The Knight Prince

Chapter 3

    A mixture of excitement and dread stewed in Ariana Reine’s stomach as she peered out the bus window, eyes opened wide, taking in all the grandeur of New York City. It was definitely a far cry from where she had just come from, a sleepy farm town outside of Saratoga Springs, which may be why she fisted the vinyl seat on either side of her as the bus came to a stop.

    As the passengers stood up and stretched while gathering their personal items and preparing to exit, which was something she should be doing too having just endured a five-hour drive, Ari focused on the internal pep-talk that had pestered her brain for the entire trip. The one that said she shouldn’t have gone to the City. Of course, that voice still sounded remarkably similar to Aunt Renee and Uncle Marsh who had basically pleaded with her not to leave and promised that nothing good would come of being here, either.  

    Since her aunt and uncle had raised her ever since she was four years old, going against their pleas weighed heavily on her shoulders. All the reasons Aunt Renee had hammered out at Ari’s back as she packed her backpack and headed out the door still swam in her mind and haunted her decision. 

    Because she knew her aunt was right. 

    Because being in New York City was risky. The wrong people could find out she was here. The people that she had been warned about over the years. The people she had been hidden away from in the first place. The people who seek her out now that she had come of age and smelled of the Tainted blood.

    Ever since she had graduated from high school and turned eighteen a few years ago, Ari had wanted to finally leave Saratoga Springs and go to culinary school, or travel, or something that would award her life with meaning. But also on her eighteenth birthday, a sordid truth came to light that had been hard for her to understand and even harder for anyone to ignore. Or moreso, harder for her aunt and uncle to keep secret anymore.

    Truth never likes to be hidden.  

    At eighteen, the trezire happened.

    When kids her age were dreaming of their futures, packing their bags for college, or just shuffling around in their new adult shoes, Ari was coming to terms with changes that were taking place in her body. As if puberty weren’t bad enough, now her cells suddenly mutated with a burst of genetic energy, changing her from being mostly human into kinda human. But even more, a witch.  

    So, for the last two years, this inherent evolution had stunted her dreams of leaving home, and now suffocated her under the apologies of her aunt and uncle, who constantly begged forgiveness for keeping this from her. And at first, she despised them for not telling her the truth, for not preparing her for what all this change was going to do to her. So now, instead of fulfilling her goals of being a master chocolatier by the time she was twenty-five, for the last two years she had been under the tutelage of ‘experts’ to help her deal with this… thing she had become.

    Even though being a witch may sound cool or exciting, it wasn’t for her, because all Ari wanted was to be a normal girl with a normal life. Or maybe she hated this thing about her because it was suddenly thrown in her face without any warning. Maybe it was just too overwhelming and too damn scary to understand it.

    They had tried to help her deal with the anxiety of it all, but her anxiety only seemed to heighten when they explained that there were many witches all around the world, yet, there weren’t many who were just like her. Her and her brother, that is. Of all the different types of witches, there were some that were so special, that it was a risk to be exposed about how special they were. And, according to her guardians and witchy mentors, this was the category she was in. It had something to do with the purity of their bloodline, to do with how close they were to the Primul, or the First Witch.

    Aunt Renee had told Ari that her mother wasn’t a witch, so that only meant her father had to have been the reason she was now… abnormal. But the frustrating part about that was her father wasn’t around so she could ask him about any of this. He was one of those deadbeat dads that swept her mother off her feet, made her his baby-mama, twice, then skated out of their lives before she could blink.

    Well, maybe it was more of one of those long, languid blinks. 

    Because she was four when her world turned upside, when her mother was killed in that car crash and her father disappeared. At least physically.  But he never was really gone, because sometimes, awake, or in some dreams, her mind would conjure up his face, his laugh, or her heart would suddenly flutter with a feeling that would remind her of him somehow. And it kinda felt like he was there with her.

    But not like that mattered much, right?

Not when he simply left and didn’t bother to be part of her or her brother’s life for the past fourteen years. And now she had all these questions and only some weird-ass mentors to confide in. Because 99% of the time, she wished she had the luxury of asking her dad.

    Her dad, who had to be one of those special witches, too. A witch that had to be careful, to remain hidden, and not let the wrong people know he existed. Part of Ari always daydreamed he was doing just that— hiding out in the City because he had to. That he didn’t try and find them after all these years because he was trying to protect her and her brother, too. At least, this is what her mind begged her bleeding heart to believe.

