Blackwood Bound: Year One

I was laying on the couch reading a book while the radio played soft music in the background, trying to pretend that today was just any other day. It wasn't working.

The book was open in my lap, but I hadn't actually turned a page in at least ten minutes. The words kept blurring together, the same sentence over and over again, because my mind refused to stay on the story. Every time I tried to focus on the heroine and her problems — which, at least, were fictional — my thoughts slid right back to my own. To tomorrow. To Blackwood.

The radio hummed low from the corner of the living room, some old, slow song my mother always put on when she was trying to calm herself down. It wasn't really working for her either. I could hear her in the kitchen, moving too fast, opening and closing cupboards, the clatter of pans and bowls and baking trays filling the house like she was trying to drown out the silence with noise. The whole house smelled amazing — warm sugar and cinnamon and butter and fresh bread — but it was too much. It was the kind of amazing that made my stomach turn, because I knew exactly why she was doing it.

My mother was baking enough food to feed this town and the next one over.

In the living room, my father was doing the exact same thing he always did when one of us was about to leave for Blackwood. He was sitting in his armchair by the window, his art supplies spread out all around him, sketching another picture of me. His pencil moved in quick, careful strokes, his eyes flicking up to me and then back down to the paper, like he was trying to memorize every single detail of my face before it was gone.

They both did the same thing when my older sister Nyctoria was about to leave for Blackwood four years ago. Mom baked until the counters were covered in muffins and bread and cakes and cookies, until there wasn't a single clean surface left in the kitchen. Dad drew picture after picture of her, obsessively capturing her in the moment, savoring us like he wouldn't see her again.

Which, honestly, was valid. Because at any point in the next four years, I could die.

That was the reality of Blackwood Academy. It wasn't a normal college. It wasn't a place you went to learn and make friends and figure out who you wanted to be. It was a place the high rulers built to manage overpopulation in Astralyn, a place where witches and werewolves and vampires and fairies and dragon shifters were all sent after high school to be thinned out. Four years of deadly trials, each year more lethal than the last. If you survived, you got to come home. If you didn't, your family got a letter and a picture to remember you by.

That was why Dad drew so many pictures. That was why Mom baked so much food. They were trying to hold on to me while they still could.

I shifted on the couch, tucking my legs underneath me and pulling my red hair back over my shoulder. My green eyes kept drifting from the page to the window, to the hallway, to anywhere that wasn't the clock ticking on the wall. I had hardly slept the past couple of days. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the iron gates from the stories, the shadow-drenched halls, the trials I couldn't even imagine yet. My magic kept sparking under my skin when I got anxious, little flickers of green light dancing across my fingertips before I forced them back down. I didn't want Mom to see it and worry even more.

The front door opened, and I sat up a little straighter.

My three-year-old niece Evadne walked in giggling, her tiny feet pattering across the floor as she immediately moved straight to the kitchen, like she already knew exactly where the good stuff was.

"Muffins!" she gleamed, her whole face lighting up.

My mother chuckled from the kitchen and handed her one without even hesitating, like she'd been waiting all day just for that moment. Evadne took it with both hands, crumbs already falling down her chin, and I couldn't help but smile despite everything. She was too young, too innocent, too full of light to understand what was happening in this house.

My sister Nyctoria walked in behind her, carrying two duffel bags, her blue eyes immediately finding me across the room. They softened greatly the second she saw me, and for a moment, it was like nothing had changed. Like she was just coming home for a visit. Like I wasn't leaving tomorrow for a place that might kill me.

"Hey sis," she greeted softly as I set the book down on the couch beside me.

"Hey there.... how was the trip?" I asked, acting like everything was completely normal and that this was just another visit.

"Eh, Evadne was loud the entire train ride.... she has more energy than I thought a three year old would have," she said, making us both laugh. It was a real laugh, for a second, and it felt strange in my chest after days of feeling like I couldn't breathe properly.

"Wow, the house smells amazing," she said, with a smile that didn't meet her eyes. She knew. She knew exactly what Mom was doing, because Mom had done the exact same thing for her.

"Yeah... can you tell Mom is stressing out?" I asked, and she instantly nodded with a knowing look.

"Dad is in the living room drawing I think the 8th picture of me," I explained, and she pointed down the hallway where all her pictures he drew of her before she left for Blackwood are hanging. There were so many of them, lined up in frames, her at different ages, different smiles, different moments. He'd drawn her laughing, her reading, her holding Evadne when she was just a baby. It was like a timeline of her life, right there on the wall, waiting in case she never came back to add to it.

