped into the dim interior of the old stables.
Movement in the corner caused Anya to freeze.
“What in the hell are you doing with Gloom?” an angry voice cried out.
The owner of the voice stepped out of the shadows to scowl at my girl. He held a rake, as if he had been mucking stalls.
“Silas Brake?” I asked in astonishment.
He turned to me. His eyes grew wide, and he dropped the rake.
“Y-yer majesty,” he said, dropping into an awkward bow.
“Stand,” I told him, gratified that someone on this side still remembered their manners. “I required the use of this steed. Now he wants a cool down.”
“It is a pleasure to serve the Raven King,” Silas said, eyes downcast, stepping forward to take the horse.
I nodded and turned from him, heading out of the stables with Anya trotting after me.
“What was that about?” she asked.
“I knew him when he was a boy,” I told her.
“Not him,” she said. “He’s not old enough.”
“His great-great-grandfather then,” I said, unconcerned at the detail. These mortal creatures had generations so often it was hard to keep track. “At any rate, his family remembers the Raven King.”
She nodded thoughtfully.
“The stables aren’t what they used to be,” I told her. “Does Primrose no longer keep a carriage?”
“There’s a carriage,” Anya said. “But it’s mainly used for new students when they arrive. It’s a kind of formality.”
“Tell me you don’t use those smelly monstrosities roaring around in the village,” I said.
Her eyebrows went up slightly. Then she laughed. “You mean cars?”
“If that’s what they are called,” I said, shrugging. I wasn’t sure I liked being giggled at, but I did enjoy the waterfall sound of her laughter.
“We don’t really use anything,” she admitted. “I mean, there’s a van for weekly supply trips, but for the most part, we stay on the mountain.”
I nodded. The rest of this world was lost. The witches keeping to themselves made perfect sense.
“Well, here we go,” she said as the castle came into sight.
It was just as I remembered, massive and strange, the only building on this side of the veil that had ever reminded me of home.
The stone walls stretched across the entire clearing, odd little porches and porticoes lurching off it at angles, as if it had been paused in the middle of shuffling itself around.
The fountain full of indignant mermaids and their kelpie still adorned the front entrance to the castle. But someone had painted a black raven taking flight on the pale marble, with the words He is coming.
Strange that anyone here expected my presence. The witches more than anyone should have known better.
Though here I was.
Perhaps that meant they would know how to get me back after all.
“Who painted this?” I asked Anya as we passed the fountain.
“I have no idea,” she said, shrugging a little too carelessly.
I frowned, filing it away to ask her again later. The girl held everything so tightly to her chest. It was wise of her, since I would have no qualms using anything she let slip to my advantage.
She pushed open one of the massive wooden doors to the school and we marched through the sweeping center hall and down the long hallway.
The inside of the castle hadn’t changed much either. Our footsteps rang out on the familiar polished wood floors. The same ancient portraits adorned the walls.
Classes must have been in session, as we were the only people in sight.
Just as we reached the headmistress’s door, it swung open and a statuesque, dark-skinned woman in handsome purple robes stepped out into the hallway.
Her eyes slipped past me and alighted on Anya, and she sighed lightly, with a mixture of relief and annoyance.
“So nice of you to join us today, Miss Corbin,” the woman said in a deep, melodious voice.
I turned to Anya. Was she a student at Primrose?
“Headmistress Hart,” Anya said crisply, “I’d like you to meet the Raven King.”
6
Anya
“Very funny,” Headmistress Hart said to me, eyes narrowed. “We don’t have time for silly pranks…”
But she trailed off as her gaze landed on the Raven King.
“Your Majesty,” she said respectfully, offering him her hand as she made a graceful half-bow.
This was not the scraping greeting offered to him by Silas Brake, but he seemed to accept it. He took her hand briefly and let go, nodding to her.
“Please, come into my office,” she said, glancing down the hallway as if wondering who else might have seen us. “Make yourself comfortable.”
He strode inside and sat in the chair opposite her desk. I hadn’t realized just how large he was until I saw him there, in the context of a familiar space. His legs were so long they had to practically fold to fit between the chair and the headmistress’s desk.
I wondered if I was supposed to come in too, or if she would send me on to class. It would be awful to have to leave now.
“Anya,” he said, patting the chair next to his.
Well, you didn’t disobey a king. I sat beside him.
Headmistress Hart hurried in after us, closing the door behind herself.
“Well, your presence in our realm certainly explains why the weave of magic here at the school has been unpredictable,” she said in a businesslike way. “What are you doing here?”
I was shocked at her tone. Surely, the king from across the veil deserved deference. Or at least a show of mannerliness.
