Prologue
She realised she was running away when the terrible screams in her ear suddenly stopped.
Ellie paused in her tracks, surprise etched on her face, wondering how far away from the scene she came to. She turned around – the highest tower in the country was now just a speck in the distance.
Not much of a surprise to her, since speed had always been her thing.
But, what did disgust her was the fact that she did the very thing she set out to avoid doing in the first place: She abandoned her sister when she needed her the most.
Ellie was the youngest in her family of magicians and not a very stable personality, either. All her life, she had been lectured for the “accidents” that she caused.
And that darned wand. Why can’t people use their hands for chanting spells? Apparently because that is unstable and thus unpredictable.
Her sister, on the other hand, was a star child. Always been. Her sister was the only person who had the most patience with her and loved her like she actually mattered.
And now, she had been kidnapped by the greatest Dark Wizard on the planet and threatened that Ellie give up a relic if she wanted to see her sister alive and safe again.
This “relic” that seemed so sought-after was what the Jordan family had always called “the Lilka”, or the rare violet diamond found only in a few regions of the world. The Lilka, though the most beautiful piece of jewellery that Man had ever seen, was a source of despair and unhappiness in most of the families that it had passed on to. Ellie’s family had been quite happy for the twenty years of their possessing; it had not affected them at all. Even Ellie was getting lesser apprehensive about believing it.
But now, the Lilka was showing its true colours in the form of a difficult decision that Ellie had to make: sacrifice an ancient family relic or forget about her sister.
