Chapter 38
Chapter
Thirty-Eight
Soon.
Soon she’d have what she needed. If everything worked out, she could return home and start to undo the curse that kept her father in magical slumber. If she were lucky enough, Kane might even help her uncoil the threads of secrecy that surrounded her family.
“What about the books my father wanted you to get?” she asked, noting Kane’s lack of a heavy bag.
“Still finding the rest. I was rudely interrupted before I could finish.” He shot her a grin. His amusement seemed to deepen at her glare in response.
He cleared his throat, likely to conceal a chuckle. “I take it luck has not been on your side?”
“I can’t find anything in this place,” she admitted and fought against rising frustration.
“Well, you were close.” He stopped by one of the shelves and rifled through a few of the volumes. “The old man kept as much useless crap as useful.” He knocked the ancient, delicate books to the ground, and Erinna cringed at the disrespect.
“That is unnecessary.” She picked up the discarded works and reshelved them.
Kane ignored her scolding. “Oh, this is good.” He took a small volume the size of his palm and pocketed it in his coat.
“Your stuff is not here.” He turned to her and held out his free hand. “Arm,” he requested.
Erinna reluctantly placed her marked arm in his hand and pulled up her sleeve. The pirate tugged her closer, more than she was comfortable with, and stared intently at the mark. He traced his fingers over the constellation, his touch light as feathers.
“Follow me. I have an idea.” He slinked through the shadows again. Not even a disturbance in the dust as he walked.
“How did you learn so much about curses?” she asked, struggling to keep up.
“It’s an important area of study for a pirate captain.” Frustratingly vague.
“I noticed you had silver strips on your ship. How often do you travel to the Great North?”
He stopped and shot her an unreadable look over his shoulder. “You ask a lot of prying questions.”
“You keep a lot of useful secrets.”
He huffed out what Erinna assumed was a laugh but didn’t respond. Instead, he scanned the shelves, tapped dust off a few of the books, and then finally found the appropriate stacks. “Here we are.”
Erinna scanned the disordered stack. Loose papers had been shoved on top or between the texts, and a light layer of dust had settled, undisturbed for years. She reached for the closest one but kept an eye on Kane as he leaned against the bookshelf. The wood creaked against his weight.
“Are you just going to watch me then?”
“What can I say, I’m drawn to you.” He cocked his head playfully.
“Grow up, Atwater.” She busied herself looking intently for information that could be useful. There was a text on the nature of curses and their cures. She plopped it into her bag.
When Erinna looked up from her search, Kane was a step closer, still watching.
“What are you not telling me?” She was starting to understand what his faces meant.
He sucked in a breath and contemplated his next words. “About the other part of the deal.”
Erinna gripped one of the heavier volumes, ready to use it as a makeshift weapon. He was talking about her father’s list. The items Kenneth wanted Kane to collect.
“Get to the point.”
He eyed her open bag. “I need to see that lineage book.”
“Why?”
He let out a sigh, and Erinna rounded on him. “What did he ask for?” She hated this piecemeal exchange of information.
“Your father bound me in contract to burn all the information I could find about your mother and her heritage. None of this can leave the library, and I technically can’t give any of them to you. Other than the one you already found.”
Kane was right, Erinna did not have time to process it. With a dry tongue, she responded. “You said the deal would work. You said you had a way around this.” She was supposed to get answers. Erinna closed her eyes and fought against a wave of emotion.
“I do have a way around it, I think.”
Erinna didn’t stop herself—she closed the distance, grabbed his collar in her fists, and pulled him close enough to hear her wrath. “Kane Atwater. All the information, all at once. What. Is. The. Plan?”
Kane was taken aback, his eyes widened in shock—something he seldom was. Erinna was tired of playing games, and for the first time, it felt like she had finally gotten through to him.
“Take time to read through that lineage book, and then I need to burn it. After that, we can go through the rest.”
“We?”
“You might have to read over my shoulder.”
Erinna blinked.
Kane gave her a lopsided grin.
Erinna fought rising manic laughter at how utterly ridiculous it was. “This is an absolute mess.”
