Page 115 of Revenant

Death…Talk…Spirit?

That can’t be right.

Growing more frustrated, I push off the floor and hiss when the corner from a loose tile cuts my palm. “Shit!” Standing up, I rush over to the sink and stick my hand under the running water.

I’m grateful Bastian has black washcloths as I press one to my wound. It’s not deep enough to need stitches, but it still stings like a bitch.

Going back over to my little corner, I wait before resuming, straining my ears to hear if Bastian’s made his return already. After a few heartbeats, I decide I’m in the clear and open the grimoire again. The page reads the same, and after another couple attempts, it still doesn’t make a lick of sense.

Gripping the handle of the mirror in my non-injured hand, I gasp when I see a few drops of my blood paint the glass. However, the worry of that flies straight out the fucking window when an iridescent shimmer glazes over the glass.

What the fuck.

There has been nothing to insinuate what this means, and I have half a mind to call it a day, because this is really starting to freak me out.

But maybe…maybe I can talk to my mom. If she is a part of this, maybe there’s a chance I could see her—talk to her.

Releasing a breath, my eyes scan over the page in more detail before they land on a cluster of words I don’t understand.

Loquere per speculum, permitte vocem transire ultra velum.

I sound it out, assuming I’m butchering it the first couple times when nothing happens. Taking another deep breath, I close my eyes and concentrate, trying to pull from the well of magic resting peacefully.

Loquere per speculum, permitte vocem transire ultra velum.

It’s different this time as the last syllable passes through my lips. I open my eyes and peer down at the mirror I’ve stared at countless times in my life. The sheen that was hardly there before lights up the room like a beacon, shooting out from the glass before settling back into itself.

Suddenly a picture comes into view. First, it’s just a silhouette, an outline of someone before it comes into focus. I let out a strangled gasp, my other hand covering my mouth as tears brim my eyes.

“Mom?”

Her smile is exactly the way I remember it—soft at the edges, warmer than it has any right to be, and the sight of it breaks something loose in my chest. Her hair mirrors mine, but her eyes are where the similarities stop. Where mine are the icy shade of shallow water, hers are hazel—warm, threaded with gold. Looking at them is the closest thing to coming home since I was ten years old.

“Alicent.” She doesn’t sound confused. She sounds like someone who’s been waiting for me to finish untangling my life and to come find her on the other side of it. “How are you, my sweet angel?”

“Is it really you?” I’ve imagined seeing her again so many times that my body doesn’t know how to catch up to what my eyes are seeing.

“Yes. But we don’t have much time, sweetheart. Not nearly enough.”

My shoulders draw inward, shrinking in on themselves. There is so much I would give—a year of my life, every spell I will ever learn—to jump through this mirror. To fit under her arm the way I used to. To feel her palm smooth down the crown of my head while she tells me none of this is as bad as it looks.

Even if it is.

“Mom, I—how—how are you here?”

“Listen to me, Ali.” The urgency in her tone catches me off guard, and my thoughts scramble to keep up. “I wish we had the time to talk. We don’t. If you’ve found your way through, then you already know what you are. What it means to carry our name.”

I nod. My throat has narrowed to something barely the width of a needle.

“You need to know about your father.” Her eyes drop and then rise to meet mine again. “Your father wasn’t an ordinary man, Ali.”

“What does that mean?” Is he with her? Wherever she is now?

“He was a wolf, sweetheart.”

The bathroom slips sideways for a heartbeat, like a dream right before you fall, and I press my free palm flat to the floor to steady myself. “What?”

“A werewolf. His pack has been hunting our bloodline since long before either of us drew our first breath, baby—it’s never been about us. It’s about what we hold.”