Chapter Two

"LACEY!" someone yelled. A girl with dark black hair and big, electric-blue eyes shrieked and dropped the crystal ball which she had been holding onto the stone floor. It shattered, spraying tiny tidbits of glass in every direction. She shrieked again as glass stabbed into her bare feet, feeling tears well up in her eyes.

"I-I-I'm s-sorry-" she began, but before she could finish a strong hand slapped across her face, sending her spinning to the floor.

"I told you not to touch that!" said a gruff, harsh voice. "Now, look what you've done, you dimwit! That was my best crystal ball, and you've shattered it!" She whimpered as a booted foot kicked her in the side, then curled in on herself to wait it out. This happened quite often to her, these beatings. It was mostly her fault, of course, for being so clumsy. By now she knew how to handle them, how to hold herself so that he could kick and punch the least painful spots on her body, and she knew exactly how to apply the medicine and wrappings and made sure not to strain her injuries too much so that they would heal before her next beating. Some days, though, the beating was worse than others.

Like today.

She whimpered slightly as the heavy boot came to rest against her head, pushing her face deeper into the cold stone floor.

"I ought to bust your head in," the man said. She felt tears trickle, unheeded, from her eyes, but she didn't dare to wipe them up. If she moved, he might actually kill her, and she had promised her mother that she wouldn't die until she was at least forty.

"Should I?" the man asked, voice sounding innocent and vaguely curious. He leaned down to look more closely at the her, and she could just barely see him through her peripheral vision. "Should I bust your brains out?"

She whimpered and risked a small shake of her head.

"Well, why not?"

She hesitated for a moment, thinking about it, and then shrugged. "Because you like me?" she offered. Instantly, she knew it was the wrong thing to say, as he stepped even harder on her head.

"Like you? Like you? You stupid girl, I fucking hate you!" She sees her life flash before her eyes as he steps harder on her head, sending a searing white pain slicing through her skull. She gasps as he eases up. "Sadly, the customers like you, so I'll keep you... for now." The boot was removed and his footsteps slowly left the room. She lay there for a moment, trying not to burst into hysterical tears, and then sat up, wincing as she realized that she had been lying on shattered glass that whole time. She felt tears burning in her nose and the back of her throat, but she forced them away, taking deep, calming breaths as she tried to remember that it was just two more years, she just had to survive two more years and then she would be free... free from her stupid apprenticeship with this stupid idiot who beat her every time she messed up.

Before she began crying, she stood up and brushed herself off, setting her shoulders and straightening her clothes, then sniffling and trying to wipe up her tears. She would take a quick bath to wash all of the glass off of her, and change clothes, since these ones still had glass on them, and then she would get right back to work studying and cleaning and polishing and spellcasting, and then she'd go to bed and remember to lock the door for when her master came back drunk and tried to enter. Thankfully, he wouldn't remember that she had locked the door on him in the morning, so she wouldn't get beaten for not letting him beat her. She sighed, letting her shoulders droop just slightly before straightening up with a determined look on her face. She would not- would not -let this get her down.

Oh, Mom... she thought to herself as she began to clean up the broken glass. You didn't tell me it would be this hard.

Lacey hurried up the steps that lead to her bedroom, up in one of the smaller towers of the big, gray castle, to try to avoid her master. She had accidentally fallen asleep in the bath and had woken up too late to get to her bedroom before her master got home. She had only had enough time to slip on a dress and her midnight-blue robes before she was forced to scurry up the twirling stairs to avoid her drunken master. Even now she could hear him stomping up the stairs behind her, slow and drunken but possibly gaining on her.

Finally, she reached her bedroom door and threw it open, darting through and slamming it as quickly as she could, then pulling all of the five locks that were on the door. She felt her heart beat faster as, only a couple seconds later, her master reached the landing and banged hard on her door, demanding to be let in. Shaking slightly, she moved to her thin mattress and curled up under the blankets there, trying to find some peace, though the fact that her master was still banging on the door and yelling made it rather hard. With a sigh, she covered her head with her pillow to try to block it out.

Mom. I hope you know how hard I'm trying for you.

Her master left a couple minutes later, muttering to himself, and as soon as his footsteps on the stairs faded she crept out from under the blankets and began setting up her bedroom. First, she pushed all of her furniture to against the walls as best she could. Thankfully her furniture consisted only of a writing desk, a bed, and a spindly little chair, so she had enough room.

Once that was done with, she slowly, carefully began rolling up the precious, ancient rug that was splayed in the middle of the floor. It was round and red and gold and had once had pictures on it, done in blue and green thread, but, over time, those pictures had faded to a blue-green fuzzy patch in the middle of the red and gold. Either way, it was still beautiful in her eyes.

She took the rolled up rug- which was actually quite heavy -and set it against a bare patch of wall, then moved to the middle of the room. Moonlight drifted in through the one window of her small, round tower bedroom, landing right on the spot in the middle of the pentacle where she stood. With a deep, dreamy sigh, she allowed the moonlight to flow into her, through her, lending her it's calm and magical power. When she was done borrowing it's energy, she opened her eyes and began the ritual. Unlike how most people did it, though, she did not speak the words: she sang them lightly. She still scattered all the right herbs and flowers and lit the candles at the right time, but she sang the words, and danced to wherever she had to move to. She didn't know why she did this, exactly, but it helped with her spells in some way, though in what way, she had never figured out.

As soon as the spell was done, she sighed with relief, then collapsed to the stone floor as all the energy left her. Functioning on willpower only, she managed to drag herself back to her bed and get herself under the covers before falling into an exhausted sleep.

The last thought she had was, I hope someone who needs them gets that luck.

A/N As I might have mentioned before... I don't actually know where this thing is going. So, if this seems strange and lame and whatnot, I blame my sister. *default* No, but seriously, I don't even really know what this is. At all.