LITMIR.BIZ

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at the stranger looking back at me from the full-length ornate mirror.

      We’re in the luxurious bedroom Aunt Vyvian has given me, the crystalline doors and the sunroom’s windows propped open, a balmy ocean breeze wafting in on the night air, the white kittens tussling on my bed. I’ve met with Paige a number of times over the past few days, lunching with her and Aunt Vyvian twice in the city and shopping together once for shoes. I greatly prefer her company to both Echo’s and Fallon’s.

      For the past hour, Mage Florel has been primping and painting me while Aunt Vyvian stands watch, arms crossed. My aunt directs Mage Florel with the seriousness of a master painter overseeing a work of vital importance, and before long, it seems as if I’m not really in the room. As if I’m staring at someone else, disbelief washing over me.

      The messy hair I’ve never known what to do with now hangs past my shoulders, woven into intricate braids, my eyes rendered large and mysterious by heavy makeup. My eyebrows, which have been plucked and shaped, heighten the effect. My lips are now full and scarlet, my cheekbones accented with blush. It’s amazing—all of the unpleasant, sharp lines of my face transformed into a vision of powerful elegance. And that’s not all—my ears and neck are graced with gold-set emeralds, and the gown Mage Florel made for me...

      It’s breathtaking. The subtly woven vines appear and disappear as the fabric moves, the shimmering tunic like a second skin flowing out over the underskirt.

      My grandmother, more than any other woman, was the standard bearer of Gardnerian beauty. Known as “The Black Witch” by our enemies, she was one of the most powerful Gardnerian Mages ever. Intellectually brilliant, artistically gifted, stunningly beautiful and a ruthlessly effective commander of our military forces—she was all of these things.

      And I don’t just resemble her. I’m her absolute spitting image.

      “Yes,” Aunt Vyvian breathes, “that will do. I think our work here is finished, Heloise.” She gets up and smiles broadly. “Elloren, you will come down to the party in an hour’s time. Paige will escort you.” She turns to Paige. “Bring her down the central staircase. I want her to make an entrance.” My aunt pauses to take me in once more, then leaves with Mage Florel, the two women chatting amiably as they go.

      I go back to staring at myself in the mirror, dumbstruck.

      “You must be so proud,” Paige says reverently. “Your grandmother was such a great woman. You must have a calling to follow in her footsteps, Elloren, or else the Ancient One wouldn’t have blessed you with her looks. Wait until everyone sees you!”

      * * *

      I follow Paige through the winding hallways, populated only by the occasional, harried Urisk maid rushing past and deferentially ignoring us.

      As we step out onto a cherrywood-banistered mezzanine, I feel my throat go dry. I pause at the crest of a sweeping staircase and look down over a mammoth, circular hall.

      A sea of important-looking Gardnerians lies before us, uniformly garbed in black. Roughly half of them are in military uniform, most high-ranking, a few wearing the silver-edged cloaks of the magically powerful.

      First, there are a few curious glances our way. Then someone gasps. A hush falls over the room.

      I blink down at them, distracted by the enormous chandelier that dominates the foyer—hundreds of candles set on the branches of a carved, inverted frostbirch tree hung with leaf-shaped crystals. It suffuses the entire room with a dancing, changeable glow.

      My eyes circle around the foyer, my gaze drawn toward a man standing in its center. He’s tall and slender and wearing a long, dark priest’s tunic, the image of a white bird emblazoned on his chest. He’s younger than most priests, with compelling razor-sharp features, a high forehead and straight black hair that falls to his shoulders. His green eyes are so intense and vivid, they seem to glow white-hot, as if lit from within.

      He’s staring at me with a look of recognition so strong, it throws me.

      An image bursts into view—the scorched shell of a tree, black limbs rising up against a barren sky.

      Sucked into the image’s dark void, I grasp at the balcony for support.

      The tree flickers then sputters out.

      I squint up at the chandelier and let out a deep breath. Perhaps a trick of the light. It had to be a trick of the light.

      Heart pulsing, I glance back down at the priest. He’s still staring at me with disconcerting familiarity. My aunt is standing close beside him. She beckons me to join their circle with one graceful, outstretched hand, her dark tunic and skirts winking sapphire.

      Paige puts her hand on my shoulder, her voice soft and encouraging. “Go ahead, Elloren.”

      Feeling rattled, I force one foot in front of the other and focus on the rich, emerald carpeting of the stairs that mutes my footsteps and blessedly keeps me from slipping on my new, slick heels, my hand tight on the shiny railing. The cherrywood steadies me, the source tree solid and strong.

      As I step off the last stair, the wide-eyed, appreciative crowd parts, and soon I’m standing before the young priest. The image of the lifeless tree sputters to life once more. Thrown, I blink hard to clear the image, and it rapidly fades to nothing.

      There’s something so wrong here. It’s like I’m standing before a deep forest, everyone sure that nothing’s amiss. But a wolf is waiting in the shadows.

      I meet the priest’s overpowering stare.

      “Elloren,” my aunt beams. Her hand sweeps toward him. “This is Marcus Vogel. He sits on the Mage Council with me and may well be our next High Mage. Priest Vogel, my niece, Elloren Gardner.”

      Marcus Vogel reaches out with serpentine grace, takes my hand and leans to kiss it, fascinated curiosity lighting his gaze.

      I fight the urge to slink back.

      His skin is oddly warm. Almost hot. And he’s looking at me as if he can see clear into the back of my head to the image of the tree still reverberating there.

      “Elloren Gardner,” he croons, his voice unexpectedly throaty. There’s a subtle, seductive quality to him that sets off a probing heat deep in my center—like an eerie invasion. I tense myself against it.

      Vogel closes his eyes, smiles and takes a deep breath. “Her power. It courses through your veins.” He opens his eyes, his gaze now riveted on my hand. He traces a finger languidly over the skin of it, and an uncomfortable shiver works its way up my spine. Vogel lifts his gaze to mine, eyes intent, his voice a lull. “Can you feel it?”

      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 you sure?” 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,

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