Antebellum Awakening (The Network Series #2)(25)

“In answer to your question, yes. If the contract is destroyed, the binding will no longer exist.”

Hope, sweet and pure, surged through my soul.

“Yes?” I asked, breathless, needing verbal confirmation. It couldn’t be that easy.

Isadora paused.

“Remember that she’s quite cunning, Bianca,” she said quietly. “You’ve underestimated her before.”

What little confidence I still had in myself shattered. “Yes,” I heard myself whisper over the bellow of my powers. The reminder of my responsibility in Mama’s death struck a crippling blow, resurrecting my anger and despair all over again. “I know.”

You were weak.

“Miss Mabel knows the limitations and weaknesses of the magic. She knows that she must keep all her bindings near or risk losing them. Getting to your binding would be very difficult.”

The word bindings echoed in my head and I shuddered to think of all the other witches Miss Mabel held in her control. Was that how she had become so powerful? I recalled the protective way she held the book in the attic four months before, and again in the Western Network.

“It seems quite hopeless,” I said in a strangled voice. My life, and the future High Priest’s, hung in the balance. Even if the High Priestess found a way around my Inheritance Curse, what would it matter? I wouldn’t kill another witch for Miss Mabel, so the binding would claim my life.

The wrinkles around Isadora’s eyes softened for the first time. Her voice reminded me of my grandmother.

“You’ll never beat her with sheer power,” she said softly, “but there are strengths you possess that she does not. Every witch has a weakness. Those who seem to have none are often the most flawed of all of us.”

“What strengths?” I scoffed as the magic expanded in my chest with a painful lurch. Pretending that I wasn’t mourning Mama had leeched my strength. “Sarcasm? Running? I can’t even do that anymore.”

I leaned forward and put my head in my hands. Why wouldn’t this all just go away? The silence continued for several moments until I looked up.

“How is Miss Mabel doing all this evil?” I asked. “How is she so powerful? She—”

She transported me.

Isadora shifted in her chair. “She’s using Almorran magic,” she said with a troubled frown, and I knew she understood my thought.

“Almorran?” I murmured, recalling the Clavas in the painting.

“Yes. Dark Almorran magic like your binding is something Mabel has always been interested in. It would also allow her to transport you against your will because you aren’t powerful enough to block her, like the High Priestess or your father could.”

The idea of Miss Mabel resurrecting an ancient dark magic in order to gain control shook me. She would stop at nothing. But for what? What was her end goal? There had to be a reason.

So my only hope is to destroy the binding, I concluded to myself in a grim thought, unable to speak it aloud. “There’s no way for me to combat Almorran magic right now,” I said instead. “I don’t know enough.”

Isadora’s expression didn’t change.

“The possibilities are always shifting, Bianca. One never knows what could happen when you least expect it.”

“Should that comfort me?” I asked, puzzled by her cryptic words.

“That should comfort all of us,” she said with a final sip of her tea. “No future is set in stone. Now, I have a few things to do this afternoon. Thank you for your visit.”

“Yes. Thank you for having me, Isadora,” I said, pushing away from the table.

She didn’t stop me. I wanted her to call after me, to tell me the secret behind saving myself. To say I was clever enough to steal a binding set by one of the most powerful witches in the world using a magic so old that some believed it had never really existed. I stopped at the doorway but didn’t turn around. Behind her cottage lay the beginning of the land owned by Miss Mabel’s School for Girls. I shivered, thinking of the painful memories. Letum Wood cast a long shadow on days like this.

“Are you going to tell the High Priestess what you know about me?” I asked, peering out the door to the dripping forest. It would be so much easier that way. Then I wouldn’t have to bear yet another secret, another burden on my strained heart. But would she? Isadora didn’t have to act on what she saw.

“Who said she doesn’t already know?” she asked.

I whirled around.

“Does she?”

Isadora peered into my eyes. “That’s not for me to say. Mildred knows many things that I do not.”

“She suspected that Miss Mabel would—”

The words stopped again, just short of hope. She suspected that Miss Mabel would bind me into an agreement. Maybe the High Priestess was already anticipating a traitorous action. If she knew, she certainly gave no sign of it.

“Regardless of whether Mildred knows or not,” Isadora said, “I will not be the one to tell her. Sometimes the most obvious courses are not always the safest.”

Disappointed but not surprised, I closed my eyes, took several breaths, and pressed forward into the gray fog that had settled in behind the rain. Isadora had her own reasons for her silence and I had to trust that it was for the best.

I ducked away from the little cottage and into the wispy fog, grateful to return to Letum’s expansive ceiling. The dragon inside cooled as I walked further away, my cape billowing out behind me.