STONE OF THE HEARTH
Two weeks had passed since we visited the wraith. In that time, each of us had to deal with what the wraith revealed, in our own way.
Niall spent most of his time with Auren. They had a mating ceremony to plan, after all. But when he wasn’t with Auren, or with us, I knew he had been investigating. He was far too scarce, compared to usual.
As for me, I’d found myself in the continuous company of a particular healer, and a very demanding witch.
Maeson and Nivelle had taken to me like moths to a flame.
The former was already becoming a permanent fixture at my side, which I adored more than I was able to let on.
The latter . . . well, I had become somewhat of an enigma for her, and she was determined to help conjure up the proper sequence of events that would allow me to release the Aether.
Nivelle had somehow found a place within our group where she felt somewhat comfortable. She still had her moments of bitterness, and she had a stubborn streak like I’d never known anyone else to have, but her temperament had come a long way from where it had been when she arrived here.
She and Maeson seemed to discover things they had in common with one other. I’d often find them in quiet conversation about spells, plants and herbal remedies, and the occasional bout of soft laughter. She was also growing more protective of Auren every day—which I had no objections to.
Though I’d had my doubts at the beginning, the witch was proving to be quite the enigma herself.
Roirdan, gods help him, seemed the most enthralled by Nivelle’s presence, though he wouldn’t dare admit it.
There was something strange between them that I couldn’t quite pinpoint.
I’d never seen him get flustered so easily.
It made for great entertainment. I grinned to myself just thinking about it.
“What are you grinning at?” Maeson chimed as she swung into my view from around a bookshelf.
“Perhaps I was daydreaming about you.”
Her cheeks flushed pink, but she tossed me an exaggerated eye roll. “Oh please. If you’re daydreaming, it’s about adding a shiny new dagger to your collection, not about me.”
“Or, I’m thinking of you wielding those shiny daggers in the face of our enemies.”
She laughed, setting a book onto the table. Then her face turned serious as she looked up at me. “You would need to teach me how . . .”
I held her stare, waiting for her next words.
“Would . . . Would you teach me?”
A flutter of excitement danced inside me—such a welcomed feeling. “Of course.”
Something lit within her eyes, and her smile was instantly back. Gods, whenever she smiled I couldn’t help but stare. It was like the sun was shining at full force. I could bask in the beauty and warmth of it forever and never long for the night.
To my surprise, she stared right back, just as intently.
Nivelle rounded the corner. “Do you two know where—” She stopped short when she found Maeson and me locked in a tense visual study of each other. “You can undress each other with your eyes later,” she said dryly, as she dropped a small stack of books on top of the one Maeson had brought.
Maeson bit down on her bottom lip as if she had been truly thinking of undressing me.
I fought the flush of my own cheeks, hiding it behind a quiet, breathy laugh. “What have you found?”
“Probably nothing,” Nivelle huffed. “I don’t know half the things your books talk about anyway. And this library is massive.”
I snorted a laugh. This library was, indeed, massive, but it was particularly well-organized. If we would have had to sort through the Highland Court’s library, that would have been a chore.
Vahrenhall’s collection was a chaotic mess of books piled high onto sagging shelves and stuffed into dark corners.
Nothing was arranged by topic or category.
Thankfully, Vanir knew every disheveled nook and cranny of his “tomb of tomes,” as I liked to call it, and he swore to us that he knew of no ancient book that could have been penned by a witch, a wraith, and a fae of either of our territories.
So, that left this one to be scoured.
Calledan’s library was tucked deep in the mountains, separate from The Keep and the city center.
It was strategically built apart from the rest of the territory’s most frequented places, which ensured there was less of a chance for it to fall victim to war, invasion, or any magic that sought to destroy our written history.
Amarna had forewarned me that she had never come across anything in the archives that dealt with the Aether.
And given that this world had never meddled with a force like it, the likelihood of there being a record that even mentioned it was slim to none.
But, with the wraith’s parting words about the possibility of a book containing information that may pertain to the topic, we had to search.
Unfortunately, so far, it appeared as though Amarna was right.
I glanced at each of the tomes, and sighed. “Surely there has to be something that mentions the Aether somewhere in this library. You’re sure the witches don’t have some ancient spellbook that you don’t know about?”
