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As soon as I do, questions flood my brain.
Where the hell are you, wildcard?
Are you okay?
Is he hurting you?
Where are you, Sweeney?
I huff out a breath and try to say as calmly as I can,I am fine. He is not hurting me. I don’t know where I am, but I don’t think I’m in any danger. He- He has a lot of power.
Is that supposed to make us feel better, love? Cause it bloody well doesn’t.
I’m keenly aware of him watching me. I know he knows that I’m communicating with them. Despite that he told me I wouldn’t have to, which I took to mean he didn’t want me to.
I’ll be fine.
He tried to kill you before, Sweeney. Figure out where you are and tell us.
We don’t know that’s what he was trying to do,I protest.
We don’t know that that’snotwhat he was trying to do, wildcard. Please let us know where you are.
Hell must have frozen over because Fielder and Cohen just agreed on something. Kohaku has been suspiciously quiet during all of this, and I suspect he knows exactly where I am.
I’ll let you know if I need you,I say as quickly as I can before I shut the communication rune down.
But I’m not fast enough to avoid hearing Gideon shout at me,that only helps if we know where the fuck you are, Rosalind.
He’s not wrong, but I can’t exactly force my father to tell me where he’s teleported me too. They have the tools to figure it out. I’m sure they are scrambling to do that now. Really, Ezra should have a stack of world maps hidden away somewhere so he can do his fancy locator spell whenever he loses me.
Once I’ve successfully shut the spell off, I look at my father, who is watching me with wary eyes. “You care about them? The four heirs of Septem Stellae?”
Maybe I should lie to him, tell him I don’t. It’s obvious that the elders of Septem Stellae don’t like our biological family, but I have no clue why. He likely thinks it’s a mistake to get involved with the sons of the coven.
But I also don’t want to lie to him. “I do. I have no clue why I do. They were complete assholes to me when we first met, and honestly, things haven’t gotten much better since then. But…”
“The heart wants what it wants.” He finishes for me, a small smile on his lips. Then he motions me over to the sitting area and takes a seat in one of the armchairs. I perch on the edge of the couch and he hands over the two books in his hands. One is a composition notebook, like we used to use in science class in high school. I recognize the tight scrawl decorating the pages as his handwriting. I flip through it, glimpsing runes and lists of ingredients and all manner of witchy things, along with notes about his experiences and things he’s learned.
I want to read all of it. I want to bury my head in the pages now, but the other book is also calling to me. Old and leather bound, with a faded gold design on the front that I can’t really make out. I run a finger over the filigree and a spike of energy hits me, making my heart pound.
My dad watches as I stroke over the soft leather, his eyes alight with hope and curiosity. I glance up at him. Feeling like this item in my hands is more important than anything I’ve ever held before. “What is this?”
A small smile curls his lips. “This, ladybug, is our family’s grimoire.”
I had been staring at the book, hesitant to open it, but now my gaze flies to crash into his. “Our what?”
“Grimoire,” he says, leaning back in his chair, enjoying this far too much. “It’s a collection of all of our spells. Open it.”
My fingers are shaking. No, my whole body is shaking, but it’s most evident in my hands as I carefully, reverently open the leather cover. The title page is printed, but in a font that looks like handwriting, looping and cursive:The Sagesse Family Grimoire.
I half expected the words inside to be handwritten, like my father’s notebook, but it’s all type face, neat, tidy text I can read easily. I flip through eyes scanning over all the possibilities, all the spells that my ancestors before me created, worked, cast. There’s a buzzing along my skin, a fizzle of power that makes me feel energized, alive, like I could take on the fucking world.
There are things in here thatThe Basics of Witchcraftstraight up said wasn’t possible. That a witch would never be able to do. Some of it is dark as shit. I can see that already. When I lift my eyes to my father, I ask, “Are we… do we use dark magic? Is that why they hate our family?”
My dad’s lips curl into a smile that is both proud and more than a little apologetic. “Some of our spells are based in what you would call dark magic, require sacrifices in order to make the spell work. But no, that is not why they dislike us, why they want us dead. The Seven elders of Septem Stellae want our family dead because of the amount of power we have. It’s vast, an ocean of power at our fingertips, and it only gets more potent as more generations come. On top of that, we have a long history of being leaders, rulers of covens. With the amount of magic we wield, who would stand against us?”
I frown, disappointed. “That doesn’t seem right? We’re despots? We used our power to make others fall in line? And they staged a coup and tried to kill us all?”
