Without warning, a large oak, blackened and rotting from death, snapped and landed on the unsuspecting guard.
I watched as death tore through the grove, withering all vegetation in the wave of destruction that passed over.
More cracks like thunder sounded, and trees around us began to shake, split, snap, and fall violently to the ground. My magic had killed again. It felt cold and wrong. But there wasn’t time to dwell on it. I pushed myself shakily to my feet, wavering and barely able to stand, but still, I forced myself forward to Mhari’s side. Blood caked the fur of her shoulder. I looked around us for the next attack and saw that the fallen trees protected us from the sight of the other guards in front of us.
“Mhari, can you hear me?” I asked and noticed how weak my voice was, how it felt like an effort just to speak, as I pushed down as hard as I could on the wound to slow the blood flow. She lifted her head from the ground and nodded, letting out a pitiful whine.
“You’re bleeding. You’ve been shot,” I stated. She might not have been able to speak in her beast form, but her eyes said clearly enoughno shit, “Right, yeah, you know that.”
The shouting from behind us grew louder again, and there were calls for a medic from in front of us. Mhari looked at me with determination in her eyes and shrugged me off as she slowly and shakily got to her legs.
“I don’t think you should be getting up,” I said, panicked.
What were we going to do? The roots were clearly no longer keeping the guards at our rear at bay, and the fallen trees in front of us were as much a hindrance to our escape as they were a barrier keeping the guards ahead from reach us. And I wasn’t sure I could even walk out of the grove, given how weak I was. My magic was depleted past any point I had ever gone before. I felt the danger of complete magical depletion creeping over me.
“That will do,” a familiar voice rang out behind us. We both spun around to see President Minerva walking into view. “Stand down, girls,” she commanded when Mhari growled threateningly. I was truly exhausted; I had no more magic left to give, not if I wanted to keep living. Standing on my own two legs was a challenge alone; any more magical output and I’d risk death. “This test, unfortunately, did not go as originally planned,” she said.
“What?” I asked, confused, and Mhari echoed me with another growl.
President Minerva smirked. “A test to force you to reproduce the same magic from yesterday,” she explained. “Ana underwent the same challenge. When—” she paused as if for dramatic effect— “pushed,” she emphasised, leaving me to only imagine just how my friend had been pushed to use her magic, “all the blood witch was capable of was putting a handful of guard to sleep. However, your shifter friend was an unanticipated addition, as was your ability to flee from the rooftop, and as such—"
“Shut up!” I yelled, my anger giving me the strength to raise my voice. President Minerva’s face soured at being interrupted.
“You’re lying! The Princess would never allow this,” I accused confidently. I could have been hurt. Selene wouldn’t allow me to be harmed. She wouldn’t put me through something like this. She wouldn’t be so cruel. She loved me.
“Where is she?” I demanded.
It was a lie. A trick to get us to give up without a fight. Not that either of us could put up much more resistance, but President Minerva obviously wasn’t willing to risk it.
I glanced at the dead grove around me—the blackened trees, weak, crumbling, fallen. It scared even me. Did it scare President Minerva?
“Where is the Princess?” I demanded again.
“Here,” Selene answered as she stepped into view beside President Minerva.
A wave of relief washed over me at the sight of Selene, and I began to take an exhausted, shaking step forward towards her. My movement and relief instinctual—until the reality of what Selene’s presence meant.
Selene knew of thistest.
5. Betrayal is Cold Baby.
Persephone Flores
I was stunned. It couldn’t be. My legs felt weaker and heavier. The ground felt like it moved beneath me, my world thrown off balance.
Selene was dangerous, had always been so, but not to me—not really. She wouldn’t truly hurt me, would never do permanent harm, and she certainly would never allow someone else to hurt me.
That’s what I thought, what I had been so sure of from the start. But then came the realisation that this was all part of some planned event—that she had been the reason that the Royal Guard was not there to protect me. Not because they were busy protecting her, but because she must have sent them away.
That she knew when she left in the morning that, come the afternoon, I would be attacked by the Academy guard again, in my own garden.
Why would she do something like this? To try to force my magic? What if it hadn’t worked? What if Mhari or I had been killed?
The way she stared me down, walking from President Minerva’s side, taking purposeful, predatory strides towards me, made me wonder if she would have even cared.
“What?” I asked quietly, still shocked, taking a step back.
Mhari growled low beside me at Selene’s approach. Her beast was a massive brown wolf, and even injured, she was clearly still strong—but she would be no match against Selene. No lone shifter ever could be.
