Page 35 of Rise of the Phoenix King (Crown and Crest 4)

“What magic could bring a woman back from death?” Henrik asks the Woodmore. But Pranmore is too overwhelmed to speak.

Ayan lifts his hand like a pupil in a classroom. “I know.”

Henrik stares at him for several seconds. Reluctantly, he jerks his head, telling him to get on with it.

“I liked to do a little reading the nights I couldn’t sleep over Gruebin’s snores,” Ayan says. “He had a book that mentioned something that happened in a human settlement near the gnome’s territory before the war, not long after you people began settling in Caldenbauer.”

“You snooped through our archives?” Maisel demands, her hand instinctively going to the handle of her favorite, pint-sized war axe.

“Does that matter right now?” Henrik asks her.

The gnome crosses her arms and scowls at Ayan.

“A man in the book contracted some illness,” Ayan says. “It didn’t say what. He was a con artist—a thief. His townspeople refused to help him, all turning him away when he asked for money for medicine. He was dying, but his wife had passed away years before, and he didn’t want to leave his young daughter alone. Desperate, he went into the gnomes’ territory and found a hermit who lived deep in the woods. At the old gnome’s suggestion, the man turned to necromancy.”

“Wretched old git was alive in my parents’ time,” Maisel says darkly. “Had a reputation—knew things he shouldn’t, dabbled in things no gnome ever should.”

Ayan nods. “He ended up helping the fledgling blood mage concoct a potion that would keep him alive. What was the gnome’s name again, Maisel?” Ayan rubs his chin as he thinks. “Kipper? Kiloy?”

“Kivear,” Pranmore says quietly.

“That’s it!” Ayan snaps his fingers and points at the Woodmore. “Kivear. The spell utilized three sources of blood—the man’s, some kind of nasty rat’s, and an unwilling victim’s—along with all kinds of other unsavory things that weren’t listed in detail—”

“For good reason,” Maisel interrupts.

Ayan continues, “As soon as the man drank the finished concoction, Kivear stabbed a dagger right in his heart.”

“He killed him even though he was dying?” Bartholomew asks, looking pale enough I’m not sure we should have roused him.

“There was something about that,” Ayan answers, struggling to remember. “The concoction’s effects only last a day after drinking, or something like that. The man would have to take it every day until death, so maybe the gnome killed him to expedite the process?”

“He couldn’t die of natural causes,” Pranmore says on a deep sigh. “In order for the spell to be made complete, his life had to be taken by someone else.”

“The effects fade after a day? Camellia must have made enough to last for months,” I whisper, my mind returning to the dead man in her closet and the crime she charged me with.

“Insurance,” Henrik says quietly, his eyes fixed on the wall like he remembers something. “And she made a fresh supply before the wedding.”

“But when?” I ask. “You were guarding her day and night.”

The commander’s eyes meet mine, and I draw in a breath. There was one night he left Camellia alone—the one he spent with me.

“What happened to the man?” Colter asks Ayan, engrossed in the story like it’s a ghostly bedtime tale.

“Kivear prepared his body and took him to his daughter.” He grimaces. “It got a bit gruesome after that.”

I rub my hand over my heart, horrified. “The man killed his daughter when he woke?”

Silence blankets the room before Ayan finally answers, “Once he realized what he did, the man murdered Kivear and then moved onto his town, blaming the people for not helping him.”

“How did they stop him?” Henrik asks.

Maisel answers before Ayan, “They didn’t. After the massacre, he sat in the middle of the square, and there he stayed. A Woodmore woman found him years later and sent him back to the earth when he begged for an end.”

All eyes fall on Pranmore, and Henrik asks, “Can you send Camellia back to death?”

The Woodmore rubs a hand over his face. “I don’t know.”

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