The Last Witch Academy

The Last Witch of Eldervane Academy

IMANI RAVELLE

Chapter One

The Girl in the Fire

The woman on the execution platform looked directly at me and smiled.

Not at the magistrate reading her death sentence. Not at the five princes seated beneath the royal canopy. Not at the thousands of citizens packed shoulder to shoulder in Saint’s Square.

At me.

I stopped breathing.

Iron chains bound the woman to a blackened stake at the center of the platform. Rain had plastered her silver hair against her face, and blood darkened the front of her torn gray dress. She should have looked frightened.

Instead, she looked relieved.

“There you are,” she said.

Her voice crossed the square as clearly as if her lips were beside my ear.

A cold tremor passed through me.

The woman stood nearly fifty paces away. No ordinary voice could have reached me through the rain, the restless crowd, and the tolling bells of Eldervane Academy.

Yet I had heard every word.

I pulled the hood of my cloak lower and tried to disappear behind the broad shoulders of the butcher standing in front of me.

On the platform, the woman continued watching me.

The magistrate raised his jeweled staff.

“Ysara Quill,” he declared, “you have been found guilty of practicing witchcraft, conspiring against the Five Crowns, and murdering three officers of the royal guard.”

The crowd erupted around me.

“Burn her!”

“Monster!”

“Make her suffer!”

I remained silent.

Two weeks earlier, Ysara Quill had been the quiet old woman who sold dried feverleaf from a narrow shop near the river. She had given food to hungry children, treated dockworkers who could not afford physicians, and once reset my broken finger without charging me a copper.

Now the Crown claimed she had torn three armored men apart with magic.

Perhaps she had.

Perhaps she had finally grown tired of being hunted.

The magistrate waited for the shouting to subside.

“By decree of the Five Crowns, and under the authority of Eldervane Academy, you are sentenced to purification by royal flame.”

Ysara smiled wider.

The sound of steel leaving its sheath came from beneath the canopy.

Five princes rose from their chairs.

They stood in a line behind the magistrate, each wearing the formal colors of his kingdom.

Prince Corven Marr wore white and gold, with a narrow ceremonial sword held against his heart. Prince Zephan Oreth stood in crimson armor, broad-shouldered and visibly impatient. Prince Sevrael Valeon wore green velvet and the pleasant expression of a man attending a wedding rather than an execution. Prince Maelor Duskryn remained half-concealed beneath a silver-trimmed black cloak.

The fifth prince wore no crown.

Tavian Draevor stood at the end of the line in a fitted coat the color of midnight, his dark hair swept back from a face carved into severe, unforgiving angles. A thin scar crossed his left eyebrow. Unlike the others, he did not look at the condemned woman.

His gaze moved over the crowd.

Searching.

Rain gathered on his lashes as his attention passed over merchants, laborers, soldiers, and nobles sheltered beneath silk umbrellas.

Then his eyes found mine.

My heart struck my ribs.

Prince Tavian went utterly still.

He could not know me. We had never met. A girl who copied shipping records in a riverside countinghouse had no reason to cross paths with the deadliest son of the Five Crowns.

Yet the intensity of his stare felt like recognition.

I stepped backward.

Someone behind me cursed as I crushed his boot.

“Watch yourself.”

“Sorry.”

I lowered my head, but not before I saw Tavian glance toward Ysara.

The old woman was still smiling at me.

The magistrate turned to the princes. “By blood freely given, let the Five Crowns cleanse what darkness has corrupted.”

Each prince drew the blade across his palm.

Five drops of royal blood fell into the iron basin at the magistrate’s feet.

The effect was immediate.

White fire burst from the basin.

The crowd recoiled before surging forward again, hungry for a better view. Steam rose from cloaks and cobblestones as the unnatural flame climbed the execution platform. It moved against the wind, winding around the stake in thin, searching ribbons.

Ysara did not scream.

She lifted her chin and spoke directly to me.

“When the bells fall silent, run.”

The white fire engulfed her.

Every bell in Eldervane’s seven towers stopped ringing.

The sudden silence was worse than a scream.

Ysara’s body vanished behind the flames. Her chains glowed red, then white. The crowd began chanting the ancient words taught to every child in the Five Kingdoms.

“By crown and blood, the darkness ends.”

I could not make myself join them.

