Exhausted, I wrapped my hands more tightly around the tree and didn’t turn around. The immense magical burst that had brought me here had burned me out like a firework. I could barely move my head.
Flair and Echo cawed furiously, flying to rest on my legs like protectors.
“I did once,” I rasped, worn out. “It cost me the most precious thing that I craved more than life. Freedom should never be for one person alone.”
“A fine sentiment.” Henrietta was closer now. I shuddered as I sensed her just behind me; her hand hovered over my head like she was holding herself back from stroking my hair as she would when I was a child. “But awfully naïve for a witch. I’ve failed you, and for that there are not enough apologies under the heavens. But the House of Crows relied on having a daughter who was Blessed, and you’re now Wickedly Charmed.” When her fingers finally carded through my hair, I flinched. “You shame me and every Oxford Coven. Your crimes are multiple and monstrous: loving a mage, being Wickedly Charmed, and cursing my academy.”
“I’m glad that at last I excel at something.” I closed my eyes.
“You shame yourself. I know monsters, and between you and our witch, you’re the one who wears robin skins.” Echo hopped up and down agitatedly.
Henrietta lifted her fingers from my hair one by one like a goodbye. Then she stepped back. I listened to the rustle, as she marched to the side of the glade.
I sighed. Was she leaving me in peace?
“Those crimes are punishable by death.” Her voice was softer and suffused by sadness. I startled, and my eyes snapped open. Did she truly mean…? I struggled to stand, but my knees buckled. Flair dragged on my dress, but I was too weak to escape. “The wicked must burn.”
Suddenly, a scorching rope of feathers lashed me to Hecate’s Tree, catching my familiars and tying them to my shoulders. A sob caught in the back of my throat. My familiars were innocents. They didn’t deserve to die for my crimes as well, simply because they were bound to me.
“If you crave your mage with such devotion, then you shall join him. You’re not worthy of my House. Burn!” At Henrietta’s command, flames burst around the tree.
My dress caught on fire, and I choked on the stinging smoke that stank of dark magic.
“If becoming like you makes me good,” I howled, whilst the flames licked my skin, “then let me be wicked.”
After that, there was nothing but the embrace of Hecate’s Tree, the magenta haze of my magic, and agony, as I was burned alive.
Chapter Three
MAGENTA
The worst thing about being a ghost after my own mother had burned me at Hecate’s Tree was the eternal craving: for touch, taste, love, and a truly decent cup of tea.
The second worst thing apart from being unable to give Robin the satisfaction of telling me I told you so or freaking him out at a séance by levitating either the table or the medium…? Even Robin hadn’t warned me that you could be trapped with other ghosts.
Whether Henrietta’s sacrificial burning had been taken as a gift by the goddess or Hecate had finally decided to save me (far too late, if you asked me), she’d caught both my familiars and me between life and death within her branches. Yet Flair and Echo had broken free of her hold to fly across to watch over the Rebels and mimic their strange new way of talking and touching, until over the decades I might’ve become — just a little — crazy as well as wicked.
It’d taken more than a century, but now I might once have been the witch who’d cursed Rebel Academy to perpetual winter, yet I’d been long forgotten by the students. Echo swore that I was still legendary with the descendants of the House of Crows who ran the academy. I’d quite shivered with delight, when I’d heard that they burned black candles at the Enchanted Ball each year to ensure their protection and my banishment.
Ah, family.
I giggled, floating higher through the withered branches of the tree, which had died the same night as I had.
The glade had been turned to bones. It was a black ring in the white of the wood. I could hear no songbirds, only the fizzing of my magic, which had rooted after so long. The moon peeked through the shroud of clouds.
I peered over the snow veiled canopy towards the castle. Then a pink feathery bundle crashed into me in the darkness. I caught Echo, snuggling him as tightly as I once had Mr Tailsy. Echo’s magenta feathers were sensitive, and he pushed closer into my hand, rambling a series of clicks.
As a ghost, Echo had been reborn with my magic pulsing through him. I’d imagined that he’d be insulted to match my sparkles but I caught him preening more often than Byron had, and Robin had always called my father a peacock.
Byron had only smirked at that.
At least, I could touch Echo and Flair; ghosts were connected, even if we were divided from the living. Often, that was the best thing about being a ghost.
But then, there were other times…
“By my blood, the elf prince has a spine-tingling voice like ice melting in a spring valley.” Echo flapped around in my arms, until he rested both wings on my shoulders. “Why does he only sing in the shower? I reckon that he’s shy or has a dark angsty secret.”
“You’re bored again, aren’t you?”
“Maybe.”
I tapped Echo on the beak. “It wasn’t gentlemanly of you to peek into the Princes’ showers.”
Echo snickered. “I’m no gentleman; I’m Magenta’s familiar.” Then he sighed, dreamily. “The elf sounded sad. You’d have kissed him better.”
I shuddered at the imagined sensation. Echo was…mildly…obsessed with the uptight but ethereally beautiful elf prince who sang to himself when he thought that no one was listening.
I was…mildly…obsessed with the idea of showers. Water that magically attacked your body as if it was a waterfall, whilst you stood beneath it naked…? Why would I not be entranced by such a powerful spell?
I grinned. “I thought that I’d proved how far I’d go not to kiss princes.”
Echo wriggled out of my hold, hopping onto a branch, before clearing his throat. “He sang this strange song, “Would You Like to Build a Snowman?”. I told him, by my fangs, I’d love to play with you. But he didn’t hear me, of course.”
When Echo launched into the plaintive song at the top of his off-key voice, I grimaced.
Was that a strange elven song? I hadn’t known that they were so desperate to make snowmen.
“You’d do better to offer to suck him off.” Flair descended out of the cloudy sky, settling next to Echo. Then he pecked his twin on the wing, until he quietened with a grumbling rattle. “The stick’s so far up his arse that I can see it poking out of his pretty sky-blue hair.”
Echo nodded. “He does have pretty hair. Although, it’s not as pretty as our witch’s.”
Flair rolled his eyes. “Magenta is an absolutely perfect young ghost witch.”
I fluttered my lashes. “Why thank you, my sweet familiar.”
“Now let me tell you what I saw. Here’s a clue…” Flair dropped on his back and writhed like he was dying.