Heir of Charms

Heir of Charms, Arda Academy Book One (FULL BOOK)

Chapter One

"If you lock your bedroom door one more time, I'm going to take it off its hinges!"

My pillow is halfway across the room, slamming ineffectually at the door in question before I realize how childish my reaction to this taunt is.

The threat, coming from my spiteful grandmother's lips this time and not my mother's, is nothing new, but I know it's empty. The bedroom door will remain, if for no other reason than my family's justified fear.

Fear of me.

Of what I might do to them if there is no barrier between us, although the wooden slab is little protection against all of which I am capable.

I will be sixteen tomorrow, long past the age when I should have been due some privacy in my own bedroom, but the other inhabitants of this house have no problem walking in whenever they feel like it. This, however, isn't all that often anymore, so I don't have to worry too much about being disturbed while I'm getting dressed or staring out of my bedroom window.

Most of my time is spent reading or studying, usually as I steal glances out of that same window.

Taran, my next door neighbor, should be returning from his usual morning shower soon, and if he is as unconcerned with modesty as he normally is, I'll catch him entering his bedroom with a large, coral-pink towel wrapped around his lean waist, as comfortable with the color as he was with me seeing him half naked.

A smile touches my lips as I picture him, his dark hair spiky and wet, the wire-framed glasses perched on the end of his nose always slipping so he has to poke at them to get them to slide back up from the middle of his nose to the bridge between his eyes.

What color are his eyes, exactly?

Will I ever find out?

I tug at my robe, which used to be electric blue, fluffy and cozy. Now, it's too small for me, as my legs have grown so much longer over the past two years that the tattered hem barely covers the tops of my thighs.

The fabric is worn and faded, thinner now just as I am, a reminder of my birthday tomorrow since the robe was a reluctant gift from my heartless Aunt Destiny when I turned fourteen.

Like her sisters, my mother and Aunt Daniela, Aunt Destiny hates me even more than she did back then.

And my grandmother?

"You're running out of time, Merith Minette Leigh! I'll be in my grave before I let you destroy this home and this family!"

She's still screaming outside of my bedroom door, on the small square landing that opens only into my room. Her ranting must be exhausting, I imagine, her shrill voice scratchier with each new curse. I remind myself that this is nothing new, but I hug my ratty robe closer, tucking my neck into the collar that has absorbed so much of my tears as I've grown used to the tirades from the other women in this house.

Women who should love me and support me, help me and guide me.

I close my eyes tightly to stop the tears I feel at the back of them from spilling out, refusing to let the harsh words intimidate me.

Fear.

That's all it is. It isn't personal, I tell myself, not really, not after I've destroyed so much. So much property, along with their hopes for the future.

But when it's my family who heaps this cruelty upon me when I have no control over who I am and what I can do, it sure feels personal.

A Castle Heights city school bus clunks over the potholes in the street, audible through the opening in my window. The early autumn morning air in Northeast Ohio is cool, the chill raising the hairs on my arms cocooned in my robe sleeves, but I've cracked the window just enough to hear the sounds of the town on our little corner.