“This is precisely the sort of behavior we fear!” snapped Madam Albright. She frowned at Master O’Brian. “She’s nearly of age, for heavens’ sake, and she has no control!”
“A broken teapot is not the same as poisons and illicit potions,” said Papa.
My hands trembled as I delicately placed the ceramic shards back onto the wooden tray. Hatred boiled within me. Mother. A ring. Some books. A lifetime of rumors. A box on our stoop the day I’d turned sixteen—a box that I’d thrown away as soon as I’d found it.
The wretched magic she’d passed down to me.
Focus on your breath. The recitation in my head was beginning to sound more like a plea.
“Althea,” said Master O’Brian in a calm voice, “we cannot compare young Miss Lucas to a criminal, not even her own mother.” He held out a steadying hand towards Papa. “We don’t suggest these solutions to punish Clara. We fear her magic could hurt someone. Or worse.”
I’d never let that happen. Perhaps I was weak for being unable to control this magic of mine, but I would never allow it to cause true harm to someone.
“There must be another way,” I said. “I—I’ll find a way to train it.” I took a shuddering, steadying breath. “Please give me some more time. If—if everything had gone right, I would be preparing to become a witch on Midsummer. Maybe something can change before then.”
Xavier only watched me. I wanted to beg him to speak, to help me, to tell me if he’d thought of me at all these past five years.
The witches and wizards around me exchanged glances. Some murmured to each other in tones too low for me to hear. They thought me wicked, uncontrollable. No better than the mother I never knew.
The Council needed to know that I wasn’t like her.
“Being a healer is all I’ve ever wanted,” I told them. “When I was little, I saw the Morwyns save a man’s life.” I remembered it so clearly, how we’d hidden behind the sofa in the sitting room and watched as his parents performed a miracle. The man, barely able to breathe; his lips, turning blue; his wife, weeping. Xavier had held my hand so tight.
“Madam and Master Morwyn used their magic together,” I recalled. “With their potions, with their enchantments, they saved him from the brink of death. The joy that filled that room after . . . I knew I wanted to do something that important. That powerful. All I want is to help people.”
I shut my eyes, drowning out the world, the Council, the thought that my magic would retaliate if I took one wrong breath.
The silence in the room was grim.
“I’m sorry, Miss Lucas,” said Master O’Brian. “We need your decision.”
Bile rose in my throat. It was a choice between two poisons. Between a life with no magic at all, and a life where this wild gift of mine would hurt me with every spell I cast.
I thought of my mother, who’d defied the Council, who’d fled from them, who’d carved a reckless path for herself. I was not like her. I intended to help people. To heal them.
No matter the cost.
With a shaky breath, I nodded. “The binding spell,” I said.
Papa grabbed my arm. “Clara, no!”
“I am entirely opposed to this,” Xavier shouted over the murmurs of the Council.
“You’d see me powerless, then, Master Morwyn?” I shot him a glare and squeezed my hands to keep my scalding magic at bay. “If it’s pain or a life without magic, I choose pain.”
“It’s not your decision to make, Morwyn,” said the silver-haired wizard. He jerked his head towards me. “She thinks she can endure it.”
Doubt bloomed within me the more they spoke of the binding spell.
Xavier stepped forwards again, setting aside the mug of tea and pressing his hand to his heart as he faced Master O’Brian. “Sir, surely there’s another option—”
“I would be slow to speak, Master Morwyn. You’ve been rather cavalier in your contributions to the Council thus far,” said Madam Albright snippily. Xavier flinched.
Master O’Brian clapped a hand on Xavier’s shoulder, as if he were the one receiving bad news. “We will respect Miss Lucas’s decision.” Turning back to me, he smiled. “So you truly wish to be a healer, no matter the consequences. I think that’s very brave, young lady.”
I gave him a perfunctory curtsy. Within me, my magic was screaming.
“How soon will the binding spell be performed?” Papa asked.
“It’s quite powerful. I’ll need more Councilmembers. But we should be ready by tomorrow evening.”
My heart lurched. “Tomorrow?”
“Yes.” Master O’Brian fetched his hat from the coatrack and placed it back on his head. “In the meantime, I’ll do my best to find you a teacher who can complete your training once your magic has been bound.”
I imagined it stewing within me, angry and biting and loathing me for having diminished it. Every pain a spell would cause me would be its own act of vengeance. I prayed it would be worth it.
If I’d had my wits about me, I would have thanked Master O’Brian for putting more effort still into trying to find me a teacher. I’d have wished him farewell and curtsied. But I stood there, numb.
Master O’Brian led the queue of wizards back to the front door. He drew it open, and once more, the marble Council chambers lay beyond. The witches and wizards filed out, some deigning to wish us farewell.
And after the rest of the magicians had left, Xavier lingered in the entryway, worrying the brim of his hat with his pale fingers. He was looking at me. Being near to him felt like it had when I’d visited my old schoolhouse yesterday. There was a fondness, yes, but grief, too, and the imposing sense that I no longer belonged there.
“I’m sorry about all of this,” Xavier said, his voice so very gentle. He cast a glance back to the doorway leading to the Council chambers. “I—I must go. But I would like to see you again, Miss Lucas. Under some better circumstances.”
“Come along, Master Morwyn!” called Madam Albright.
Xavier jumped at the sound of his title, and then reached out a hand for mine. I cautiously gave it to him, anger and confusion and sorrow and delight warring within me.
He gave my hand the faintest kiss. He had done that as a boy, copying the prim etiquette of his wizard father.
“Goodbye, Clara,” he said, and before I could register it, before I could ask him why he opposed the Council’s spell, why he’d stopped writing me—why he was acting as though he never cared for me at all—he slipped through the entryway, shutting the door behind him.
2
When I threw the door open again, the Council chamber was gone. There was only the colorful garden that Papa tended and the oak tree I’d climbed as a child. It was as if the Council, their meeting—Xavier—had been nothing but a dream.
But it was no dream, and soon my magic would be tightly, painfully bound.
I ran outside, sheltering myself beneath the oak’s branches. I squeezed my eyes shut, held my palms out to the sunlight, and breathed in the perfume of summer: flowers and dew and earth.
Some people believed that magic came from the sun, spilling into the ground and bringing life. It was why our magic wove together so beautifully with nature. When I was like this, basking in a summer morning, it felt like I was back where I belonged.