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　　 𝐀𝐋𝐄𝐗𝐈𝐒' 𝐄𝐘𝐄𝐒 𝐒𝐂𝐀𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐃 𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐑 Anvard Castle as they awaited for the others to begin their journey. She was moving around restlessly, pacing back and forth in an attempt to keep herself busy. One of the worst things about their quest was the long wait. She wasn't patient like the others. She'd usually be the one to scout the terrain so she could at least go explore her curiosity.

She had always had an admiration for Kiano's patience. It was remarkable to her how long he could remain in the shadows of other's lives, feeding himself on the information they spilled to one another without having any regard for him. She was used to keeping an eye on him and made sure she knew where he was at all times. He may not have looked it, but Kiano could move from place to place without a single sound. Even though he had such a strong voice, opinion and presence, he could just as easily fade into the world of darkness where the shadows of the living resided.

After running a frustrated hand through her hair, Alexis let out a long sigh of boredom. Her hands attracted each other, her right index finger and thumb reaching out to the plain, silver ring on her left middle finger. The skin on her middle finger was lightly scratched and raw from her ring being pulled to the second knuckle and back down to the knuckle that attached the finger to the hand.

She'd stopped herself from the habit several times, but found herself lost in thought again and again. Back to the night she was bedazzled with hundreds of moonstones, carefully stitched onto her gown to resemble a Narnian night sky. Her head couldn't stop thinking about every detail she never wanted to forget about that night.

Such as Peter's warm hands on her back, her arms swung around his neck to hold him close. How she could feel his breath just below her throat or her heart hammering in her chest. How her eyes were at the same level as his lips when she looked straight ahead or the way she could feel his lips smiling against her forehead. They'd spoken so little, but that hadn't mattered to her. The music filled the void of their non-existing banter and while she enjoyed talking to him, dancing with him in the silence of their words spoke volumes to her. She might've been the most tensed up she'd ever been, but it excited her. The rush that soared through her veins that night was overwhelming.

She wanted to feel that way again. She had to see him and show him that he could trust her. She didn't understand what had happened between the previous night and today, but it turned everything around in the worst way.

As she got pulled into the Portkey by Victoria, she'd caught a glimpse of his eyes. The stark-blue of a cloudless sky was tarnished by the guilt he was feeling and the sadness that she saw in him, she took with her when they vanished.

She hated that they felt the need to hide from them and deep in her heart, she knew the others regretted what happened on that square too. Except for Aiden. She wasn't sure if he'd feel any remorse for the accusations he'd thrown towards them, but by the way Chrys couldn't stop talking to Victoria—who'd asked the three of them to not distract her so she could focus on crafting the new wands—it wasn't hard to guess that she felt bad about it.

Crafting a new wand was a precise and fatiguing task. No matter how much experience Victoria had with creating wands, she was a far journey from the level of skill that her father possessed. Sweat trickled down her forehead as she tried to keep her hand as steady as possible. She couldn't really respond to Chrys since it would take away too much of her focus, so she opted to nod once in a while and it seemed to satisfy Chrys enough.

'I still can't wrap my head around it,' Chrys said and crossed her arms over her chest, though she threw them into the air in frustration not much later. 'What did they hear that we didn't? I know we went around the castle to gather the necessary supplies all morning, but I'm honestly surprised no one else did. What do you think they heard? Do you have any idea?'

Victoria's eyes shot up from the wand before her to Chrys. She decided to take a break and stretched her hands which had been cramped around the wand. 'There was a prophecy. Both Caspian and Peter mentioned it. Now, what was said in that prophecy is the real mystery. All that we know is speculated on what they've told us. Whatever they heard, it was regarding witches and wizards dressed in green, blue, red and black, which reminds me, we have to change our clothes,' she answered and wrapped her hand around her necklace.

'This world, Narnia, something is threatening it and I assume they think we're the threat spoken about in the prophecy. Our answers and their answers are likely in the Western Wild,' she concluded.

Chrys looked at her feet with her eyes narrowed. 'I hadn't heard either one of them mention a prophecy,' she muttered.

'I'm not surprised,' Victoria replied and half-heartedly shrugged. 'Anger, much like fear, clouds our judgement and mind.

'So that's why Kiano makes such horrible mistakes?' Chrys retorted, which made Victoria chuckle lightly.

'Your words, not mine.'

