Expelled from her old school for a crime she didn't commit, Ivy must gain the trust of the High Pack at Ridgeview Academy to stop her new home from going up in flames.
Season 2 of Witchfire
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───── Piper ─────
I held the needle up to the light and turned it this way and that, admiring the way the silver tip threw back the light. I wondered with some amusement if any magpies in the canopy were envious of my prize.
The glittering appeal was lost on those imaginary birds the moment I buried it in my forearm. It felt like holding a lighter to my skin, but I pushed the silver-steel through the mangled flaps of my flesh with brutal efficiency, knowing it was the only way to reliably stitch up the wound. The silver ensured that my flesh wouldn't automatically heal around the strand of hair trailing behind the eye of the needle, my suture of choice, thus trapping it in place. The last thing I needed right now was an infection.
I gritted my teeth throughout the task, but not against the pain; this was nothing compared to what I'd suffered as a child. No, I gritted my teeth against an onslaught of memory. The task was too familiar and blurred the borders of memory and reality.
I could see her, in these moments: her handsome bone structure and coal-black eyes, burning in a wreath of unruly ringlets. I frowned at the vivid nature of the illusion, breathing in her scent of leather and sweat.
"An alpine breeze," I whispered, trying to anchor myself in the present. Five things to keep the memories at bay. The smell of rotting leaves in the underbrush. The smooth, round stone by my feet. It would be perfect for skipping. But I was getting ahead of myself; I needed to focus on the now. The shrill caw of a bird...
It was as if someone had turned a dial and dimmed the sun. The small clearing in which I sat became some place else entirely: a dank, stone dungeon, so dark it needed to be lit by flaming torches...
"No," I whispered, trying to claw myself back into the present.
It was too late. The past and present blended seamlessly, until I couldn't tell one reality from the other.
I stared through the silver-steel bars at the wall of the crypt, wondering if I'd killed any of the people buried there. The place stank of animal and human excrement, undercut by the smell of festering wounds, which never truly went away. But the bars... if I stared long and hard enough, sometimes they disappeared. Simply vanished, as if I could walk right through them...
A brittle, crunching noise drew my attention to the neighbouring cell. Wavering torchlight revealed an emaciated wolf, desperately gnawing on the bones of its last meal. Perhaps sensing my attention, it lifted its head and warned me away with a snarl that was almost as savage as its eyes.
I shuddered, but my fear was not of the creature, so much as sharing its fate. It was not uncommon for a werewolf to lose all semblance of humanity after fighting in the arena for too long, and I was pretty sure it was crunching down on the bones of its own kind. My kind.
