Nutella

"She what?"

This was my mum. She was sitting at the table, stirring some flour and water in a bowl. I tried to guess what she was going to make from the vials of ready-made potions around her but failed miserably.

I sucked at Kitchen Magic.

She could have been cooking a cake and I wouldn't have known it from scones.

Daddy stood before me, his hands behind him. Gone was the nervousness he'd personified when we were talking in the kitchen.

Glancing quickly at me, he gave me a wry smile and turned back to face Mam's icy look. I thought she was going to Spell the both of us, Dad and me, right there and then. For a small second, all sense of brevity I'd had earlier vanished.

My Mam had Dragon Blood, you see, and by the Lords, her fire wasn't something that you wanted to toy with unless you were willing to get more than a little burned.

All too slow, I found my voice and head.

"I want to meet Amery before the wedding."

Was my voice really as strong as it'd just sounded?

Her icy green eyes moved from Dad's to mine. I swallowed the nervous ball that had worked it's way up my throat.

"I beg your pardon?" A red eyebrow raised and Mam stood. If you knew my mother, you would understand the threat such an action posed.

Both my father and I took a small step back.

"Cristya," Daddy started, "marriage at her age is unconventional. Perhaps we could arrange a ..."

Mam glared at him and the words froze on his lips.

"If I'm going to be spending the rest of my life with him, then I think that it i-"

Mam put the spoon in her hand down and advanced.

I retreated until I felt the wall against my back.

So my mother might not have it in her to eat her own young - dragons did that you know, when their brood disobeyed them, or something equally horrific - but I swear the look she was giving me made me question all sense.

Biting my lip, I sent out a small prayer to the Goddess Irya - the Mother; and rhymed the Confession in my head.

I figured that if I was to go out, I'd like to go out on a good note.

Maybe the Mother had a place in her Realm for magical, soon-to-be-married, disobedient little brats like me.

I peeked at the look on my Mam's face and squirmed.

Holy Mother, Seer of All Things ...

"I was fourteen when I married your father," she spoke to me now. I clasped my hands behind me and looked up. Mam was looking straight at me. Surprisingly, the anger in her eyes was gone. In them instead, were tears.

I tried not to let my sigh of relief reach her ears. My father would have heard it, obviously, but not her.

Dragons were not known for their keen hearing.

"I wished to the Goddess that my daughter wouldn't have had to suffer the same fate..." My father's jaw dropped at the word 'fate,' "...and oh how I hate that this has had to be a destiny you've had to shar-" She broke down then. Tears streamed down her face and her hands went up.

Daddy moved towards her, arms reaching out and Mam crumbled against him like a broken doll.

He swung her around, so that her back was to me, and gave me a look that told me the fuchsia outside might have been in need of a little watering.

I gave him a small nod and turned to walk away.

This, I could tell, was going to be a very long day.



Shit.

I totally forgot about Evayn.

He's going to be so crushed when he finds out I'm getting married.

I think that maybe I should just break up with him. Make it a clean cut - simple and pain free. Maybe after, when it's done I could invite him to the wedding.

I'll make him sit with Rowena, 'cause she's always crushing on him so bad whenever we hang out. She never tells me but I see it in her eyes and feel it in her heart. Maybe they can find some future together, if Rowena isn't arranged to that awful guardsmen I that I know stares at her whenever we walk past the castle entrance.

Yes. That's what I'll do.

I'll break up with him.

I'll do it next time I see him in school. I should probably take a spell with me just in case though.

Can't have the whole of Westview finding out about wedding.