Nivelle leveled a look at me. “If there were such a book, trust me, I would be the one to know.”
I drummed my fingers on the table.
Maeson plopped onto the wooden chair next to me. “The only thing I found that came relatively close to anything we’ve discussed was some philosophical work about chaos and order.”
My fingers halted. “Chaos?”
“Yes. I remember you saying your power felt like chaos. It rang a bell when I was reading it, but I—”
“Which book? This one?” I reached for the small, thin hardcover that was drowning beneath the others.
“That would be the one.”
There was no title on it, only a dirty, linen cover that was probably once ivory but was now a mottled shade of brown, as though it had been handled by hundreds of grubby hands. I opened it to the first page. Still no title, or even an author’s name.
“Where did you find this?” I asked.
“Tucked away in another book, actually. It was in a dusty corner, by the section about Old Magic.”
Nivelle and I exchanged a glance, and she leaned in closer, trying to get a better look at what the pages held.
“This looks more like someone’s personal notebook than a published work. It’s not even edited properly.” I pointed at a line that was scratched through, halfway down the first page.
Maeson scooted forward in her chair. “That’s why I didn’t take it that seriously. I thought that surely someone’s handwritten notes wouldn’t be of that much importance.”
I scanned the page, my attention snagging on the border that was sketched at the bottom.
There were . . . runes, like those I’d seen in Vahrenhall.
The Highland Court was well known for implementing runes as a form of decor on absolutely everything—from buildings, to weapons, to clothing.
To this day, they still tied runes into protective spells and wards, something the Ancient Fae learned from the witches who dwelled there for a time.
There was a meaning and a purpose to each one.
Dragging my finger over the symbols, I began to think this wasn’t just a coincidence. The witches were the ones who bound the Aether in the first place. They tied the hands of an entity that was never meant to be restrained, and when they brought that curse to this world, innocents suffered for it.
This could very well have been the book the wraith was referencing.
I glanced up at Nivelle. “Are you familiar with the meanings of these runes?” She looked at me like I was stupid, so I held up my hands. “I just had to ask.”
She leaned closer. “These are all symbols for protection over different things: the mind, the body, the spirit. This one here”—she pointed—“means good fortune in war.”
Interesting.
I turned the page, and sure enough, the words “chaos” and “order” jumped right out at me.
The passage spoke of chaos as if it were a god—something to be feared, and revered. Something this world did not know the likes of. It seemed clear that whoever wrote this was familiar with chaos . . . as if this was a personal account of it . . .
I kept reading, hoping I would find a reference to the Aether, but there was nothing about chaos being chained to a physical being. In fact, there was nothing more than a reiteration of the things we’d already figured out.
I flipped the page and continued scanning the contents, only to find .
. . spells. They filled every page—spells for protection, for growing food and blessing harvests, for medicinal purposes and healing, even spells for finding lost objects.
Page after page, spells and rhymes and riddles were scrawled out, one by one.
“Maeson, how far did you get into this book?”
“Only a couple of pages. Why?”
“Because it seems this is some sort of spellbook.” I lifted a brow at Nivelle.
She frowned. “Don’t look at me like that. Our spells are here”—she pointed to her head—“not in some old book. Like I said, if there was a book, I would know. But as it is, witches don’t keep written records. Our spells are ancient knowledge, passed down from memory.”
“But what if a witch decided to record them? What if this is that book the wraith told us about?” I continued, fanning through the handwritten notes.
Maeson fumbled forward to see. “Strange. I’ve never heard of incantations like these—Oh! Except this one!” She stamped her finger onto the page. “This one’s in the Seidr!” Her brow furrowed. “That’s quite odd. I thought this one was Old Magic, but it looks like it has runes tied to it as well.”
“You found this in the section about Old Magic, right?”
“Yes, but I almost didn’t find it. It was smushed inside of another book at the back of the shelf. Forgotten, perhaps.”
“Or hidden.” Something like this would have been precious to its owner, just like Evander’s journal was. It wouldn’t just end up in a library for all to see. And if it did . . . there was a reason for it.
