Page 158 of Bedeviled

I force my features to go blank, but I’m surprised—and more than a little horrified that she’s aware of this. After all, if she knows Memnon’s breaking the bonds, then she likely also has some idea of how he’s doing it.

Namely, killing people and only sometimes reviving them.

The high priestess stares at me for a long moment. “He’s only going to get worse,” she says meaningfully. “You know this just as you knew it once, long ago.”

Her words stack like stones in my stomach. I feel queasy. So queasy.

Bloody crones, intuiting things they have no business intuiting.

“But he is the monster needed for the moment, isn’t he?” the high priestess continues. “There are so many bad men out there. Bad men, bad women, bad fae…”

My fingers tense in Nero’s fur. “What did you say?”

Her eyes sweep over the walls of the room. “Funny how we can fly through the air—some us of can even manipulate ley lines—and yet we still need our persecution tunnels for the devils that come for us. And they always do come for us. Humans, fae, demons, even other witches. We are both sacred, powerful creatures and yet so very vulnerable to the whims of wicked beings.”

I feel like this woman could really do with a coffee buddy.

Her dark, intense eyes resettle on mine. “She wants a proper throne.”

Who?

The question is on the tip of my tongue, but the look the high priestess levels me with has the word withering away before I can voice it.

You know who, her eyes seem to say.

Eislyn.

“She breeds men like horses,” the high priestess states. “You ruined centuries of meticulous planning, but alas, her moment rises again. The last ruler of the Flora Kingdom is now fertilizer. A regent rules while the throne remains unclaimed. But it won’t remain so.

“You know she wants it. She has always wanted it, and she will act soon. You must be prepared.”

The hairs on my arms rise.

This is the reason she called me in, I realize.

I lean forward in my seat. “What does she need to do to become queen?”

“The Flora Kingdom houses a vault full of scrolls. Each one is a judgment made on behalf of the kingdom, and every scroll has been enchanted to enact these decisions. Burn the scroll, and not only will the spell placed on it be destroyed, the judgment itself will be no more.”

My mind races at her words. So Eislyn wants to destroy the scroll with her banishment on it. As long as she cannot get ahold of that scroll, she won’t be able to cross over into the Otherworld and claim the throne.

Of course, she won’t be able to cross over to the Otherworld to fetch and burn this scroll, so this should be a nonissue. But the fact that the high priestess is sitting here telling me this right now makes me think that it is very much an issue.

“I am not all-seeing,” she admits. “If I were, I would never have let death come to Henbane. I see things in the twist of smoke and hear whispers in the earth. It has not been enough to save many of our coven sisters. Maybe this, at least, will be.”

She looks old then. Old and weary and wrung out.

She clears her throat, her spine straightening. “One last thing,” she says. “I hear you’ve been in search of an impossible spell.”

I draw my brows together, unsure what she’s talking about now.

The high priestess’s white raven caws loudly, then leaps from her shoulder and flies across the room. It swoops low and drops a bag it was clutching onto my lap. I startle as I catch the small pouch.

“What is this?” I ask, even as I open it and peer inside.

Within it is a book no bigger and no thicker than my hand. But from it emanates a nauseating amount of power.

So not just a book, a grimoire.