Page 55 of Fae Devoted
“Jo, do you know what the Guild’s tattoo artists use to make witch dye?” Jacob interrupted, changing the topic.
“The ashes of their ancestors’ bones.” Johnnie wondered what Anwyll ink had to do with the missing wolves. “The older the better.”
It was general knowledge among the magical community that the Guild kept meticulous records of Anwyll burial sites, their forefathers traditionally buried in enchanted sand to preserve the bones for future generations.
“And battle witches?” Jacob pushed.
“I assumed the league of Anwyll grandmasters reserved the oldest bones for them,” she said on a shudder. The white symbols embedded into a witch’s skin were undeniably beautiful, but the main ingredient for the stunning tattoos skeeved her out.
Jacob removed the lukewarm latte from her death-grip, and her stomach dropped again. She wasn’t going to like what he had to say next.
“There’s another source.” He weaved their fingers together. “A source ten times stronger than the oldest Anwyll skeleton.”
“Another?” Jacob’s expression gave nothing away, but an emotion she could only describe as righteous fury leaked through the bond, and Johnnie justknew. “It’s Ferwyn bones, isn’t it?”
Unlike witches and vampires, shifters were a natural product of Faery. When in wolf form theywereFaery, their bones drenched in their homeland’s magic.
“You know that the original Fae apprentices were completely human, right?” Dylan’s irises glowed yellow, then brown, then yellow again. Jacob growled low. A warning for the younger shifter to regain control.
She nodded.
“The incantations were just pretty words spoken without the—”
“Magic to fuel them,” Johnnie whispered, the back of her throat aching.
“The Fae tried to manufacture it in the chosen few. They sketched ancient symbols into the humans’ skin with ink made from a concoction of Ferwyn ash and God knows what else, hoping to instill magic into their blood.”
“And it worked.”
“No, it didn’t.”
“What do you mean?” She squeezed Jacob’s hand while listening intently to the eye-opening revelations Dylan laid out for her.
“The spells the initial students produced were inherently weak or failed completely. The Fae’sexperiment,” Dylan sneered, but his eyes had returned to light brown, “didn’t show real results until the children exposed to magic in the womb were born. They were the first true Anwyll.”
“How do you know all this?” When she met Dylan, he was pursuing a master’s degree in wildlife conservation, not the secrets of ancient Anwyll history.
“Príoh Walker entrusted me with the information after I agreed to the mission. There were three others along with my father who were making their homes in either the Upper Peninsula or Northern Michigan area.”
“Then Peter joined Patrick, and that made five Glaofin to keep your eyes on.”
“I’ve only come in contact with one other retired male besides the brothers since joining the Fowler Pack. The rest seemed to have vanished into thin air. The two in the UP have been missing for years.”
“Battle witches still use our bones, Jo.”
“What?” Johnnie swayed in her seat, Jacob’s abrupt announcement knocking her world even further off its axis. Hepulled their linked hands to his jaw and rubbed her knuckles along the scruff on his chin.
Dylan leaned forward and explained. “Our race has burned the bodies of our dead since coming to this realm. We weren’t opposed to the Anwyll utilizing our remains when we fell in battle or died naturally. It helped hide us from humans before they knew we existed.
“Using our ashes only became an issue after the gateway between the realms was closed. Not enough of us were dying in wolf form without the House wars in Faery, and the Anwyll were forced to find another resource for their ink.”
“I had no idea,” she breathed.
“Neither did I until my sire disappeared. Along with battle witches, only the highest-ranking Fae Touched leaders in the world and the reclusive members of the Guild know about the superior properties of Ferwyn ink.”
“And they’ve kept this a secret for ten centuries? How is that possible?”
“The Guild controls its distribution and deals with betrayal harshly,” Jacob said. “If not, we would have gone to war long ago.”
