Protagonist Bound by Geanna Culbertson Page A

moments I was alone, I was always too nervous to whip out the wand due to worry that someone might find me with it.
    This past summer I had tried to get out of bed in the middle of the night to at least get some after-hours training in the privacy of my room. But even that proved to be difficult, as the guards assigned by my overprotective parents to repeatedly check my chambers deterred me from ever practicing for more than a few minutes.
    Other than the brief hour or so of messing around with it yesterday afternoon in our room, it had been several weeks since my last good session with the wand. Ergo, I decided to warm up a little before Blue returned.
    I grasped the familiar weapon in my hand with confidence.
    Shield , I thought, commanding the wand to morph.
    No sooner did I think the word did the wand transform into a thick handle, which sprouted a shield that opened up like a large metallic flower.
    Knife , I thought.
    The shield retracted back within itself as fast as it had expanded. The handle hardened and changed its shape at the same time. Barely a blink of an eye later it became a silvery leather grip from which extended a glistening eight-inch blade that looked so sharp it could have cut a person who stared at it too intensely.
    I ran the wand through several more tests after that—morphing it into an archer’s bow, a boomerang, a crowbar, and then my usual weapon of choice, a sword—before returning it to its original shape.
    My magic wand was enchanted to transform into whatever handheld weapon I willed it into. Which, in a word, was awesome. The enchantment was also extremely handy, versatile, travel-sized, and user-friendly.
    The only forms I regularly changed the wand into were the shield and the sword. The archer’s bow was pointless in a close-range fight and completely useless unless I happened to have arrows on me. And the other weapons I’d tried morphing it into (the crowbar, axe, boomerang, etc.) were neither as helpful nor as practical as the sword was in my hands.
    Then again, if I was to be totally honest with myself, I was not exactly a natural at swordplay either.
    Okay, that was a vast understatement. The fact was I naturally sucked at it.
    Between Blue, my brothers, and my own individual practice, I’d been honing my sword-fighting skills for a long time. As a result, I had genuinely managed to become pretty good.
    But this understanding did little to bring me comfort. For no matter how you spun it, “pretty good” was just not that impressive when you had been training hard for nearly ten years.
    What can I say? Practice apparently does not always make perfect.
    A sword in my hand always felt awkward, unbalanced, and seriously lacking in harmony with my person. Frankly, that dang broomstick had felt way more at home in my hands than a sword ever had. And that was just depressing. I had this powerful, magical object at my disposal, and I continually did it injustice with my lack of fighting talent in any of the weapons I’d ever tried to change it into.
    And yet, call me stubborn or unyielding, I was determined to keep at it. I trained, I worked hard, and I fought on despite my inherent hindrances. Because, one way or another, I had faith that I would get better in time.
    Blue was that extra encouraging force I needed along the way. She not only helped me in pursuit of my combat-related goals, in our time together in the practice fields she also pushed me to further test my limits. It was difficult, often bitterly exhausting work, but I relished it and appreciated her every day for the skills I’d developed, and the drive it fueled in my heart as a result.
    In that moment, my fearless friend returned to the stables. After slamming the door shut behind her, Blue tossed me an armored breastplate and a set of protective arm shields that I strapped on. The things were bulky, but I’d rather have worn twelve extra pounds of bronze than have risked Blue accidentally stabbing me if I was