Serafina watched in fascination. Rowena did not wallow in fear and misery. She did not cry. She seemed filled with new urgency, a new, angry determination to fight and survive.
Just when Serafina thought she had seen everything strange under the moon, Rowena pressed her hands flat to the top of her head and ran her palms slowly down the length of her hair, changing her hair color from red to black. Then she touched two fingers on each hand to her face just below her eyes. She pressed her fingers onto her cheeks, wiping in a hard, steady motion, changing the contour of her face as she went. Next, she reached down to her feet, pulled off her shoes, and pushed the little toe into each foot until it disappeared. Finally, she touched the center of each of her eyeballs with the pad of her index finger, tinging her eyes with a golden-amber color.
Serafina stared in mystified disbelief. Step by step, Rowena had transformed herself into someone else. Someone who looked disturbingly like her!
It was as if Serafina was looking into a mirror, but the girl who was looking back at her was far more beautiful and alluring than she was.
“Wait, Rowena,” Serafina said. “I don’t understand. What are you doing?”
“You heard him,” Rowena said. “I want this over.”
“But who was that?” Serafina asked. “Who was attacking you?”
Rowena pulled her torn robes around her and started walking fast through the forest, following the same path Serafina had used to come here.
“Hold on, just stop, where are you going?” Serafina asked desperately. “Please, tell me what you’re going to do.”
“Stop pestering me, cat, I have a summer ball to go to,” Rowena said.
Serafina followed Rowena through the forest, knowing that Braeden was in grave danger. But in the early-morning hours a thick cloud of mist lingered in the mountain valleys and floated along the ridges, drifting slowly, white and eerie, through the trees, obscuring Rowena’s path. Serafina wasn’t sure if it was a natural fog or one of the sorceress’s concealing potions, but one way or another, Serafina finally lost track of her.
As she looked for Rowena’s trail, Serafina felt the coolness of the mist on her skin, and sensed that if she stood still a little too long, she’d slip into the vapor, whether she wanted to or not. Dust to dust, and now mist to mist.
She had learned to enliven some of the elements in tiny ways, and she had shifted into the water in the stream, but the more she interacted with the elements, the more she sensed herself slipping into them.
It broke her heart to think about leaving the people she loved behind, but she knew there probably wasn’t anything she could do about dying now. As Rowena had said, she was already on her way. It felt like she had one more night, maybe two, before she was gone.
Everyone dies, she told herself, trying to stay brave, but I need to protect the people I love.
But how? That was the question now.
She’d seen the violent force terrorizing Rowena, bringing in storms, casting fireballs, and burning her as it demanded she retrieve the Black Cloak. Braeden and Waysa were playing a dangerous game by hiding it, but maybe it was the only thing keeping them alive.
All through the afternoon, she searched for Rowena, looking for tracks and other signs, but the sorceress had disappeared.
Finally, she headed back to Biltmore, dreading what was going to happen. It was the night of the summer ball.
She emerged from the forest trees near the statue of Diana, goddess of the hunt, atop the hill that provided the most dramatic view of Biltmore’s front facade.
From there, a long stretch of green grass ran down a steep hill to the Esplanade, the flat expanse of manicured grass with its carriageways on each side leading up to the entrance of the house. Biltmore House rose up with its intricately carved limestone walls, its fine statues and strange gargoyles, its steep peaks and slanted rooftops, and the rolling layers of the mountains in the distance. She had once stood here in this spot in a beautiful red-and-black gown, with Braeden and Gidean standing at her side, the three of them gazing down at the house together. But not tonight.
Tonight, she was alone, standing in the moonlight, still wearing the torn, dirty, bloodstained dress that Braeden had buried her in.
Flickering torches lined the grand carriageway that led up to the main door of the mansion, and all the windows of the house were aglow. The slanted, spiraling windows of the Grand Staircase were ablaze with glittering brilliance. But it was the intricate glass panes of the domed Winter Garden—the center of the ball—that shone the brightest of all. It was difficult to imagine, but it seemed as if it would be there that Rowena would try to weave her web around Braeden.
Serafina watched a steady chain of horse-drawn carriages ride through the mansion’s gates. The main road to the estate had been muddy and partially flooded, but the bridges were holding, and the carriages had managed to get through. They proceeded in a long line, one after the other, up to the front doors of the house, where two tall, perfectly matched footmen in their formal black-and-white livery uniforms welcomed the arriving guests.
Quiet and watchful, Serafina walked down the hill toward the incoming carriages.
“Oh, it’s positively breathtaking!” one fine lady said to her gentleman husband as she opened the carriage window to see the house more clearly.
“Look at it, Mama, it’s like a fairy tale!” a young girl in the next carriage said to her mother.
“More like a horror story these days,” Serafina grumbled quietly to herself.
Most of the carriages were pulled by two horses, while the wealthiest members of society had carriages that were pulled by four. But then Serafina spotted something she had never seen before.
One of the carriages didn’t have any horses at all. It looked like a carriage, with four spoked wheels, lacquered wood sides, and four passengers sitting on tufted leather seats, but it appeared to be moving by its own magical power. Serafina’s eyes darted around as she looked for the sorceress, thinking that she must have cast some sort of spell, but Rowena was nowhere to be seen.
The carriage with no horses made an odd puttering sound, and the man in the front seat wore a funny hat and goggles. It took Serafina several seconds to realize that it wasn’t her enemy’s dark magic, but some sort of newfangled machine.
All her life, her pa had been telling her that times were changing, that all over the country men and women were inventing things that were going to change the world. She never knew exactly what he was talking about. But maybe this strange, horseless carriage was the beginning of it. She wished her pa was there to see it and tell her what it was.
Still on the lookout for Rowena, Serafina slipped through the line of carriages, up through the congestion of four-legged hoof stompers, top-hatted coachmen, and glittering ladies.