The Raven King must have agreed. Instead of answering, he merely observed her with his pale eyes.
The tension in the room was palpable.
“He needs our help to get back across the veil,” I said quickly, trying not to fidget with my robes.
“Well, I’d like to understand how he got to our side to begin with,” Headmistress Hart said sternly. “Anya, I imagine you know something about all this, or you wouldn’t be here.”
I clamped my mouth shut.
Growing up like I had, there was a golden rule. If you were lucky enough to have loyal friends, you didn’t rat them out.
“Miss Corbin,” Headmistress Hart sighed. “I suppose this has something to do with protecting your friends, am I right?”
I bit my lip.
“We are well past worrying about anything you and your friends might have done or known about,” she said wearily. “If the veil is torn, there is too much at stake to waste time with silly games.”
She was right. But it went against my nature to open my mouth.
“I would help you,” the king said. “But I have no more idea than you do how this happened.”
That wasn’t entirely true, but I supposed he really didn’t know the whole story.
“Why don’t you offer immunity to Anya and her friends?” he coache
d the headmistress.
“We’re not in a courtroom,” she remarked.
He only stared at her, impassive.
She frowned at him, then turned to me.
“Miss Corbin, you have my word that neither you nor your friends will be punished in any way for whatever you share with me,” she said. “But if you refuse to speak now, and I learn later that you could have assisted in this matter, I will show no such mercy.”
Well, that couldn’t be more clear. I gulped and tried to gather myself.
But the headmistress must have mistaken my silence for refusal.
“Tell her she has to talk,” Hart said, turning to the Raven King. “You know what our job is. You know what we’re doing here.”
“I know what you’re doing here,” he replied and then glanced at me. “I have no idea what she’s doing here.”
A strange look passed between them that I couldn’t understand.
“Miss Corbin is under my protection,” Hart said stiffly. “As are all the students at Primrose. Miss Corbin, please.”
With her eyes fixed on me, I couldn’t refuse.
“The warlocks of the Order of the Broken Blade,” I said quickly. “They’ve been getting bolder.”
Her eyes widened slightly, as if she was surprised that I knew about the Order at all.
“Right after Bella got here, they got possession of a book from the Primrose Library,” I said carefully.
The truth was that Bella had taken the book from the Library, hoping to use it to help her brother when she thought she would not be permitted to return to school.
But since the Order had broken into the Library that same week, I figured the headmistress would assume the book was taken then.
She nodded, pursing her lips, and I felt a sense of relief.
“My friends got the book back from them, but the Order managed to rip out a page,” I went on.
“What page?” she asked.
“A page explaining how to open the veil, to call the Raven King,” I said. “Thankfully, one of my friends was able to recreate the page. So we gathered the ingredients for the spell so that we could do a counter spell.”
“But it obviously didn’t work,” the headmistress said, nodding toward the Raven King.
“Actually, it did work,” I told her. “The veil almost opened, but we were able to pull it closed.”
Her eyebrows went up as if she were impressed. But if I thought she was going to praise me, I was wrong.
“Go on,” she said.
“They tried again,” I told her. “We didn’t expect it. They used the blood of a guardian to fuel the spell, and by the time we arrived it was too late. They had opened a portal in the veil. And they had summoned, well, him.”
I looked to the Raven King. He was frowning as if he wanted me to spin a more interesting description how he had appeared.
Meanwhile, I was biting back the fact that Kendall had lost her magic in the fight.
I wasn’t so sure the headmistress’s promise to withhold consequences for any students involved in my story would extend to cover Kendall, if her lack of magic meant she could no longer be a Primrose student.
Besides, that wasn’t my secret to share.
“We clearly need to increase the workload here at Primrose Academy if you all have so much time on your hands for extracurricular activities,” Headmistress Hart said sternly. “I have a number of questions for you and your friends. I’m going to have Miss Twillbottom call them in—”
“What is that delightful smell?” the Raven King asked, cutting her off.
“It’s French toast day,” I told him. I could smell it too, and my stomach was actually rumbling.
The Raven King got up and walked out of the headmistress’s office, presumably in search of French toast.
“I really think it’s best if…” Headmistress Hart began.
But he was already gone.
I looked at her, shrugged, and then ran after him.
I fully expected her to call me back sternly and give me a talking to, or even a full interrogation.
Halfway to the cafeteria it sank in that she was really just letting me go.
Frankly, any situation that flustered Headmistress Hart should have terrified me. And my heart was racing, but it was fueled by something else entirely as I thought about being near the Raven King once more.
7
Anya
The Raven King’s legs were longer than mine. I jogged to the cafeteria and arrived in the doorway just in time to watch him stride straight to the counter, cutting off a whole line of students.