She refocused her attention on the wand and skillfully crafted the wood of the wand. The sycamore wood had a fine texture, though Victoria didn't dare to trail her fingers over it, not wanting to risk a splinter breaking off and piercing through her skin.

The more she sanded down the wand, the better she could see the details in the wood. The white sapwood seemed to be freckled by distinct ray specks that were hidden deep within a sycamore tree's trunk. The darker, reddish-brown heartwood laced through the sapwood and ray specks to create an intricate web.

Throughout her time working and learning in her father's shop, she'd never met another person who fitted sycamore wood as well as Alexis did. The wood type is known for being adventurous, curious and questing and needs an owner with those qualities. Alexis' curse-breaking dreams were put on hold when Chrys had visited her home to ask her to join. At first, her wand had rebelled, feeling as though there was no greater adventure than being a curse-breaker, until she and her wand realised what it entailed to be part of Bellicose.

There was rarely a day they weren't working to find a way to end the on-going war and being a fugitive had a toll on everyone, especially Chrys and Victoria—though while the first would admit it without a second thought, the latter would take that confession to the grave if she could.

From her pouch, Victoria retrieved a small box; her mother's old jewellery box which she was gifted when she was accepted into Hogwarts. When she opened it, she was greeted by three types of wand cores and her own face mirrored back to her. She got rid of the strained frown on her face by softly rubbing over it and her eyes trailed to the right side of the mirror. A sepia-coloured photo of her with her parents had been stuck in the small space next to it.

She remembered the day the picture was taken and how incredibly annoying she was to her parents. But they'd laughed so much that day. Her parents tickled her to get her to laugh again when she wasn't allowed to get a chocolate frog until after the photo shoot and threw a temper tantrum because of it. The picture showed the last three seconds before the photo was taken and played it in a loop. Her father tickled her sides while she and her mother laughed in abundance. The photo was taken years before she went to Hogwarts, but she's always carried it with her wherever she went.

On the left side of the mirror was a handwritten note of her parents. It had been taken out of the envelope and was pinned into the wood that was decorated with sunflower wallpaper. The sunflowers were printed against a soft green background and had worn off during its time of usage, much like the wood itself. She had yet to read the letter, but couldn't bring her heart to do so. On the day she left, her parents had given it to her. Eight months later, she still had to read it.

'I miss you,' Victoria mumbled underneath her breath as she squeezed her eyes together so she wouldn't tear up.

She tilted her head downward so when she opened her eyes again, she was looking at the three wand core types, all neatly stacked in their own little compartment. She picked up a dragon heartstring with tweezers and rather shaky hands. The hole at the bottom of the wand should be wide enough for the heartstring to go in without a hitch, but if Victoria had learnt anything from her father, it was that it was never an easy process.

Slight irritation began to grow after the failed attempts kept stacking up, as though it refused to enter. Bonding a wand with its core was the trickiest portion of the process of crafting a wand. She'd had times where the wood simply refused a core or the other way around.

Magic was a curious thing, but semi-sentient objects were much more curious. The objects couldn't talk, but those who listened with an eager ear could hear their cries and pleads. A wand, for example, could tug at their owner for them to miss a target or they could block their owner's spell and store its magic within itself so the spell would never be performed. Many witches and wizards, if not all, could feel exactly their wand's thoughts without even realising it.

Victoria put back the heartstring and retrieved a new one from the old jewellery box. The string was thin and long, making it almost impossible for Victoria to aim it well enough to go through the opening. Until contact was made.

Once the heartstring touched the wood, Victoria could feel an instant connection soar through her fingertips right to her heart. The feeling didn't appear with every wand she'd make, but when it did, her father had told her it meant that "the wood and the core both accepted the other and thus it needed no further training to make sure the wand worked properly."

The heartstring glided into the wand with little difficulty and attached itself to the wood before Victoria closed the hole with wood putty and sanded it further down until she was happy with the result. The dark reddish-brown heartwood wrapped itself around the wand like wild ivy and so Victoria gave the wand a handle in the same colour. She glazed the wood to finish the process and looked at the wand with an exhausted, though proud smile.

'Alexis,' Victoria said and lifted her head from the wand to the blonde. 'Your wand should be ready.'

Alexis perked up from her spot and ran over to where Victoria was sitting. She took a good look at her wand, finding it even more beautiful than the one that was originally made for her. Though there was something about her old wand that she preferred over this new one. She grabbed the wand and readjusted her grip on it several times until she'd found the right way to hold it. 'It feels odd,' she said.