Something was wrong.

The royal fire should have consumed Ysara, but it bent away from her skin. The flames twisted around her like living things refusing to bite.

The magistrate’s triumphant expression faltered.

Prince Corven lowered his sword. Zephan stepped forward. Maelor’s hand disappeared beneath his cloak.

Only Tavian continued watching me.

Ysara opened her mouth.

The fire rushed inside her.

Her back arched against the stake. Light shone through the cracks appearing across her skin, brilliant as molten gold beneath broken stone.

Then she exploded.

The blast threw the magistrate from the platform.

People screamed and trampled one another in the sudden panic. The butcher crashed into me, driving me to one knee. Heat struck my face, followed by a wave of sparks that should have burned through my cloak.

They did not.

Every spark stopped in the air around me.

Hundreds of them.

Tiny white stars hung suspended above the rain-soaked square.

People nearest me saw them.

A woman grabbed her son and backed away. The butcher stared at me with his mouth hanging open. A royal soldier raised his spear.

“No,” I whispered.

The sparks moved.

They slipped beneath my hood, entered my sleeves, and sank through my dress. I felt each one pass through my skin without heat or pain. They gathered beneath my breastbone until something inside me—something that had been sleeping all my life—opened its eyes.

Power erupted through my body.

My vision turned white.

For one impossible instant, I saw everything.

I saw black roots twisting beneath the square, wrapped around bones that had been buried before the Five Kingdoms had names. I saw rivers of magic flowing through the city walls. I saw the seven towers of Eldervane Academy rising from the mountain above us, their foundations driven like iron nails into the wounded earth.

And I saw five threads stretching from my heart.

One shone gold.

One burned red.

One pulsed green.

One was silver and nearly transparent.

The last was black.

It ran directly to Prince Tavian Draevor.

His hand closed around the thread as if he could see it too.

Then the vision vanished.

Sound crashed back into the world.

People were running in every direction. Soldiers forced their way through the crowd while the magistrate shouted orders from the platform.

“Seal the square!”

I staggered upright.

The execution stake remained standing, but Ysara was gone. No bones. No ashes. Nothing except five melted chains pooled around its base.

The butcher pointed at me.

“The fire went into her!”

Several heads turned.

My fear sharpened into instinct.

Run.

I shoved through the crowd.

A soldier caught the back of my cloak. I tore free, leaving the garment in his hand, and slipped between two market women. My boots skidded on the wet stones. An elbow struck my cheek. Someone fell in front of me, forcing me to jump over him.

“Stop that girl!” the magistrate commanded.

The square had six exits.

Royal soldiers blocked five.

The sixth led toward the mountain road and the towering iron gates of Eldervane Academy.

I ran for it.

The academy gates were never opened to common citizens. They admitted the magically gifted children of noble families, foreign dignitaries, and the royal heirs who trained there before claiming their thrones.

They would not open for me.

Behind me, armor clattered against stone.

“Stop!”

I ran faster.

The gates rose higher with every desperate step. Two enormous slabs of black iron met beneath an arch carved with the emblems of the Five Crowns. There were no guards stationed outside them. There did not need to be. The gates were sealed by magic strong enough to repel an army.

I reached them and struck the iron with both hands.

Pain flashed across my palms.

“Please.”

The gates did not move.

The soldiers were nearly upon me.

I searched for another escape and found only the academy wall stretching in both directions. It rose thirty feet above the road, smooth and windowless.

Trapped.

A royal guard seized my shoulder.

The power beneath my breastbone flared.

I spun around.

The guard flew backward.

I had not struck him.

I had not even touched him.

An invisible force hurled him into three other soldiers, knocking all four men to the ground.

Silence spread among those who had followed me from the square.

A dozen spearpoints turned toward my chest.

I stared at my hands.

Faint golden lines glowed beneath my skin.

“No,” I whispered again.

The captain of the guard drew his sword.

“On your knees.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“You attacked an officer of the Five Crowns.”

“He grabbed me.”

“On your knees.”

More soldiers surrounded me. Beyond them, frightened citizens watched from the mouth of the road. Some made signs against evil. Others whispered the word no one had dared speak aloud in generations.

Witch.

My mother had warned me about that word before she died.

Never let them call you unnatural, Azenya. Once they do, they can do anything else to you and name it mercy.

