Page 39

It crashes over me like a wave, taking all my senses with it, and for a few moments I’m suspended somewhere outside my body.

In that darkness, the whispers and echoes of millennia curl around me in a gentle caress. Soft voices beckon me, shapes and shadows and indistinct writing flashes behind my shut eyelids.

There are a thousand secrets in this ether, a winding maze of knowledge I can barely even start to understand. It comes faster that I can process at first, and even when I’m able to latch on to bits and pieces of it, it becomes immediately clear that I have no idea what language I’m looking at.

There’s no sense in the words, nothing I can process or even closely relate to any other written languages I’ve studied. Still, I can’t help but marvel at all of it.

I can’t help but marvel at myself as well.

Even though I can’t decipher the words, my heart aches in my chest at the feeling of being utterly unbound. In these few brief moments, I’m cracked open completely. The pure, raw power flowing through me is entirely unfamiliar, yet at the same time it feels like coming home.

It’s the power I was always meant to find.

With a jolt and a firm hand at my shoulder, I’m drawn back to the witch’s workshop below the mountain. I take a few stumbling steps back from the table, wide-eyed and panting.

“What was that?” Vayla asks. “What happened to you?”

I can only shake my head, still reeling from the sensation of magick sliding over my skin, through my blood. My hands tingle, the fine hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stand on end. My breath is coming hard and fast in my chest, and I’m not sure I’ve ever felt this alive.

“Allison,” Vayla says again with absolutely no sympathy in her voice. “You look like you’re going to pass out. What happened?”

She’s right. I’m still breathing too hard, too fast, and I realize for the first time that I’m shaking. Staggering back onto one of the workbench stools, I press a hand against my chest, trying to get a hold of myself.

“The book,” I say finally. “It was… I was… I could see what’s inside it.”

“And?” Vayla asks, apparently not concerned enough to give me a few seconds to breathe before interrogating me. “What did it say?”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t read the words.”

She lets out an exasperated breath, turning back to the book on the table and placing her own hand on it, like she’d rather believe it was the book’s magick and not my own that just catapulted me into some strange liminal space between its pages.

“Do you read the language?” I ask her.

She shakes her head. “That’s what we were working on. This language is extinct in this realm and in yours. We think there might be something here about the spell the first witch cast to seal the bargain, something that might help it be recast or renewed.”

I nod, a plan taking shape in my mind. Languages, I can learn. The faint mental click of understanding settles into place, taking some of the heaviness and worry with it, but leaving an all-new sadness in its place.

Maybe this is why I’m here.

I know I’ll never be able to cast a spell like what she’s talking about. There’s no part of me that believes I’m capable of what I’m sure is powerful, soul-deep magick that could restore the bargain and balance all that power between realms. Maybe, though, I can translate. Maybe I can last in this realm long enough to uncover the information that will give the next Tithe bride the chance to recast the spell. That has to be it. That has to be why the Goddess brought me here, the part I have to play in all of this.

Even as it all starts to make sense, a sudden pang of panic and fear moves through me at the thought.

What happens to Eren when I can’t stay here any longer?

I can’t think about it. I can’t let myself dwell on the fact that the clock’s already ticking and my days in the demon realm are likely numbered.

Standing from the chair, I brace my hands on my hips and give Vayla a hard, determined smile.

“I want to see every book in the library that’s written in this language.”

Chapter 19

Eren

Watching Allie walk from my court is like watching a queen born to her station. There’s an undeniable grace in my little witch, a strength and fortitude she wears like armor despite the lingering scent of her fear and uncertainty.

Felix appears by my side a moment later, watching her go.