'Of course it does. This wand is completely different from your original wand. You do not share the same memories. In fact, you share no memories with this wand at all. You have to train it all over again,' Victoria explained to her as she watched Alexis hold onto the wand as though it was an extension of her own arm.

Alexis nodded shortly, glancing down at her wand. 'Thank you for crafting this new wand for me,' she said with a smile, happy to finally be holding onto a wand again. 'Your wand crafting skills have really improved.'

Victoria smiled at the compliment and rubbed some of the sweat off of her forehead. 'I can't spend as much time as I'd like on it, but it's usable and should be durable enough until you have your own wand back,' she said. A blanket of stars was tucked over the sky when Victoria realised she'd worked the entire day on the wand, and yet, it was still the fastest she'd ever been.

Chrys shivered as the cold air permeated through the fabric of her flimsy dress. She wrapped her arms around herself and watched how her breath created a small misty cloud in front of her. She hid further into the forest until she couldn't see Alexis and Victoria anymore and hoped that Kiano wasn't anywhere near her as she hadn't been able to spot him since the sun had gone down. She slipped out of her green dress, feeling like the colour didn't suit her as well as it had before today.

The soft-pink dress that she put back on was thicker and longer and had multiple layers which kept out the cold of Anvard's chilly spring. She was happy to be matching with her pouch again and glad to be wearing another colour dress.

'What are you doing here?'

Chrys let out a cry of fear, turning around instantly and backing away, until she saw that it was Kiano standing behind her. 'I was changing my clothes,' she said, clutching onto her heart which had tripled in beating speed. 'We're surrounded by leaves, pine needles, cones, grass, twigs, branches and you still don't make a single sound?'

'When you look where you walk, you know where not to step,' he replied plainly. 'Anyway, you shouldn't be out here. Who knows what hides within these woods.' He ushered her back to Victoria and Alexis and craned his head to make sure there was nothing within the forest nearby them.

'So far the only thing hiding in those woods is you,' Chrys huffed.

Victoria had changed into an enchantingly beautiful dress. Under the light of the moon, it had the most magical glow. The royal purple colours of the dress resembled the deepest purples of dark magic, seemingly swirling through the fabric. Alexis' dress didn't get the justice it deserved in the pale light. It started with a muted yellow which flowed into a rich orange at the bottom. It was fitted to perfection and Alexis felt happier in this new dress which hadn't been ruined by false rumours.

'Kiano,' Victoria began, but the wizard was quick to cut off her sentence before she could even begin.

'All of my clothes are black. I have brought nothing else with me.' He didn't even spare her a glance, as he never did, and shifted a little uncomfortably on the spot.

Victoria opened her pouch and retrieved dark blue trousers, a dark leather vest and an off-white button-up. 'Here,' she said and handed him the clothes. 'You have to wear something else or people will freak out at the first sight of you.'

'If they don't do that already,' Alexis butted in.

Kiano made the three girls turn around as he changed his clothes. He was used to wearing formal clothes, but wearing any other colour besides black was out of his element. He felt imbalanced, out of sorts. He fastened the buttons and tucked the shirt into the neat trousers before putting on the short vest and fastening those buttons as well. Even with his deadpan expression, he was a handsome sight to see.

'Look!' Alexis whispered with a harsh screech in her voice. 'They're finally leaving the castle.'

'On foot?' Chrys added rather confused.

Kiano helped Victoria pack up all of her belongings and put them back into her pouch. 'I'm not surprised,' he said and secured his own pouch around his shoulder. 'Anvard's surrounded by mountains and I'm guessing they won't travel three more days to go around them.'

'Keep an eye on them. Make sure none of them stray away from the group and sneak up on us,' Victoria said as the four of them retreated further into the woods and away from the path they assumed the others would take. They were far enough that they couldn't be spotted, but could still see the path. The hunt had begun. . .

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Hii everyone!

Tired of me yet? He he of course you're not, how could I ever be tiring-

Some more focus on the Bellicose members again. It's been a lot of fun to give my own spin to the wand crafting business, so hopefully you enjoyed my version of it! Now of course I have to know; what was your favourite part of this chapter?

I don't think I've ever published a chapter with this little dialogue hahah! I am still very proud of it, but it was such an error. My head always thinks that if there's no dialogue, it'll be boring--thank you brain lol

Anyway, I'm excited for the next chapter whieee. Thank you all for reading!

xx Theresaa

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