Page 124 of Princess Avenged

Ember

“Ember! Hide!” Mom yells. “In the cellar! Now!”

I open my mouth to object—Mom can be so extra sometimes—but her eyes are wide, full of terror. Serious terror.

She tosses the vial of blood she just drew from my arm. It lands in the fireplace and she smashes the glass with the poker, and my blood evaporates in the lingering embers.

“What are you waiting for?” she yells as she runs to the door to make sure it’s locked. “Cellar!”

This isn’t a drill. It’s the real thing, even though I have no idea what that thing is, only that she’s been preparing me for it since…forever.

Heart galloping, I scramble past her and into her bedroom, and as I enter the room, her massive armoire shifts to the side, like a feather blown in the breeze. A brass handle appears on one of the thick pine floorboards, just like it does every time she’s run these drills.

The handle is unnaturally cold in the hot humid air, and when I touch it the edges of the cellar door appear in the floor like magic.

Not like magic. It is magic. Magic I don’t understand, and my mother refuses to even name. I’ve had little contact with other people outside Mom, but I’ve read enough books and seen enough TV to know that the things my mother can do are not normal.

“Faster!” Mom yells, her arms stretched wide above her. “I can’t hold them off for long!”

I want to ask who “they” are, but I don’t. Tugging on the handle, I pull up the door and quickly descend into the cold, dark space of the cellar, and then take a few steps back from the ladder as I wait for my mom to join me.

Above, the door slams shut and steals the light.

“Mom!” I reach for the ladder to climb back up to her, but it’s gone.

Did I descend the illusion of a ladder, or can she make physical things disappear just like she can move that heavy armoire?

“Mom!” My scream scrapes my throat, but gets no response.

In the blink of an eye, the cracks of light around the cut floorboards vanish, and the armoire lands above me with a thud, moving back into position and landing as if accidentally dropped. Not my mother’s style.

The space around me glows an ethereal deep blue, like I’m submerged in illuminated smoke, but the glow is thicker than smoke, more like a heavy liquid, and then it dissipates, plunging me back into darkness.

“Where is she?” asks a loud voice above. An unnatural voice, distorted, deep and menacing.

“Who?” my mother answers.

A slam echoes. Dust and dirt falls around me as our house shakes.

“You will pay for your disobedience!”

My mother screams. At least I think it’s my mother, and the piercing sound hurts my ears and stabs my heart. Then the bloodcurdling sound fades, as if all the air behind it was consumed.

I pry my hands off my ears, not sure how they got there.

“Where is she?” another voice shouts and it echoes in my bones.

Who are they looking for?

Me?

Still in total darkness, I want to scream out for my mother, but I’m choked by fear that makes me feel weak and childish. A fourteen-year-old—fifteen in seven months—shouldn’t be cowering in a cellar while her mother is in danger above, especially since she’s doing it for me. I need to save Mom from whatever monstrous beings attacked our house, attacked her.

Hands in front of me, I search the space, heart racing, panic rising inside me.

I’ve been down here so many times during drills that I know it by heart. I reach for the stone foundation to get my bearings, my nostrils filling with musty, humid air as I step forward. The wall isn’t as close as I expect and I fight to calm down as I stumble farther and farther, expecting my hands to strike damp stones at any moment.

But I can’t seem to reach the edge of the room. I turn back, moving toward the middle where the ladder and trap door were.

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