by Jennifer Ansara

Content Warnings: Blood, Nonconsensual Drug Use, Body Horror

I was young when he found me. A mere child, dallying in the summer fields, abound with speckled color, bright against the dry browns of wild wheatgrass. I danced under the sunlight, collecting meadowsweet and celandine in bundles in my arms, meandering in the stretch between the paths to town and the weathered windmill of my family’s property.

I heard the thrumming of hooves first, the creaking of a cart in tow. I remember the hazy, smoky aroma of incense that washed over me when he dismounted, the plume of dirt that billowed into the air the moment his boots struck the earth. He wore strange, angle-cut attire, complete with a glittering silver merkaba pinned to his lapel.

Never before had I been so ashamed of my ill-fitting chemise, wild black ringlets, and barren feet. My cheeks started to burn, and I found myself unwilling to meet his gaze.

“Do you know the way to the port?” he asked. His voice was gentle, and it frightened me. I forced my chin up and summoned my voice, though it came no louder than a kitten’s mew.

“The next town. Iudnerth. Take the highway.”

The smile he flashed told me he wasn’t really in dire need of directions. But what could he want with a poor, disfigured girl gathering weeds along the roadside? I squinted at him, uneven brows creased, resisting the urge to stare into the depths of his honeyed gaze.

“What’s your name?” he prompted, cocking his head. Dark curls bounced with the motion, perfectly framing the sharp planes of his face.

“Gwentwyfar.” My voice was scarce, but curiosity and fixation drew my courage out from hiding. “Gwen. And yours?”

“Auryn. Just Auryn.”

“Auryn…” I tasted the name, not quite realizing I had echoed him. I liked the feel of it on my lips.

“Ficaria verna,” Auryn stated. “Celandine. Lesser celandine. And horribly out of season. How did you find it?”

My unburdened hand wandered towards the tear along my hem, wringing it in my grasp. I didn’t find the celandine. I grew it. In complete honesty, I didn’t know how speaking sweet nothings to the seeds I gathered last fall had caused sprouts to emerge and blossom into full maturity in a matter of mere hours. I didn’t want to tell him I had craved celandine to soothe the ache in my abdomen, that dull pain that appeared every month with a wash of blood, and left within a week, only to arrive again next moon cycle. And in that moment, I couldn't fathom how that desire for relief had manifested into these bright yellow blooms.

“Gwen,” Auryn began. He had drawn closer to me. I hadn’t noticed. “What can you tell me about magick?”

“Magick?” Recollections of the fragmented, ancient knowledge my gran had imparted to me flooded my mind. I recited what I believed. “The sun shines on the earth, and flowers bloom. That is the simplest form of magick. A transference of energy, making something beautiful.”

I found that ache had crawled its way up to my chest, and I banished the threat of tears that accompanied every bittersweet memory of Gran to face Auryn. And to my surprise, he didn’t laugh or scoff. Instead, he nodded along sagely before beckoning me over.

He knelt onto the ground. I winced at the earth embedding itself into the fine fabric of his trousers. “Come here.”

I followed. I didn’t care to hike my skirts, embracing the stains that were sure to follow. What was a privilege to me was a mere trifle to him. I set my precious bundles to my left, blinking up at Auryn with wide, pale blue eyes.

“Can I have your hands?”

Heart thudding, I obeyed. He brought my hands into his, cupping them around a stalk of buds.

“Breathe,” he instructed, “and focus your energy here.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, searching my body for that spark of vitality, trying to lure it from my chest and through my veins, down my arms all the way to my fingertips. I envisioned it snaking through my veins, messy but strong, like the wild reach of nightshade roots.

It was Auryn’s hum of approval that snapped me from my trance. And when I fluttered open my eyes, I watched in utter astonishment as the foxglove unfurled, each pendent opening one by one. Magenta petals yawned to the skies, reaching for the rays of the sun in all their delicate beauty. Did… did I do that?

