The SpellBinder's Grim (LONG LIST 2018)

Chapter Two: Broken Hearts

Chapter Two: Broken Hearts

"No, mother, you should have seen the look in his eyes!" Elizabeth croaked, fiddling with her red hair with anxiety. She had immediately rushed home to tell her mother about the events that had transpired between Caius, Roland, and herself. " He hit Caius with a sword and took away a branch I had enchanted for him."

Anna who had remained silent while her daughter frantically told her ordeal, calmly walked over to her nightstand and blew on a candle. Instead of it flickering out, it roared into an angrier flame, illuminating the bedroom. "Did he actually see you enchant it?" She asked quietly while brushing her long silvery- black hair into a bun on the top of her head. Despite Anna being nearly forty years old, she lacked the wrinkles to show for it. She could easily pass for someone twenty years younger. She had had Elizabeth when she was twenty one summers, a very far cry from the ages of which women would have children. At her age she would have been expected to be a grandmother already.

"I do not believe so, but when has the Brotherhood ever needed visual proof to burn someone?"

"They don't," Anna scoffed, stroking her hair without looking at her.

"You are not helping at all," Elizabeth threw her hands in the air in frustration.

"Be quiet or you will worry your sister," Annaelle snapped back.

"She should be worried. I know you are perfectly aware of what day it is tomorrow, mother," Elizabeth's anxiety was getting the best of her at that point, and the roaring candle went out. Anna let out an annoyed sigh and the light returned as bright as it had been before.

"Say that you and Caius found it. I don't understand why you do your little tricks for him anyways. So peculiar you are," Anna set down her brush and let her gray eyes rest on her daughter. "You know good and well that it is dangerous to be using your gifts so close to this village. This celebration should have served as a reminder to that. Your grandmother died because she wasn't careful."

"Grandmother died because she refused to use her powers on humans," A voice from the bedroom entrance snapped. They both turned around quickly to see a young girl about sixteen years old with reddish brown hair standing with her arms crossing her chest, her blue eyes angrily defying her mother's.

"Yet you use magic in our home where a passerby can by chance catch a glimpse of you." Elizabeth snapped at her mother.

"You know there is a concealment charm on the house. No one can see what we do not allow them to in here. Out there is a different story entirely." Annaelle pointed a long finger toward the front door for added effect before turning to Emily, finally acknowledging her presence.

"Emily, we do not use magic against creatures that are weaker than us, no matter the circumstances. It is what defines us between good and evil," Anna chastised her youngest daughter.

"It is unbelievably idiotic,' Emily scoffed.

"I might as well light my own fire and burn myself at the stake," she added.

"Is no one concerned for our safety? Roland is out there, right now with materialized proof that there is a witch in the vicinity and Caius and I were the only ones around!" Elizabeth grabbed hold of her red locks and tugged them around her face to hide the scared expression she held. "We could end up like Grandmother Ara by sundown."

"No, the both of you could end up like Grandma Ara, I would actually fight back," snarked Emily while rolling her eyes.

Both of the older women looked at the younger and quirked a brow. "Unless you recently developed powers we know nothing about, please tell us how you would plan on stopping a mob of villagers from killing all three of us?" Elizabeth snorted before Anna swatted her gently.