I had been eight years old. Too young to understand why her hands trembled as she stitched a small leather charm into the lining of my coat.

The charm.

I reached beneath my dress and closed my fingers around the object hanging from my neck. I had worn it every day for fifteen years without knowing what it contained.

It was hot now.

The captain advanced.

“Last warning.”

“Wait,” I said. “There has been a mistake.”

“No mistake.”

A man’s voice answered from behind the soldiers.

Prince Tavian walked up the mountain road.

The guards separated immediately.

He had abandoned his ceremonial sword somewhere in the square. Blood from the ritual cut still marked his palm, but he appeared otherwise untouched by the explosion. Rain gleamed on his black coat.

The other princes followed several paces behind him.

All five had come.

That frightened me more than the soldiers.

Prince Corven approached first, his pale golden hair still perfectly arranged despite the chaos. He studied me with cool blue eyes.

“You absorbed royal flame,” he said.

“I didn’t ask it to happen.”

Prince Zephan gave a humorless laugh. “How reassuring.”

He looked like a warrior carved from red stone. A burn scar curled above the collar of his crimson armor and disappeared along the side of his neck.

Prince Sevrael moved beside him, his handsome face arranged in sympathy.

“You must be terrified,” he said.

Of the five, he was the only one who sounded kind.

That made me distrust him immediately.

Prince Maelor remained farther back. I could barely make out his features beneath his hood, but his attention rested on the hand clutching my mother’s charm.

Tavian stopped directly in front of me.

Up close, he was even more unsettling. His eyes were not black, as they had appeared across the square. They were a deep, storm-dark gray edged by the faintest ring of silver.

His gaze lowered to the golden lines beneath my skin.

“What is your name?”

I considered lying.

The black thread I had seen in my vision seemed to tighten between us.

“Azenya Rook.”

Something shifted in his expression.

It vanished too quickly for me to identify.

“Rook,” Maelor repeated softly.

The other princes looked at him.

“You recognize the name?” Corven asked.

“No.”

Maelor’s denial came too late.

Tavian held out his uninjured hand.

“Give me the necklace.”

My grip tightened around the charm. “It belonged to my mother.”

“I know.”

The world narrowed to his face.

“How?”

“Give it to me.”

“No.”

Zephan stepped forward. “This is not a negotiation.”

“Then your kingdom has a peculiar understanding of the word give.”

Sevrael’s mouth twitched.

Zephan’s did not.

Tavian continued holding out his hand. “That charm is the only reason every soldier on this road is not already dead.”

I glanced at the men surrounding me.

They took a collective step backward.

“I don’t understand.”

“The woman in the square transferred something into you,” Corven said. “Something powerful enough to disrupt royal flame.”

“She didn’t transfer it,” Maelor murmured.

Tavian looked at him sharply.

Maelor pushed back his hood.

He was younger than I had expected, perhaps twenty-five, with silver-brown skin and long black hair tied at his nape. Strange symbols had been tattooed across his throat in pale ink.

He stared at the golden lines in my hands.

“She awakened it.”

The word awakened passed through the princes like a warning.

Zephan reached for his sword. “That is impossible.”

“Apparently not,” Sevrael said.

The captain cleared his throat. “Your Highnesses, the magistrate ordered the girl detained.”

“She is detained,” Corven replied.

“Then I will escort her to the royal cells.”

“No,” five voices said together.

The princes looked at one another.

For the first time, I understood that I was standing at the center of something far more dangerous than an execution.

Five kingdoms had shared an uneasy peace for nearly a century. Every royal child trained at Eldervane, supposedly so future rulers would learn cooperation before inheriting their crowns.

No one believed that.

Eldervane kept the princes close enough to watch one another.

It kept their kingdoms from going to war.

And now all five princes wanted custody of me.

Tavian moved nearer. “Open your hand.”

I should have refused.

Instead, I slowly drew the charm from beneath my dress.

It was a flat oval of dark metal, no larger than a thumbnail. I had always believed the markings on its surface were scratches.

They were glowing now.

Maelor inhaled sharply.

Corven’s composure finally broke. “Where did she get that?”

“My mother gave it to me.”

“Who was your mother?” Sevrael asked.

“Evara Rook.”

Zephan stared at me as though I had announced myself as death.

“That is not possible.”

