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“I came here to get away from them,” I recall, but I was enraged by what had happened.
I didn’t stop to really think why it had happened.
“Do you have something to do with this?”
Jewel shrugs. “Maybe, possibly? I don’t know. My magic isn’t something I can control too well, but I will say you’re someone I’ve been waiting for, and for a very long time, mind you.” She clicks her tongue. “Your men are just going to have to wait,” Jewel says as she holds my hand in hers. I immediately feel more grounded and the tug on my chest eases. “First off, I’m sorry for cursing you. I thought you were working with that asshole, Daithi, and I was just going to steal your power. But after watching you for a couple of days, all you’ve been doing is reading books and working on spells to break his hold on you. You’re notbad. You actually know what you’re doing, too.”
She smiles, the gesture infectious and disarming.
Are all manifestation spirits this charming?
“Maybe you’ll be able to help me,” she adds with a wrinkle of her cute nose. “And I won’t have to kill you. For real, anyway.”
Comforting.
I’m not sure what help I could offer a spirit in the death plane. I also don’t recall working on spells, but then I realize there is an open journal with my handwriting in it.
A quick skim reveals spells in multiple languages that I don’t remember writing. But they’re all related to fate magic.
Parts of it are things I learned from Ayla, who had worked with the rogue witch, Amala.
Other bits are new.
I pick up the journal and read over it.This could work,I think.
The female loops her arm through mine and sighs at the words on the page. “You really are brilliant. I’ve been wandering around for a while now, collecting scattered knowledge left over by other witches in this plane. But I can’t interpret it like you can, even though I used to be a witch before the manifestation power took over.”
I blink at her. “How long is awhile?” I know that technically a manifestation spirit can create pretty much anything given an applicable medium to work with. Their power comes from a great sense of need or an inciting event of incredible willpower that fuels the rare magic.
A manifestation spirit can do almost anything, create whatever they can imagine.
But an entire library?
It must have taken her ages.
She shrugs, her warmth strangely comforting against my spirit form. I’m not quite corporeal here, but the curse she put on me is keeping me in place and allowing me to interact with her creation. “Weeks? Months? I’m not sure, to be honest. I feel like it’s been much longer than that, but I was recently freed from some sort of siphon state. I walked out of a grave and there was a broken headstone.” She shivers as if it’s an unpleasant memory. “I tried to leave, but I still seem to be stuck here.”
“But you’re not dead,” I observe. She’s a spirit, yes, but that’s her natural state.
Her skin is warm.
Her flesh is real.
Everything about her is alive—she’s just trapped here, like she claims.
And it’s her observation of a “siphon state” that tells me all I need to know.
My fists clench when I realize that she is yet another victim of the patriarchs. They’ve been in power for ages and there’s no telling how many women they’ve bound and used for their own selfish purposes.
“The patriarchs trapped you and were using your magic,” I observe. If she was still alive when she had been pulled into the death plane, it could have been the incident that transformed her into the mythological species.
She shrugs again. “Yeah, that’s what the other spirits told me. It seems to be a common problem around here. At least, until all the headstones broke. Now the patriarchs are coming up with new tricks.”
“They’re not the only ones,” I lament. “Apparently, my mates’ father, Zane, is trying to control power, too. I’m not sure how he’s involved, but he poses a danger just as much as the patriarchs do.”
I saw the fear hidden in Jasper’s eyes when he mentioned his father. I wasn’t going to forget that threat.
The walls tremble and my gaze shoots up. Shadows filter over the reflective windows and my heart kicks in my chest.
