CHAPTER 2
Yup, it was official. I was going to die.
The scream wasn’t mine, but it might as well have been.
A few sporadic flashes of light illuminated the eerie darkness, revealing what was hidden inside.
Chaos.
I stared in rising horror as a young woman around my age conjured a cerulean orb of magic, only to be knocked off her feet a second later by a . . .
I blinked. Blinked again.
The forest of pine trees was alive. Every time a ball of magic lit up the night, the trees reacted, viciously attacking the magic wielder.
Another terrified scream punctuated the air, followed by a terrible snapping noise as roots shot from the ground and wrapped around the girl. She screamed again, only for a root to wind around her head and muffle the sound.
“Run!” a male voice shouted from nearby, and I glanced over to see him blast a tree with fire.
As the orange ball exploded against its side and started licking up the bark, an inhuman noise came from its depths, sounding way too much like an agonized wail.
Within seconds, the entire tree was up in flames, burning so hot that heat gusted across my face.
The stench of burning wood hit me, along with a scent combination that immediately turned my blood to ice.
Dirt. Decaying leaves. Despair.
The tree was dying.
“RUN!” the Fire Elemental bellowed again, nearly colliding with me as he charged past.
The foreboding presence of death kept me locked in place, all while my survival instincts fired off on all cylinders.
Run, hide, fight. Run, hide, fight. A part of me wanted to return to the beach, to the safe haven a mere step behind me.
It would be easy, so easy to hide, to resume my pitiful life of obscurity.
Another part wanted to save the dying tree and make sure the girl trapped by roots was okay.
I did neither of those things, knowing that this was a test. A trial. This was my initiation, and if I made the wrong choices, I would fail.
As I hesitated, my grandmother’s words came back to me. “Do whatever it takes to survive, Winter.”
Whatever it takes. Whatever it takes.
I reached up to grasp the invisible amulet around my neck, knowing what she’d want me to do.
Run.
Listening, I burst into action, using the flames from the dying tree to follow after the Fire Elemental. Every few yards, he would lob a fiery orb at the trees nearby, and they’d screech in fury. The more he did it, the angrier they became, until—
Crack. Groan. Snap.
One of the trees suddenly fell, narrowly missing me as it careened like an arrow toward the fleeing warlock.
With a thunderous boom, it hit the ground, and I lost sight of the warlock.
The impact shook the forest floor, so violently that I pitched forward, sprawling on my hands and knees.
Roots and rocks dug into my flesh, but I barely felt the pain, the world around me abruptly muting as I sensed death nearby.
I stopped breathing, my spine going rigid when I felt its phantom touch seconds later, coating my skin in goosebumps. But it wasn’t here for me. I started to tremble anyway, knowing that I was helpless, powerless against it. Whenever death came, it never left empty-handed.
Frozen with fear, I stayed where I was for several long moments.
Only when the fires burned out and plunged the forest into darkness once more, only when the stench of death finally faded away, did I try to move again.
My hearing returned, but the world was still hushed, as if Mother Nature herself had paused to observe what had just happened.
Please only be the tree, please only be the tree, I silently chanted to myself, unwilling to accept the worst case scenario.
Picking myself up, I followed the fallen tree’s length, moving slowly so I wouldn’t trip over a root.
Please, please, please.
I could barely see a few steps ahead of me but didn’t dare conjure an orb, my intuition warning me that the trees would attack me if I did.
They’d probably been enchanted to react to magic, so I forced myself to endure the suffocating darkness—darkness that had once felt like a friend to me but not for a very long time.
Now it felt like a malevolent stalker lying in wait.
When I reached the spot where I’d last seen the warlock, I swallowed hard and inched closer to the fallen tree.
Please.
One step. Two. The toe of my shoe struck something. Not a root or even the tree, but something that felt a lot like a limb. Like a body. Like—
“Dear ancestors.” I whirled around, clamping a hand over my mouth as bile surged up my throat.
It was the Fire Elemental. The tree had crushed him.
Even without visual confirmation, I knew he was dead.
This wasn’t the first time I’d dealt with the aftermath of death’s claim.
The hopeless despair sank deep into my bones, sucking the very life out of me.
