Page 126 of The Seven Miracles of Beatrix Holland
Beatrice heaved in another breath and then went back under.
In one long blow, she drew her sister’s sigil in bubbles, feeding the sigil her own oxygen. It was all she had left to give.
Another crash shook the boat. This was it, then. This was when she would die.
Then came another thump, but that was her own body crashing to the floor of the galley.
The houseboat swayed as a slight swell passed below it.
The interior of the cabin was dry. The five candles on the table still burned. The spreadsheet on her computer still displayed its regimented, orderly boxes.
Beatrice sat up, her clothes as dry as the floor. The only wet thing in the whole cabin was the handkerchief on the floorboards next to her. She lifted it, heavy and dripping. The sigil she’d drawn in blue ink was smeared, almost gone.
Beatrice put the edge of the handkerchief to her tongue: salt.
As she stood, her legs trembled. The grimoire was still on the table, too, smack-dab where she’d left it.
Only one thing had changed.
Instead of being open to the finding spell, the pages had been flipped.
The book was now open to the sealed page. The one she’d promised Cordelia she’d never look at.
Even if it made her sister and everyone else hate her even more than they already did, there was only one thing to do.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
I should clarify. I said to be brave, new witch. Not stupid.
—Evie Oxby, at New York Fashion Week
Beatrice touched the wax seal at the edge of the page. How long had it been since someone had opened this? Had Cordelia ever seen what was inside? Did Astrid know what it was? Or did the secret of its contents go back farther, to her foremothers, Rosalind and Anna and Valeska and Xenia?
As Beatrice’s shaking fingers touched the edge, ready to unfold the page, she paused.
The promise she’d made to Cordelia not to look was from before.
Before Beatrice had learned so much, before she’d spent hours and full days studying magic.
Before she’d really, truly believed.
And crucially, before she’d broken everything by teaching Minna something that had put her in imminent danger.
What if Cordelia was wrong?
The fact that the book had openeditselfto this page, combined with the fact that Beatrice had no other earthly idea what to do—oh, for fuck’s sake.
Using the same knife she’d cut herself with, she cracked through the wax on the seal. She unfolded the page.
It held nothing but a single sigil, drawn in red ink so dark, it verged on black. The parchment puckered around the ink, as if it were drawing the page into itself like a small black hole.
The image resembled an old-fashioned scale with one half missing. Two sharp slashes at the fulcrum were separated by a jagged, stabbed line. An arrow pointed down, diving into what looked like a teardrop, which bled its own tears.
Looking at it felt worse than almost drowning. Beatrice struggled to breathe, the air in her lungs almost as heavy as water.
There were no words on the page, nothing to help her parse what the sigil could do.
She shouldn’t have known what it meant, what it stood for.
