Girl of Dark Flames | DISCONTINUED

Five: The Dead Princess

"The realm of fairy-story is wide and deep and high and filled with many things: all manner of beasts and birds are found there; shoreless seas and stars uncounted; beauty that is an enchantment, and an ever-present peril; both joy and sorrow as sharp as swords."

-J.R.R. Tolkien

―

FIVE: THE DEAD PRINCESS

"Today, Kira is supposed to take you to the Atrium.  Or me if her iciness is getting to you," Helen announced. 

Today was the fourth day.  The fourth day since my world turned upside down, since flames singed my clothes and fire danced along my fingertips.  The second day since arriving at Ivyport.  The first full day I spent healing ― all of the little cuts and bruises and an especially nasty cut along my arm that I somehow didn't realize I had until I woke up on that day.  And then we came to today.

"I can go with you instead, if you'd like," Helen offered.  She wasn't the person that she appeared to be on the day that I arrived.  She wasn't unfriendly ― in fact, quite the opposite.  A little bit on the blunt side.

I almost declined.  Perhaps Kira wasn't the girl I thought her to be.  I believed in second chances.  But still, I said, "I'd like it if you could come with me."

"Then I will," Helen said, and grabbed a fawn satchel with something metal and glinting inside.  Knives?  I'd already figured out that at least half of the students living in the campus carried knives commonly, wielded them as familiarly as a pencil, and were most likely also lethal with them.  "Take one," she said, noticing my glance towards her satchel. 

She flipped a dagger expertly in one of her pale hands and tossed it ― nothing more than a telltale glint in the air ― to me.  I snatched it out of the air a little bit nervously, the blade glittering in the watery morning light.  The handle was of a soft wood, the blade hard, glimmering steel.  It felt foreign to hold the weapon, something sharper than any steak knife.  And although I once had the knife that Ezra gave me seemingly years ago, it was rusted and dull and I didn't have a good chance to examine it.

"Are you sure that I can...?" I started, thinking that the knife was more dangerous in my hands than on the ground.

"You'll be fine.  It's part of the rules that every student has to carry at least a knife on them at all times outside Ivyport.  I carry seven."

I raised an eyebrow and cautiously put the blade in the pocket of my jacket, gladly taking a leather sheath from Helen.  Anything to stop the feel of metal.  Something about it whispered through me with an eerie echo that I didn't like.

"Are you ready?" Helen asked, tucking yet another knife into a hidden pocket somewhere along the leather of her jacket.

"Yes.  No.  Kind of."  Magic made me nervous.  It was exhilarating, but also had this sense of danger, a taste of spinning out of control, that feeling when your heart beats rapidly and the only thing you can do is hold on.

Helen set down her satchel again.  "Cassa ― can I call you that? ― magic is not a curse.  It may not always be a blessing, but, trust me, there are some good things.  The Atrium is for practicing magic, yes, but magic is a part of you."

A part of me.  A bit of what she said made me inwardly cringe.  So it's been there this whole time?  Yes, yes I have felt its presence.  I've had accidents before ― setting off fires and scaring my mother badly enough.  But I've never known that it was always there, always hovering, always sleeping.  Waiting.