Page 80 of A Time of Witches

Squeezing her eyes shut, she concentrated. “Earth, Mother Nature, please help enhance my gifts.”

A gentle breeze stirred her hair.

Something in her chest loosened, as if her heart physically opened.

“Please help enhance my gifts,” she said again.

A pleasant tingling started at her birthmark and spread through her body.

She opened her eyes in time to see her veins shimmer beneath her skin, the way the grimoire had when she first touched it.

Something innate within her bade her repeat the phrase a third time. “Please help me enhance my gifts.” Her voice was louder, stronger, filled with the yearning to learn.

The candles flared, washing her in heat.

She stood still for a moment, suddenly aware of the room in a way she hadn’t been before. Every mote of dust in the air shone like embers and the crystals on the table lit from the inside with a strange glow.

The grimoire pulsed with energy, drawing her. She placed her palms on the spread pages, vitality flowing beneath her touch. There was so much learning still to be had within those pages.

Before she could embrace the beauty of her gifts, a sense of dread fell over her like a weighted blanket, leaving her heavy, paralyzed.

Dragon hissed at the entrance to the secret room.

At something he wanted her to see.

But when she walked closer, he trotted off, tail up so a slight crook at the tip seemed to beckon her to follow. Like she had a choice.

As she kept up with him, she took in her surroundings with new eyes, eyes that showed the past strongly visible with the present now cast beneath a veil, obscured by what once had been.

They descended the stairs where the air grew thick and heavy, settling in her chest and made her heart strain to beat.

She’d felt this way last time. Right before…

Boom, boom, boom!

A heavy fist pounded at the door.

Fear punched through Lilith with a similar force.

A maid tentatively opened the door, her expression pinched with unease. A man entered, his stride purposeful, black robes snapping around him. His presence filled the capacious Great Room, blocking the light so everything suddenly went dark.

Ominous.

Dragon arched his back and loosed a savage hiss.

Lilith’s veins prickled with ice.

Those robes, the way they billowed like a carrion bird, the hard set of his eyes and the mean determination gleaming there.

She knew this man. From her dreams.

The odor of smoke filled her nose, her mouth, and a scream went off inside her head, body alight with the reminder of the flames and their indescribable agony.

His hand had been the one to hold the torch. He had tossed it upon the pyre, setting the kindling ablaze. Setting her on fire, to burn alive.

He was the man who would kill Sybil.

Chapter Thirty-Eight