The Black Witch

The first installment of The Black Witch Chronicles is set in a world where the Gardnerian Mages, who believe themselves divinely chosen, have become the dominant power in the Western Realm. Their society is governed by religious doctrine, racial purity laws, and wandfasting, a magical binding that permanently pairs young people as life mates.

Seventeen-year-old Elloren Gardner lives in the remote village of Halfix with Uncle Edwin, a violin maker, and her brothers, Rafe and Trystan. Their parents were killed in the Realm War, which ended when their grandmother Carnissa Gardner died in battle. Carnissa held the feared title of "the Black Witch," a prophetic designation tied to immense Gardnerian power. Elloren looks exactly like Carnissa but has been told she possesses no magic. She harbors a secret ability to sense the source trees of any wood she touches, a quirk her uncle warns her never to reveal, as it implies Fae blood. The Fae are a magical non-Gardnerian people, and any connection to them contradicts Gardnerian claims of racial purity. The prologue reveals a childhood memory: At age three, Elloren spoke spell words through a wand and set the surrounding forest ablaze, an event Uncle Edwin later convinced her was only a dream.

Elloren's sheltered life ends when Aunt Vyvian, a powerful Mage Council member, arrives to arrange Elloren's wandfasting to an influential young man. Uncle Edwin refuses and sends Elloren to Verpax University to study apothecary medicine, paying her tuition through kitchen labor. Before departing, Elloren encounters her missing neighbor Sage Gaffney, gaunt and terrified, carrying a hidden baby she says is not her fastmate's child. Sage presses a luminous wand into Elloren's hands, calling it the Wand of Myth, a legendary force for good, and says mysterious white birds called Watchers want Elloren to have it. Sage flees into the wilderness, and Aunt Vyvian reveals that the Mage Council is coming for the baby, an Icaral, a winged being Gardnerians consider demonic. Elloren hides the wand and says nothing about Sage's escape.

During the journey to the capital, Valgard, Elloren sees a Selkie, a seal-shifter in human form, locked in a cage in a shop window. She meets Fallon Bane, an 18-year-old Level Five Mage, the highest power classification, whom Aunt Vyvian privately identifies as the likely next Black Witch. Fallon warns Elloren away from Lukas Grey, a magnetic Level Five Mage and military star whom Vyvian favors as Elloren's fasting match. At Vyvian's party, Elloren meets Marcus Vogel, a priest running for High Mage, and perceives a disturbing dark void around him. She befriends Aislinn Greer, the bookish daughter of a Mage Council member and a future fellow scholar at Verpax University, and performs violin at the gathering, rescued from a disastrous start by Lukas's piano accompaniment. Lukas kisses Elloren privately, and she feels an overwhelming surge of elemental energy. He asks her to the Yule dance and suggests she has dormant power.

Vyvian pressures Elloren to accept Lukas's wandfasting proposal, but Elloren refuses, honoring her promise to Uncle Edwin. Outside Valgard's cathedral, Icarals attack Elloren, seeking to kill her before she can fulfill a prophecy that the next Black Witch will destroy their kind. Lukas saves her life by killing one attacker. The experience shakes Elloren's faith in her uncle's sheltering approach and drives her to seek the truth for herself.

At Verpax University, Elloren undergoes a formal wandtesting, a test to determine her level of magical ability. Energy surges through her but ricochets painfully off the wand, classifying her at the lowest level, though she senses power locked inside her. She is assigned to the North Tower with two Icaral lodging mates: Ariel Haven, a volatile Gardnerian with ragged black wings who terrorizes Elloren through the night, and Wynter Eirllyn, a shy Elfin Icaral artist. The Lodging Mistress refuses to move Elloren unless she wandfasts, on Vyvian's orders.

In the kitchen, Urisk workers, a green-skinned non-Gardnerian people, and Kelts, a non-Gardnerian people of mixed heritage, physically attack Elloren and threaten her. Yvan Guriel, a stern Keltic student who was nearly expelled for illegally treating Urisk workers, watches with undisguised hatred. Elloren turns to Lukas, who threatens each worker's family to ensure her safety. The bullying stops, but his ruthlessness sickens Elloren. She confronts Ariel with the threat of reporting her, establishing a tense truce. Fallon becomes a persistent tormentor, freezing Elloren's supplies and eventually destroying her handmade violin, her last connection to violin-making with Uncle Edwin. Her apothecary lab partner, Tierney Calix, becomes an unlikely ally.

Over months of hostility, Elloren's worldview cracks open. Professor Kristian, a Keltic historian, provides alternative histories revealing that Gardnerians descend from Kelt-Dryad unions, that her ancestor Styvius Gardner slaughtered entire villages, and that Carnissa sought to annihilate every non-Gardnerian race. In Chemistrie class, Elloren and Aislinn are partnered with the Lupine twins, Diana and Jarod Ulrich—Lupines being a wolf-like people feared and vilified by Gardnerians. Diana is arrogant but genuinely kind; Jarod begins exchanging poetry with Aislinn, and their connection deepens into love. Elloren learns that nearly everything she was told about Lupines was fabricated by prejudice.

A crisis over Ariel's pet chicken reveals the cost of Elloren's earlier choices. When Lukas kills the bird and stakes its mutilated body to the door, Wynter explains it was Ariel's "kindred," a creature she could communicate with telepathically. Ariel nearly breaks. Consumed by guilt, Elloren steals a replacement chicken and distances herself from Lukas. Trystan confides that he is attracted to men, placing him in mortal danger under Gardnerian law. Elloren discovers that Tierney is full-blooded Asrai Water Fae, glamoured as a child to hide among Gardnerians. A banned book documenting the genocide of the Fae after the Realm War devastates Elloren further.

Rafe falls in love with Diana. Following Yvan into the woods, Elloren discovers he regularly visits a caged, unbroken military dragon being tortured by Damion Bane, Fallon's sadistic older brother who serves as Dragon Master at the base. On the way back, a Watcher leads Elloren to the Valgard Selkie, now chained and beaten by the University groundskeeper. Elloren steals the keys and, with Yvan's help, frees the Selkie. The group hides her in the North Tower, where she is later named Marina.

When Vogel seizes power as High Mage, wandfasting becomes mandatory, and Rafe and Trystan receive draft notices for war. An assassination attempt on Fallon by Eastern Realm mercenaries leads to Lukas Grey's appointment as commander of the nearby military base. Elloren dons Gardnerian silks and a white Vogel armband as camouflage to protect her friends.

The group raids the base to free the dragon. Trystan uses Sage's wand to freeze and shatter the Elfin steel cage, but when Elloren touches him during the spell, her latent power amplifies his magic exponentially, breaking every cage on the base and freeing over 100 dragons. In the chaos, Elloren is mauled, and Yvan heals her near-fatal wound with his bare hands, confirming his hidden Fae nature. Tierney summons a blizzard to cover their retreat.

In the aftermath, Professor Kristian and Vice Chancellor Quillen reveal themselves as leaders of the Verpacian Resistance, having hidden 256 Fae children during the Realm War. They provide alibis for Elloren and her brothers and formally welcome Elloren to the Resistance. Quillen asks Elloren to maintain her connection to Lukas, who has shown signs of moderating Gardnerian excess, as a potential asset against Vogel.

The novel ends with Elloren fully transformed, now allied with Icarals, Lupines, Elves, Fae, and Kelts against Gardnerian authoritarianism, hiding a Selkie in her lodging, nursing a stolen dragon in a secret cave, and preparing to face Lukas Grey at the Yule dance while concealing her role in destroying his military base.