Chapter 1
One
Veda rips from the root as many spider lilies as she can carry and throws them into her makeshift firepit.
Drenched from rain and dirty from weeding, she watches the crackling flames turn to ash.
Sunbeams filter through the forest, painting the trees with a smoky golden glow.
The hushed moment lulls her fears into dormancy until they reignite with the realization that fire purifies; it doesn’t always destroy.
She extinguishes the last of the embers in favor of a trip back to her cabin for a hot shower, from which Veda emerges in a cloud of steam a short time later.
She grabs a towel, noticing the welts on her brown skin from the trek through the forest. After gathering her thick copper-brown hair into a bun, she carefully spreads her arms in front of the mirror.
The Sanguis Curse slumbers in her blood.
Fatal if not for the bewitching magic that keeps it sidelined, the curse feeds on her energy, growing stronger.
For the past six years, purple bruises have deepened into angry clusters of raised skin.
Black veins have branched like fractals, curving around her shoulder, inching toward her throat.
Every avenue for a cure has ended in failure, meaning that, one day, the Sanguis Curse will consume her.
But her curser’s blood fills a cyst on her ribs, a reminder of a mistake that damns the culprit to die with Veda . . . if they don’t kill her first.
Wincing, Veda rubs salve on what she can reach.
Magic activates at first touch, cooling her skin and easing the pain.
It’s a temporary fix that helps her get through each day.
She hides her mortality beneath jeans and long sleeves to avoid the looks and questions, then swallows a pain elixir, another for nutrients, and makes oatmeal to combat the impending nausea.
She’s halfway finished eating when the blue gemstone sitting in a glass jar on the table pulses twice before glowing bright.
Rendered obsolete by modern technology, lapis stone messages were once the only method of instant communication when secrecy was paramount.
Ominous uncertainty knots her stomach. Veda picks it up.
A shock of magic races up her arm as a familiar voice projects from the stone:
“Come quickly.”
It goes inert.
“Shit.”
Veda grabs a jacket and sets off.
Dense, tall trees create a canopy overhead, casting shadows across Veda’s path.
A breeze rustles the trees as chirping birds dart to and fro. Lined with ivy and fern, the uneven trail is a worn path of her own creation. The scent of rich, damp earth is calming, the atmospheric fog and steady drizzle, peaceful. Without a spider lily sighting, the walk is a perfect distraction.
Veda emerges into the pasture behind Weston Academy.
She’s not fifty yards from the tree line when the first chicken scuttles past her feet.
More follow, scattering across the field, pecking at the ground in noisy pursuit of critters.
Their liberator, Peter Weston, waits by the gate, his fair skin flushed from time spent under the morning sun.
Peter is an intentional man. That he’s straying from routine puts Veda on edge—a tension he tries to ease with a crooked smile. With green eyes, tousled blond hair, and soft yet strong features, the tall, slim Seer is handsome in all the ways that count, and none that soothe her nerves.
“Who died?” Veda asks cautiously.
“No one.” His smile falters. “Oh shit. I only used the stone message because I thought you were already in the greenhouse without your phone. Sorry I scared you.”
“It’s fine.” Veda wants to relax, but the anchored unease in her bones won’t allow it.
Gaze sharpening, he gently tilts her chin to the side. “What happened to your face?”
“I didn’t want to waste the blue moon, so I went foraging.” She winces. “There were hundreds of spider lilies along the path about half a mile north of the cottage. I got spooked, it started raining, and I ran into a tree branch or five.”
“Tomorrow is the last day of March, but spider lilies bloom in late summer,” Peter muses thoughtfully. “It’s too much of a coincidence to ignore.”
“I know. I figured I’d talk to Gabriel after he drops off August.”
“You do that, and I’ll ask a forestry technician I know to guide them out there.”
“Okay.” Veda takes off her heavy satchel and slings it over his shoulder. The weight doesn’t faze him. “My bag’s still wet. I wanted to collect more, but what I did gather is safe and sound, ready to make anything the school needs.”
Peter nudges her. “They could use a lesson from the best brewer I know.”
“Ms. Everly is a good brewing master,” Veda says, dismissing him with a wave as they walk toward the school.
Weston Academy is a single-story brick-and-stone building with high ceilings and dozens of windows.
