Page 68 of Binding His Fated Mates

Harris still thinks he’s with the LAPD and he’s talking tactics.

You know how he gets.

Then the last message: I miss you.

I smiled and texted Hunter and Lee the same message: I miss you too.

I turned the dating show off and put on another episode of the baking challenge show I’d been watching the other night with the twins. It was weirdly soothing, even though I wasn’t much of a cook myself.

I set my tea on the coffee table—I’d only had a few sips, and it had already gone cold while I was holding it. I considered using a spell to warm it up again but decided against it. I’d need every ounce of my magical power for tonight. We had monsters to hunt.

Then I yawned. Maybe I’d take a nap here on the couch, after all. I stretched out, my gaze still fixed on the television.

The edge of the blanket caught on Hunter’s stack of books and sent the pile cascading across the floor.

“Shit.”

I threw the blanket off me, so it was safely out of the way. Then I dropped to my knees next to the pile of scattered journals to inspect the damage. The books were old and fragile, a priceless collection of arcane lore. Had my carelessness hurt the bindings?

To my relief, they seemed fine.

I restacked the books. Then, I felt a strange shiver up my spine when I picked up a journal with yellowed paper. It was thick, bound in black leather, but otherwise plain and unremarkable. I opened it to a page crammed with spiky handwriting. The next page had alchemical symbols and diagrams. Some sort of ritual.

Huh.

Well, it had nothing to do with sympathetic manifestations or the Mara. It looked more like the author’s personal notes on some sort of alchemical project.

Idly, I turned the page. And then my breath caught in my lungs as I read the heading of the spell the author had carefully written out on the page: A Most Powerful Alchemical Incantation to Bind Opposite Elements into a New State of Matter.

No. There was no way. Was there?

I scanned the spell. It was intended to bind spiritual essences that had been gleaned from rare elements into a mundane vessel, to produce a powerful magical artifact. Most spells to create enchanted objects only bound one magical essence, because it was dangerous to add other potentially unstable elements together. It could easily create something that was dangerously volatile—either destroying the object and likely the caster as well, or else creating a cursed artifact.

The witch or warlock who had written this spell, however, had apparently figured out a way around that. The trick, according to their notes, was to combine all of the elements together at the same time, instead of trying to layer the enchantments on top of each other.

The ritual wasn’t just one spell, but several layered together. And it culminated in a powerful incantation that provided a catalyst for the rest of the ritual, seamlessly merging everything together at the same time.

I read the incantation—it was seven words in archaic Latin, using the imperative conjugation of the verbs—and my hands began trembling. Because I could already tell that the incantation was enormously powerful, just by reading it silently in my head. Six of the words built on each other, creating a deep well of power as they were chanted at length. And then there was a single, seventh, word at the end that looked to be the author’s own invention, which activated it. It was only spoken once, when the power had been fully raised and the spell was ready.

Though I’d need to translate the words to be absolutely certain, the incantation looked like it could easily be separated out from the rest of the ritual. Meaning that it could be plugged into a new spell.

For instance, one I’d already written, which was designed to unite the two very different halves of the same person into one whole again.

Clutching the book in my hands, I stood up sharply.

Everything else I’d been feeling fell away from me. Reality narrowed down to a single point. I had to be certain.

I grabbed a sticky note from the pack on the coffee table and bookmarked the page.

Then, with the journal tucked safely under my arm, I left the cabin I now shared with the twins and made my way across the commune to my own cabin. I pushed open the door and stepped inside.

I paused inside the threshold, struck by how small it suddenly seemed. And how barren and devoid of my personality it really was—a stranger could’ve lived here. Journals—mostly the collection I’d hastily brought with me from home—were strewn about the cabin. Papers and notes, too. But apart from that, there was nothing of me here. As though I’d spent years trying not to take up space, even in my own home.

I pushed that thought to the side and made my way across the cabin, to my desk, and pulled open the bottom drawer. My journal—the one containing the mostly finished reversal spell I’d been working on—was lying there. It seemed too small and ordinary to reshape my life the way I feared it was about to.

I flipped open my journal and the alchemical text I’d discovered to the correct pages. Then I spent the next half hour comparing my spell against the catalyst I’d discovered. With shaking hands, I copied the incantation out into my journal.

I sounded the words out in my head, mentally testing the entire spell from start to finish. Even done silently, I could feel the way the spell called up my power, amplified it, and pulled it into patterns that were meant to seize hold of multiple magical signatures at once and weave them into one unified, unbroken whole. I didn’t speak the last word, the catalyst that would bind the work and seal it, not even in my own head.