WHITE DARKNESS - BLACK MAGIC SAGA - BOOK 1

UNFORGIVEN

Leevanna frowned.

What was Luther Vailant doing at Gleaxsiara Institute?

“Thea,” she said.

“Hm?”

“What is Vailant’s father doing here?”

Thea left her book and turned her head around to see the man speaking with Professor Azura Sandstorm. They were in the library with Mason, who spoke before Thea could, “Heard he’s here for the Pegasiphix thing or something,” he shrugged. “Guess the creature is gonna be executed.”

“What?!”

Many students shushed her. Leevanna mumbled a sorry and started packing up her things into her bag. “Where are you going?” asked Thea seeing her friend stand up in a hurry.

“I won’t let them touch it,” was the only thing Leevanna answered with before storming out of the library. She wouldn’t let such a beautiful creature loss its life for what? A simple scratch? No f*****g way. “Luther,” she said once she had approached the man. “Professor, good evening,” she nodded to Azura and her eyes fixed back on the father of her academic rival. “I have to speak with you, please.”

“Leevy, good to see you too,” the man chuckled. “Well, Azura, we can take this other time, I have a meeting with this precious young lady.”

Professor Sandstorm nodded with a smile. “Dear Leevanna, please don’t ask too many questions,” Leevanna smiled and nodded before the professor left the two of them alone.

“You can’t kill them.”

“Kill what dear?” frowned Luther.

“The Pegasiphixes,” Leevanna was certainly most exasperated.

Luther looked at her and blinking, catching the route of their conversation. “Leev… That isn’t my decision to make,” he said. “I’m just here as Eisdrache’s father.”

Leevanna whined, tired of it. Her frustration boiling up. She couldn’t say what the creature had given to her, not even Reeves knew of it, but she just couldn’t find another excuse or even a reason why they shouldn’t kill the beast. Leevanna knew its blood, meat, hair, eyes — all of it, would help scientific research for potions and spell work, and to make weapons for the war. It was important, she knew, but she just couldn’t let it die. She needed to understand why the creature had given her that sphere, and what was it. She had thought she had more time.

“Please,” she said again, “just — I don’t know — take it to Vaminia or something, I will train it in the summer — just please don’t kill it,” Leevanna was begging, her hands clasped into each other as her eyes burned in fear.

Luther looked at her, surprised by her behaviour. “Leevy you know you father wouldn’t approve for you to have it,” Leevanna whined again. “I know you suffer when a creature is dying but there is little to none I can—”

“Then who I can speak to?” she was desperate. Her hand passed through her hair pushing it back. Her whole body itching. “I swear I can convince them, just please — please let me speak to them. I was the one who wanted to see the Pegasiphixes, please punish me instead of them.”

Luther huffed, unsure of what to do. The Parliament had already sent people to make sure the creature would be killed. The Head of Justice, Edan Oakwood, was also there. The scientific advances the creature would let them be able to have would be unimaginable, the tears and blood it would shed was what they needed to help the army, and he was sure Leevanna knew that, but… she was suffering for it. And if he didn’t quite understand why, he knew he needed to do something for her. She was like a daughter since the moment he got to meet her, and for a daughter he would kill if necessary.

He just didn’t know what to do.

His eyes went to the people the Parliament had sent. They were walking in direction of the little habitat the Institute had given the Pegasiphix near the greenhouses. If he was to do something then he had to do it fast.

But what could be done?

The Head of Justice and the high-ranked generals in the army had already made their minds once they had knowledge about the creature which had been found. It was necessary for them to do this. It would save thousands if not millions.

“Leevy,” he bent down, grabbing her cheeks and sweeping away a tear which had rolled down her cheek, “I need you to listen to me, very carefully.”

And Leevanna nodded.

“I assure you; I swear to you even —” he sighed. “That if there was something I could do, I would,” tears started rolling down her eyes as his heart broke in pieces. “But right now the only thing I can offer to you is to say goodbye to it.”

“But—”

“Please, Leevy,” his eyes pleading with her. “You have to be strong okay? There’s people here who know your father,” her eyes went wide at his words, “so please, I beg you, you have to put that mask of yours and be strong for me, okay?”

Leevanna stepped away.

She breathed deeply and started counting numbers.

The best she could do.

“Fine,” she nodded, the tears being swept away by her fingers, “I want to say goodbye.”

Luther caressed her cheek. “Okay.”

So they started walking towards the greenhouses.

Leevanna had always been more than just an academic. Her love for magical creatures went beyond reasoning, she knew they were all innocent, as if war was to happen, all human race should extinguish, leaving just animals and creatures. That was why she was in such a state. The Pegasiphix had attacked Vailant, yes, but he had also attacked her, and nobody was placing a death sentence over his head. It wasn’t fair. She knew Luther Vailant wasn’t the cold-hearted man his son was, but she had begged for something that he just couldn’t give to her, even if she cried her eyes out.