“Perhaps you wouldn’t be flailing if you had even a bit of curiosity.”
She whirled on him. “Maybe if you were more forthcoming, we wouldn’t be stuck in each other’s hair.”
Kane thought for a moment. “It’s really not too much of a bother. I did get the help of a halfway decent shipwright.”
Halfway decent! She willed death upon the pirate, and for the first time, it looked like Kane might have been slightly afraid of something as he processed her fury.
“I need that lineage book, and then I’m done. We can get to the rest after.”
Erinna cursed herself for not taking more time to review the pages. She thought there was something familiar in those texts, but she wasn’t interested in investing more time than necessary to find what she could on the curse. “Let me go through it first.”
“You have half an hour. And before you try to find a way around this, I have to burn them at the end, no matter what. So make sure it counts.”
Erinna pulled the book from her bag. The lineages had been tracked by Iprix himself for the many decades he’d been alive. She flipped through the rough paper, looking for anything related to the Hargroves. A few notes on marriages, a hastily made map of the Hargrove territory.
The boundaries fell somewhere in the center of the continent surrounded by larger kingdoms and other clans.
There. Hidden in the margins was a note. The Hargroves weren’t a clan; they were a Coven.
She moved from those pages, noting the placement of the Hargrove coven in some old, forested boundaries, near a large circle drawn in ink at the center sat a simple word with a question mark: ‘Starhaven?’ The coven itself had an annotated note as well.
The writing was newer, more recently added to the page.
‘Renamed, perhaps a sect of the Starfall Coven?’
“If you must, just rip the pages about your mother out and hand those over. I don’t think I need all of it.” Kane had clearly grown bored of a random book he took from the shelf. He shrugged and dropped it to the ground with a loud thud.
“Would that work with your deal?” she asked, wincing at the loud sound and his indelicate handling.
He shrugged. “Worth a shot.”
Erinna nodded and watched as Kane moved to another journal that caught his attention.
In a rare moment when his focus was situated elsewhere, Erinna picked up a dull splinter from the ground and traced what she could from the pages that contained information on the Hargrove Coven and the two sections that mentioned Twyla by name.
It was a rushed and messy job, but it would suffice. The map took the longest for her to outline.
Her mother was a witch, and the Yaga called her one as well. The reality had not yet sunk in. She ripped the pages and put the rest of the book in her bag, hoping the half-baked plan would work.
The pages of Twyla Hargrove, the information about her mother—her heritage—had been thrown on the ground in sacrifice.
With a harsh flash, flames danced to life in Kane’s hand as he hurled a fireball at the pages. The papers crumbled to ash. Erinna rubbed at her eyes, the burn of smoke tearing her vision.
Kane rubbed at his neck, breathing out a sigh of relief. “This was it.”
Erinna reached for his open bag, for the other bits of information he compiled.
Kane danced out of her reach. “Remember, I can’t give them to you.
But you can read over my shoulder.” He took a spot on the ground and gestured for her to follow suit.
She pressed herself against his side, on her knees, to look over his shoulder.
“Let’s go,” she urged, frustrated with any second of delay. He sprawled the contents out: a few pieces of paper, a map, and pages that were clearly ripped from a book or journal.
Her gaze landed on a letter. The seal was faint but unmistakable. Erinna had only seen it once in her life. The seal of the Chancellor. She picked up the paper with shaking hands.
Why on earth would Iprix be sending her mother a letter? Only when Erinna read the first passage, it was clear that both her parents had been summoned to his side.
By the date scrawled in chicken scratch on top, Erinna would have been four at the time.
A year before her mother passed.
There was no clearly useful information in the letter. A basic summons for her parents to assist Iprix in his time of need. The mage would have been bedridden but still awake. No reason was listed, no clear meaning, and it drove Erinna mad.
She pressed closer to Kane to get a better look at the contents sprawled in a semicircle on the floor. A few journals were open to the pages that detailed information about her mother.
Heat radiated from Kane’s body, and Erinna unconsciously drew comfort from the warmth. The Yaga had ignited a dull ache from her Talent.
“Wrap it up, Yarrow. We can’t do this much longer.”