"He does that... but Beatrix, listen to me... everything will be alright," she whispered, giving my arm a quick comforting hug. Her voice was soft, but I could hear the part she wasn't saying. She couldn't promise me that. She had survived all four years, but she knew better than anyone that surviving didn't mean it was safe. It just meant she got lucky.

"I keep trying to tell myself that... I've hardly slept the past couple days," I admitted, my voice dropping lower. I didn't want Mom or Dad to hear me. I didn't want to add to their fear.

She nodded, understanding in a way only someone who had actually been there could understand. "I think it's that way for everyone.... I would love to tell you it gets better after each year but it really doesn't," she explained, making me hold back a sigh. I appreciated her honesty, even if it wasn't what I wanted to hear. At least she wasn't lying to me like everyone else tried to do.

"You think the council would create a better way to manage overpopulation.... sending everyone to Blackwood after high school is just cruel..." our father cut in, clearly aggravated. He had stopped drawing, his pencil still in his hand, his jaw tight. I could see the anger in his eyes, the same anger he tried so hard to hide when Nyctoria left. He had survived Blackwood too. So had Mom. They knew exactly what they were sending me into, and it was tearing them apart.

Nyctoria walked over to him and hugged him tight, trying to relax his nerves, although it won't do much. He hugged her back, holding on for a second longer than normal, like he was grounding himself in the fact that at least one of his daughters had made it home.

Evadne ran over to me, handing me a glazed donut, and I took it with a smile.

"There's my beautiful niece!" I said, and she jumped up and down happily, her little curls bouncing.

"Mommy says you are going away for college," she said, and I nodded, knowing she is far too young to understand what Blackwood actually is. To her, college was just a place grown-ups went. She didn't know about the trials, or the deaths, or the survival rates. She didn't know that her aunt might not come back.

I'm surprised Nyctoria even had a child. I get having a family is a big thing and is exciting, but when you eventually have to send them to Blackwood, it seems like it would be too much. How do you love someone that much, knowing one day the council will take them away and put them through the same hell you went through? How do you look at Evadne's smiling face and not think about the day she'll be twenty and standing where I'm standing right now?

Eventually, our mother finished up dinner and we sat around the table, trying to act like everything is okay, but it's not. The food was perfect — pork chops, mashed potatoes, fresh bread, all the things she knew I loved — but I couldn't taste any of it. The room felt too quiet, too heavy, like we were all holding our breath and waiting for someone to say the thing we were all thinking.

"You know the first year has a 65 percent survival rate.... Beatrix is going to be fine," Nyctoria said, breaking the silence. She was trying to be positive, trying to give Mom and Dad something to hold on to, trying to give me something to hold on to.

My mother shook her head. "No year is safe.... no matter the survival rate percentage," she muttered under her breath, staring down at her plate. She wasn't trying to be cruel. She was just being honest. She had been there. She knew that a number didn't mean anything when it was your child walking through those gates.

I can't look up at any of them right now. I push my pork chop around my plate, unable to take a bite. My appetite is completely gone, replaced by a knot in my stomach that won't go away no matter how many times I try to breathe through it.

"Well, we can't go into this thinking she is going to die, how is that supposed to help her?" Nyctoria argued, but my dad gave her a stern look.

"What? I survived all those four years.... the three of us did at some point, the least we could do is show her that we believe in her," Nyctoria continued, and I sighed, not knowing what to say or do other than listen to my family bicker. They all believed in me. I knew that. But believing in me didn't stop the trials from being deadly. It didn't change the fact that thirty-five percent of first-years didn't make it home.

"Nyctoria.... your mother and I of course want what's best for Beatrix and yes we believe in her but at the same time... mentally we must prepare for the worst... that is the point of this Academy.... to kill off the ones who can't handle it," my dad said, his voice cracking just a little at the end.

And that was it. That was the sentence I couldn't hear again.

I pushed my chair back, the legs scraping loudly against the floor.

"Beatrix..." he started, but I just walked upstairs, unable to look at any of them. I didn't want them to see me cry. I didn't want Evadne to see me cry. I didn't want to hear any more about survival rates or preparing for the worst or what Blackwood was designed to do.

I just wanted one more normal night at home. But I already knew I wasn't going to get it.