Page 74

“Apologies, I forgot myself during your shockingly impassive response to our father’s death,” I snip back.

She sighs again, and I smirk cruelly. “What an unattractive sound, sister.”

She snorts. “Yes, six months of freedom has changed me.”

I have no response to that, and I watch her sip her scotch, the large ice cube sliding in the crystal.

“It’s rather unfortunate that I’ve gotten months of grieving and waiting for his inevitable downfall, while you were blindsided by it. I have this odd sense of relief that it’s finally come to pass, and I fear it is chafing against your shock.”

Tingling ripples down my body, and I swallow down the rising bile. It rasps my voice into nearly a whisper. “Am I the only one who cared for him?”

The glare she hits me with could peel paint. “Don’t be dramatic. Of course I cared for him. He’s our father, and I loved him deeply. Mother will be utterly ruined when she hears, a burden that will fall to me, and I’m not the most sympathetic one in the family.” She smirks. “Perhaps I can borrow some from your sexy magician. He seems full of a gentle compassion that is missing from our genes.”

My eyes close with the pang in my heart. “He is.” I take a burning gulp and do gag this time. I set the glass down on the floor and fold my arms over my eyes.

A smack against my leg has my arms lifting to peer through them. Emilia is beside the couch and pats my stretched-out legs again until I draw them up. She elegantly falls onto the cushion and welcomes my legs onto her lap. She rests her glass on my knee. “I wish I could make you feel better. It destroys me to see you like this.”

The lump in my throat grows, and I reach out a hand towards her. She takes it and squeezes. “I’ve missed you.”

My breath releases with a shiver. “Me too.”

She smiles and lets go of my fingers. “I will say your magician is delicious.”

I snort. “I thought you found men repulsive.”

“Oh, I do, but I can acknowledge a beautiful specimen when I see one.” Her fingers dance over the rim of her glass. The tang of magic hits my tongue as the gift she inherited from our mother breaks down the ice until the cube no longer exists and the water dilutes the strong liquor. She takes a sip and smiles. “Much better.”

My gaze flicks from the glass to my sister and back. “How long have you been watching Peripetia Bookshop?”

An elegant laugh softens her features. “So clever. I don’t think Father even knew I was in the city. I’ve been there a few weeks at most. I couldn’t get past the wards until the grimoires went wild.”

“What was it that you took from behind the pentagram?”

Her eyes dance when she meets my gaze. “Figured that out?”

“Not many can break down the physical into its base particles. Only Mother and you have that born ability to negate Transformation so thoroughly.”

“Astoria had something that Mother created with Viola and Gildra. I wanted to reclaim it before her curse rotted her mind.”

Astoria hiding something her mother created does make sense. I remember Viola showing up in tears because the Archweaver took something of Gildra’s that Viola was saving for Astoria. “But what is the notebook?”

“It’s the only known record of the surviving priesthood magic. Viola gave it to Astoria in hopes that she’d be able to find a way to balance her Dual Threads before erupting.”

My lips part. I knew my mother researched ancient magic with her friends in their youth, but priesthood magic?

“Do you have it?”

Emilia lifts her hand. Her long nail pierces the air, a static sparking against the tip. She drags down, leaving a flickering line, like a seam ripping. She slips her hand through and withdraws a very dusty and yellowed-with-age leather-bound notebook. I take it when she offers it to me.

I turn the pages carefully, the old paper crackling as it moves. Diagrams of runes fill the pages, different theories and notes scribbled alongside them. My mother’s and Viola’s elegant scrolls are easy enough to identify, leaving behind a third handwriting that has sharp points like knives instead of the loops of the other two.

My heart aches when I touch the writing. “I bet Astoria loved seeing her mother’s notes.”

“I’m sure,” Emilia says softly, leaning closer to me to see.

Conflicting emotions swirl in my chest like a building storm. I turn the pages, barely reading them as I go. The rune diagrams appear less and less frequently until the pages fill with theoretical research. My mother’s sections focused deeply on the weaver birthing cycles. I pause to scan a long ranting ramble about weavers being incompatible with the basic laws of nature. She even drew a diagram of family trees, showing how one weaver can only pass down their thread to one child, leaving no room for growth or repopulation. Gildra’s notes scribble along the margins, and the next three pages are full of all the Entropy family lines that were lost during the Revolution.

Doomed for extinction is noted at the end. Damn, that is depressing.