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EIGHT YEARS OLD

Z ion had contacted Cirilla in hopes that she would be available to teach me, and she had agreed. Cirilla was a friend of Annelise’s, and a powerful Shade. Zion thought I could learn to hone my magic beneath her tutelage.

She lived in Siraleth, right down the street from our cottage. Zion had brought me to the stone house—quite sizable compared to our own—and knocked on the door.

Cirilla answered, they exchanged a few words, and he had left me there to study with her that very day.

When she had first opened the door, I had noticed her purple eyes were markedly darker than I remembered. More of an aubergine compared to the bright amethyst from my earlier childhood.

At the time, I didn’t think anything of it.

Looking back, I should have realized right away that she had been dabbling in dark magic. It wasn’t long before she began teaching me, too. She had said that I was unique in a way she had never seen before, and that my magic might need an extra…advantage.

She hadn’t wanted to at first, especially after hearing about what had happened at the school with Gregor. One day I was rifling through the books in her attic and found one that particularly intrigued me. Cirilla often let me go through her books, so this day was unlike any other.

Until I opened the binding.

Most of her books were leather-bound pieces that were handwritten, but she had quite a few that were commercially made, too.

I tended to gravitate toward searching through the leather-bound tomes, hoping that I would find her family’s grimoire.

She had told me that it was hidden away, though I was desperate to hold one in my own hands for the first time.

I had only seen the Kotova grimoire once , and hoped desperately that it would choose me as its ward one day.

It had snapped closed as soon as my eyes had laid upon it.

My mother had taken it with her when she had left to go to Akra, and I had not seen it since.

At the time, I had been too young to recognize what it was.

But now that my magic had awakened, I craved the spells hidden within its pages.

The book I found that day in Cirilla’s attic was a grimoire of sorts.

It was filled with all types of clandestine spells I had never seen before and hadn’t expected to find the grimoire of an upstanding family hidden away in the attic.

How to create a potion to make someone fall in love with you—something that was taught to be strictly forbidden.

Spells shouldn’t alter free will. How to change into a form that was not your own mother given form.

I could turn myself into a lion with this spell instead of a wolf.

How to cast a curse that would give you complete control over someone.

How to incur physical pain with merely a thought.

How to siphon magic.

That last spell had intrigued me greatly. I might not have been born a Stormshade like every other Kotova born to the bloodline of my mother, but perhaps I could wield storm magic after all.

With a spell like this…it might be possible.

I had tried to hide the book in my knapsack and escape the house with it, but the book seemed to expel an energy all its own.

Just as I was about to pass through the doorway on my way home that night, Cirilla had reached out.

She grabbed the loop on my bag and pulling me back.

The bag slipped from my shoulders easily and I had turned around in indignation, crossing my arms over my chest.

“Tsk, Tsk, child. You cannot take this book from the house,” Cirilla had said.

She placed the bag on the kitchen chair, pulling the book free with a shake of her head.

“How did you know it was in there?” I asked, cocking my head to the side and narrowing my gaze at her.

She was a powerful Shade, but even she did not have the prophetic sight from the mother that the one they called Alastir had been gifted.

She was a Nightshade, like me.

“This book has a dark energy all its own.” She held it within her grasp, her gaze roving over its weathered coverlet. “It is palpable. I thought I had hidden it well enough, but it figures that it would have sensed you, sensed your magic. Called out to you.”

“A book can do that?” I asked, uncrossing my arms and leaning against the back of the kitchen chair.

Cirilla nodded. “Indeed, but only the most powerful of books.”

I squinted my eyes as I peered up at her. “And this is a powerful book?”

“A powerful book, indeed. That is quite the understatement. This is the grimoire of Grishina, an old and powerful family. A bloodline that ultimately fell to dark magic and was snuffed out.”

“How did you come into possession of it?” I asked, skeptical.

Cirilla let out a sigh as she rolled her darkening purple eyes. “At an auction, of all places. I always go to find bits and bobs, rare potions or the like. I never imagined I would find something so valuable.”

“An auction? They sell books at them?” My gaze fell to the book once more.

She nodded. “Only very expensive books.” She placed her hand atop my head in an affectionate manner. “I’m not sure they understood the translation. The power that this particular book held. They never would have sold it otherwise. It is worth a far greater sum than what I paid for it.”

She removed her hand to caress the gilded letters engraved on the front coverlet.

Grishina.

“Would you teach me spells from the Grishina grimoire?” I asked, standing on my tip toes and eagerly smiling up at her.

She thought for a long moment before speaking. “There are a multitude of spells and incantations in this book that could be of use, but there are some that are…dangerous.”

I waved my hand as if to say, ‘those didn’t matter.’

“We will simply have to stay away from those,” she answered conspiratorially as she leaned down to place a kiss against my cheek. “But the book stays here.”

I nodded in understanding.

“Now run along home, dear. Zion must be waiting for you.”

On the walk home that night, I couldn’t stop thinking about the Grishina grimoire and how it could make me the most powerful witch to ever live.

How those kids who had bullied me back at school wouldn’t be able to stand against me ever again if I could learn all the spells in that book.

That I would surpass all the instructors.

My father, even. I wouldn’t even need the Kotova grimoire if I had the Grishina grimoire.

I couldn’t stop thinking about how I had uncovered my own arsenal of powerful spells, and I wasn’t about to let it go.

Each day from there on out I was excited to go to my lessons. Zion would lift his eyebrow at me from the doorway as he watched me skip off toward Cirilla’s house. He had never seen me excited about school before, and he had chalked it up to not having to deal with those tormentors anymore.

Little did he know the Grishina grimoire had awoken a thirst for knowledge within me. I had never set my hands upon a grimoire before. And this one, unlike the Kotova grimoire, actually let me read it. It didn’t appear sentient, like the one that belonged to my family.

I would sit with Cirilla for my regular lessons during the day, and then she would let me study the Grishina grimoire at night.

I didn’t return home until well past sundown, my eyes bleary and tired, and I would fall immediately into bed.

I fell asleep instantly those nights, exhausted from the long days of studying.

I began spending the entire day with Cirilla, even eating dinner at her house. I was seeing Zion less and less, but he didn’t seem to mind. I was excelling in my schoolwork, far surpassing where I should be by this age. He didn’t mind my extra hours of studying and reading.

I had mastered my change completely, and no longer felt the urges of the wolf, even when I spent hours and hours in her form.

Little did I know…that was because the wolf and I were becoming one.