It sits on a small butte, with steps shaped from the hillside and a large wraparound deck where students linger.
Peter pauses at the top of the steps and squeezes Veda’s shoulder.
The chill of his spell tingles her skin before she can stop him.
Soreness vanishes like it was never there.
While the price for magic isn’t always equal or fair for Mages or those without amulets to absorb the cost of their spells, Seers like Peter are a minority who can use magic without physical consequences.
How remains a mystery, though theories point to a specific gene cluster activated when Sight—the precognitive ability to glimpse the past, present, or future—manifests.
Seers cannot brew potions or imbue magic into anything except amulets, and they’re highly sensitive to magical neutralizing agents, but they don’t suffer chills from casting light spells, broken bones from hexes, or organ failure from curses.
Sight isn’t a choice. It comes with a lifetime of discrimination, stereotyping, and unchecked harassment by some of the Mage majority that sees them as dangerous abominations.
“You could get in trouble for that,” Veda mutters. “Then Khadijah is going to be mad as hell when enforcers kick down your door to arrest you for a casting violation . . . again.”
Peter smiles at the mention of his wife. “They’d probably take her in, too, for mouthing off.”
Veda shakes her head, amused. “True.”
“Besides, that healing spell was weak enough for a Mage to cast without major injury, which makes it legal. As long as Seers don’t display overt magical superiority, we’re safe.”
“I know. It doesn’t stop me from worrying.”
Calling Peter a friend doesn’t quite match the true nature of the bond they forged years ago, when he sat beside her at orientation during freshman year at Crestwood University.
It was the first year the campus integrated Mages and Seers, and tensions were high.
He spoke first, cautious but polite, and their conversation turned genuine the moment Veda argued that integration should have happened years earlier.
Born in that moment, their friendship grew during intellectual debates and bittersweet nostalgic ramblings about her childhood, and rooted deep enough to endure after Peter returned to Proventia to take over Weston Academy from his retiring mother, while Veda moved to Philadelphia for medical school.
He is the closest thing to a sibling she’s had.
“Are you okay?” Peter asks.
Veda doesn’t trust easily, a conditioned reflex after losing so much. Even though she’s never doubted Peter, the answer is complicated. Best to keep her feelings buried and stick to the script.
“I’m fine.”
Peter’s timing either protects or prepares Veda—the hardest part is recognizing the difference. Outside his office, with a hand hovering over the knob, he becomes unusually cryptic. “This isn’t an emergency in the traditional sense.”
Before she can ask what the hell that means, Peter pushes open the door and gestures for her to enter.
More suspicious than wary, she stays close to the wall.
Peter’s office is small and well lit, with neutral walls, oak floors, sparse furniture, and an antique ceramic tea set that serves as an icebreaker for parent meetings.
Standing in front of his wall of bookshelves is an older, petite woman who emanates an air so superior, Veda regrets not rinsing the mud off her boots before entering the room.
The woman wears long deep-purple pants and a matching knee-length embroidered kameez with gold earrings and jewelry, and her makeup is as perfect as her silky black hair—streaked with gray at the temples and pulled back with a vintage gold hair clip adorned with a colorful array of tiny amulets.
Freckles dot her brown skin, and crow’s-feet indent the corners of round brown eyes.
Both speak to her age and only heighten the powerful presence she exudes.
The woman’s pensive focus is fixed on a target.
Veda follows her gaze to a child no older than six occupying the chair in front of Peter’s desk.
Despite dangling feet, the boy reminds Veda of a micro-adult.
With deep-tan skin, freckles, bright-hazel eyes, and dark-brown hair gelled and parted severely to one side, he carries a cautious, curious tension while maintaining a level of stillness children his age rarely possess.
He’s dressed in the standard school uniform—a white button-down, fitted black pants, and leather dress shoes—and his black knitted bow tie stands out as much as the standard blazer neatly draped over the back of his seat in an oddly tidy act.
“Apologies for keeping you both waiting. Veda, this is my godson, Antaris Fowler.” Peter’s introduction holds an uncertainty that earns him a quizzical glance from the child. “Today is his first day of school.”
Unsure how to greet Antaris, Veda settles for an awkward “Welcome to Weston.”