Auryn withdrew his hands and sat back on his heels. He looked upon me proudly, as his newly picked student had succeeded in a lesson delivered with six words. “Yes, Gwen. That was all you.”

He stood, snapping a dandelion from its roots. A drop of golden sunlight, like my sweet celandine.

“And you’re right. Magick is a transference of energy.” He examined the little thing, weeping with white ichor. “But it’s not always beautiful.”

The dandelion withered, writhing as though pained, curling in on itself, and crumbling into dust. The breeze stole it away. Auryn stood taller.

He smiled that bright, dazzling smile again. “May the blessings of Meraudia shine down upon you, Gwen. Farewell.” With that, he headed back to his cart.

Realization hit me faster than my mind could keep pace.

“Wait!” I called after him. The uniform—the merkaba on his lapel—it should have clicked sooner.

“You’re a student of the Akademi, aren’t you?”

He looked pleased to receive some recognition, to be acknowledged without scorn but with wonder. And if he was traveling this way, it must mean he was headed towards the island Kybries. To Arethya.

“Are you going there now?” I ventured, waiting for his answer with bated breath.

Auryn understood the true question layered beneath the facade. He saw it on my dirtied rags, in the weeds that ravaged the once-tilled soil. He saw it in the spots of sunlight that penetrated the shadows cast by the windmill’s unmoving sails, in the hollows of my cheeks upon my scarred and disfigured face, through the black and barren trees that stood like skeletons through my broken village. The unspoken desire of reprieve and escape hung heavy in the air. And he felt it. I know he did.

To my disbelief, he took me with him.

✿

I treasure that memory. Six years ago, I begged the strange man to steal me away in the night, and by some miracle, he did. And for six years, I trained under Headmistress Elestren’s strict guidance. The cold, stone walls and tall, stretching archways of Arethya Akademi had become my home. For once in my entire existence, I felt as though I belonged somewhere. I wore that merkaba proudly, on a ribbon around my neck. Six years and I have learned to bottle lightning, part seas, summon storms. And for six years, I have pushed my body to the extremes to accomplish feats deemed ordinary to any other mage. Not once did I consider returning to Terithien. Fleeing Arethya—countless times, but returning home? Never.

I drew myself from the milk bath. It had gone cold and I was shivering. Cloudy water beaded off my ill-formed body, dripping onto the smooth marble floors. Today, I would trade my human mortality for magehood at Meraudia’s altar. Today, I would ascend.

A tap at the door alerted me that Elestren was here. Not a second later, the headmistress let herself in. I always stood in awe of her grace, how every footstep seemed intentional. Not a single silver strand of hair ever appeared out of place.

Elestren had a gown folded over her arm. Two female students filed in after her. Demelza and Senara. My peers. Somehow, I succeeded them. In fact, I succeeded the entirety of my class.

“Get dressed. And sit down.” Elestren’s tone was just as firm as the tongue of her lessons. “We’ll have to tame those wild curls of yours.”

Elestren pushed the folded gown to my chest. Her icy nature didn’t dampen my anticipation. Elestren may have guided hundreds of young sorceresses to ascension, but for me, this was my day. I savored the feeling of the cool, silken fabric, the planes of glossy black waves only interrupted by the white stitches surfacing along the neckline. It draped awkwardly on my crooked frame, smoothed only by the chemise beneath.

The two girls worked to detangle the mess of my hair. They carefully pinned every curl into place, weaving winter blooms into my hair. Elestren paced behind me. I didn’t look in the mirror. I never did.

“You’ve come this far, hwenn.” She always called me that. At first, I thought it was her accent, but I came to learn it meant "perennial," as in the botanical sense. “One final task awaits you.”

I knew this. One final sacrifice. A sacrifice directly to Meraudia, goddess of the night, the stars, of transformation, and of magick, in exchange for awoken power and fully-fledged magehood. No longer would I draw on the vitality of worldly figments. Soon, I would be the source of my own power, and a lifeline to the goddess herself.

