“Death?” Medea’s voice cracked, and she swallowed her sudden trepidation.
Isis nodded once.
Each of them had their strengths when it came to magic.
Medea was gifted with charms and enchantments. She could levitate almost anything, train insects to sing her a song, and coax a flower to grow at twice its natural speed with a wave of her wand.
Circe was a master of transformation. She could turn a blade of grass into a snail or a fish into a frog with little effort. When it came to potions, she intuitively knew which herbs to combine to produce a tonic imbued with the desired attributes.
But Isis’s talent was truly chilling. She was a master of necromancy who had raised more than one animal from the dead. Isisknewdeath. When Isis said she smelled death, Medea understood she wasn’t exaggerating.
Medea shook off the sudden chill that rattled her bones. “We won’t linger. Let’s do this and do it quickly.”
“I agree with that plan!” Circe drew her wand from the pocket in her sleeve. The six-inch length of wood was polished smooth and twisted naturally from its base to a slightly upturned tip.
Medea’s wand, cut from a different section of the tanglewood tree, was a crooked seven inches that still held a hint of bark.
Isis sniffed and drew her own wand from her boot. Sleek and dark, it was only slightly longer than Circe’s with an elongated knot in the wood of one side.
Since the day she’d acquired the grimoire, Medea had proved the strongest at interpreting the ancient symbols the spells were written in. To be sure, all three were gifted with the ability to read multiple languages, but the symbols in the grimoire were exceptionally ancient and interpreting them was tricky. It wasn’t a language their parents had taught them. Although any of them could read the spells, truly comprehending the intention behind the words was difficult. The three sisters had experimented with each of them leading the rituals only to determine that without a doubt the outcome was better when Medea read the incantation from the page.
So, as had become their habit, Medea uttered the spell, her voice growing stronger as all three raised their wands and circled the tome. Tiny sparks of light lifted from the book and swirled between them. A growing wind blew from the pages. Power, thick and hot, teased her skin. Not until the last word rolled off her tongue did the book change. The pages folded in on themselves and then disappeared entirely.
Medea lowered her wand. “It’s done. Exactly as expected.”
Isis plucked from the ground the large jewel that had appeared where the book had been. She held it to the light, her fathomless deep-blue eyes wide with wonder. “It’s here, inside this jewel.”
Circe snatched it from her hand. “Let me see.” She turned the jewel in her fingers. “You can turn the pages by rotating the stone. I can read the spells in the right light.”
“The spell is reversible,” Medea stated confidently. “We can turn it back into the book anytime we need to.”
“Which one of us should keep it?” Isis asked.
“Not me,” Circe said quickly. “If Mother gave me one sideways look, I’d hand it over immediately.”
Medea glanced at Isis.
“You are better at concealing things.” Isis shrugged as if the answer was obvious. “I think you should keep it.”
Tugging the stone from Circe’s fingers, Medea slipped it into her pocket. “Done.”
Isis sniffed. “That smell again.”
At the sight of Isis’s grimace, gooseflesh paraded along Medea’s arms even though the temperature was as warm as always. “We did what we came to do. Let’s go.”
She followed her sisters’ hasty retreat into the woods, but stopped short, just inside the tree line. “The sling. We forgot it in the field.”
“That was made from our old baby blankets,” Circe said. “Mother and Father will definitely recognize it if they find it.”
“Wait here. I’ll go.” Medea darted toward the field again and swept the blanket off the ground. As she rose from the bed of marigolds, the hair at the base of her neck tingled as if it was trying to stand on end.
Someone was watching her.
She whirled to face the gate again, stared directly through its golden bars at the empty field beyond. There was nothing there. She blinked.
A massive black dragon appeared out of nowhere, staring at her through the gate with shrewd golden eyes that peered from a face of black scales crowned with a set of twisting horns. The beast snorted, studying her. Smoke blew from the curls of its dark nostrils. Fierce. Beautiful.
Enough time passed she was certain the dragon didn’t intend to come after her. Steadily, Medea turned on her heel and strode for the cover of the forest.
