Page 79 of The Witch and His Crow

I searched the face of the stone for any marks that looked like runes. And it didn’t take long to find them. What I first believed to be natural marks were actually specific carved lines and shapes, no different to the symbols in Eleanor’s grimoire. I scratched centuries of grime from the grooves, brushing the dirt away until each one of the three symbols were clear beside each other. ‘Place markers. They’re here.’

I laid my palm on the ruins, and the viper inside of my gut stirred. It shifted like a python in a wicker basket, the stone the music played through a pipe.

‘And…’ Arwyn stepped in behind me, his body heat radiating across my cool skin. ‘The runes are facing inwards, just as you suspected.’

‘Keeping us in,’ I said, unable to take my eyes from the three rune marks.Protection, authority and home.I didn’t need to open the page on demonology to recall the information. Although one word was missing.Prison. That was what this place felt like now—like we were trapped in it.

Eleanor had said the stone used had to be blessed by both sun and moonlight, and at first thought these looked like they’d never seen either. But after running my hands around the wall, I found more grooves. As though the rune-marked stone had been slotted into the wall, like a piece to a puzzle.

A puzzle Ihadto work out.

‘Did the grimoire tell you how we can remove them? Perhaps taking one of the markers out will topple the entire shield, or at least create a hole big enough for a certain crow to slip inside.’

‘Only the being who crafted the boundary can remove it.’ That had been made clear. And I hardly imagined we could entice Hekate to do that, not when the Witch Trials were the only thing keeping the last scrap of her power safe.

Something else unsettled me, a bit of information my mind struggled to grasp.

‘No harm in trying to break them, right?’

I heard Arwyn’s question, but it seemed to join the list of others my mind played out. There was one far more pressing question I asked myself as I memorised the tunnel and its rune-marked wall.

‘These runes were mentioned specifically on the page about demonology. Why would Hekate use them here? If not to keep demons out, but to keep them in…’

The air seemed to drop in temperature, a violent chill racing over my body. I was suddenly glad for Arwyn’s close proximity.I almost leaned further into him, wishing to steal every ounce of comfort his body offered.

‘What’re you suggesting?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ I said, looking over my shoulder at him, recognising the genuine concern his firelight exposed on his face. ‘…I saw something, before the Enduring trial. Jordan, that witch that was killed by the Witch Hunter, his body was taken by…’

The memory assaulted me, thick and fast. Shadow creatures, splitting the ground apart, reaching up like hungry hands to snatch the body of a witch into the bowels of the earth. And suddenly, as I looked back to the tunnel, I got the impression that if those creatures were around, it would be in a place like this that they would bide their time.

‘Demons,’ I said, admitting the word aloud.

Arwyn laughed at me like I was a madman. Then he shook his head, running a hand over his shorn head. ‘I’ve gone over every text from every Choosing. If there were demons mentioned, I think I would know.’

‘And yet we saw them in Eleanor’s time, and the history books don’t make mention of that either.’

The ground beneath our feet groaned in agreement. No. Not agreement—itactually fucking moved. The walls shook, and dust from the low stone ceiling fell over us like ash. It happened so quickly that both of us were forced into silence. But it was as if this strange place disagreed with Arwyn’s comment, mirroring my own.

‘What about now?’ I asked, panic spiking.

I blinked and the tunnel grew darker. And darker. It was Arwyn who noticed why, looking to either side as the most distant lit torches extinguished, one by one. ‘Time to go.’

My feet were rooted to the spot, refusing him physically although my mind screamed of the impending danger. ‘No, not yet. We need to break this shield. IneedCaym.’

Now more so than ever. I could face Witch Hunters. I could face witches. But demons, the possibility of them being real, that was something I wasn’t prepared for.

‘No time.’ Arwyn reached for my hand, but I pulled free. Using my time, I reached into my pocket and withdrew the grimoire, frantically searching for anything to help with breaking the shield—if not completely, enough for Caym to reach me.

A high-pitched scream pierced the encroaching dark. It started off as one clear sound, then multiple screams began until they overlapped with one another.

‘Run.’ Arwyn snatched my arm and pulled me back. I tried to restrain him, but his strength far outweighed mine. ‘Hector,move.’

‘Get. Off. Me.’ My heart was hammering, my brain aching in my skull. The darkness was making reading the pages impossible. But I had to do something. We had made it here and found the rune marks. I couldn’t leave without at least trying to break the boundary.

The snake inside my gut was poised and ready to strike. I couldn’t waste that feeling.

There was more screeching darkness from either side of us. Then the sound of scratching, like iron-clad nails clawing at stone.

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