Page 63 of A Fate of Blood and Magic
Fire filled my lungs, and I held it in, letting it travel through my body, that heat lessening as it made its way to my fingertips. I took the book from Alastor and opened it.
Words started to cover the once empty pages, andentranced, I flipped through the many pages, finding them also filling with words.
“This is incredible.” I ran my fingers over the pages, enjoying the way the magic zapped with each graze.
Alastor leaned forward to get a better view.
In ages long passed, when the world still bent to the will of mages, there was a goddess born of two realms. One foot she kept among her mother’s kin, the mages and stewards of magic. The other, she walked beside her father, a god among gods.
Though she bore the blood of divinity, her heart belonged to the mages. Their craft, their devotion, their thirst for knowledge; these she cherished above all else. In a gesture of eternal fealty, she forged the Orb of Sacrifice. Into it, she poured her divine essence, binding the vessel to the veil between life and death.
Through this sacred orb, she gathered the final remnants of power released by magical creatures as they crossed into the afterlife. Energy that would have otherwise unraveled, shifted into the untethered forms the living could neither touch nor wield, was instead captured and repurposed.
What might have become wild, elemental chaos was now a spring of strength. And so the mages were gifted with power enduring, drawn from the threshold of mortality itself.
In reverence, the mages returned her gift. They offered fragments of their own magic and pieces of their souls, so the goddess might feed upon their devotion and strengthen her bond to the moral world.
Thus, a covenant was sealed in magic and sacrifice, and for a time, both goddess and mage flourished.
I blinked at the words before I looked up at Alastor. “I don’t understand. I thought Leanora created the orb.”
He rubbed his chin. “As did I.”
“Did she use the orb to siphon magic then? Or was the magic already there?”
“It seems the magic was already there,” he said, eyes still scanning the book. “But she also used the orb to absorb magic. She stole from me countless times.”
When I put my hand on his knee, he stiffened before he slowly drew his leg away.
“May I?” He gestured toward the book, and I gave it to him.
Slowly, he thumbed through the pages, his eyes bouncing between the text.
“There is much to learn,” he said. “Do you permit me to read at my leisure? I will report back anything pertinent I discover.”
“It’s your book, Alastor,” I said.
“Yet, it is you it answered.”
I bit back my grin. “I’ve been thinking about it, and if you’ll teach me, I’d like to learn more about being a mage and about our magic. I’d also like my boys to know that part of their heritage.”
He was quiet for a moment, long enough I worried I’d upset him. “I’d like that,” he answered. “I think our ancestors would like for our mage line to continue.”
I hadn’t thought about it, but I liked the idea too. For too long, Elias’s history had taught the fae to fear the mages, when it was their king and queen they should’ve feared. While I knew it would hurt Elias to admit the truth to his people, I yearned for him to do so and clear the mage name.
I wasn’t foolish enough to believe it would erase years of hate and fear.
But perhaps it would be a start.
“When you come over, do you want to take the journals Iwrote about your sister?” I wasn’t sure why I offered except that I wanted to rid myself of the journals but didn’t know what to do with them.
If the fires that had torched Elias’s cabin in Colina hadn’t destroyed the books, I couldn’t imagine it’d be safe to toss them in the trash.
“Yes.” He hesitated. “I don’t know that I’ll read them, but I’d like something of hers. Did she speak to you of our brother?”
“Yes, in the first journal.”
He was quiet long enough that I thought we’d finished our conversation, so I shifted to rise.
