The last time Karla had been here, she'd been incredibly nervous about how that evening would turn out and affect her future. Standing in the Keep tonight with a crowd of people around her--some of them almost complete strangers--made her almost laugh at how naive her fear had been the last time.

Her Offering was nothing. This was the completely ( Read more... )

Karla tried not to look nervous as the great doors to the Dark Altar opened in front of her. Inside, Opal witchlights danced in sconces, forming a path for her to follow, rather than illuminating what was within. This was very different than her Birthright Ceremony, where she'd had the company of her parents and several other children, where a ( Read more... )

The first week Karla, Warren, and Raven had been back, they had been granted a leave on lessons. After all, Warren and Raven had just graduated from high school and that was an accomplishment of some note. Even Lucivar had announced his morning exercises for the week were voluntary only, making the three of them (okay, Raven and Warren) immediately ( Read more... )

After getting the news from Dinah yesterday, Karla was more determined than ever to head back home and see what she could dig up about the legend of Zuul. Only a legend, as far as she knew, passed down to young Queens as a warning, but there were too many pieces that fit together. The mass disappearances. The erasure of everything having to do with ( Read more... )

Holding Rook's hand tightly in hers, Karla promised in an undertone, "We won't let her take you, sweetheart. And you still have time to back out of this if you're not sure you still want to participate. Your safety is the most important thing, here, okay? So if you'd prefer to stay ( Read more... )

Knowing that she was here a decade in her own future--or a future, anyway--was a little disconcerting for Karla. She wasn't sure if that unease was lessened or heightened by the fact that standing here in front of the Keep and it looked exactly the same as it did in her own time. Having Jaenelle as the Queen of Ebon Askavi didn't change the way the ( Read more... )

The atmosphere in the Keep was tense. Jaenelle had retreated to her suites completely and Daemon was stalking through the hallways like an angry black crow. More reports were coming in from Glacia, more attacks on villages, some by the pair masquerading as Lucivar and Daemon, still others by 'freedom fighters' backed by Hobart ( Read more... )

Karla was heading to the courtyard of the Keep, where a portal had been ordered for her return to Fandom. It still felt wrong, oh so wrong, to be heading back to safety and comfort while Jaenelle and Lucivar were out in the wilds of Askavi, circling each other in a dark and dangerous dance. She was supposed to just go home and focus on class while ( Read more... )

Saetan looked like a man who had barely survived a battlefield ( Read more... )

Today there were two choices for visits-three, if one counted staying at the Hall, which was always a possibility. The first was a trip to Ebon Askavi, the Black Mountain, the home of Witch. The last, of course, was more historical than fact, though Jaenelle did have a suite there, left over from when she was a little girl. It was the center of ( Read more... )