They continued to walk until they reached the Pegasiphixes, the three of them bounded in chains, Leevanna sobbed and threw herself to the creatures to hug them. They received her lovingly, placing one of their white and golden feathered wings over her to make some peace in her mind.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said again and again as if the creatures could answer her. She continued sobbing against the creatures, which curled up around her. This broke Luther’s heart, seeing her mourn this way.

Minutes passed as Leevanna soothed herself between the magical creatures, however time wasn’t in her favour, because Luther then rushed her to hide in a corner to the greenhouse and to not watch what was about to happen. She begged him not to let them kill the creatures, but there was nothing he could do. Leevanna stood up, giving a last kiss to each of the creatures and expanding her gratitude to them as an aura.

As Leevanna hid herself in a corner, the parliament representatives arrived at the place.

“You can’t kill them!” came Óegnus Kyai’s voice. “They are mine! You can’t kill them!”

“They attacked a student, dear Óegnus,” said Edan Oakwood making a tsk with his mouth. “And they will help in the war, their blood will help us!”

The headmaster of Stouvania shook his head, “Those students shouldn’t have gotten near my Pegasiphixes in the first place. This is just not fair.”

Luther preferred to not say anything in this situation. It was for the best. Even if his son had been the one who was attacked, Óegnus was right, he and his friends shouldn’t have gone looking for the creatures. His eyes fixed on the creatures which were still all curled up against each other.

The breeding was between them, hidden against its mother. And this gave Luther an idea. Something perhaps he shouldn’t do… His eyes darted to the male Pegasiphix, which seemed to be looking at him, and Luther pleaded for a solution to his problems.

As the executioner prepared the enormous axe to cut the Pegasiphixes’ heads off, Luther was running out of time with all the thinking of his brain. Would he be able to do so? Perhaps. Luther gulped when the first Pegasiphix, the male, was settled to lose its head, and he looked aside when the axe dis its work. It was now or never.

An icy aura invaded the room, nobody seemed to notice, and when the job was done and the representatives and Óegnus were already gone with the corpses of the Pegasiphixes, Luther went to Leevanna and embraced her in his arms as she mourned the loss of the magical creatures. His eyes then divagated to the place when the breeding of the creatures had been curled up against its mother… And he just kissed Leevanna’s head.

“You are a f*****g piece of s**t!”

Vaughan’s yell came through the doors the Vasilka common room. Her face was wet from tears and red from rage. Eisdrache knew she was speaking to him, even if she hadn’t said a name. He had seen his father and the parliament representatives, and Thea had told him Vaughan knew about those things too. He was ready for her to insult him all she wanted.

“You attacked me too and you didn’t have a death sentence hanging over your head!” her voice still loud. He stood up, leaving his book aside, ready for her to keep going.

“Look, I—”

What he didn’t expect though, was that slap from her. It stung into him.

With his head still to the side and a mark from her hand on his cheek. Skin burning. She pushed him with her hands. “You are a f*****g monster who thinks everything has to go according to him! Those creatures were innocent! Not like you, you piece of s**t!” He shoves him off again with all her strength.

The words from Orya resonating inside his mind.

I hope she sees you as a f*****g repulsive monster all her life.

Orya was right, she would never forgive him.

“Vaughan—”

“NO!” she cried. “You shut up because if you hadn’t been all whiny when I approached those Pegasiphixes none of this would have happened!”

“At least I don’t cry at night because no one wants to be near me,” his grin is malicious, “because they are f*****g scared of me. Because they think I am a monster.”

And she shoves him off with all her strength before he does the same with her. Her cheeks are rosy, and her breathing is heavy. Just like him.

“I’m trying to explain—”

“SHUT UP!” she yells pushing him angrily.

“Or what?!” he yells too. “Are you going to hit me? Eh, Vaughan?! Are you f*****g going to be like your dear father?! That’s how things are after all, no?! The apple does not fall far from the three anyways! Thats why everyone is f*****g scared of you!”

“I swear if you—”

“You are a Vaughan, no?” he laughs sarcastically. “Thats who. You. f*****g. Are. After all! Like your dear f*****g father! A f*****g man who—”

“f*****g SHUT UP!”

And she doesn’t realise her magic has emerged like burning lava mounting the rocks from a volcano ready to erupt and annihilate everything at its pace without mercy or a brief breath of life. While the water hears and understands, the ice does not forgive or forget. She has actually hurt him. With icicles. Sharp and small ones. They had been more like tiny and thin diamonds of a card from a poker deck.

The King is dead, God save the Queen.

