Page 149 of First Ritual

A Guide to Experimental Magic.

Humans Debunked.

“Humans Debunked,” I echoed. That conveyed a level of preparation before they’d left. The idea of Rowaness trying to understand humans was laughable. The book hadn’t done her any good, put it that way.

Very interesting, though. The last titles were the only ones not about inflicting pain and suffering on others. I wanted to borrow the second-to-last tome, but I was wary of Huxley looking into my activity again.

Maybe I’d come here to read it sometime.

When I picked up the quill again, the pages before me went blank.

I wrote, Hazeluna Corentine. Books borrowed.

There were far more books listed here than under Grandmother’s name, and the list was more varied across battle and apothecary. She’d been very interested early on in the use of gems for storing energy. Then she’d moved onto subjects pertaining to honing and sharpening magic with flora and flora. There was one halfway down—Battles of the Mind. If there was a title to sum up Mother’s fighting technique, that may be it. I touched the title with the feather, unable to squash my curiosity to read the book. Bet she’d formed her paradigm idea from something in there.

The same mix of apothecary and battle-oriented books occupied the second page. I smiled at a few and laughed outright at others.

Yet a resounding numbness seized me. I stared at the last title on the list. A crushing, crawling sensation used my spine like a rope to reach my neck, where it wrapped its dark vines around my throat and squeezed.

At the same time Grandmother was reading A Guide to Experimental Magic and Humans Debunked, Mother was reading Demonicae.

35

I’d been so clear on what to do after my dawn recentering. Cut the tether. Be rid of my demon flat mate. Cure Wild in the doing.

My mother read Demonicae, then left the coven. What the hell did that mean? I didn’t know which way to move.

That simple revelation changed everything I’d assumed into one big question mark. I’d always believed the attack that day was a random thing. I had no idea what the fuck to think about anything anymore.

The only theory I had was that mother pissed a demon off big time. She’d loved this place. She’d left loved ones behind. So had Grandmother. It made sense that Mother left to protect the coven from a demon.

Now I needed to know which demon she’d pissed off. That seemed integral. If my grandfather were here, I would’ve asked him. If Rooke’s father was around, he’d be a close second. But there was one person who could know everything—or nothing at all.

My father.

I opened my eyes having spent an hour in the moss forest recentering myself. Again. Was this my new path?

Finding my father had never been on my radar. I simply didn’t care about him. Maybe that seemed odd given that I’d put everything on the line to find my tether person at one point, but prior to my family’s murder, I’d been perfectly content. Afterward…

If my father had shared a tether with Mother, then he would have felt her death. He never came to find me.

If he didn’t share a tether with Mother, then why would I want to find him?

And if he was dead, then I’d already had enough death in my life to contend with.

Fate sure was an asshat.

How on earth did I figure out who he was? The guy wasn’t in this coven—that much I was sure of having met the magic of every coven member. Did he transfer out, or was he from another coven? The covens sometimes gathered when the forces of nature coaligned in special ways.

While I worked on that, I’d piece together my mother’s movements in the years before she left here.

Some of the tension in my chest eased as the new path became clearer and more solid.

I had to find Varden.

Unfolding, I left the moss forest.

“Miss Corentine, hey,” called a teen boy.

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