I looked through the mirror at Elestren, surprised to see a smile grace her lips. It was the same smile Auryn gave me when I willed foxglove to unfurl. My heart swelled with pride.

“Go now.” Elestren tossed her head towards the door. The circlet round her head jingled with the motion. “The others are waiting for you downstairs.”

I failed to banish the giddy smile that stretched across my face, even as the scar pulled my lip into a strange direction.

Music and laughter wafted aloft from the floors below. Winter’s breath wound through the halls and pulled at my dress, but the chill at my heels only spurred me onward.

I came to stand behind the double doors. My pulse quickened, my chest tightened. I trained my face into idle contentment and squared my shoulders. This was it.

“Gwentwyfar of Terithien!”

I stepped forth through the threshold, bathed in glittering moonlight. The world was awash in diamonds as fine mica powder drifted from the heavens, welcoming me in a vibrant display of conjured snow.

Applause and cheers rang out. Bundles of flowers were thrust into my arms; viburnums, hellebores, daphnes, I was anointed with crowns of thorns, adorned with wreaths of mistletoe twined with precious stones. My appearance was no longer so plain.

I was embraced by everyone who crossed my path, congratulated by old teachers and praised by elders and ascended mages whom I had met even briefly during the duration of my studies. It all morphed into a blur around me, for my attention was elsewhere. My gaze weaved through the merry crowd, skittering over the sea of brocade and jacquard with my breath held suspended.

“Gwen.”

My heart seized. I knew that voice anywhere. I spun on my heels, practically tripping over my own feet. Auryn stood there with a bundle of lilacs in his arms.

“Auyrn,” I breathed, drinking in the sight of him, feeling as parched as that summer day we met. “You came.”

“Of course. I couldn’t miss your ascension. On the winter solstice, no less. You are a lucky girl.” His words sent warmth and tingles rushing through my body, akin to the sensation of magick itself. “I brought these for you.”

“Lilacs.” I adored lilacs. How he came to know that I hadn’t the slightest idea. “But they don’t bloom until spring?”

I realized the idiocy of my words as soon as they tumbled from my lips. He was a fully ascended mage. Of course he could summon lilacs. But these were the most convincing mage-crafted lilacs I had ever seen.

“Syringa vulgaris. I preserved them. From last spring. Tricky things, they are. I wasn’t even sure if they would bloom. Terithien’s winter was harsh, and the heavy snowdrifts could have killed them… or awoken them…” He trailed off, distracted, looking sheepish. He appeared to remember the lilacs in his grasp and placed all but one gently into my arms. “They reminded me of you, Gwen,” he professed. “Even the most delicate things can be the most powerful. And they’re blue, like your eyes.”

That admission robbed me of my speech. Damn this ascension. I had never felt more power than I did in this very moment. Did I really need to pledge myself to a distant goddess when the only person who mattered was standing right in front of me?

Auryn turned over the lilac in his hand. He only deliberated for a moment more before reaching over and tucking it into my hair.

“Radiant. Like a lilac in the spring.”

Elestren cleared her voice as she drew near. “Gwen,” she said, as solemnly as ever. “It’s time.”

✿

I stood before the entirety of Arethya gathered to witness my ascension. I was jealous of the onlookers. I have never bore witness to this ceremony before. I desperately wished to know what to expect. Magick always came with a price, that was one of the first lessons I had learned, but the tithe I’d pay tonight, that was uncertain.

Meraudia’s star pieced the sky behind me, accompanying the rising moon. My reapings lay scattered at my feet. Candles burned at the points of the merkaba engraved deep into the marble beneath my slippers.

Elestren poured wine into a goblet and passed it over to me. I noticed how she evaded crossing over the white lines of the merkaba as she approached. The bitter aroma of the wine made my nose crinkle, though I masked it with all my might.

“Arethya,” Elestren began, her voice low, resonant, and threaded with reverence. “Tonight, we do not merely celebrate the winter solstice. Tonight, we bear witness.” She only paused to let the swell of applause die down, silencing the crowd of magicians with but a raised hand. She always had that sort of command over a room. “Gwentwyfar stands on the threshold of magehood. She has mastered the disciplines set before her. She has surpassed her peers, bent theory into practice, and learned the first and truest law of magick: power is never taken without a cost.”

