Page 6 of Phoenix Academy: Madness

I turned my face away, unable to bear it anymore. Minutes pass. Eventually, he sighed and shook his head.

"She was too sick to be saved."

"You killed her," I said, voice hollow and rough from so many tears. "You fucking monster."

He looked at me with lifeless eyes. "She's freed now." To his followers he said, "Take her body and put it near the bonfire. We'll burn it with the others. The older girl is next."

I couldn't watch them drag her away, all the fight and vigor gone from her body. I close my eyes instead. When the madmen took me, I flexed my wrists so that the knots they tied around my wrists were as loose as possible. I reached out with my magic and called the little mice and bugs up from the floorboards, coaxing them to gnaw at my bonds.

Lizzy whimpered again, little sobs escaping her chest, and I promised myself that I would free her from the Heretic.

He held the first and biggest of his knives above me, prepared to do his worst. I flexed my fingers towards the row of knives, coaxing one towards me on the back of a thousand ants, determined to free Lizzy. I formed a plan: I would throw the knife to her, shove the Heretic in the fire, fight off his followers for as long as possible, and scream at her to run as soon as she escaped.

It was a good plan. A solid plan.

But little teeth chew through rope slowly.

And I forgot that the blood he took from me would make me weak. Magic flows through witch's veins, a fact the Heretic knew very well, and the less blood we have, the less magic we have.

By the third cut I was biting back my screams, determined not to scare Lizzy anymore.

When the fifth and sixth came I could no longer swallow the pain. The room filled with my voice raised in agony. I became like a wild animal, unable to control myself.

Eventually I couldn't feel my fingertips. Then my fingers at all. Then my mind began to wander.

As he filled bowls with my blood, I felt myself slip away. The pain became so much that I embraced unconsciousness.

Mother forgive me, but I left Lizzy behind in that room, watching my father bleed my body dry.

Chapter 3

Darkness.Blackness. An end to the agony. No more pain.

I floated somewhere far from my body, barely aware of what had happened to it, grateful that it was over.

Then I remembered Lizzy.

And what the Heretic planned to do to her.

Somehow, despite the pain waiting for me, I made it back to my body. I returned to unending agony, to pinpricks of torture all across my skin, to a crackling heat that consumed me.

I woke up to flames.

To the disgusting smell of charred human flesh.

My own skin crackling and melting with heat.

He put me on the fucking bonfire.

Rage filled me, incomprehensible. The desire to sink my fingers into the Heretic, to call magic to me and make him bend the knee, overwhelmed me. I wanted todestroyhim.

I woke in the fire as someone new. I was no longer gentle Ariana Wolfe, witch on the run, gleam in her mother's eye, but instead a creature made of pain and fire. Baring my teeth in a snarl, I pushed up to my feet, stood on the bonfire made of burning wood and human flesh, and was reborn in the flames.

Flames that inexplicably turned as blue as the sky at noon. Full of feral magic, the unnaturally blue fire curled around my ankles and ran up my arms, dancing across my burned skin, somehow cool and comforting at the same time. I felt my body heal, charred flesh turning pink and brand new, scars disappearing in a flash.

There was a sound behind me, a whimper followed by a string of curses. "Fucking bitch-ass no-good motherfucker left me by the bonfire, that fucking cunt, I'll deadass kill him, I'll..."

I turned to face the man, head cocked to the side, blue flames dancing in the hair that grew from my new body and brushed against my neck. He stared at me, in awe and horror, and I smiled, knowing I looked like a goddamned mad woman.

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