Page 65

I step out of the stacks, carefully keeping an eye on a group of grimoires that are stalking us from along the top of the shelves. A soft crunch under my boot has me pausing. I step back, then freeze.

The front of the store is stained with old blood. Flakes of it have fallen, and the large, thick pool on the varnished floor has the crumbling layers of old congealed blood, the quantity of which meant my father was still alive when Alasdair brought him here. A chill drips along my insides, coating me in a tingling numbness. The healer side of my mind clocks the darkness of the blood, the amount of flaking, in a detached manner, offering useless tidbits of knowledge that I can’t quite process through the white noise in my ears.

Lucas sighs from a distance away. “Well, there’s the second book.”

I blink, dragging my gaze from the carnage to frown at him. He’s at the top of the three steps that lead to the front door. I can just barely make out the outline of a massive paper bear with a crocodilian mouth scattered along the steps, having fallen to pieces the moment the book’s spine was ripped from it, which sits discarded beside Lucas’ right foot.

All I can make out of Lucas is his profile as he examines the destroyed grimoire and the front door, which he points to in emphasis. “From what I can tell, someone slipped through the Magistrate’s seal on the shop, fought their way to the back there—” he points at two destroyed stacks closest to the front counter that are blasted apart “—then they circled around to retrieve that notebook and brought it back to the front by the path we took.”

I close my eyes briefly, trying to control my breathing. My mind roars with a pulsing of pain I’ve never experienced, and I clear my throat before attempting to be helpful. “Guild? Dimitar? Magistrate himself?”

I’ve never met the Magistrate, but I doubt he would appear to handle this personally. He is well guarded within the parliament district, and no magic users are permitted within.

I rub my forehead, my eyes squeezing shut. I’m being an idiot. We already determined it was a weaver. I add, “Alasdair?”

I keep my eyes closed, still rubbing to try to clear the fog from my brain, but it’s no use. The stale, musty stench of old blood is clogging my nose. I can barely manage a whole intake of breath without my throat convulsing, bile rolling in my gut. My skin crawls like the stench is a living miasma that coats me, filling each pore to ooze down my flesh. I shiver, twitching, trying to rid myself of the sensation, to clear my lungs from the rotting remains of my father’s lifeblood.

Alasdair’s voice hisses in my ear, the crawling on my skin transforming into a snake that coils around and around me.

I tortured your father so slowly to regenerate my withered body. His agony was deliciously filling.

My teeth click, my lips curling as I scream within my mind, GET OUT.

But it’s no use. His agony was delicious echoes over and over, mixing with Alasdair’s joyous laugh until his words shift, his voice changing. She knew… drums in time with my racing heart and no longer sounds like Alasdair at all, but my own voice screaming into the abyss of my torment.

My eyes snap open, and I gasp, but it makes it worse. The evidence of my father’s torture surrounds me. The dried blood coating the foyer. The smell of death that clings to this ruined shop. And worse, Alasdair’s poison sinks deeper and deeper into my soul.

… even I didn’t believe she’d be so heartless as to keep your father’s death from you…

I close my eyes again with a small whimper.

… so heartless as to keep my father’s death from me…

Lucas is talking, and it’s as if he’s a great distance away. I try to lock in on what he’s saying, try to unstick my gritted teeth to beg for his assistance. But I can do nothing but tremble while Lucas prattles on obliviously. “Alasdair is my bet, unless Dimitar has access to new magics, which I wouldn’t put it past him. Tor has sold him many grimoires over the years.” He sighs, and I manage to open my eyes to gaze at him pleadingly when he shifts his stance to face me. “I don’t know. Maybe—VALEN!”

My father would be so disappointed in me. I can see his frown, the twitch of his mustache, his blue eyes that mirror mine. Control. Vigilance. Two basic principles of using Bauer magic. There is no room for distraction. No excuse accepted for negligence.

My gaze meets Lucas’ wide and panicked one as he surges forward. His rings spark to life, threads shooting forward like deadly, magical spears. I reach for my magic, but my concentration is broken, and my mind is sluggish from the horror of witnessing my father’s blood splattered all over this shop.

Sloppy, Valen. His disappointed sigh echoes in my mind, and my eyes burn, the image of Lucas blurring.

Black mist from a grimoire surrounds me, shifting my hair to tickle my face. I suck in breath, my knees going weak as self-preservation initiates the instinct to dodge.

The impact collides with my left shoulder blade centimeters from my thumping heart and my soul nestled within. The bone shatters, my mouth spreading wide in a cry. Golden light blinds me, Lucas’ threads arcing around me to slam into the creature that is dissolving my flesh in deep, gulping draws. I spin from the momentum and crash into the ground.

I blink, numbness flooding my mind. Shock. It’ll rob me of my senses if I don’t do something. My fingers twitch, and agony pulses with each pound of my heart. My left is useless, but at least my dominant arm is still working.

My blood pours from me, my shirt partially dissolved from the impact of the grimoire. The red mixes with rusty, flaky remains of my father’s blood. How fitting. We’re both to die in this shop.

Crashing and flashes of a mighty battle around me begin to penetrate my daze. I suck in a breath, convulsing from the agony of my exposed bone.

Get up, Valentin, my father’s firm tone demands of me. Now concentrate. What did you learn from those healer books you were obsessed with?

I suck in a breath, flinching. My lung isn’t collapsed, but my ribs are bruised or cracked. I’ll take that. I shift. Clavicle intact. The grimoire was dissolving my flesh, but did it manage to take out my muscles? There are eighteen very important ones that cross through there. I put my right hand under me and push off the floor with a roar. My arm shakes, my vision flashing, but I don’t stop. I can’t. Sweat pours down me as I sit back on my heels. I clutch my useless left arm and blink away the black spots obscuring my vision.

It doesn’t take long to find Lucas and the smoky grimoire. He’s struggling with it, his threads barely able to keep it back.

I raise my trembling right arm, the image of my father prominent in my mind. My jaw sets, and my eyes flare bright. I snarl the incantation, my heart pulsing painfully and my soul screaming as my thread surges with power. It’s powerful magic that usually requires me to be at full strength and not injured and exhausted from holding my family’s estate’s wards together, but if I learned anything from Astoria, it’s fuck everything and do it.