She didn’t mean to. Or maybe she did. She doesn’t really know. She knows she is magic, and nobody taught her to apologise for the fire — and ice — that lies inside her. She has been taught to never apologise, better said.

And she doesn’t want to do so anyway.

The cuts make his white school shirt have lines of scarlet red over the part of hist torso and arms. The wounds don’t seem so serious or deep, they’re more superficial. She hopes nobody else got hurt from her sudden icy attack. Her hands are cold and glitters from the ice remain in all her body. She thinks that maybe she is made of ice after all.

There is no more metaphor. The Ice Queen does exist. She hasn’t had explode like this for a long time. Doesn’t remember when was the last time someone got hurt because her magic tickled her skin taunting with emerge. The Elemental Magic classes had helped her.

“I was right after all,” he says. His eyes are narrowed at her. His hair is messy, and she thinks it maybe shines that way because there are traces of ice glitter over it. Crimson decors the pale skin of his face and his breathing is heavy. His fists still tight and knuckles white, thin traces of blood paint the cracks of his hands’ skin too. Her face and body in general keeps being warm but yet she feels so cold. “Just like your father,” his eyes look at her up and down.

His voice low and dangerous, like a warning, but she isn’t afraid.

“As if you weren’t like f*****g yours,” her eyes imitate the movement his did. “Stuck around but never present, didn’t he?” and he knows she knows the story. “Being so f*****g coward and hiding behind that mask just using words to defend himself.”

“Don’t act like you don’t do the f*****g same thing,” the cuts his body has doesn’t seem to bother him. “f*****g hypocrite, don’t pretend to be so much better.”

“I don’t,” she responds. “I don’t throw my hands to the fire and then take them back to seem less guilty, Vailant,” her eyes never leaving his. “If I’m cruel, I don’t need to hide.”

“Sure about it?” his glare is burning her. “Don’t you have that f*****g empire of yours? The beloved and f*****g Ice Queen?” he doesn’t realise but has sent the same little pieces of ice at her. Now she has cuts too, but doesn’t care so much, she didn’t even feel them. Her nails dig in her skin, but she doesn’t care and continues to tighten her fists. “Do not pretend you’re better than me, Vaughan,” he continues. Jaw and neck tense. “You’re just the same, no less, not much, the f*****g same.”

“Good you know then,” she says. “That you are a f*****g piece of garbage who doesn’t deserve anything. That you are cruel, vile, f*****g pathetic and a f*****g cockroach who is a f*****g coward.”

“Good you have seen yourself in a mirror,” his tone continues being low.

Both have the same position they have had all this hour.

A foot at the front, fists tight, body in direction of their opponent. Ready to fight.

The silence accompanies them for long seconds than seem years. Just staring at each other with narrowed eyes and cuts than burn their skins. But not so much like the real wounds, that one’s which are deep inside them, monsters who threat with laugh at them at the most wrong moment of their life. That part of them which is dark and full of memories that now are secrets they don’t pretend to share with no one else, not even their pillows.

Self-defence.

Coping mechanisms.

Ways to kill traumas.

Fights.

Wars with themselves they have fought alone for a very long time. They like to fight. That’s what they do the best.

Some children are born with wars in their veins.

Wars they learn to fight and not give up. Wars that sometimes are not even theirs, that are not their faults. Wars that come from an exceedingly long feeling of hate between two people who once considered themselves more than friends and less than confidents. Innocent souls that are so corrupted by hate and resentment because of the darkness the sun cannot illuminate, and the ice cannot forget.

And it could be also that many they want it that way, want to continue fighting the wars that perhaps are already over, just to prove who is better, who is the strongest in the battlefield.

But they are just so tired…

By Tuesday of the following week, Leevanna was in her class of Life Gardening and Herbalism. Her mind spiralling.

Come on, don’t be a coward.

Her eyes are fixed on the sharp shape over the table. She raises her gaze and sees that professor Steinfield keeps talking about whatever plant they are seeing that day. She isn’t paying the minimum attention though she loves the class.

She wants to pay attention. But she couldn’t. Her eyes fix again on the tiny razor her eyes had just found by chance under a pot. She is close to it.

And you say to be an Ice Queen?

It seems you’re about to cry.

She closed her eyes and tried to muffle the voice in her head. It was impossible to keep it shut it for a single f*****g second.

Coward.

“I am not a coward,” she whispers angrily between teeth, talking for herself without noticing the words had really escaped the doors of her breath.

“Miss Vaughan?”

She turns her head to professor Steinfield, who’s looking at her with a soft frown and sweet smile. Some students are also looking at her but quickly look away when they feel her cold gaze ordering them to mind their own bloody business. They were in Life Gardening and Herbalism class.

“Everything fine?” Asks the woman again and approaches.