Weakness stole through my body, and I waited for the feeling to ease its grip on me, torn by what to do next.
I should keep running, but . . . but someone was dead.
Even though I knew students died at Heartstone Academy every year, seeing it firsthand was a shock to my system.
He didn’t even get the chance to prove himself. Didn’t even get to step inside the hallowed halls of the prestigious school he’d wanted so badly to attend.
Just like that, his life had been snuffed out. All those years of training, of preparing, of hoping. For what? For this?
Doubt assailed me again, even greater than before. I couldn’t do this. The stakes were too high. Gran would understand if I backed out, if I returned home where it was safe. Right?
Before I’d even finished the thought, I knew the answer.
I was a Mayweather. A Mayweather. Mayweathers never backed down, and they most certainly never hid from a challenge.
We might have been forced out of our community ten years ago, but Gran and even my parents had never stopped fighting to prove their worth.
The Mayweather bloodline was legendary in the witch community, going back decades, centuries.
That reputation was sacred, even more so now that it was hanging on by a thread.
I could restore that reputation. I had to restore it. It was my solemn duty as a Mayweather to protect the family name. Nothing else was more important.
Including my life.
With that reminder burning in my gut once more, I shoved aside my doubts and forced myself to move again.
Not toward the fallen warlock, but away, knowing that the longer it took me to reach the school, the more I would have to prove.
Portaling wasn’t an option since I had no clue where the campus actually was.
I could levitate to at least acquire a bird’s eye view of the terrain, but doing so would expend a lot of energy—not to mention the trees might not approve.
Walking it was.
As I left the warlock behind, I focused on covering as much ground as I could without attracting attention.
I’d spent the majority of the past decade in obscurity, so that shouldn’t be a problem.
I was used to blending in with humans, to living in the shadows.
I was a shadow, slipping through the trees without detection.
I might not be buddy-buddy with my magical affinity anymore, but it cloaked me all the same, allowing me to access its dark world.
With each passing step, the night’s foreboding chill grew, the wind moaning through the trees like a melancholy ghost. Intuition tugged me northeast—not a heightened sense of direction but something deeper. A knowing. An awakening. One that often felt sinister in nature.
This way, it breathed, urging me onward with cold prodding fingers. This way to your destiny.
Lured by the telltale rush of flowing water, I decided to follow the river upstream, walking along its rocky edge and picking up speed despite the sharp incline.
This wasn’t so bad. As long as I didn’t use magic, I could—
I was suddenly yanked into the freezing river, gasping in shock only for my mouth to fill with water. As my head went under, I instinctively pushed toward the surface, but something shoved me down deeper. I slammed into the riverbed, unable to see up from down through the dark current.
Sharp rocks dug into my flesh, ripping my new uniform and skin to shreds. My lungs screamed for air, and I flailed my limbs, desperate to reach the surface. When I couldn’t find it, something dark—darker than the churning waters trying to drown me—stirred within my veins.
Use me, it said, the words a soft hiss of command. When I ignored it, still grasping and clawing to reach the surface, the darkness hissed more urgently, Use me!
I stubbornly clenched my jaw, refusing to give in, refusing to drown. I was stronger than this. I was a Mayweather.
USE ME.
No! I internally shouted at the darkness, deciding then and there that drowning wasn’t such a bad way to die after all. All I had to do was swallow, and it would be over. No more responsibility. No more guilt. No more pain. I would be free of it all.
At peace.
A word I didn’t have the right to utter. To feel.
What was I thinking? I couldn’t die this way. I didn’t deserve a peaceful watery grave.
Use meeeee.
It was the sense of despair, the chill creeping into my very soul that finally weakened my resolve. Death was near, seeking out a new target.
Only this time, his target was me.
With the threat of my impending doom so close, my survival instincts kicked into overdrive.
Before I could stop it, the darkness in my veins surged up, ready to strike out at anything and everything.
Fear gripped me, not because death was breathing down my neck, but because I was about to expose the part of me I’d carefully locked away.
The part of me that had a mind of its own, that was dangerous.
A scream built in my head, one of terror, of helplessness.
I couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t control it.