I slid the book fully in front of Nivelle. “Here. See if there is anything that would be helpful to us. I . . . I don’t even know what I’m looking for at this point.”
“Well, spells are good for two things: doing things, and undoing things. It’s the undoing that is the most difficult.
Casting a spell usually only requires words and an anchor to the earth.
But rescinding one takes more effort. It often calls for specific physical objects, and sometimes things that are . . . darker.”
Maeson propped her elbows on the table, placing her chin on her hands as she watched Nivelle dissect the journal. “Darker?”
“Blood, body parts, sometimes even death.”
“Oh. Old Magic doesn’t require those things. It is drawn from the earth.”
“This is far different. We conjure it into being.”
“You actually sound quite terrifying when you say things like that.”
“If you think that sounds terrifying, just wait until you witness dark magic.”
I could hear Maeson’s gulp as she met my eyes.
“Here,” Nivelle said, turning the book for me to see.
“Binding and unbinding.” The top of the page showed a swirling rune encased in a larger circle, and next to it, the same swirling pattern, surrounded by a square.
“The circle represents power being bound to an object. The square represents a physical being.” She moved her fingers along the depictions as she explained.
When she came to a subsection beneath it, she stilled.
“What is it?” I asked.
“This . . .” She pointed to the depictions of the same runic patterns, except they had two X’s attached above the shapes that encased the swirls. “This is for unbinding.” She turned the page and gasped, practically shoving her face in the book.
“What? What?!” Maeson squeaked.
“It’s here,” Nivelle breathed. “Aether.” She traced her fingertip over the symbol that looked like a vertical figure eight with a vertical line cutting through it.
I studied the rune and the crudeness with which it was drawn, compared to all the others. Like it was an afterthought, or the scribble of a fleeting memory. As if whoever wrote it was in a hurry to do so. “That’s the symbol for the Aether?”
Nivelle nodded, still shocked that what we were looking for was actually in this strange book.
“And there’s a spell,” she said softly, pointing to the words that were written next to it.
Blood of my blood, bone from my flesh,
stone of the hearth, bird from the nest.
Untangle my bonds, these words are my thresh,
Release me, oh burden, unbind and let rest.
We all stared at the words for a long moment.
“That sounds so . . . simple,” I said.
“It’s not.” Nivelle’s voice deepened. “It is never that simple.”
“This is for unbinding the Aether?”
“It would seem so.”
Maeson paled. “It obviously requires blood. And bones.” I felt her nervous gaze on me, but I was too busy trying to decode the words to offer her any sort of consolation.
“Hearth . . .” Nivelle chewed on the word, and frowned when she came up with no plausible explanation. “Why would it require a stone from a hearth?”
I looked closer at the incantation, noting the placement of certain words. “It says ‘stone of the hearth,’ not ‘stone from the hearth.’ ‘From’ is a more literal sense. So, what if it doesn’t mean what we think it means?”
Maeson seemed to catch on. “Maybe it’s not referring to an actual fireside hearth. Maybe the ‘hearth’ stands for something else. Like . . . a place of origin.”
“What do you mean?” Nivelle asked.
“Well, a hearth is often considered the center of a home. In that way, it can also symbolize one’s sacred center, or the connection one shares with something.”
“Could it be divine?”
“I . . . I guess so. If it’s referring to something that is connected spiritually.”
Nivelle shook her head. “And how would one get a stone ‘of’ something like that? What stone even has that sort of importance?”
I exchanged a look with Maeson, only to witness her eyes light up. “The Alatyr stones!”
When I didn’t immediately agree, her face fell.
It was a genius idea, but it didn’t feel quite right.
“It’s clever, but if we assume that the bearer of the burden is the one saying the spell, that would mean they would have to have a connection to whatever stone is being referenced.
And in this particular case, I don’t have a connection to any of the Alatyrs. ”
“Do you have a connection to any sort of stone?” Maeson asked.
I shook my head. “Not that I’m aware of.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nivelle’s head tilt.
“Not you . . . Your power.” She drew out the words, as if the answer was taking form in her mind’s eye. “It’s the Aether. The Aether harbors the connection.”
“Not to anything of this world,” I said, ready to scrap that idea as well.
“You’re right. Not this world.”