Page 87 of Magic Hunted
Savvas smiled, faint lines fanning from the edges of his eyes. “Of course, my heart. We have a lot to be proud about, and not only because of the grimoire. I’m sure your parents would have been proud of you too. They entrusted you to keep it safe as a small girl, which you did even when everything was against you.”
My chest tightened as the surge of emotion in the bond filled the cavity inside me.
“You’re overwhelming her. Overbearing alphas. So fierce on the outside when they’re the biggest softies on the inside. Isn’t that right, child?” Shanyirra gestured for me to move to her. “Come. Let’s allow the grimoire to find itself again.”
I stepped toward Anise. Her section of the grimoire opened, its pages fluttering as though to greet my section. The weight lifted from my hands and the pages I held rose into the air and fell onto the pages Anise held. It settled in a flash of golden sparks and when the light faded, the pages had merged.
Black ink scattered over the page, forming words that made sense to me. I gasped, taking a quick step toward the grimoire. Letters in beautiful cursive script appeared across the open page from one end of the open section to the other. I read it out loud as my blood ran cold. “Dead is the king without his soul. Dead is the magic that saves the whole. Too much given, the price is high. Only one way or all will die.”
The pages fluttered still and the golden glow faded, leaving a limp parchment of indecipherable writing once again in Anise’s hand. It was as though showing the message had exhausted the magic.
“What does it mean? What do we have to do?” I spoke through numb lips.
Shanyirra answered through the crushing silence. I wished she hadn’t uttered a word because her words were a prophecy in itself. So much could go wrong. So much already had and to make it right was too much to hope for. In the end, hope was all we had. “I think the king put more in the grimoire than his magic.”
Chapter Forty-Two
“You livedhere?” Savvas sounded as though he didn’t have enough air.
“I know it’s not much, but…” I said.
“Not much! It’s a shit hole, Haera. Gods, I wouldn’t let animals live here,” Dias said. His arm tightened around my waist, stopping me from entering my safe place.
Sewer-rat. The name whispered in my mind. I shoved aside the cadre’s description of me. They’d only said it to hurt me. They were dead. They couldn’t hurt me anymore.
Now I’d experienced what it felt like to sleep in a bed and sleep deeply without the fear of discovery, I could understand their horror. The walls and floor in my little room were damp, and the few items I’d scavenged to use as furniture were little better than garbage. My bed was a pallet on raised blocks of firewood. The one blanket I’d owned was gray and threadbare and it looked like the rats had made a nest at one end while I’d been away. Next to the bed was a chest made from worn planks of packing crate wood containing a change of clothing and a few worthless items I thought may come in handy if I needed them. It was pitiful, yet I’d called this room home because I’d had no other.
I patted Dias’ hand and stepped free of his hold and into the room where the stench of the sewer below my feet pervaded the air. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not coming back here.”
“I’m going to seal this room shut. No one will be able to get in or out ever again. I’d blow it up if it wasn’t right under the castle proper.” Ashir stepped behind me, his orange and clove scent helping to subdue the foul aroma.
His shirt was stained with sweat and dirt. All of us were in the same state. It had been relatively easy to subdue the few humans who’d fought us for Titan’s stronghold, although we’d had to fight a few. Most hadn’t fought at all and merely put down arms when Ashir and the panther shifters had invaded the castle courtyard.
The humans who had fought were taken to the dungeons. One night down there would be enough to earn their loyalty to my mates. Without Titan’s magic, they were weak against the shifters who’d fought every day of their lives for basic survival. The takeover had taken less than a day. It had been less than that for the humans who’d fought to beg for the same mercy they never gave.
It was after we’d tossed the last human into the dungeon, I’d had an urge to see my safe place again and they’d followed me here. I wasn’t sure what I expected to find. Maybe I’d just needed to heal and say goodbye to a part of my life that was over. Thank the gods.
We’d returned to panther territory soon after I’d released my section of the grimoire. Shanyirra had taken the pages, promising to try to heal it so that it might grow stronger. She said the grimoire had weakened through being divided. The very thing that was meant to protect it had also failed it. She said, if she could, she’d use her magic to see what the portal’s shockwave had done. Whether the people it had taken were merely displaced or incinerated.
The only way to heal the grimoire, in my opinion, was to find the other sections and put them together. How we would do that, I didn’t know. It wasn’t as though Serafine, Anise or myself could feel where the sections were, or who they might be hidden inside. They might be lost forever, in which case we’d have to think of another way to heal Earth and Faerie. If we didn’t, there would be nothing to save when all three of us naturally passed.
“If you blow it up, you’ll destroy the one good thing about this room,” I said.
“There’s something good about this room?” Savvas asked.
I bent to a section of the wall and leveraged the bricks that opened into the tunnel below. A cool draft of foul air ruffled the strands of hair that had pulled free from my braid. “If I hadn’t claimed this room, I’d never have been able to make this escape route.”
Dias knelt down and glanced into the tunnel. “This was how you rescued our shifters?”
I nodded. “It opens directly to the sewerage tunnel. Most people don’t want to go anywhere near it. This room was the perfect cover.”
“And also dangerous,” Dias said. A smile tightened his lips, and something between awe and horror colored his bond thread. “You put yourself in serious danger to help people right under Titan’s nose.”
I shrugged, fisting my hand over my stomach. “I wish I could have saved them all, but I didn’t. I couldn’t.”
I would remember the faces of the people I couldn’t help. I could honor them in my memory. All the innocent people I’d been forced to witness being tortured and killed for the sake of Titan’s obsession that five out of The Six were going to kill him for his share of the magic.
In the end, he wasn’t far wrong. When he died, his magic was shared between Atrus, Britheva and Christian. As well as finding our missing people, we also needed to find them. There wasn’t a trace of them since they’d disappeared from the cave. It would only be a matter of time until one or all of them resurfaced. They’d be more powerful than they ever had been, which was a horrific thought. They were also clearly unhinged. There would be no telling how the corrupted magic would affect them now. When it came down to it, they were human and humans weren’t meant to hold magic in their bodies.
