Premonition
Book One of The Anima Trilogy
Rachael Krotec
Nib and Feather, LLC
Premonition. Copyright © 2019 by Rachael Krotec.
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
For information contact; www.rachaelkrotec.com
Cover design by Celin Graphics
ISBN: 978-1-7337118-1-4
First Edition: March 2019
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Created with Vellum
For Pops
Chapter One
“No,” Lilah says through bared teeth before closing her eyes. “I won’t be down here again.” Though what castigator doesn’t enjoy punishing a ruffian? Focusing on the darkness behind her eyes, she imagines warm yellow light beyond the basement walls. It screams her freedom.
“Then don’t make this any harder than it needs to be,” Marcus says, fixing Lilah’s arm onto the wooden chair’s wide armrests.
Pain from his clawing fingertips on her wrists paints a grimace over her lips, and her eyes shoot open. Though his strength always overwhelms her, she continues to struggle. The air in her lungs sizzles, and it feels oddly marvelous to exhale and let the cool, empty expanse of tissue go dry from lack of oxygen. She peels her calves from the chair where they stuck with sweat and stretches her arms down the length of the wood, unconsciously carving a dark half-moon nick with her nail next to a group of her own personal collection.
The act itself doesn’t last long. Lilah is experienced in the routine well enough to do it herself. As a regular to the punishment the Nox call tenebrae, she escapes the pain before the branding has even happened by following a set of breathing techniques she’s learned in her Warrior class. “One must never acknowledge the pain,” Lilah remembers Instructor Petrovna telling the class, “for a warrior does not bow to such corporeal troubles.” Relax, relax, relax. She inhales deeply, and her lungs rejoice in the return of air, calming her increasing heartbeat.
With Marcus’s back to her, his hands bounce shadows across the walls while they work quickly above the whipping flames of the fire. Marcus turns, the steel branding rod in his left hand. As he grasps her wrist, a grimace twists across his lips.
He’s done this hundreds of times—a dozen to Lilah herself—but this time she notices a twitch in his lip and a slightly erratic beat of his heart. She flicks a glance at his eyes. The hazel orbs stare gravely down at her. Can it be that he enjoys this even less than Lilah? She blinks. No, it can’t be. He’s a castigator. This is what they do.
As Marcus lowers the rod, she sits completely still, her eyes fixated on the flames dancing in a circle, growing and diminishing as they lick the air. She tries to imitate the calm motion with her breath, and her chest rises and falls gently, without haste, without fear. The inevitable pain is under her control.
Breathing into his right palm, Marcus evokes a black orb and ushers the incantation to the sharp tip of the rod. She bites the tender tissue of her inner cheek, preparing for the burning rod to scorch her pale flesh. In one swift movement, he thrusts the rod to her skin, carving the outline of a rhombus shape and finishing it with a slash from corner to corner. The scent of burnt flesh and molten iron rises to her nostrils. The blade itself does not inflict the most pain, but rather the black orb of light that pours into her skin, the spell that Marcus conjured. It is also this ebony orb that permanently fixes the brand black in color.
After the searing tip lifts from her skin, she looks down to see the symbol. Around the black brand, her skin is raised, red, and angry. She finds herself trembling, but not from the pain. Instructor Dujardin, her Warfare class instructor, was in the wrong, but his behavior went without repercussions.
Tenebrae punishment is the Nox way, but Lilah knows it is not the only way, although she’s never directly asked Verna, her Lux guardian, Lilah presumes their method of punishment for rogue behavior to be much like the way Verna punished her as child by sitting in quiet reflection. Why let wonder grow when this is the way my life will go? Though she knows this, she still wonders what life would be like had she been born into the Lux sect. She knew it would at least have saved her from agony, and her body wouldn’t be covered in brands.
She stands from the chair and her legs wobble while stars spin in sight. Closing her eyes, she places a hand on her forehead. The pain persists in her wrist. It isn’t the size of the brand that leaves her faint, but the fact that it is her third tenebrae punishment this week.
Sight clearing, she looks to Marcus, who stands with folded arms. As Castigator at Waterstone Academy, he doesn’t need another cause to send a shiver down the students’ backs, but his build does just that. Wide shoulders and thickly muscled arms coupled with his height make him a menacing figure. Cropped mahogany hair sprinkled with gray shows off the light freckles covering his nose and cheeks. Stubble hides the line of his jaw. Paired with a prominent brow and nose, his hazel eyes seem too radiant in their sockets. He gives her a pointed look and gestures at the large doors of the basement.
Lilah nods. She leaves through the doors, up the spiral stairs, and into the welcomed yellow light that fills the white-walled hallway.
Alessandra examines the body with fractured vision. Clutching her skull, she squeezes her eyes shut. Hold on, only a little longer . . . She opens her eyes and looks at her shaking hands. But her vision is her own, so she pokes and prods at the dead body lying on the dirt floor. Sighing, she scribbles something on a shred of paper, already covered in frantic cursive. So close, but something is still not right . . . Her legs feel foreign beneath her as she stands and yells for one of the numbered followers. A young woman comes—Alessandra thinks her name is Charlotte but doesn’t address her. “Bring me another,” she pants.
