I awoke to an insistent, pounding headache. As my senses returned, I noticed the cold, rough ground beneath me. My eyes flew open, only making the headache worse. I wasn’t in my room. I was sitting, leaning slightly against a bench. It was uncomfortable, and I wondered how I had gotten into that position. My mind was still foggy, but, with painful deliberation, the world slowly swam into focus. That’s when I finally comprehended what I was seeing, and I felt my insides curl into what must have been some impossible knot.

Thick metal bars spaced about a hand width apart occupied my entire field of vision as I looked ahead. The cold, rough ground I was sitting on? Bricks. The bench I was leaning against? A nearly inflexible cot with something on it that could be called a mattress in name only. I was in the dungeon. I was in the dungeon. But why? I still couldn’t remember anything.

Panic was starting to set in, and the more aware I became, the more the pain throbbed through my head. Instinctively my hand went to my head, trying to both ease the pain and find the source for it. I felt something hot, wet and sticky, and an even sharper pain shot through me. Blood. A wound. Someone had hit me on the head.

In a flash, everything of the previous night came rushing back to me. The candle, the flying dresser, the shattered window.  My father’s horrified reaction.  It all came tumbling as images one after the other, overwhelming. A sob escaped from my lips, my body racked, and I thought I was going to vomit.

“Lana,” my mother’s tired, sad voice broke through the onslaught of emotions, and made me fleetingly happy in a way that almost broke my heart. I just wanted to run to her and have her take me into her arms and tell me that everything was going to be okay.

One look at her face told me that was not going to happen. Not now. Maybe never again. Her brown eyes, a couple of shades lighter than my own, were set into thin angry lines as she regarded me. Her lips were stretched taut, the way they always were when I had done something she disapproved of.

“Mother—”

“You are not my daughter,” she cut me off. “My daughter is sweet and innocent, and she definitely does not use magic. Whoever you are that has chosen to inhabit her, I demand you return her immediately.” My mother spoke with no emotion, only cold steel. I finally had my first glimpse of her as, not my mother, but Lady Jane of Eleanor estate.

“Mother… it’s me…” I choked out, my voice carrying the sound of the tears now streaming from my eyes.

She shook her head sharply, her features carefully composed. “Your eyes may be back to normal now, but it’s just a clever trick, isn’t it? I always knew you’d end up a disappointment. Somehow I knew the magic would lodge itself within you, but I always tried to deny it. You are possessed by magic. I would ask you to give me my Lana back, but she never existed, did she?”

I was stunned. Words died on my lips. No words of reason could penetrate her steel. She had decided I was the enemy before even entering the dungeon. She was only there to inform me how much she despised what I had become.

“Why ask anything, if you aren’t going to believe me?” I asked, my voice breaking almost all the way through.

“You’re right. You needn’t reply. I just came to inform you the trip to the Argeno household has been cancelled. Instead, we are setting out for the palace. We’ll let the king decide your fate for your treachery.” She didn’t care about me anymore. How could she if she was planning on taking me to my certain death? One night, one night in which I couldn’t control my actions was all it took for my mother to stop caring about me. This was what it was like to receive the side of her that did not care.  It made me feel completely hollow.

I couldn’t speak anymore. I was consumed by sobs. My own mother was ready to discard me so quickly. Was it because I no longer fitted into her perfect plan for me? Did she think that John would no longer want to marry me if he discovered that I had… that I had… done – what I had done the previous night? Didn’t anyone understand that it was an accident and that I had no control over what happened? Did no one believe me?

“What have I ever done to you to deserve this?” I cried as she turned to walk away. She stopped, but didn’t turn back to me.

“You have ruined everything for me, and for that you must pay.”

I didn’t understand what she meant by that. What could I possibly have ruined for her? It was a onetime occurrence. How could something no other noble family yet knows about have affected her plans? I kept wondering about my mother’s logic long after she left. My thoughts then turned hazy and I cried until I had no tears left. I kept wishing that it had all been a dream and that any moment I would wake up. But I had no such luck.