“Anya,” he called to me with a regal gesture indicating that I was supposed to cut the line too.
Esme and Dozie, two of the meaner legacy girls, were in line right behind him.
“Excuse you,” Esme said to him in a belligerent tone, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “Who do you think you are?”
I held my breath.
“I am the Raven King,” he said in a deep, proud voice. “And you are a slip of a hedge-witch who needs to learn her place.”
The rest of the cafeteria went silent.
Esme narrowed her eyes and opened her mouth. It was clear that she wasn’t paying enough attention to realize he really was who he said.
“Listen here…” was as far as she got.
The Raven King lifted his hand and made a swiping motion with his index finger.
Suddenly, Esme’s mouth was gone.
It wasn’t smaller or tamped shut, it was gone.
Her eyes went wide with terror, and she gripped her best friend Dozie’s arm.
Dozie screamed.
“Your majesty,” I said, running up to him. “You can’t do that.”
“Having a mouth is a privilege,” he said in a clear, ringing tone. “One most often wasted on mortals, I’ve found.”
“Give it back to her,” I suggested, scrambling. “So she can properly apologize.”
He studied my face, and his pale eyes narrowed.
“Fine,” he said at last, waving his finger at Esme once more.
Her mouth reappeared slowly from one side to the other, like a pocket unzipping, and she gasped in a desperate breath.
“Well?” he said, in a bored way.
She stared at him in horror.
“Apologize,” I whispered to her, like a director reminding an actor with a bad case of stage fright.
“S-sorry,” she squeaked out, scurrying out of the cafeteria with Dozie in tow.
“Your Majesty,” the cafeteria ladies cried out, falling into deep curtsies made all the more impressive by their advanced age.
The Raven King spared them a fond smile.
“It is a privilege to serve at the pleasure of the Raven King,” the head cook declared, piling a tray high with the choicest items behind the glass.
I watched as she spooned out a triple portion of French toast from the center of the pan and smothered it in maple syrup, then added whipped cream and two dishes of berries.
“A blessing on your homes,” the king declared carelessly, when the cook handed over the tray with another curtsey.
They all made impressed clucking noises and there was another round of creaky curtseys.
The king had already turned to observe the seating area. He strode up to the nicest table in the place, near the wall of windows overlooking the courtyard.
The group of seniors seated at the table stared up at him, agog.
He fixed them with a fierce look of impatience, and they all scrambled out of their chairs, giving him a wide berth.
The Raven King pulled out a chair and sat, then gestured for me to join him.
“Where is your meal, Anya?” he asked sternly.
“I, uh, I’m not hungry,” I said.
Actually I was starving, but there were so many eyes on me that I had no interest in getting back in line. Besides, doing that would mean there was no one to keep an eye on the king.
“Where are your
friends?” he asked. “Why do they not join us?”
I glanced over at our usual table. Bella, Cori, Kendall, Nina and Lark were trying not to stare too openly.
I waved them over and they grabbed their trays and headed toward us.
That was when I noticed the headmistress and a small group of teachers against the far wall. They were all looking at the Raven King, and whispering to each other urgently.
“Greetings, Your Majesty,” Kendall said, bowing politely.
The others followed suit.
“Please, join us,” the king said benevolently.
They all took their seats, but no one ate or spoke.
“How’s it going, guys?” I asked brightly. “How was first period?”
“F-fine,” Bella said pushing her plate away. “I guess now we know why you weren’t there.”
I grabbed her plate and helped myself to French toast. The heavenly sugar went straight to my brain, and I felt more like myself almost instantly.
“This is Bella, Cori, Kendall, Nina and Lark,” I told the king.
“So you didn’t wind up back on the other side?” Kendall asked him softly.
“Anya is going to help me return to my kingdom,” he told her calmly.
They all looked over at me.
I tried to surreptitiously wipe syrup off my mouth.
“We’ll figure it out,” I said. “In the meantime, Headmistress Hart asked what happened. She promised us immunity in exchange. So I told her.”
Kendall’s eyes went wide and so did Bella’s.
“Not your thing, Kendall,” I said quickly. “Or yours, Bella. But I gave her a brief rundown on our interactions with the Order, and their two attempts to open the veil.”
“Then it’s only a matter of time for me,” Kendall said softly.
“I hope not,” I told her.
But she was probably right. How long could she stay at a school for magic when she had sacrificed all of her magic to save Jared?
“You’re the one that depleted herself to save the panther,” the Raven King said, looking to her.
She nodded with a half-smile.
“Kendall,” I reminded him.
“Kendall,” he echoed. “That was a very brave, and very foolish thing you did.”