“Everyone keeps saying that today.”

“Evara Rook died twenty-three years ago,” he said.

“My mother died seven years ago.”

“No,” Tavian said. “The woman who raised you died seven years ago.”

I struck him.

My palm cracked across his face before sense could stop me.

Every soldier drew his weapon.

Zephan looked delighted. Sevrael stared. Even Maelor’s guarded expression gave way to surprise.

Tavian’s head had turned with the blow.

Slowly, he faced me again.

A red mark appeared along his cheekbone.

I waited for him to order my execution.

Instead, Tavian smiled.

It was not a kind smile.

It transformed his severe face into something dangerous enough to make my pulse stumble.

“That,” he said quietly, “was a mistake.”

“Then stop speaking about my mother.”

“I was not speaking about your mother.”

He reached for the charm.

The metal split open before he touched it.

A beam of green light shot into the sky.

The clouds above Eldervane tore apart.

Sunlight poured through the opening and struck the seven academy towers. One by one, enormous symbols ignited across their walls.

The earth trembled beneath us.

High above the road, the academy bells began ringing again.

Not seven bells.

Eight.

The sound of the hidden bell rolled across the city like thunder.

People in the square screamed.

The iron gates behind me groaned.

Ancient mechanisms turned inside the mountain. Locks that had remained sealed for centuries released with bone-deep crashes. A glowing line appeared where the two gates met.

They slowly opened.

Cold air swept down from the academy grounds, carrying the scent of snow, old stone, and something sweetly rotten.

Beyond the gates, hundreds of students and instructors had gathered along a vast stairway.

Every one of them was staring at me.

At the top of the stairs stood a tall woman in black robes. Her white hair streamed around a narrow, unsmiling face. A chain of seven iron keys rested across her chest.

The headmistress of Eldervane Academy.

She descended one step.

Then another.

No one spoke until she reached the bottom of the stairs.

Her colorless eyes moved over the five princes before settling on me.

“Azenya Rook,” she said.

I had never seen this woman before.

I had never sent an application to Eldervane. Never undergone the magical examinations. Never stepped through its gates.

Yet she knew my name.

The headmistress lowered herself to one knee.

Gasps swept through the students.

The princes reacted differently.

Corven went pale.

Zephan gripped his sword.

Sevrael’s pleasant mask disappeared.

Maelor bowed his head as though a terrible suspicion had been confirmed.

Tavian moved between me and the kneeling woman.

Protecting me—or blocking my escape.

The headmistress placed one hand against the wet stone.

“The eighth bell has summoned you,” she said. “The sealed gate has recognized your blood, and the dead flame has chosen its vessel.”

Her eyes lifted to mine.

“Eldervane Academy welcomes its final heir.”

I could feel the entire city waiting.

I looked at the soldiers, the students, the five princes, and the academy that had opened itself for me.

“I’m not an heir.”

“No,” the headmistress said. “You are something far more dangerous.”

The golden lines beneath my skin turned black.

All five princes reached for their weapons.

The headmistress smiled.

“You are the last witch.”

Chapter Two

The Academy That Buried Her Name

No one had called me a witch since I was six years old.

The boy who said it had seen me holding a dying bird behind the cooper’s shop. Its neck had bent at an impossible angle after striking a window, but when I opened my hands, it flew away.

My mother found the boy before sunset.

I never learned what she told him. I only knew that he crossed the street whenever he saw me afterward and never spoke the word again.

My mother had made me promise that I would not speak of the bird.

She taught me to hide every strange thing that happened around me. Flowers opening beneath my fingers in winter. Candles flaring when I became angry. Dreams that revealed events before they happened.

Coincidences, she called them.

Now I stood before the gates of Eldervane Academy with black light moving beneath my skin, five armed princes surrounding me, and hundreds of witnesses who had watched royal fire enter my body.

There would be no hiding this coincidence.

The headmistress rose from her kneeling position.

Up close, she appeared older than the academy itself. Her face was deeply lined, and one of her colorless eyes held a faint blue cloud. The seven keys chained across her chest were different sizes and made from different metals.

There should have been eight.

An empty iron loop hung beside the last key.

“A witch,” someone whispered from the stairs.

The word moved through the assembled students.

“A real witch.”

“That’s impossible.”

“They killed all of them.”

“Apparently they missed one.”