Elestren turned, her gaze settling on me. It sent a chill up my spine.

“Tonight, Gwentwyfar will offer what all mages must. Not a demonstration, nor a devotion. A sacrifice. The final sacrifice.”

A murmur rippled through the crowd. My attention snagged on Auryn. He wasn’t looking at me. He stared at the ground, shifting his weight.

“From this moment forward,” Elestren continued, “She will no longer draw from her surrounding world. Instead, she became a living conduit of Meraudia’s power: shaped by it, bound to it, and changed forevermore.”

Elestren’s voice softened by a degree. She dabbed at a tear, and paused to recollect herself.

“As her mentor, I speak with pride. As Headmistress of Arethya, I speak with certainty. There is no student more worthy to be placed into the hands of our goddess. Magick is not begged for. It is earned. It is answered. Hwenn, speak your vow and drink.”

I held the goblet to the heavens, even as tremors wracked my body. I filled my lungs and exhaled, speaking the lines that I had rehearsed for months.

“I offer myself to Meraudia.” My voice waivered, but it did not break. “I vow to become her conduit, empty of want, open to will. I lay down what is mine so her power may pass through me unbroken.”

I swallowed, seeking out Auryn for encouragement. His grimace sent ice through my veins.

“I—I swear devotion without limit, service without end. I seek power not for comfort, nor mercy, nor love, but to honor magick in its truest form. Let what is taken from me take root in the world, and rise again as power.”

I raised the goblet to my lips and applause arose. Every instinct screamed at me to drop it, to spatter wine across the sacred altar, to renounce my vows that I had only just spoken. But I stood there and I forced myself to drink. The acrid liquid burned my mouth and lips, dragging heat down my throat. I choked back my coughs even as nausea hit my stomach.

I told myself I wanted this. I needed this. If there is one thing women are born without, it’s power. And I shouldn’t shy away from my one chance to seize it.

The world tipped and blurred around me. Cheers distorted into animal cries. The marble rushed up to meet me. The crack that followed resonated long into the darkness that encompassed me.

✿

A scream tore through me.

The sound of my own wailing jolted me awake. And yet, I couldn’t stop it. White-hot pain ripped down my body. Sweat beaded on my brow as shivers took hold. My eyes failed to register that I was back in my room, lying flat on my bed, stripped down to my chemise.

Viscera seeped between my legs. I turned over in my bed and retched the remainder of the wine onto the floor, sending fresh spikes of pain through my abdomen. A peculiar coldness jabbed at my limbs, and only then did I find my bed laden with ice.

I braced myself onto my forearms, willed my legs to gain purchase beneath me. My room heeled like a ship on uncertain waters and I thrust out an arm to catch myself against the wall. My hand collided with the mirror, sending shards clattering to the floor.

The need for breath nullified my outcries. I pulled a fragment free from the framing and nearly forgot my pain entirely. I didn’t recognize the girl who peered back at me. Instead of angry, red, lacerated webbing across the leftmost side of my face, there was smooth, fair skin. Instead of a crooked spine pulled wayward by fused scar tissue, a straight, slender figure, though doubled over in pain. I stared at my own eyes. Lilac blue, the same as always. Radiant, glowing, beautiful. The only assurance that the woman in the mirror was me.

Power had morphed me. Meraudia had changed me. Magehood—she had granted me true and final magehood, but at what cost?

The world went hazy around me. The agony was so constant that it robbed me of proper thought. Darkness threatened the edges of my vision. Half-blind, I stumbled towards my wardrobe. Muscle memory kicked in. I have dealt with monthly bleeding for years. I grabbed for a cloth and stumbled towards the wash basin.

Crimson streamed down my legs. It stained the bottom of my feet and puddled beneath me, welling like a spring.

