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“Okay,” he breathes, and his hand searches for mine in the sheets. I don’t pull away when we make contact. Instead, I interlace my fingers with his and hold him there like I’m afraid he’ll be the one to let go, but he grips my hand just as tightly.
“Did you find what was on that page?” he asks after a moment.
“I haven’t looked yet.”
He says nothing, but we’re both probably thinking the same thing.
Whatever it is, hopefully it was worth it.
CHAPTERELEVEN
I shouldn’t be disappointedReid’s gone when I wake up, but the sight of the empty chair beside the bed feels like a fist squeezing around my heart. I take in the room for the first time—Kirby’s, clearly. Everything’s pink, the bedspread, the feather decorations on the wall, the lights strung around the vanity mirror. I roll over, my joints aching, and reach for the glass of water on the nightstand. The book is beside it, along with a note.
Sorry to leave before you woke up. Pulled into a meeting. Please call me if you need anything.
Reid
I smirk a little at how formal it sounds. Howregal.I guess at some point all of the royal training gets so ingrained it becomes a part of your DNA.
I chug the water, then pull the book into my lap. If my exhaustion hadn’t won out last night, my curiosity would have. I’d thought it might look different here, but the cover is just as dark, dark enough thatblackdoesn’t feel like a good enough descriptor. Static electricity sings along my fingertips as I trace the cover, not painful, exactly, but the power is potent enough to raise the hairs on the backs of my arms.
Strange. None of my mother’s other books feel like anything but leather and paper and ink. I’ve never seen this one before. Has Adrienne, Calla? For it to be hidden and away from the rest…
I already have a good idea of what I’ll find inside, but the breath still leaves my lungs as I turn to the first page.
Every spell book is unique—often passed down through a bloodline, each volume different in style depending on the witch who added to them. But never, not once, have I seen a book like this.
The illustrations are detailed, as they usually are, the black pen marks heavy and sharp. But the images are grotesque. And a swift glance at the ingredients list is enough to put two and two together without reading the spell.
…an offering of flesh…
…the fingernail of an innocent…
…rib removed while the sacrifice is still living…
…blood of a raven, drained from its still-beating heart…
The drawing depicts a person severing their own hand over a fire.
But what the hell would the caster even get out of a spell like this? I skim the page, not wanting to retain more details than necessary, but find nothing. The line at the top, it’s in Latin. That must be it. Latin has never been my strong suit.
Possess another’s bodyseems to be the gist. But not with yourself. With somethingelse.
I close the book again and take a deep breath through my nose. I’m not oblivious. The Darkmores have a history with dark magic, though it hasn’t shown up in documentation for decades. My mother, for one, always made it clear that we were never to dabble in it. Which was part of the reason she’d gone absolutely berserk the first time she’d found me using necromancy.
So I know she wouldn’t direct me to this book lightly. Not if there were any other options.
Maybe it hadn’t been her at all, a small voice whispers in the back of my mind.
The magic felt like Calla’s, sure, and that nail was definitely Mom’s, but Adrienne and I just assumed it was from them. What if that’s what theactualsender wanted us to think? If for some reason they needed one of us to retrieve the book? The compartment in that bookshelf needed a blood offering to open it. Probably a similar security system to the shock on that note.
Steeling myself, I flip to the page the note specified—313.
At least it’s not as gruesome as the last one. There are no illustrations, but the words are cramped. There are so many instructions they struggle to fit on a single page. I stare at the Latin at the top, trying to decode its meaning.
Direction?No, no. More likemanipulation.Control.
It sounds a lot like glamour, actually. But more.