“Yes, master.” The young woman nods fervently, trying to hide a smile.
Alessandra scowls as soon as the woman leaves. That kind of enthusiasm disgusts her. She has a single purpose, one she has spent years trying to achieve—indeed, nearly a lifetime—and now that she is on the verge, she feels that kind of enthusiasm will only cause the discovery to filter through her fingers, mocking her as it seeps beyond her reach.
When the woman returns with another able body, Alessandra’s anima surges into her vision and it fractures again. She slams her hand into the wall, and the pain recedes the black from her sight.
“P-Please,” the body mumbles, “don’t kill me.”
Alessandra laughs, clutching a hand to her stomach. “Death is never intended, but life is not a guarantee.”
The shadow sits on its knees, crumpled over like an empty canvas sack. Everything aches with age, everything in the shadow’s body is telling it to leave. But it must keep going. It is a warden; it has a purpose to fulfill here.
Naked, the wounds on the subject’s skin ooze against the filth on the cell’s floor. Brown and deep crimson mix to create something shy of black. The shadow holds no envy for the process, but they preach no interference, so it sits and waits.
“Hm,” Alessandra hums, examining the paper in her hands with narrowed black eyes.
The shadow falls onto its side, the impact slamming its shoulder into its chin. The bones feel as if they’ve broken. Everything feels broken. The shadow bites its tongue. Everything in time.
Now, the shadow imagines t
he pressure of Alessandra’s incantation as it shreds the subject from form—her tiny mouth a wide “O.” Alessandra tilts her head. The pressure turns into pain for the shadow as Alessandra conjures still—deeper deeper, closer closer to the black-barbed nebulous thing within the subject. Alessandra collapses, heaves herself upright, and continues the spell, until the shadow watches the black thorns unfetter its nebulous prisoner.
When it is done, Alessandra stands over the shadow, inches from its face. The shadow claps. Alessandra’s breath is warm against the shadow’s cheeks. Eyes and hair engulfed in black. Ah yes, the shadow knows what Alessandra looks like all too well. It has seen her this close many times—too many times. The shadow wonders if Alessandra will fail in her task, then smiles inwardly. This is the woman who still fights, despite it; she will not give up so easily. The shadow laughs, a haunting chuckle. Alessandra grabs the shadow’s shoulders and shakes. The shadow’s laugh pitches. “Tell me, child. Tell me what you have learned.”
Alessandra’s black eyes waver, blue filling the center near the pupils. She gasps, struggles, releases her hold of the shadow’s shoulders. “It’s within us, isn’t it?” she huffs. “But it can be stopped.”
A whooshing of the air and the shadow grins. It feels it might enjoy watching what happens next. “The time has come upon us. Have you the strength to carry our will to fruition?”
Alessandra growls, then her eyes and hair return fully to her—clear blue eyes and sandy hair. The shadow knows Alessandra’s smile springs from the depths of her lost heart.
“Charlotte, right?” Alessandra twirls her hand with a flourish, tossing a bloody rag to the floor of the cavernous room. She must get the incantation to her followers, carefully. If the incantation falls into greedy hands, it might be worse than had she not shared the discovery at all. She licks her lips. The subjects are reborn, as they were intended—from Nature. The younger woman flinches and swings around to face her, then squares her shoulders and nods. “Make haste.” Alessandra smirks, reminding herself of a certain follower of hers with a love for the pretentious.
“Yes, master, of course.” Charlotte bows and shoots from the cell.
“Ah,” Alessandra leans against the wall, the darkness behind her eyes flickering back to life. She pinches her shoulder. “The young take orders too easily these days, don’t you think?” She stares at the subject, perched in the chair, and breathes a sigh of relief. Her conviction faltered, but now—just like the subject—is reborn.
An aged hand sweeps over a broad forehead, smearing the glistening pale skin with sweat. The long obsolete fan sways back and forth with a humming vibration, which is irking and yet soothing. If Verna stares at the blades long enough, she imagines them transforming into hands, forever striving to touch the faded rose-patterned wallpaper.
She resumes sorting the endless pile of papers Director Shannon insists they dispose of, since the vast majority of the files hold information about children Littlewood Orphanage took in during the Sisters’ War. Though Verna holds a strangely sentimental attachment to the files, she agrees that it is time to release them, as if the files themselves are capable of holding the children in their painful past.
Fragile peace invaded the land thirteen years ago, after the last battle of what people had named the Sisters’ War, since Alessandra and Florence Hilt were the opposing forces. Alessandra disappeared, and Florence was publicly punished by the Six—the secret society of the most powerful in either sect—of which she was a member. They used her as a scapegoat for the death and destruction wrought during the ten years of war by placing her in the White Sleep—a dream state. They announced a search for Alessandra, but after a year passed, a feigned hope grew that perhaps she’d died or at the very least would no longer trouble this world with her insatiable bloodlust.
