1. Selena

Selena

I’d always hoped my sixteenth birthday would be the moment I came into my witch powers. That was the way it worked in books and movies, right? You turned a certain age, something important happened, and then BAM.

The magic ignited.

Since I lived on an island full of supernaturals, I should have known better. That wasn’t how our magic worked. Yet, as the only supernatural on the island that still showed no sign of any magic, I held onto the hope that maybe on this birthday, something would change. I mean, my biological mother was one of the most powerful witches born in the past century.

So why was my magic nonexistent?

No one knew.

I sat in my room in the castle after the party, surrounded by my presents. But I was only focused on the invitation in my hand. It was from the mage Iris—the event coordinator on Avalon—asking me to apprentice by her side for the next two years.

It pissed me off.

A knock on the door pulled me out of my thoughts. I could tell it was my best friend, Torrence, just from the pattern of the raps.

“Come in,” I said, dropping the invitation onto my lap.

Torrence waltzed into my room, her long auburn hair flying behind her, and situated herself on the end of my king-size bed. “I knew you were pissed about that one,” she said, glancing at the invitation.

“Can you blame me?” I huffed. “Iris is just trying to give me something to do instead of the magic classes I’m barely passing every year.”

I would have failed my magic classes if it weren’t for the written portions of the tests. Because I understood magic theory perfectly well.

Magic practice , on the other hand, was a different story.

It was impossible to practice magic when my magic didn’t exist.

“Yeah,” Torrence agreed. “It sucks.”

One of the things I loved about my best friend was that she never sugar coated anything.

I picked up the invitation again and glared at it. As I did, a buzz started from my toes, growing up through my body until it reached my hands. My insides felt like branches of a tree igniting, crackling and popping with electricity.

I gathered the electricity until it was buzzing below the surface of my skin and sent it flying out at the piece of paper in my hand.

In my mind, the paper burst into flames and turned to ashes.

In reality, nothing happened.

“You’re staring at that invitation like you expect it to spontaneously combust,” Torrence said.

“That’s what I just tried to do,” I said. “I felt the magic. It wants to come out. It’s just… stuck.”

I shrugged, because this was nothing Torrence hadn’t heard before. I’d told everyone about how I could feel the magic inside, wanting to come out. But when the other witches asked me what my magic felt like, they told me it sounded nothing like what their magic felt like when they performed spells.

I didn’t think they believed me.

So I’d stopped talking about it. To everyone except Torrence, of course. Sometimes it felt like she was the only person in the world who still had faith in me.

“There’s no spell I’ve heard of that makes anything spontaneously combust,” she said simply. “But if you feel like your magic wants to do that, then hey, it’ll be cool to see what you’ll be able to do when your magic makes an appearance.”

I was grateful that Torrence held out hope that my magic might emerge someday. But I nodded in agreement, since I also knew there wasn’t a spell to make things spontaneously combust.

Then I threw the invitation into the fireplace.

Once satisfied that it was burned to a crisp, I leaned back into the mound of pillows behind me, still staring into the flames.

“So…” Torrence said, and I turned my attention back to her. Her green eyes glinted with the look that I knew only meant one thing. Trouble. “The collectors’ edition of Pride and Prejudice I gave you wasn’t your real birthday present.”

“It was a great present,” I said, since it was. “But now you have me curious. What’s my ‘real’ present?”

Torrence smirked and lifted her hands, chanting a spell I knew well. A sound barrier spell. Her purple magic swirled out of her hands, shooting up to the ceiling and soaring down along the walls as the spell locked into place. The purple disappeared, and now anything we talked about while she maintained the spell wouldn’t be overheard.

Each room in the castle already had a sound barrier spell around it, but we liked to be careful. Just in case.

I leaned forward in anticipation. “So?” I asked. “What is it?”

She reached into the sleeve of her sweatshirt and pulled out a vial full of bright red potion.

My eyes widened at the sight of it. “Transformation potion?” I looked to her, to the potion, and back to her again. I didn’t need her to nod to confirm what I already knew was true. “What’s it for? And where did you get it?”

Transformation potion was one of the hardest potions to create. Only the most advanced witches could brew it. And once it was brewed, it expired after twenty-four hours. So it wasn’t something that was kept in storage.

“I made it, using my own blood,” she said. “So you can transform into me.”