Page 73 of Lore of the Wilds

Lore walked, careful not to go so far that she wouldn’t find her way out, but despite her caution, she felt like someone was guiding her. She could swear she heard a humming that overshadowed the beat ofhome, home, home.

It sounded like,Wewill protect you, child.

Whatever was guiding her was gentle in its nudges—quietly telling her to turn here and followthisgame trail while avoiding another path that screamed danger.

Soon, she began to see floating light in pockets along the trail. These lights seemed to shimmer like moonlight on water, winking in and out like starlight in the midnight skies. The farther she walked into the woods, the thicker and more substantial that light became.

Excitement thrummed up her spine and her steps quickened. She’d seen these lights before, back when she was a child. Only then, she couldn’t have known what this was.

Magic. Raw magic, collected in spots. She suddenly knew her grimoire was infused with this raw magic. It positively pulsed with it, shimmering with a thousand colors and iridescent with power.

The light was brightest within a thicket of hazel trees. In its center was a small clearing overrun with clovers covered in a thick layer of frost. The small flowers blanketed the ground and in their middle, pushing their way through, was a circle of bright red mushrooms with white spots so vivid they gleamed in the rays of moonlight.

It seemed to Lore like a temple for the moon.

Lore knew this was where she would finally learn of her calling, for she had felt it for most of her life, ever since her mother burned up from the fever. The only rudimentary knowledge of her town healer meant she hadn’t known what to give her mother to bring the fever down successfully, and it had cost Lore’s family everything.

Lore knew she had the heart of a healer, but knowing which herbs, infusions, and salves would work was a different matter.

She’d needed a teacher, and she’d finally found one in the grimoire and the wildwood itself.

Lore kneeled in the middle of the circle of mushrooms and opened her grimoire with shaking hands. Here in the clearing, the moonlight reached the forest floor, lighting the pages just as they had that first time in her small room at the castle.

Only now, the magic amassed within the book seemed to call to the magic around her.

The glowing spots within the shadows began to swirl. Even the mushrooms and clovers seemed to vibrate with the magic. Lore breathed in deeply—the fungi surrounding her smelled like rain and the clovers had a sweet, vanilla smell. Lore wished she could bottle the scent.

When she touched the grimoire, the light soared from it, seeping into her like thick honey. Although the light was vivid and bright, it was cool to the touch. Comforting.

Lore brought her hand up in front of her face, turning it this way and that, marveling at the light staining her fingers like spilled ink, if ink were made of starlight.

The thicket of trees surrounding her seemed to sigh with contentment and the leaves shook with glee.

Lore laughed, the sound echoing through the wildwood. She plucked a single clover and placed it on the rough page of the grimoire. She watched, wide-eyed, as diagrams appeared before her. She saw that in the spring, the clover would sprout flowers. She saw a hand plucking the flowers and boiling them in water to make tea, and that a salve could be made from the leaves to treat ailments of the skin.

Despite that, the words surrounding the illustrations were in the old dialect and she could not decipher them.

***

Lore woke up to do it all again. And again.

Once word spread about food being served at the Exile, the small tavern was now filled twice a day. Lore was thankful for it. The chopping, washing, cutting, and cooking kept her so busy she almost didn’t think about Asher and Isla risking their livesfor her. She almost didn’t think about the fact that another week had gone by with no word from them. She almost didn’t wonder if they were captured or lying dead somewhere because of her.

When she brought up her worries to Gryph, he just laughed them off. He had complete faith in Isla to do whatever she put her mind to. Finndryl... well, he felt the same about his twin, and he claimed Asher was too stubborn to ever let anything really bad happen to him.

But Finndryl hadn’t been there when those two guards were going to cut Asher down like he was nothing. In those few moments back at the castle, Asher would have died were it not for the book. No amount of stubbornness would have saved him.

She wanted to have the same confidence that they did, but she didn’t. So, she cooked and cleaned and kept herself distracted. And when she wasn’t in the kitchen, she was out in the forest, poring over the book and searching for anything that could help them.

Despite not being able to read the book, shewaslearning. She thought she might have discovered a way to help Asher and Isla, even if she couldn’t be with them. The spell was similar to the one she’d used in the camp to protect their perimeter, only this one would protect them from enemy eyes.

She knew the herbs required for the spell from the drawings. She searched the ground, the trees, under stones, and in the wet earth beside a river until she could match them to the pictures in the book. The diagrams of flora were drawn with such care, they seemed almost lifelike. She gathered everything she needed and mixed it all into an incense.

When she lit it and spoke the words of the spell out loud, she infused her intentions into the smoke, even while stumbling over the foreign words. She did this spell every evening until she felt the magic catch and grow. She didn’t know if that meant the spell had worked, but she hoped her protection reached Asher and Isla, wherever they were.

With the increase in business, Gryph’s spirits were up. He would pop into the kitchen when he wasn’t busy behind the bar to help her serve, do paperwork, or grab something to eat or drink for himself. No matter what it was, he always had a kind word for Lore.

She soon learned that, like herself, he never stopped. He was always busy, always moving—and if she thought that might have something to do with not wanting to think about his pain, just like herself, she never breathed a word.

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