Witchmarked (World's First Wizard Book 1), Aaron Schneider [most important books to read .txt] 📗

The first trio having vanished, Milo came up for air and took a dumpling in each hand before looking at the colonel.

The colonel waited, his smile unmoving even as his eyes remained watchful.

For a moment, Milo didn’t know what to say, and he might have started gorging again if he hadn’t suddenly remembered the past ten minutes with painful, nauseous clarity. The food in his stomach became a lead weight, and he slid the two pierogi back onto the plate with numb, trembling hands.

His eyes darted around the room as he remembered the skittering horror that had disappeared between the lights. His fingers raked through his dark hair, nails scraping his scalp before they entwined with what hair they could grip.

“Magic,” he breathed, his eyes sliding in and out of focus. “You did say magic, sir?”

The colonel nodded, his expression guarded behind a wooden smile.

“Yes.” He nodded, his scrutiny unblinking. “Magic. An alchemic branch of necromancy if I understand it correctly.”

Alchemic? For Milo, the word conjured thoughts of long-nosed and long-fingered men surrounded by beakers simmering over flames and great tomes full of spidery scrawled formulae. Combined with the grisly title of necromancy, he felt something twist violently in his stomach. He opened his mouth to demand a justification or even an explanation, but then he remembered that awful day three weeks ago in Room 7.

The odd, trivial tasks: lighting a candle, pouring the water into a bowl, drinking it, and snuffing out the candle with his fingers. Milo had just assumed it was a sobriety check or screening. The abuse of liquor and other substances was hilariously commonplace among the colonial forces and the penal regiments particularly, so it had seemed sensible.

When the child with his eyes had appeared, he’d told himself there was something in the water he’d drunk, something to thwart the drunks and addicts. He’d told himself it was just an adverse reaction to that mysterious medication. Fearing being thought a degenerate, he’d said nothing, though he’d noted that the proctor for the test had noticed his furtive, anxious glances.

“The test,” he muttered, dreading how thick his throat felt and how his stomach trembled threateningly. “It was some kind of spell?”

Jorge nodded, his eyes boring into Milo.

“A ritual,” he clarified as he leaned forward and slid a hand beneath the white curtain of the trolley cover. “Which I am led to believe is different from a spell in some ways.”

Ritual. Sorcery. Witchcraft. Hellfire. Damnation.

The words danced a merry jig around Milo’s smoldering conceptions.

His stomach rebelled as the colonel produced a metal pail from the trolley. Milo forfeited the pierogi, along with whatever thin gruel had clung to the inside of his stomach. Head bowed, he felt somehow disconnected to the wretched thing he was, being sick in a bucket with mud still clinging to his ears, throat, and hair. How had so much gone wrong so quickly?

“This isn’t possible,” Milo muttered into the bucket. “How could I do magic without knowing it?”

Colonel Jorge chuckled, having settled back into his chair, hands resting on the table.

“It is a fair question,” he acknowledged with a tilt of his head to regard Milo with owlish scrutiny. “But not the one I had expected.”

“What might that be, sir?”

The officer’s calm replies and knowing stare were beginning to irk Milo, and he was distraught enough to let his military etiquette lapse. The colonel blinked away the breach, too busy watching to take note.

“Most would deny the existence of magic,” Jorge said absently. “It is my experience that even being very religious or superstitious doesn’t keep a person from questioning whether magic—real magic—exists.”

Milo paused at that, allowing himself to wonder, but then he remembered the child ripping himself in half and the patch of midnight that had been left behind. Somehow, dismissing magic seemed incredibly futile at this point. Either the colonel was toying with a madness in Milo he had been unaware of until now, or something supernaturally sinister had just taken place. Either way, he felt like the world was closing in on him.

“So, you tricked me into doing witchcraft?” Milo pressed as he put the odiferous bucket down between his feet. He’d thought to set it to the side, but saying those words made him think it would be wise to keep the pail at hand.

“I suppose that is one way to look at it,” Jorge affirmed with a nod.

“How?” Milo wheezed, choking back more bile.

Colonel Jorge crossed his arms, seeming uncomfortable for the first time.

“There is a simple but unsatisfying answer, which is, ‘I don’t know.’”

Milo stared, wondering if the hollowness he felt was better or worse than what had provoked the vomiting.

“What?”

Jorge shrugged and shook his head, a strangely vulnerable and humanizing pair of gestures.

“I’m afraid we are in the woods on this one,” he said. “The fact is that of all those we’ve attempted the experiment with—I think the total is nearly one hundred and thirty-eight thousand last tally— you are the first viable case.”

Milo supposed he should have been pleased that he was special, but Jorge’s sheepish expression pricked at his hardship-honed instincts. For the first time, he realized the colonel was holding something back. Milo knew that most must have been fine because his fellow conscripts who’d also been tested did not report anything like what Milo had experienced. The camp had been abuzz for a week over what the odd test was about, with all sorts of theories regarding testing medications, new chemical weapons, or things that were even more frighteningly esoteric. When no one got sick or grew new body parts, the chatter had moved on. Milo had written the whole unsettling business off as nerves.

Now, though, Milo felt his head spin but forced himself to focus.

“To be honest,” the colonel began in the way all lies do, “I am amazed that we found a successful candidate so quickly.”

“Always had the Devil’s own luck.” Milo snorted and then grimaced at the implication. Some of the boys