The Legend of the Eight: The Gifted

3: The November Incident

THREE: THE NOVEMBER INCIDENT
DECEMBER 27
KATE DIAMOND

IT WAS SUNDAY MORNING AND the sky was still cloudy from the snowfall before. It would probably snow again. Inside a palace so large it would put Neuschwanstein to shame, Princess Katarina Diamond sat at the desk in her bedroom. She was busy setting up her planner for the new semester and while doing so, spoke with her roommate, Wren Rorrick, on the phone.

Wren was telling Kate about her new home in sunny South Florida—a long ways away from the World of Magic and the Academy. After the November Incident, Wren and the rest of the Rorrick family relocated to the Mortal World. They weren't the only ones to leave. Many families were terrified after the Incident and left for somewhere safer. Others stayed but lived in fear.

"Did your parents say you could come back for New Year's?" Kate asked when Wren finished gushing about her new home, though she had trouble believing that any place could be better than the World of Magic—especially Florida.

"I asked," Wren said from the other line, and she was whispering like she wasn't supposed to be on the phone. "But my parents were pretty clear. If someone like Reagan can do what she did, the World of Magic isn't safe anymore."

Kate nodded mindlessly and continued flipping through her planner. Somewhere during the month of October, between notes about a test on common jinxes, was a scribbled note from Liam Heart (who sat in the desk beside Kate's during their Enchantments class). Liam wrote something about their teacher, Mr. Westville, and his Italian accent which was just a little toostrong and Kate drew a smiley face beside it.

"The hearing is today, isn't it?" Wren asked when she didn't get a reply from Kate.

Suddenly, Kate lifted her head up and her hand stopped. She didn't remember telling Wren anything about the hearing but WoMWeekly (a popular tabloid that extended to its television show, WoMLive and online app WoMOnline) had been covering everything about the Incident since it happened.

"Y-Yeah," Kate finally managed to spit out. "It is."

She blinked back down to her planner in an attempt to distract herself and her eyes traced over the lines of Liam's doodle of a werewolf—probably because on the day he'd drawn it, there was supposed to be a full moon later that night.

"Any word yet?" was Wren's follow-up question.

Kate shook her head despite the fact that Wren couldn't see it and she twirled the diamond studs around in her ears.

"Nothing yet. The Council got here a few hours ago and they haven't left the Conference Hall since. Not even for a break."

"Well I hope they find the right people guilty," said Wren, conveniently using the term people instead of person. She didn't have to say it for Kate to know. She believed Reagan wasn't the only one responsible for the Incident—she believed Kate's twin sister, Wil, was too. A guilty verdict for Wil meant not only that she'd be expelled from the Academy but she could also be Banished to the Shadow Lands.

"Two people were killed. Someone needs to be punished."

Kate opted to give Wren the opportunity to think about what she was saying—or rather, who she was saying it to—but Wren didn't say anything more. Mindlessly, Kate ran her fingers over the lines of her planner—she was meticulous about marking down assignments. Each ridge and bump in the page mirrored the impression of her pen and she could nearly read the pages without even looking.