    And this was the undisclosed reason she wanted to finally come to New York City, and also the reason her aunt and uncle begged her not to leave Saratoga Springs. Not only could she not stay away after hearing her brother’s wife, Melissa, crying on the phone the other night about how Xavier and baby Jaxson were missing and how she felt so alone and scared and needed someone with her, but also… just maybe… she could find her father, too?

    Though a tacit certainty rattled throughout her being, eating a hole into her hopes, that the reason Xavier was suddenly gone was tied somehow to why her father was lost, too. Did the witch hunters, the ones her mentors bedecked into boogiemen, take Xavier like they probably took her father?

    Lost in these thoughts, Ari still hadn’t moved from her bus seat, watching as her fingers spun the beaded bracelet on her wrist, picking at each round smoky quartz stone, squeezing it as if it were a rosary and she were frantically praying in a confessional. Perhaps the band was something like that, seeing it was her faith in who she was as a witch that it would protect her from being noticed by the hunters, or so her mentors claimed. This plastic-looking ensemble of small white and black marbled stones around her wrist was supposed to block anyone from knowing who she truly was. A tainted-blooded witch. A descendant of a First.

    And now stepping off this bus would put this little trinket to the test.

    “Are you afraid?” a little voice asked her.

    Ari jolted out of her thoughts, her head snapping to the left at the little girl sitting in the seat next to her. Mila. They had been travel buddies for the last five hours, as well as coloring buddies, storytelling buddies, and partners in the best pop song duets any other twenty year old and seven year old could belt out together. She reminded Ari of her cousin Lizzie back home, her age, long brown hair, and huge doe-like eyes were so remarkably similar that she nearly felt homesick. Nearly.

    Afraid? Yes. Definitely yes. “No, I’m ok.” Ari smiled down at her as she tucked wisps of blonde hair that had fallen from her messy bun back behind her ears. “I’m just waiting for everyone to get off the bus before I leave.”

    “Everyone is off the bus, silly,” Mila stood up, one leg in the aisle and one kneeling on the seat. Ari boosted herself up higher in the seat, noticing the nearly empty seats, and the only people left consisted of herself and Mila’s mother and older brother, Patrick, who were standing at the head of the bus talking to the driver. Mila’s thumb jetted to the back of the bus. “We’re just waiting for my dad. He’s in the bathroom.” She kept watch, twirling a strand of her long brown hair between her fingers.

    “Well, I guess it’s time for me to go, too,” Ari smiled at the little girl, but it slowly melted away as her eyes swung back to the window, looking out at the bustle of people walking purposefully on the sidewalk below.

    “Here, you can have this,” she heard Mila say. Ari turned back to her, noticing the red lollipop twirling in her fingers. “Mom says sugar always helps with the nerves.”

    Ari chuckled, taking the small treat, tipping it at her as she said, “Your mother is a genius!” Ripping off the wrapper, she inserted the cherry goodness into her mouth, dousing her tongue with its sugar in hopes that Mila’s mother was secretly some witch, and this really was an elixir for her stress. Yet, after a few seconds, her stomach still danced in knots, she sighed in defeat.

    When her father exited the bathroom, nodding down at Ari before taking Mila’s hand to leave, she said, “I’ll miss you, Ariana,” then made one of her prized goofy faces, to which, Ari scrunched up her own face and returned, sticking her tongue out of the side of her mouth and rolling her eyes inward. She and Mila enjoyed one last giggle as she watched her father escort them off the bus.

    Blowing a large puff of air out of her mouth, Ari grabbed the backpack that had been pinned between her legs and finally mustered the courage to uproot from the seat. Each step down the slender aisle felt heavy as she moved toward the exit, her heart seemingly in the same rhythm with each pounding stamp. But finally, here she was now, in the doorway of the bus, standing at the precipice of a place her aunt and uncle strived to keep her away from. A place where her mother died. A place that had swallowed her father and possibly her brother.

    What would this place now do with her?

    “Hey, Sis, is this your stop or what?” The bus driver impatiently squawked behind her.

    Nodding, Ari swallowed, staring outward, “Yeh, this is where I belong,” she muttered, slowly lowering her canvas shoe to the beckoning sidewalk below.