Blood. Was that the price? A menstruation period, maybe that was what Meraudia claimed. But it was far too early for mine. I briefly considered the idea of a miscarriage and quickly shoved away the memory of my one and only night with Auryn. No, that was far too long ago.

A hollowness settled itself in my lower abdomen.

“No,” I breathed, refusing to entertain the thought. “No, they wouldn’t. Arethya wouldn’t. Elestren wouldn’t.”

Tears prickled at her eyes. Betrayal melded into rage, and that anger carried me through the anguish. I finished packing my underthings with rags and discarded my soiled chemise. I yanked my winter dress from its hanger, sending the wire frame orbiting around the rod. It’s amazing how much the body can do when flooded with adrenaline and reliant on patterns developed by routine. After I jerked the lacing close, I stared into my wardrobe. My gaze, burning with the fresh prickling of tears, lingered on the little possessions that I had. I relented. I grabbed my cloak and gloves and anything else I deemed worthy in my state of near-delirium.

My door swung open on its hinges, colliding into the wall behind it as I stumbled through. I had only managed three steps further when gravity wrapped its wretched claws around me and dragged me down. I caught fistfuls of the unicorn tapestry before I hit the floor. Golden rings snapped and showered down from above, clinking onto the ground, but I forced another breath into my lungs and righted myself. Bracing one arm against the tapestry, my head swirled with visages of the beastly thing. My gaze locked onto the beautiful ivory horn, tipped with a pearl of blood. How I had never noticed it before eluded me. Once, I thought it was beautiful. Now, it is violent. And I, once horrid, now beautiful but bleeding.

Unsummoned magick calefacted through me. What started as a tingle smelted into a sear. It rooted itself deep in my chest, branching out through every blood vessel, entwining itself like vines around my soul, reaching blindly for sunlight in the dead of night. The stray fibers of the thread began to recoil near my hand. I worried it might burst into flames, but I hadn’t the strength to pull away. Instead, I brought my other torrid hand to my abdomen and sighed in relief. I must have brought fresh burns to newly mended skin, but I couldn’t care. I was familiar with the agony of flame, but this pain was a creature most unfamiliar.

“Gwen?” A soft voice echoed down the chamber. “Gwen!”

Panic transfigured Auryn’s tone into something ugly. I snapped my gaze up at him. Penetrating, wintery blue eyes pierced right through him, and though he faltered for a moment, he still rushed to my aid.

“Gwentwyfar,” he breathed, hovering his hands over my shoulders. “You shouldn’t be up—you need to be resting! Let me carry you back to bed—”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” My words were broken and dangerously sharp and colored by fury, like a shattered stained-glass window.

“We need to get you—”

“Why. Didn’t. You. Tell. Me.” Betrayal tasted bitter in my mouth. I shoved him as far away from me with every ounce of strength I could muster, forgetting all about the agony. “Why didn’t you tell me what the price was?!”

Sympathy softened the features of his face. Or was that pity?

“It’s forbidden, Gwen,” he said softly. “And it will be forbidden for you to speak further of it.” He tried to smile, hands out in a placating gesture. “You did the right thing. Meraudia called to you, and you answered.”

It took every bit of control to keep my voice level. “What price did you pay?”

“The same as you.”

“But what did they take from you?”

Auryn looked away. I gritted my teeth. By a physician’s definition, I am no longer female. And by society’s belief, I am no longer human. But Auryn, he was both his sex and his profession, regardless of the price he paid. Magick seared at my fingertips, threatening to escape. Ozone and static electricity thickened the atmosphere. Lightning flashed in the distance, casting long shadows behind us. The unspoken threat weighed heavily in the space between us.

He looked at me, lovelorn, the honey in his expression crystallizing into trepidation.

“Let me go, Auryn,” I whispered. But I was begging. I was warning him. A small part of me yearned for him to keep me here, to cradle me in his arms, to wipe away the tears. But the fear in his eyes solidified that it was too far past that point.

And to my disbelief, he let me go.

