Dark Heart of Magic (Black Blade #2)(42)

Long, golden hair, dark blue eyes, pale skin that shimmered in the moonlight. She was one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen, like a fairy-tale princess come to life, but something about her seemed strangely . . . familiar. Like I’d seen her somewhere before, although I didn’t think I had.

For as beautiful as she was, her appearance was also a bit strange. A long, flowing white garment covered her slender body, looking more like a nightgown than an actual dress, and her feet were bare, despite the sticks, rocks, and other woodsy debris that littered the cemetery. One lock of her golden hair was braided down the right side of her face and tied off with a sapphire-blue ribbon, while a white wicker basket full of blood-red roses dangled from her hand.

The woman stared at me, obviously seeing me despite the mist and the darkness, which meant that she had some sort of sight magic. I expected her to open her mouth and yell for the guards, but to my surprise, a soft smile curved her lips. The warm, welcoming expression made her look even more beautiful, like an ethereal ghost come to frolic in the moonlit cemetery.

“Serena!” she said, tossing her basket aside and racing over to me. “You finally came back!”

I couldn’t have been more shocked than if she’d started doing cartwheels. Serena? She thought I was my mom? Why? Why would she think that? Sure, I had my mom’s black hair and blue eyes, and I was even wearing her sapphire-blue coat, but I obviously wasn’t her.

But the woman didn’t seem to realize that. Instead, she stopped in front of me, reached out, and drew me into a tight hug.

“Oh, Serena,” she said in a choked voice. “It’s been so long. So very, very long.”

I stood there, my mouth still gaping open, my arms hanging by my sides, wondering who this woman was and why she thought I was my dead mom. After several seconds, the woman drew back, still smiling.

“Oh, Serena,” she said in a light, lilting, almost singsong voice. “I have so much to tell you. About Deah and Lila and everything else that’s been going on between the Families.”

More shock jolted through me. She knew my name? But if she knew that I was Serena’s daughter, then why did she think that I was my mom?

I looked into her eyes, and I realized that they were unnaturally bright, as though two glittering jewels had been set into her face. But the weird thing was that my soulsight didn’t automatically kick in the way it usually did whenever I locked gazes with someone.

I waited . . . and waited . . . and waited . . . but I didn’t feel any of her emotions, even though she was obviously very glad to see me. No warm happiness, no blazing conviction, nothing. Instead, this strange, almost floating sensation filled my mind as if my head were full of the light, airy mist that surrounded us, as if I were somehow drifting away from the rest of my body—

I blinked, and the sensation vanished, although the woman’s eyes remained as bright as ever. I tried to step away from her, but she reached out and grabbed my hands, hard and tight enough to tell me that she had a strength Talent.

“We have to warn the girls about the wolf,” the woman said in a low, urgent tone. “The wolf wants to devour them both, gobble them up until there’s nothing left but bones and blades.... No blood, just bones and blades . . . bones and blades . . . bones and blades. . . .”

She shuddered and let go of my hands. She wrapped her arms around her body and hugged herself tight as though something terrible had happened.

“Are you okay?” I asked, having no idea what was going on or why.

The woman looked at me, her face dark and troubled. Then, in the next instant, she blinked, her lips stretching up in another sunny smile. “Just fine now that you’re here, Serena.”

And then she turned around, retrieved her basket of roses, and skipped past me. Seriously, she was skipping as though she didn’t have a care in the world. The woman headed straight to my father’s tombstone, then dropped to her knees, pulled the red roses out of her basket, and started arranging them on his grave, humming a soft tune all the while.

All I could do was just stand there with my eyes bulging and mouth gaping open even wider than before. I felt like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. Things just kept getting stranger and stranger.

“I thought that was you at the tournament today,” the woman said. “But, of course, I was up in the box, so I couldn’t be sure.”

So she was the woman who’d been sitting in the Draconi box, the blonde wearing the white hat. That still didn’t tell me who she might be in the Family, but that didn’t matter. What did was getting out of here before someone else spotted me—

A branch cracked behind me, and a hand touched my shoulder.

Instinct took over. I grabbed the hand, turned my body into the one behind me, and flipped my attacker over my shoulder. The guy landed on his back with an audible thump, then let out a low groan of pain.

Felix blinked up at me. “Ouch. That hurt.”



“Felix!” I hissed. “What are you doing here?”

“I’d say the better question is what are you doing here,” another voice chimed in.

I whirled around to find Deah standing in the cemetery as well, her hand resting on the hilt of the sword strapped to her black leather belt. My hand curled around the hilt of my sword as well, and the two of us stood there, staring at each other, daring the other to make the first move.