Verna knows better than to believe in such fantasies. Alessandra Hilt is alive and stalking this world, waiting for when she can rise again. A humming in Verna’s bones that tells her so. She must have secret knowledge of the earth and its infinite crevices to have stayed hidden this long. Verna knows the prophecy; when she comes, it will be no surprise.
The Sisters’ War lasted eleven years—discord, even still—and devastated both sides. Now, unease pervades the next generation, those who grew up in the midst of it all. With no clear victor, and both armies all but obliterated, resolve came only in the form of vigilant caution. This discretion only heightened distrust and further fueled the division between the Lux and Nox, though the war itself was not between the two. Both Florence and Alessandra are Nox. While most of Alessandra’s army was Nox, Florence recruited many Lux.
Verna eyes the calendar on the wall, the one she made herself. Over today’s date is a circle but no words, a simple reminder that today is the fourteenth anniversary of taking Lilah under her guardianship, a child who plagues her life equally with discomfort and joy. The circumstances of the child’s guardianship haunt Verna, even in her waking state. She shouldn’t have taken her. As a Lux, it was against every rule of Littlewood Orphanage, but as a Guardian, she couldn’t deny the child her protection.
She pulls a crooked key from her pocket and unlocks a secret compartment in the back of one of the file cabinets that line the decrepit walls of the office. She never should have made it. Perhaps it was part of Verna’s rule abiding nature that bound her to create one. Perhaps it was something else entirely.
Pulling the file from the cabinet, she sits back at her desk. Listening only for a moment to the humming of the fan, she drags her fingertips across the slightly rolled edges of the file. Verna should destroy the file. Now. She should never have even made the child one. She was never a ward of the Littlewood Orphanage.
The weight of the paper in her hands comforts her; that day was no vision, no false firing of her imagination. Daydreams are singular and easily forgotten, vague and disjointed. This was not. It was real, as real as the humming of the fan or the sudden crippling ache in her chest as the memory rolls across her eyes.
She pushed past the heavy black doors, keenly aware of every footstep she made down the narrow hallway. She smiled at the sight of the freshly painted letters on her office door. They were bold and elegant and spelled her name so proudly:
Verna Crowne
Assistant Director
The pleasant smile faded as her eyes glanced over the towering stack of papers. She didn’t mind. She had received this title because the previous assistant director was killed rather brutally one morning while traveling to Littlewood Orphanage. These were the times. Though Verna pined after the position, she would never have wished such a thing on a fellow Lux.
Hours passed, imitating the slow descent of the raindrops sliding down her corner window. Meticulously, she filed. Each child’s inherent abilities and corresponding signa, bloodline, and when the Lux orphan was found were all laid out neatly within the confines of each case file.
Verna, as a Guardian, stayed close to the children throughout these troubling times. She provided the necessary protective charms that warded the building, making it impervious to attacks. Verna took extra care to explain to the older children what was going on and how it would affect all of them when the war finally settled. Her own daughter, Charlotte, was old enough to learn the latest news from school, which had to be held at the orphanage.
But unease had made a home within Verna. Often, she woke in the midnight hours wet with sweat, gripping her covers in fear. To try and assuage the overwhelming feeling, she would walk into Charlotte’s room. Seeing the steady rise and fall of her sleeping daughter’s easy breath gave her comfort. Still, the unease waited to reappear and steal back what peace Verna had found.
Verna sighed and scooted her chair to the stack of papers on her left. Counting aloud as she went, she fingered through them. Her tilted head made her look particularly young, and as she smiled, she tried to tell herself that today was not going to be hectic like yesterday. She would be organized so that Director Shannon couldn’t yell
at her.
She had come into Littlewood alone today; Director Shannon and two others were outside the city collecting children from a nearby town that had just been attacked. Though larger battles had mostly ended—warriors were becoming scarce—spontaneous attacks continued.
After covering her mouth with a frail hand to hide a yawn, a distinct smell percolated in the air. Verna froze. An aroma, a fragrance of sweat and blood, rushed her senses. A flash of heat warmed Verna’s body; she found it hard to breathe. Mechanically, she stood from the desk and walked toward her door, peering out into the hallway.
“Hello?” Her voice quivered.
Unable to stop herself, the aroma enticed her to move into the hallway and out into the lobby. She let the incantation course through her body, though she really didn’t have much of a choice. It was like floating in the ocean, at the mercy of its current.
A disheveled woman sat on one of the white chairs. She had dirt caked in her hair and a face smeared with blood. Seemingly unaware of the shocking appearance of her companion, a little girl nonchalantly sat next to her, swinging her legs.
Recognition slipped into Verna’s mind, a name graced the tip of her tongue. Just as she was about to speak, the thought was stolen from her mind’s grasp. Verna gazed at the woman, noticing how she didn’t seem at all distressed by the powerful spell she was casting to control Verna’s mind. Verna shuddered. This woman was far superior in anima than herself.
“You are a Guardian. You must protect her. Your life shields hers, forever.”
Verna felt as though she was no longer in Littlewood, but on a battlefield where this woman undoubtably belonged. The woman’s words rang in her ear as a command. Verna bowed. “Yes.”
Premonition Page 1