She rolled her eyes. “Maybe if you cared to learn how your deals actually worked, we wouldn’t be in this predicament.”
“But then we wouldn’t have this lovely bonding experience.” He nudged her shoulder in emphasis.
She rolled her eyes but appreciated the levity. His antics were becoming an odd sense of comfort as she waded through the tension of her circumstances.
There was a letter addressed to her mother, a simple invitation to be a visiting professor for a semester. At face value, it was nothing of huge importance, except that Erinna never knew her mother to have any affinity for arcanum, much less a Talent.
Twyla Yarrow had been invited to give a class on modern witchcraft. The letter had been sent from Nama Kellori.
Erinna wished with all her might that she could keep the letter, but one look at Kane and she knew it was out of the question. She tried her best to commit it to memory.
“It’s time.” Kane shifted the contents into a messy pile.
Erinna feverishly took in the rest. From what she could tell, Kenneth was trying to erase everything he could about her northern heritage and perhaps anything that would pertain to the level of witchcraft Twyla was familiar with.
It was clear that the Synod of the Everdawn had wanted to outlaw the older practices, and some were keen to punish those who practiced.
Iprix had been witchcraft’s most powerful ally in the court before his passing.
Kane’s eyes went bright as he willed a fire to life. Almost as quickly as they emerged, the fire faded to ash and smoke beneath his control, leaving nothing but dust and a scorch mark on the floor.
“Perfect. That seems to be all there was. You Yarrows are careful not to leave a trace of yourselves.” His tone could potentially pass off as respect, but it didn’t pierce through Erinna’s foul mood.
The only saving grace to keep her from spiraling was the fact that she could potentially salvage something from the imprint she left on the other pages in the book.
“How do you know that is all you needed to do?” For a moment, she hoped there might be something else she could find. Some small bits of information that were safe from his fire.
Kane shrugged. “I suppose it’s all your father knew about when he made the deal.”
“And you said you would forget?”
Kane tapped his chin in thought. “Yup, I haven’t a clue what was on those pages.”
“And that doesn’t bother you?”
He shrugged. “I knew the terms before I accepted. Of course, I didn’t think you were that interesting when I made it.”
Erinna shot a glare his way. “So did you take a bit of my father’s power as well?”
“No, I’m selective with the deals that trade with arcanum.”
“I guess I should be honored then.”
“You should.” There was no trace of humor in his response. Kane palmed through a few books and held them out to her. “Look through those. They should have some information about bloodline curses.” Before she could reply, he turned and disappeared into the shadows once again.
Now that he had finished his end of the deal, Kane was likely off to find his beloved maps.
For the first time since entering the library, Erinna felt like she finally had the space and time to go through her spoils. Bits of information had been falling into her lap, and her mind buzzed trying to fit the pieces together.
She pulled out the books she collected. Erinna lost herself in the works of bloodline curses, scoured through Iprix’s notes on the inverse consequences of blessings.
But one part in particular caught her eye.
Tucked in the middle of a book was a torn piece of paper with scribbles and inkblots.
She laid it out. A map of the Great North.
A small scribble in the center of a forest, Erinna swore it noted Starfall Coven, known for their blessings. She pocketed the paper and put the book back in the pile. She thumbed through the rest of the contents.
A bloodline curse was best broken at the source. The two foolproof options were to kill the person responsible for the curse or ask them to break it, assuming they were still alive. From what Erinna could guess, the curse maker was either an ancient monster, or dead.
Her eye drifted back to a section on the properties of curses. The passage spoke about how a witch could use the arcanum of blessings, morph their properties, and turn a boon into a bane.
Her mind churned through the information. Afton had said the arcanum for transmutation was similar. This could be what he meant. A name rose to the surface. One that kept appearing even after she left Tarth.
Nama Kellori. A powerful professor of transmutation.
A professor who had invited her mother to give a lecture at the academy.
Nama Kellori was perhaps her next best step.
A loud gong reverberated through the halls. It was Afton’s signal to leave. Erinna shoved everything she could carry into the bag and ran to meet the mage and pirate.
She collected enough.
It would have to be enough.