The headmistress turned toward the crowd.

She did not raise her voice.

“Return to your halls.”

No one moved.

The headmistress selected the smallest key from her chain and snapped it between two fingers.

A sound like breaking glass split the air.

Every student vanished.

One moment, the academy stairs were crowded. The next, they were empty except for drifting motes of pale blue light.

I stared at the space where several hundred people had been standing.

The headmistress returned the unbroken key to her chain.

“That was unnecessary, Veyra,” Prince Corven said.

“That was efficient,” she replied.

Veyra.

I had heard the name spoken in countinghouses and taverns, usually after people checked that no royal officers were listening.

Headmistress Olyssia Veyra had ruled Eldervane Academy for forty-six years. She had trained three generations of monarchs, survived seven assassination attempts, and once ended a border war by locking both kings inside a tower until they agreed to peace.

Some claimed she could remove a person’s magic with a touch.

Others said she kept the stolen power in glass jars beneath the academy.

Neither possibility made me eager to enter.

The headmistress extended one pale hand.

“Come, Azenya.”

I did not move.

Behind her, the academy gates stood open. A steep avenue climbed between black trees toward a collection of towers, bridges, and enormous stone buildings. Some appeared to have been constructed into the mountain. Others hung above it without visible support.

The eighth bell had fallen silent, but I could still feel its final toll inside my bones.

“I appreciate the invitation,” I said, “but I would prefer to go home.”

Zephan barked a laugh.

Sevrael Valeon smiled as though I had made an especially charming joke. He had regained his pleasant expression, but something watchful now lived behind it.

Corven appeared offended on behalf of the entire institution.

“You cannot simply decline Eldervane.”

“I wasn’t aware I had applied.”

“You did not,” the headmistress said.

“Then we agree.”

“We do not.”

The magistrate came limping up the mountain road, supported by two guards. Blood ran from a wound above his temple, staining the white fur collar of his ceremonial robe.

“Headmistress Veyra,” he called. “That creature belongs to the Crown.”

A dangerous stillness entered the headmistress’s face.

I had been called worse things than creature, but something about the ease with which he said it made the power beneath my skin stir.

The magistrate noticed.

He pointed his jeweled staff at me. “You see? She cannot control it.”

“I have had it for less than five minutes.”

“You attacked royal soldiers.”

“After they attacked me.”

“You disrupted an authorized execution and absorbed power belonging to the Five Crowns.”

“The fire came to me.”

“Fire does not choose.”

“That particular fire seemed quite certain.”

Sevrael covered a smile with one hand.

The magistrate’s face darkened. “You find this amusing, Your Highness?”

“I find her amusing. The situation is catastrophic.”

His green eyes shifted toward me.

The admiration in them felt more dangerous than Zephan’s hostility.

The headmistress stepped between the magistrate and me.

“No individual summoned by the eighth bell belongs to any crown.”

“There has not been an eighth bell in four centuries.”

“There has always been an eighth bell. You simply could not hear it.”

“The girl is under arrest.”

“She is under my protection.”

The magistrate struck the base of his staff against the road. A circle of white flame spread around us.

The power inside me surged.

Tavian caught my wrist.

His bare hand closed over the glowing lines in my skin.

The world stopped.

The royal fire froze around us. Raindrops hung motionless above the road. Even the magistrate’s mouth remained open around an unfinished command.

Only Tavian and I could move.

His fingers felt cold enough to burn.

“What did you do?” I whispered.

“Kept you from killing him.”

“I wasn’t going to kill anyone.”

“The power inside you disagrees.”

Black veins of magic crawled from my wrist onto his hand.

I tried to pull free.

His grip tightened.

“Let me go.”

“If I do, the magistrate dies.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I can feel what your magic wants.”

“And what does it want?”

His storm-gray eyes held mine.

“To answer every threat with a grave.”

The words should have frightened me.

Instead, some hidden part of me recognized them as truth.

The magistrate had raised his staff. My power had awakened. I had not commanded it to attack, but I had felt its eagerness. It wanted to reach through the royal flame and find the heart of the man controlling it.

Worse, it knew how.

“How are you moving?” I asked.

“The blood we spilled into the execution basin connected us to the flame.”

“All five of you?”

“Yes.”

“Then why are the others frozen?”

A…

“That…