Page 3 of Spells of Shadow and Blood

I watched quietly as Annelise walked down the front steps, mounting the chestnut horse that awaited her on the cobblestones. She mounted the mare, trotting off down the street after Cirilla.

She only looked back once, but that was all it took for me to break.

I grasped my father’s leg and cried as many tears as my body would allow as he patted my back comfortingly. I hadn’t known it at the time, but my parents hadn’t been lovers in quite some time. Since even before my birth, perhaps.

But they remained the best of friends.

Despite promising to visit me, despite my heart skipping out of my chest each time I heard hooves against the cobbled street outside, Annelise did not come back.

The king would not allow her to leave The Stone Palace for any length of time. Though she would write, it would be years before I would see her again.

When she finally did return, years later, she did not come home alone. She was on foot, the night air carrying a chill that settled deep in my bones and set my teeth on edge. I had rushed to the door and swung it open, my excitement at finally seeing her once again stifled when I saw what she had been carrying.

There was a bundle in her arms, wrapped tightly in a muslin cloth.

Achild.

And as Zion joined me at the door in the middle of the night, the baby’s cries pierced the air, a storm roiling angrily overhead.

EIGHT YEARS OLD

Iwas five years old when Annelise had been summoned to be the royal healer. When she had left and never looked back. Zion raised me alone, doing the best he could, but he didn’t have the most…watchfuleye. He was busy with his blacksmith business, often times not returning home until late in the evening.

I had been one of the youngest Shades to be conscripted into the king’s army at the ripe age of eight years old. One of the few Shades to join before my magic had awakened. Due to my lack of years and experience, I was only allowed to visit the castle once a month for basic training. I wouldn’t be allowed to move there to train full time until my teenage years.

The days I did go, I begged and pleaded to see my mother. But she was always busy. Whether she truly couldn’t step away from her duties or she was ignoring me, I wasn’t sure.

Back in Siraleth, when left to my own devices, I became…bored. I didn’t have many friends at school. I was an outcast. The other Shades made fun of me for my strange hair, and the fact that I hadn’t been born a Stormshade. My magic hadn’t awakened yet, but they already knew. I hadn’t been born blessed with the storm magic of the Kotova bloodline.

All the Kotovas are Stormshades, didn’t you know?they would say, taunting me.

Ididknow. I had unfortunately taken after my father in that aspect. I might be the first Nightshade of the Kotova bloodline, but little did they know, I wouldn’t be the last.

I was eight years of age when I joined the king’s service, and I was eight years of age when my magic finally awakened and I turned for the first time.

It had been an accident.

I had been in the schoolyard during our free time, swinging from the low branches on the oak tree, when the students decided to gang up on me. They always chosemeto pick on. One of them pulled me down from the tree by my blue and white hair, throwing my small body into the dirt.

I hated feeling so…incapable.

Soweak.

I scrambled backward, afraid for my life. The last time they had ganged up on me, they had wielded a blade. There were no school instructors in sight, and I hadn’t come into my magic yet. I was a late bloomer in that regard; most Shades came into their magic early. Between two and five years of age. We had already been training with magic at school, and I had sat those lessons out, unable to apply that knowledge to my own magic.

Just another reason for them to make fun of me.

As I scrambled backward in the dirt, away from the group whose intentions I could only guess, I sensed something deepwithin me surge up. As if it were an ember within my core, it rose to the surface, simmering below my skin.

I had never experienced anything like it before.

I pulled on that ember, not knowing what would happen when I did.

One moment I was a young girl, dirty hair and skin, scrambling away from her attackers. In the next, I was a white wolf of sizable stature, towering over them.

They backed away, trembling and in shock as they saw my transformation.

I had expected it to hurt…the first time I turned. But it hadn’t. It was as easy as breathing. One moment I was a girl, and the next I was a wolf. It was as simple as flicking a switch within myself.

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