“Er—” she forces a smile. “I’m not feeling so good today, may I be excused from the class?” and her tone of voice is sweet, shy and almost seems like she is embarrassed for asking such a thing. Her pale cheeks had acquired a slightly blush and the smile remained painted on her face.

“Yes, yes, of course,” says Steinfield still smiling.

Leevanna nods in gratefulness and leaves the robes she uses for that class aside before heading to the greenhouse’s exit in silent as she looks straight. When she’s back into the chateau, her eyes lowered until they found her right hand. The tiny razor was inside her fist and the cold pain of the metal piercing her skin made her bite her tongue and keep walking. The razor carving even more.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

She doesn’t bother to look down when her ears catch the echo of the scarlet and thick drops of her being colliding with the ground under her. She closed her eyes as she felt the plea her digestive system made when her eyes caught a couple of students from the Vasilka house eating a salad made of Uttara knew what. The beg was like a knot that had formed just in the navel area and had risen to her throat in one.

As if her stomach had digested itself in that instant due to the hunger swing from not eating for a week and four days.

She felt like throwing up.

But what was she going to throw up?

If she hadn’t had anything but water in all that time.

She felt guilty for even doing it. And she decided she wouldn’t eat absolutely nothing for one week and five days more because her weakness of the eating desire. The razor burrowed deeper into her skin until it made her release a ragged and shocked gasp that was barely audible when she felt her hot blood slide down the lines between her fingers painting her skin completely. She didn’t know where she was walking or even where she intended to go. She just kept letting her feet to move at their will.

Still staring straight ahead, her right hand stopped gripping the razor and switched it to her left hand, leaving red traces of her fragile and scarlet being on the fabric of her robes. Her eyes snapped open when the sharp blade was the first thing to pierce the lines of her palm.

The sharp, hot and cruel pain made her lungs consume itself in the burning sensation her own low breathing provoked. She felt the razor sinking over and over into her skin as she squeezed the object in a heartbeat motion, tearing up her flesh and outlining her blood ducts as it pleased.

It feels like a warm hug, like she’s just comfortable and everything is nice, it might made her feel a bit anxious or have butterflies in your stomach at first, but when she feels the cold breath of the death’s lips, she leaves a smile on her face.

Her head starts to feel like a constant throbbing, and she thinks that at any moment it could explode, like a bomb. But medically that is impossible, she knows. She recognizes all the symptoms the fragile shell of her body is experiencing instantly.

The imperceptible shaking of her hands from the feel of her razor piercing her. How her chest rises and lowers with difficulty as her lungs compress trying to fight for the volatile air that seems its gonna leave her.

The weakness in her legs with every lazy step that she doesn’t know how is giving. How her body feels light as a feather and heavy as a guilt at the same time. Her heart races and slows down the marathon for a few seconds before wanting to escape the cage in which her ribs have it trapped.

A caress of what appears to be a breeze from her brushes her face and causes a black sheet to opaque her sight making her stumble. Her body feels numb, and her lips breathe their last while a tear escapes from her interior when weakness won over her as always.

Her body collapsed in the passageway through which Professor in Meiden came.

“Miss Vaughan!” the professor screamed in horror seeing her bleeding hands staining all the floor when she fell. The woman ran up to her to close the distance and lifted the border of her robes before reaching down to the ground to hold the girl in her arms and open one of the plates of her hands to find the small razor. “Professor Lawrence!” she called scared as she tried to wake up the unconscious girl. The professor left his chat with some of the Faris students he had crossed paths with and turned his head to the place the voice of Madelein came.

He ran towards her. “What happened?” he asked taking the girl in his arms to head to the hospital wing as soon as possible.

“She collapsed in front of me,” the witch said in a rush as both ran through the hallways. “Hannah!” she said when her eyes fixed on a girl. “Miss Swan, please search Professor Reeves!”

Madam Pamela looked at her.

Leevanna was lying on the bed facing another stretcher and giving her back to the three persons in the room. Her now bandaged hands were under her cheeks, and the sheets covered her from waist to feet.

The hospital wing had been closed for that day because no one could know someone had tried to kill herself.

“Don’t be too mean,” Pamela said in Reeves’ direction. “Maybe she is having a lot—”

“No,” Sthepon cut her off. “She is stupid, that’s why she’s here.”

“Sthepon!” said Madelein and he rolled his eyes.

“I’ll deal with her,” he sighed. “You two can go now,” both women nodded and left in silence not without giving a last look to the girl.

Sthepon turned his head to the stretcher his goddaughter was. He sighed again before walking towards her. Now facing her, he saw the tears running down her cheeks.

“Come here,” he said stretching an arm once seated. She did what he said and started crying against his chest as her tiny hands clung to his robes and he wrapped her tightly. “Everything is going to be fine; you can cry… I’m here now.”