Page 57 of Spelling Disaster

Remi and I share a look.

“We’ve grown up with our Mom as a Cleric,” she says to Blaire. “We only know the stories she told us.”

“Well, in olden times, covens were ruled by high priests and priestesses but only those from the Clerics could commune with the divine. They were a step above the usual rules. People started to say anyone who ascended to the Cleric in their coven was touched by the mother.”

I’ve heard about her. The divine mother, Kaelyah, also called the good mother.

“It’s said the divine mother reached down to her covens, her protected ones, and told them of a dream she had where she would be betrayed. Apparently she called up her allies and sought to protect the covens. But the Cleric in the coven who had been so blessed by her… he also had the dream. He saw the power of the mother and a way for him to have it for his own.”

I shiver even though the temperature in the room hasn’t changed. Without having heard it before, I knew where the story would go.

“The Cleric betrayed his coven, all covens, and burned the other Clerics who had less power than him. He seized it for his own,”Blaire continues.

This isn’t anywhere near to the story I’d been told growing up. Nothing close.

Talk about a history lesson. Beside me, Remi is just as shellshocked as I am.

“The divine mother, the high priests, and the high priestesses all joined together to fight back against the rogue Cleric. The power he’d stolen had corrupted him and turned him into something dark and unnatural.” Blaire pauses for effect even though it’s not necessary. She’s going green around the gills too, and the blood drains from my face because I know what she’s going to say. “He changed into a horned god. There was no going back from that.”

Shit.

“They say the good mother trapped him inside a book and he is to remain there until the blood of another Cleric sets him free. Which is why no one is upset that Clerics have died out. The last known Cleric was burned at the stake even though he’d had his power stolen from him, as a safeguard. Only they haven’t disappeared. Have they?” Blaire’s laugh is high pitched and a little frenzied. “Because here you are. And you haven’t bled on any books lately, Yazzy, have you?”

My laugh sounds just as crazed as hers. “Of course not. I’m a librarian. It’s not like I make a habit of slicing open a vein.”

“What happens if he’s set free?” Remi asks. Her dark eyes are unreadable.

“According to the stories, and who’s to say if these are real or not, but he’s sworn vengeance on the world of magic. And only the one who sets him free can return him to his prison,” Blaire answers.

Me. It’s me. It can’t be real, except it is, and the spotlight is on my shoulders. I set him free through some strange manipulation of fate and he’s been hunting me since, to take me down before I can put him back in a book.

Like I’d even know where to start.

“It doesn’t make sense, though,” Blaire continues. “If all of the Clerics were killed then how… how is it possible that you are one? That you were groomed to be theone?”

“I actually don’t know how to answer you,” I mutter. Lightheaded and a little dizzy, I rub circles along my stomach. It doesn’t help.

“I know.”

Blaire and I turn to look at Remi in unison. “So you’ve heard this story before?” I ask shakily. And apparently hid it from me.

What else does my sister know? What other secrets has she kept locked away because she doesn’t trust me?

Or for my own good?

“The divine mother hid one lone survivor,” Remi says, not bothering to look ashamed. “And passed down the information on their whereabouts from her child, and so on. Mother to child. Since that time, only one Williams’s daughter has possessed the knowledge and the gift. From Grandma to Mom, and from Mom…to you, Yasmine.”

Damn it, it’s me. Now I get what Mom meant as far as my magic, that of childhood being replaced by something greater. Uniting me with the kind of magic used to create the Horned God.

I’m going to be sick.

I want to tear through the room and destroy everything in my path, to make the outside space look the way I feel on the inside. To tear through the boy-band posters on the wall and whip everything into a frenzy like it will somehow get rid of this distraught feeling gnawing at my bones.

My fate is tied to the Horned God.

With even more on my plate than just my reputation at the academy and my fake relationship with Theo Acaster, I have to try to get rid of this ticking time bomb before it explodes right in my face.

“What am I going to do?” I stare at the floor and surge to my feet, my stomach dropping with the movement. “I can’t stay like this. I’ve got to do something to make it all go away.”

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