32
Iwoke with the sun high in the sky, streaming in through the open windows. Nik was still wrapped around me, a sleepy smile on his face.
A part of me still couldn’t believe that last night was real, that this was truly happening. I leaned in and placed a gentle kiss on Nik’s lips before turning to get up, trailing the bed sheet along with me.
“Where do you think you’re going, firecracker?” he asked, rubbing sleep from his eyes and stretching.
I took a moment to admire his bare abdomen in the afternoon sun, his tattoos curling around his taut muscles.
“See something you like?” he asked as my gaze lingered.
“Lots, in fact. But we promised to meet the others in the library,” I reminded him.
He let out a soft groan before rolling out of the bed, the view of his bare behind causing me to pause even further. The bedsheet curled around my body was tight in my fist as I bit my lip. He turned to me with a raised eyebrow, and I turned away quickly, a flush rushing to my face.
“You can look all you’d like, firecracker,” he told me, reluctantly pulling on his briefs and crossing the room to me.
His hand caught at the sheet wrapped around me and gave a playful tug, but my hands held.
“You know I love that blush.”
I shook my head with a smile. “We will have plenty of time for a…replay…later. I don’t want to keep them waiting.”
With a reluctant nod we dressed, taking our time to stop for kisses and gentle touches to the point that at least twenty minutes had to have passed by the time we finally made our way over to the library.
To my surprise, Tess and Puck were nowhere to be found. Had we slept that late? There was a handwritten note in what appeared to be Liss’ handwriting taped to the stack of books on the table asking us to meet her in Zion’s office.
We traveled down the hallway hand in hand, towards the last room on the right, right before the hidden tunnels. I raised my hand to knock, but the door swung open of its own accord.
They were expecting us.
Zion sat in the cushy leather chair at the desk. Liss was across from him with her hands buried in her lap.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, sensing the tension in the room before either of them had a chance to speak.
“Come sit,” Zion smiled softly, indicating the chairs across from him.
I took the one next to Liss, Nik settling into the chair on my other side.
“What’s going on?”
“Liss told me about the key spell,” Zion replied simply, leveling me with a gaze I couldn’t quite read.
“And?” I asked in confusion. “We don’t have a bloodline…so we have to find another way.”
“There may be another way,” he replied, his gaze cutting to Liss.
“What did you find?” I asked, moving to the edge of my seat.
I could feel the anxiety bubbling up within me where it had been nothing but serenity only moments ago. Was there a chance Zion had found another way for me to control my storm magic? If he had…this would change everything.
It wouldn’t matter how many we lost in the battle in Prins, we would be able to move against Donika much sooner than we had expected. If I could bind my magic and use it against Donika, it would change the tides of this war.
“It isn’t a workaround. Not exactly,” he replied, his mouth tight.
“What does that mean?” I asked, my brow raised.
My eyes cut to Liss, but she was silent in the chair beside me.
“We have a bloodline.”
My hand flew to my throat in confusion. My gaze fell on Nik, but he appeared equally as confused as I was. I had told him last night about how we would need to find another way, because the bloodline needed to come from the witch who would be bound. A direct bloodline.
“Zion, what are you talking about? Everyone in my immediate bloodline is dead.” I shook my head in confusion.
“Not everyone,” he replied softly.
“What are you talking about?” I asked, my eyes once again flicking towards Liss.
My pulse had ratcheted up, my heart beating painfully fast in my chest. As my gaze traveled from Liss back to Zion, a wave of vertigo hit me, my vision blurring.
One moment I was there in Zion’s office, my eyes flashing back and forth between Zion and Liss. The next, I was pulled into a vision, one I recognized as having been sent by the book of shadows.
Once again, I was seeing through the eyes of someone else, the same someone holding the intricate silver key. Their hands rested above the grimoire, their fingers tracing the elaborate serpentine designs and the teardrop crystal. The hands delicately placed the key atop the tattered pages of the book, and exactly as it had before, the Kotova grimoire was engulfed in flames.
When the smoke cleared, the key was drawn onto the page, no longer a physical object. My vision traveled up the hands, the arms, the shoulders, until I could see the vision of the person clearly before me.
It was my mother.
Her strawberry blonde hair fell in soft curls around her shoulders, a soft smile on her lips as she tore the page from the grimoire.
Why was she removing the spell? What was she doing?
She carefully tucked the page into the breast pocket of her vest before closing the book. It snapped shut, the leather straps swirling around its binding to seal it closed.
My mother turned her back on the grimoire, leaving the room and closing the door behind her. Without the protection of the Kotova grimoire, the spell could be taken by anyone. Was this how it found its way into the hands of Phineas Wolfe? Had he stolen it from my mother? But why had she ripped it out of the book in the first place?
My vision snapped back to the present, Liss watching me carefully. My eyes snapped to Zion’s, my brow creasing in confusion.
“I don’t understand…the grimoire…it showed me a vision. My mother, she stole the spell out of the Kotova grimoire all those years ago. But…why? That’s all I saw, all it showed me. As usual…I have more questions than answers.”
“She was trying to help a friend,” Zion replied softly, his eyes on me.
“A Stormshade friend? Only a Kotova would be able to access it in the grimoire, and only a Stormshade would have need of the spell.”
Zion nodded.
“And Phineas stole it from her?”
Zion nodded again.
“But I don’t understand…how do you know all this, and why did the grimoire show me this vision? Alastir had said the grimoire, the key, explained that Stormshades weren’t endlessly powerful. That the spell would allow me to control my storm magic, and that the grimoire was sending me a warning by showing me this vision. But what does all that have to do with my mother?”
It felt as if there were a pair of hands around my neck, threatening to strangle the breath from my lungs. I was on the precipice of something, but I wasn’t sure what, and I didn’t know why Zion wouldn’t spit it out.
If they had found a bloodline for me to use for the spell…did that mean there was someone else alive in my mother's bloodline? But that still wouldn’t be a direct bloodline…I wasn’t sure if that would work.
I shook my head, meeting Zion’s gaze from across the desk.
“What are you getting on about?” I asked, frustration lacing my tone.
“Liss,” his voice was gentle as he turned to her. “It’s time.”
“Time for what?” I asked, my gaze meeting hers.
There was a sadness there, one I hadn’t seen in her before. Was she related to me? Related to my mother? What were they keeping from me?
“Anna…it’s time.”
“Anna?” The name left my chest as if it had been clawed out, scratching my throat on the way up.
I paled as Liss shook her head back and forth, tears sliding down her cheeks. “I didn’t want it to happen this way.”
“For what to happen this way?” I asked, my hand reaching across the space between us to rest on her knee. “I’m sure if you explain, we can clear all of this up—”But as the words left my mouth, Liss began to change before me.
Her nose became smaller, more rounded. Her eyes were bigger, bluer. Her skin was paler, more freckled. Her strawberry blonde hair a rosier shade.
“Wha—” My words cut off as she raised her chin to face me.
I had seen my mother in visions, the visions the grimoire had sent me.
I would have recognized her. How would I not have recognized her?
“It’s a glamour,” Zion explained, as if plucking the question directly from my thoughts. “She has been wearing a glamour since you met her.”
“No—” I shook my head back and forth viciously, pushing back in the chair. “Who are you?”
I rose to my feet and Nik followed, silent at my back. I could feel his hand reaching out for me, but he stopped just shy of touching me.
My voice was brittle as it left me.
Weak.
Breakable.
“How could you?” My voice was raw. “Why?”
I didn’t think there would be anything that could break me after everything that had happened in the Stormvault.
Everything Donika had put me through.
I had been wrong.
Across from me sat my mother, Annelise Kotova.
And she was alive.