Page 52 of The Black Witch

“What have you beendoing,then?”

“What do you mean?”

“At your uncle’s house!”

I glare at her, frustration boiling over. “Tending the garden, taking care of the animals.” I’m careful not to mention the violins. Females aren’t supposed to apprentice as luthiers, and I don’t want to get Uncle Edwin in trouble with these horrible people. “I read, make herbal remedies. And...and sometimes I make wooden toys...”

“Toys?”

“Little animal figurines, mostly.” I shrug. “Sometimes doll furniture. My uncle sells them at the market...”

The Elfhollen, who have been standing very still and regarding me coldly, venture small looks of surprise at each other.

“You are being evasive!” the sorceress grinds out as she points an accusatory finger at me. “Arm yourself, Gardnerian!”

One of the sorceress’s underlings steps forward and hands me a smooth, polished wand of Red Oak.

Commander Vin points to a table across the room, where a small, unlit candle in a brass holder is placed. “You will now produce a flame.”

I look down at the wand in my hand then back at her, dumbfounded. “How?”

“Mage Gardner, do not feign ignorance with me! It is the simplest of spells!”

“I don’tknowany spells!”

“Bring her the grimoire, Myn!” the sorceress barks in the direction of her underling.

Myn brings me a book and flips the worn pages open. “Aim your wand and speak these words,” she instructs stiffly.

I look the words over. They seemed vaguely familiar. Like something from a dream.A dream with fire.

I lift the wand awkwardly and point it at the candle.“Illiumin...”I begin, my voice high and shaky.

Commander Vin lets out a sound of impatient disgust. “Elloren Gardner!” she barks. “You are holding the wand incorrectly. You must make contact with the palm, or the wand energy cannot flow through you.”

I rearrange the wand so that one end is pressing against my palm and point it at the candle once more. My hand shaking, I lift the grimoire and begin to speak the words of the candle-lighting spell.

As soon as the words roll off my lips, a pure, crackling energy begins to prick at the balls of my feet, and the image of an immense tree bursts into the back of my mind. I gasp as a much larger jolt of energy shoots up through me toward the wand, slams against it and then violently and painfully ricochets backward through me.

I drop the wand and it falls to the floor with a sharp clank.

Stunned, I looked over at the candle.

Nothing. Not even a tendril of smoke. But my arm aches as if it’s been burned from within.

What just happened?

Lachlan Grey and the other Gardnerian soldiers look heavily disappointed. The sorceresses and Elfhollen seem to be breathing sighs of relief. Only Commander Vin appears momentarily unnerved as she stares, eyes riveted on the painful wand arm I’m flexing to quell the discomfort.

“Well,” Commander Vin begins, her momentarily rattled expression gone, her face once again impassive as she addresses Lukas’s father. “It would appear, Lachlan, that Mage Gardner is definitivelynotthe next Black Witch.”

“I did try to tell you,” I murmur, the pain in my arm having morphed into a throbbing ache.But that monstrous energy. What was that?

“Elloren Gardner,” Lukas’s father formally announces, “you are hereby placed at Gardnerian Wand Level One.”

The lowest level possible—no magic whatsoever.

I stare at him as certainty rises within me like black water.

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