Page 27 of The Black Witch

I’m cast into a troubled confusion. “No,” I force out as I try to unobtrusively tug my hand away. He holds firm.

“Has she been wandtested?” His question to my aunt comes out thick as dark honey.

“Yes, several times,” my aunt assures him. “She’s powerless.”

“Are yousure?” he asks, his unflinching eyes boring down on Aunt Vyvian.

My confident, unflappable aunt visibly wilts under Vogel’s penetrating stare. “Yes...yes, quite.” Aunt Vyvian falters. “Her uncle assured me of it. He had her formally tested again only last year.”

I look to my aunt, astonished by both her cowering behavior and her words. No one wandtested me a year ago. I haven’t been tested since I was a small child.

Why did Uncle Edwin lie?

Vogel’s black void presses into me, warm and relentless, and I inwardly shrink back from it, eyeing his fiery stare with mounting trepidation.

Why does he unnerve me so much when Aunt Vyvian and so many other Mages clearly worship the ground he walks on?

Vogel releases my hand and I pull it back protectively, fingers repeatedly clenching, trying to throw off the disturbing feel of him.

“What a pity,” he laments, reaching up to touch my face with deft, artist’s fingers. I resist the urge to recoil. He tilts his head in question and breathes deeply, as if smelling the air. “And yet...there is something of Carnissa’s essence about her. It’sstrong.”

“Ah, yes,” my aunt assents with a wistful smile, “shedoeshave some of Mother in her.” Aunt Vyvian proudly launches into a description of my musical accomplishments, my easy acceptance into University.

Vogel’s half listening to her, his eyes fixed on my hands. “You’re not fasted,” he says to me, the words flat and oddly hard.

Defiance flares, deep in my core. I look straight at him. “Neither are you.”

“Good Heavens, child,” a neatly bearded Council member puts in, a golden CouncilMpinned to his tunic. “Mage Vogel’s apriest. Ofcoursehe’s not fasted.” The Council Mage shakes his head and titters a nervous, apologetic laugh toward Priest Vogel.

Vogel ignores him. “She needs to be well fasted,” he says to my aunt, his eyes tight on mine.

“She will be,” Aunt Vyvian assures him.

Vogel briefly turns to my aunt. “To someone of considerable power.”

She smiles conspiratorially. “Of course, Marcus. She’s under my wing now.”

“Has she met Lukas Grey?”

Aunt Vyvian leans to whisper something into Vogel’s ear, her stiff skirts rustling. The other members of their circle fall into easy conversation with each other.

I barely hear them, distracted by the feel of Marcus Vogel’s penetrating stare.

The sound of a boisterous group entering finally draws my attention away.

Fallon Bane sweeps into the room. She’s surrounded by a throng of handsome military apprentices in slate-gray uniforms, as well as her military guard and a few other officers decked out in soldier black. Orbiting them is a smattering of lovely young women.

But none is more beautiful than Fallon.

If she possessed a gown made of the same fabric as mine, she quickly abandoned it. The lush gown she now wears is a spectacular, glittering affair that flies in screaming defiance of the accepted dress code—scandalously purple on the edge of black, rather than black on the edge of purple. The two military men she’s flanked by possess her same features, stunning eyes and smug grin. They must be Fallon’s brothers—one of them taller, his uniform black, while the other wears military-apprentice gray. And they both bear five stripes of silver on their arms.

Fallon instantly zeroes in on me. She lifts a hand as if taunting me, and sends a spiral of smoke rising up that flashes a rainbow of colors. The crowd erupts into delighted “oohs” and “aahs” as all the attention in the room pivots toward her. The older military men in our circle eye her with wary deliberation. Military apprentices aren’t supposed to use magic unless they have permission—it can be grounds for dismissal from our Mage Guard.

The military commander near my aunt gestures toward the officer beside him with a subtle patting of the air—let it go. My head starts to throb. Apparently Fallon Bane isn’t just powerful. It seems she exists independent of all the usual rules.

Fallon jerks her wand, and the colored smoke disappears in a riot of multicolored sparking. The young people surrounding her laugh and applaud.

Fallon resheathes her wand, narrows her eyes at me, leans in toward her taller black-clad brother and murmurs something as the others listen in. They all give each other looks of surprise, then turn to peer at me with expressions of amused disgust.

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