Page 1 of Of Witches and Queens

1

MIA

Ophelia has picked up all my boys like flowers from a meadow. This one, that one… Now she has a bouquet of pretty, damaged boys—the boys who own my heart—and I have no idea how to get them back.

How to rescue them, when they don’t want to be rescued, the enchantment playing tricks on their minds, convincing them Ophelia is the one they want to be with, not me. How do you break such a spell? I need help, but who will believe me when the boys themselves are convinced that they are meant to be with her?

It’s starting to dawn on me that this may be an impossible mission. Ophelia got her way after all. I bet she expects me to leave the Academy now.

But she doesn’t know me all that well, just like I turned out not to know her, either. Impossible missions are my specialty—and by that, I don’t mean that I succeed in executing them, rather that I always embark on them as if I’m some unbeatable heroine who has never tasted defeat and has no fear of the dangers lurking ahead.

Maybe I am stupid like she keeps saying.

One thing I know, though, is that you don’t give up on the people you care for.

Says the girl who’d always thought her mother abandoned her. But no, my mother died, as I’ve found out recently, and anyway, the point is… To any outsider, it may look as if the boys are in love with Ophelia but I know better. I know about the enchantment, about how she’s siphoning their magic, slowly sucking them dry to make herself powerful—trying to become the most powerful of all witches, the Queen Witch, the Vasilissa. Come the Golden moon in two weeks, with her four elemental conduits in tow, she may be able to rule the world.

This isn’t a small thing. I need to tell others. I need all the help I can get to stop her.

But is there anyone powerful enough to do it? The Apollinari—my real family, as it turns out—is the most powerful witch family, and not many witches are left in the world.

Regardless, I need to warn someone.

Pulling on clothes, I grab my backpack with Ophelia’s diary in it—I carry it with me everywhere in case she takes it again from my room before I get a chance to examine it more closely and decipher the occult symbols in it—and head for the administration offices.

It feels weird to be passing outside classroom doors, skipping my classes. It’s also weird not to be around my boys, any of them, not to have them follow me, to protect me from Zoey’s Wicked Girls. I guess I’m on my own when it comes to that now, too.

It makes my eyes feel hot. It was like finding a family, one that really cared for me, and losing them again, one by one. I’d barely understood my feelings for them, barely realized they’d never hurt Ophelia by the time she came back and trapped them in her spell.

I round the corner of the school building and almost plow into a boy. A vampire, friend of Ashton’s.

“Percy.” I flail but he manages to step back. Thank God for inhumanly fast vampire reflexes. “Sorry.”

“Mia.” His face has that impassiveness so cultivated by his kind—by all the magical races, really, except perhaps for the werewolves who are more open and less standoffish. “I hadn’t noticed you.”

I resist the urge to roll my eyes. “How is Ash?”

“Ashton? Fine, I believe. We don’t see him much these days. Always running after skirts.” He glances at my jeans. “Well, after girls, anyway. If it’s not you, then it’s that other witch, Ophelia.”

My teeth are gritting. “You can stop being so dismissive. He’s under an enchantment cast by Ophelia.”

“Oh? Really?” He squints at me. “Jealous of her, are you?”

See? I knew this was how people would react if I told them. “Forget it, Percy.”

“Already done,” he mutters and walks away.

“Asshat,” I breathe and get back on the path to the offices. “I only wanted to know if Ash is okay, and you…” I take a shaky breath. “You don’t give a damn about him.”

“I heard you!” he calls from way behind me.

Damned vampire hearing.

“Can you hear me giving you the finger?” I whisper.

He says nothing else—nothing I can hear, anyway.

Just as well. I’m at the end of my wits, the end of my patience. I spent all night tossing and turning, trying to find a solution to this mess and finding none. Last thing I need is arrogant vampires mouthing off at me.

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