Page 51 of Disenchanted

Sage tilted the heavy book in her arms, jostling it to the most exact angle, encouraging the moonbeams to light the entire page. She couldn’t quite manage it. Each time, the tiniest fraction of a corner or an inch near the spine remained in shadow. The seconds, then minutes, sped by. She was running out of time. The clouds were rolling daringly close to blocking the moon. She couldn’t bear the thought of having to wait for another shot at it. She shoved back tendrils of her blasted hair and fumbled, rushing her way through to find a page that might spill secrets.

She gasped so quickly and so intensely that she almost dropped the thing and had to start all over again. But finally, there it was. A whole week later.

“Mal, this is it,” Sage whispered, barely daring to breathe.

Beneath the silvery trail of light, just as they had the first time, the words revealed themselves to the moonlight, glistening ink as though freshly written. Gradually, the lines formed, becoming clearer and glowing warmer as they charged themselves from the moon’s magic for her to read.

Mine soul does beg, how I implore

So love may be yours evermore.

They were different. Different words. Sage’s heart raced. Were these the banishment instructions instead? She’d assumed the blank grimoire would merely reveal the same incantation as last time. All she had wanted to do was read it again so that she could pick apart the words of the spell, make a proper record of it to understand it further and see Lilara’s message for what it was.

But this was a whole new entry in the grimoire. Not only that, it didn’t feel the same either. There were no dramatics this time—no rush of wind, no shaking of the earth beneath her feet.

Witch, leave this wicked life behind

And flee the town in dark spellbind.

This wasn’t the same kind of spell. Maybe not even an incantation at all. It didn’t seem to create any physical changes or encourage her magic to bubble and bloom beneath her skin. She couldn’t feel it taking hold around her.

Her hair did not fly back. Her fingertips did not tingle. Her voice did not change—aside from the weak shake that broke and cracked as she read the final few lines. She could barely even speak them aloud. This was no spell or banishment. The words felt more like a promise. A confession.

Witchcraft may never know another,

No true kin, sister or brother.

No joy, no light, no heart is worse.

For who could ever love the cursed?

Mal continued licking his snow-white paw and cleaning behind his ear. “What a pleasant, light-hearted ditty,” he said, distinctly unbothered.

But it was all true.

Sage had dared to let herself think that her story was being rewritten, that the ending could be a different one than she’d been anticipating. But as she had always stubbornly told everyone her whole life, she was never wrong. Every sparkling glimmer that she had been fortified by over the past few days extinguished with a single breath.

Lilara knew exactly what was coming for her, and despite it all, Sage was insistently following in her very same footsteps. Lilara was doing what she could to prevent it. This was not an invitation, a celebration or encouragement, as Sage’s soft, naive sister had insisted. It was a warning after all: that she would always hurt the ones she loved.

“Sage, are you all right?” Mal jumped down from the bed and padded over to the window. “I hope you’re not going to take any notice of that.”

She slumped suddenly onto the windowsill, overcome by a feeling of heaviness and emptiness. “Cursed,” she whispered.

Mal gave a little chirp of alarm and leapt up onto her lap.

“Witches really are cursed. I knew it. I knew,” Sage breathed. An angry, smarting flash bit sharply at her. She had been so very, very deluded.

“Knew what?”

“Everybody tried to tell me it wasn’t true, that I wasn’t right. But I was. I always am.” She wasn’t even talking to Mal. She was lost to her own cruel thoughts. “How could I be so stupid? So ignorant?”

Distracted by her own ego. Tricked by glitter.

“Don’t be so harsh on yourself. You’re the brightest witch there is,” Mal said, nuzzling the top of his head under her chin.

The first words that the book had revealed played over and over in her head. So, naively, she had allowed herself to believe they were an invitation to explore magic. Permission to find a freedom in joy that she had never let herself feel before.

It was clear now, with these new words straight from Lilara’s own pen, that she had interpreted it all so very wrong.