MADELINE
Sunlight fell through the tall strained glass windows, the kind that stretched from floor to ceiling and caught dust motes like they were something precious. The training hall smelled of cedar and cold stone and faintly of something burnt, the residue of a hundred spells gone wrong by students who were not me.
I was eight years old and standing barefoot on a practice circle chalked into the wooden floor.
My grandmother sat in a high-backed chair at the far end of the room with her ankles crossed and her hands folded in her lap, watching me the way she watched everything. Like she already knew how it would end. Like she was just waiting for the world to catch up to what she had already decided.
The other children were struggling.
