Page 86

Idonea swallowed hard. Her fingers were trembling. "Have you read it?"

"Some. I stopped."

"Why?"

"There were things in it I didn't want to know."

She stared at the wool. Her hand hovered over it, not quite landing. "What things?"

He didn't answer. The silence stretched between them, brittle and full.

She made herself speak. "Alcaeus."

He was already at the door, his hand resting on the bar. He paused. "Yes."

Her throat ached around the word. "Thank you."

He nodded once, and let himself out into the cold without looking back.

Idonea stood at the table for a long moment after he'd gone, her pulse hammering against her ribs. The lamp guttered. Lysander stayed at the hearth, present without speaking, giving her the space the moment needed.

She unwrapped the wool.

The book was leather-bound, and the spine had cracked from handling, the corners gone soft from years of being held. She opened the cover with trembling fingers.

Her mother's hand ran across the first page in the narrow, precise script she'd known her whole life. The familiar slant of the letters hit her like a blow to the chest. Stars. Her vision blurred. She blinked the tears back, fiercely.

She turned the pages with care, hardly daring to breathe.

Workings. Observations. Lists of plants. A long passage on the ethics of taking from the dying, written in a younger hand than the marginalia.

Then, half-way through, on a page about vessels in older witch usage—

A margin note in Nellith's hand.

The body must be prepared, not used. A working that uses an unprepared vessel will burn the vessel out before completion. Patience is the only virtue.

And below, in the same hand:

Five marks. Five years. Sooner ruins it. The last one took three. A waste.

She read it once, the words blurring at the edges. Then again, slower, forcing herself to take in every careful letter of Nellith's narrow script.

The candlelight wavered. A cold, creeping dread spread through her chest, settling deep behind her sternum. She knew her mother's hand. She knew the precision of it, the way Nellith never wrote a word she didn't mean.

This is theoretical, she told herself, the thought desperate and thin. Just old notes. Just study.

But the lie wouldn't take. Her own back ached suddenly, every mark Nellith had inked into her spine flaring like remembered fire.

She closed the book with shaking fingers, her thumb caught between the pages, and lowered it to the floor beside the bed. Her breath came shallow.

Across the room, Lysander stirred at the hearth.

"Idonea?" His voice was soft. Careful. "Are you—"

"No." The word came out broken. "Don't ask me yet."

He didn't push. He simply turned back to the fire, giving her the silence she needed.