✿

I ran. I ran through the halls, down the dizzying, spiral staircase. I ran through the courtyard, crunching snow beneath my boots. I ran to the stables. I mounted with great difficulty before spurring my mare into a gallop.

The rocking motion wore severely on my condition. Every fiber of my being either buzzed with budding magick or burned with great anguish. Icy winds whipped past me, but I rode on, far, far away from the Arethya and the remnants of my servitude.

I didn’t get very far before I yanked the reins and slid from the saddle, staggering into the snow. I crumpled.

Sweat dripped from my brow and sizzled into the snow. It already turned into slush beneath my hands.

The lilac blossom tucked into my braid freed itself and dropped beneath me. It had only been a day, possibly a few hours, since Auryn placed that into my hair. I picked it up and stood. The urge to cast it aside itched at me, but for some reason, I clung to it.

Syringa vulgaris, Auryn’s voice rippled through my memories. They remind me of you. Even the most delicate things can be the most powerful.

Even lilacs needed a cold shock to bloom.

I faced the Arethya. Snow soaked the hem of my gown and cloak, blood darkened the white beneath my boots, blooming outward like spilled wine. Lighting no longer fizzled through my blood. Clarity returned to me in the silence of winter. It lodged in my heart like a shard of ice.

The sacrifice wasn’t meant to awaken my magick. Like the perennial weed ripped from the ground and absorbed into its ravisher, it sustained Arethya.

I snapped the merkaba from my neck.

✿

I don’t remember leaving Kybries. I don’t remember riding to the port, demanding I take passage with the next ship off the island. I don’t remember riding through Iudnerth and the gasps of awe that echoed me. I don’t remember the cries of fear or exclamations of witch when my blazing gaze swept through the village, and the smell of ozone permeated the air.

But I do remember my first steps back onto Terithien soil, how the ice thawed beneath my feet, how wildflowers sprang from my footsteps. I had thought the magick would leave me once I crossed the water. I had thought it belonged to the island, to its stone towers and sanctified altars, to the hands that cut and consecrated and called it holy.

It did not. The sacrifice didn’t awaken my magick. I did.

Frost softened where I walked. Snow collapsed into dark puddles that seeped into earth. Buds manifested, hyacinths and bluebells and something unnamed, petals still silvered with melt. They did not wait for spring. They answered me. Here, at home.

For a moment, I could not move.

I had been told that magick was drawn, borrowed, siphoned, earned in careful measures. That it lived in groves and relics and blood-marked stone. That it must be begged from a goddess who kept strict account of every gift. But the earth did not demand trade from me.

They had meant to hollow me. Blood still yet clung rust-brown at the hem of my gown. It marked each step behind me like a second trail, darker than the flowers.

I had not understood. Now I did. If something had been taken, it had not vanished. It had changed its shape. The ache in my body was not emptiness. It was wintered ground, split open.

They had tried to make me an offering. They had made me into winter.

Lilacs untwined out of rock, out of frost, out of the long-sleeping roots beneath Terithien’s hills. Wrong season. Wrong place. And yet they bloomed with ferocious certainty, as if the world itself had been waiting for my arrival.

I did not belong to the Akademi. I did not belong to Meraudia.

If magick required a price, then I would decide where the cost was paid.

Behind me, the island would still be singing with wine and applause and the hum of stolen power threading its foundations. Let it. Let them wonder, when their spells thinned and faltered, why the current no longer answered as it once had.

Magick is not owned. It is cultivated.

I stepped forward again, and spring followed.

❀✿❀

Jennifer Ansara (she/her) is a historian with a fixation on the ancient world and the stories that refuse to stay buried. With degrees in Ancient Civilizations and Language & Literature, she draws inspiration from myth, empire, and forgotten worlds to craft fantasy steeped in historical influence and immersion. Her writing explores feminine rage, destiny, and the thin veil between divinity and mortality. When she isn’t writing about scorned lovers or reincarnated kings, she’s reading fantasy, adding to her library, and embracing her witchy tendencies.