Page 70 of The Book Reader
I pull my hand back and walk over to another tree. This symbol looks like two cords twisted together.I wonder what they mean. Why did I place them here?I reach out and touch this one, and it glows again; it’s like they are starting to wake up.
“Protect.”
“Leave here.”
“Danger.”
“Keep us safe.”
“Protection spells.” I tilt my head to the side, almost feeling how urgent it was for me to carve these here, how much I wanted to keep this place safe. “Did they work, Gaelan? Did anyone ever find this place?”
He shakes his head. “No, even to this day, no one but you and I has ever set foot here, no one has ever found it.”
“They’re still working, I can feel them.” I walk over to the next one and notice it has a burn mark through it. “Someone has been here; this one has been disarmed.” I place my hand on it, and it doesn’t light up. The feeling of death emanates from it, like someone tried to destroy it. Pulling my hand back, I turn to look around at the others, checking to see if they have been burned as well. “Who would try to do this, Gaelan? Do you think it could have been Macy?”
“She wasn’t powerful enough to touch spells from the book, if you could write them quick enough, no one is.”
I walk over to him. “What do you mean?”
“The book is an extension of your powers, a place to hold them until you can fully accept them.”
“What happens when I do?”
“I don’t know, you’ve never gotten that far, it’s just what you’ve told me needed to happen, but—” He stops talking, and I know what he was going to say.
“But she kills me first?”
He nods, taking my hand and kissing the back of it. “You get the book and have to learn its spells and how to use its power, but the same thing happens each time… we’re never fast enough.”
“This time we will be, wehaveto be.”
He leads me closer to the hut. “We used to come here all the time when we first met. The hut,” he points to it, and his eyes take on a sad look, “I built it for us, our own little hideaway.” He changes the subject. I’ve noticed he does this a lot when something is difficult for him to talk about. I just wish I could remember my lives before this one. The way he looks at me makes me feel like I’m his everything, and it breaks my heart that I have no memory of becoming that for him.
“It’s perfect.”
He smiles down at me. “It really was, I’ve not been here for a very long time… centuries in fact.”
“Didn’t you bring me here last time?”
“No, we lived a non-supernatural life. I didn’t use my powers either.” He pushes the hut door open and steps inside. I reach for the side of the door and stop, shocked, pulling my hand away quickly. I move back a step.
“It’s not safe, Gaelan. Get out!” My voice is full of panic as I look around the door to the window at the side.
“She was here.”
“The Bringer.”
“Blood.”
“Broken.”
I feel a power coursing throughout my body. My arms lift of their own accord, pulling at Gaelan, lifting him out of the hut and crashing him onto the ground behind me.
“Rose?” Gaelan coughs, looking at me from the ground. The earth beneath my feet starts to shake. My head turns, and the hut begins to crack at the side from the force of it before it bursts into flames and vanishes from sight.
“She was here.”
“She took it.”
