“We were just there,” she said, pointing behind us. Her guard looked stunned into a stupor, clearly not understanding where she meant. “There is an old Temple,” she added. “We were not far. We thought you were right behind us, Griffin. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
He was visibly sweating. And panting. But to my sister, he said, “It’s nothing you did, Your Highness. It is my fault. I... I got mixed up. Thanks be to the Light you are unharmed.”
She smiled reassuringly, and we all marched on. I looked back at the field of wheat grass once we’d made it up the hill a ways, but all I could see were more winding garden paths and rows of hedges. A chill slithered up my spine.
“Do you see that?” I whispered to Oliver, discreetly nodding behind us.
He nodded. “I noticed as soon as we were beyond the barrier.”
“The barrier?”
“It reminded me of the Blood Woods,” he whispered. “When we followed Arrick into the fog, his camp was waiting just on the other side. Do you remember?”
My heart kicked in concern. “Pagan magic, then?”
“The ravens, Tess. They must be... a calling card or symbol or something. Don’t you think?”
The old way is the true way. “Yes, they must be. A symbol for pagans. But white magic or black?”
He was silent for a moment before he said, “Maybe both.”
Then we both fell quiet. And stayed that way through the remnants of lunch, a scolding from my uncle afterward, and then I claimed a headache to avoid a late supper. I sent word to Oliver so he could skip if he’d like. I knew I had blown my chance of spending more time with Taelon that evening, but I needed to investigate something before I could recover my senses and engage with people again.
Once Clesta had forgiven me for leaving her to my uncle’s wrath and helped take my hair out, I shooed her from the room and locked the door behind her. Digging out the grimoire I’d locked away, I flipped open the front cover. Incriminating initials were scribed in the upper right-hand corner. GA. Gwynlynn Allisand.
I flipped to the center of the book and found the same raven in flight that had been on the tree today. And in the stained glass.
It was identical to the book Father Garius had shown me at the Temple of Eternal Light. But more than this spell book had started to resemble my time at the Temple.
Then I flipped the pages back to where I’d left off the night I’d found it. There had been something that stood out just before I dozed off. A phrase in my own language. My mother’s neat scrawl in the margin.
It took me a couple of minutes, but I found it. Next to pagan text and pictures of herbs and bones was the flourished lettering I knew belonged to my mother. “The old way is the true way.”
She’d written it onto the page herself.
I sat in the middle of my bedroom floor, half undressed from the day’s gown, with my hair a wild mane around my shoulders, and had to face the fact that my mother might have been more pagan than I had ever wanted to believe.
Not only that, but she could very well have been a part of the three initials carved on a tree in the middle of what appeared to be an abandoned witch’s sanctum—an ancient chapel used by the pagans for spells, magic, and healing.
I only knew about them because my mother had told us stories of their power.
But had her words been more than just stories? Meant for more than to simply entertain us?
I had more questions. Why did our Temples of Light look so very similar? Had the Brotherhood of the Light simply copied an already established religion? Dumbed it down and made it more palatable for the masses? Created something they themselves did not believe in but would make a believable alternative for the people of the realm?
And beyond that, what did my mother have to do with any of it?
What did her death, and the death of my brothers and father, really mean?
The old way is the true way.
Was it her message?
Her faith?
Or was it her abandonment of them both so she could marry my father?If her initials were of her married name, did that mean she’d continued her pagan beliefs afterward regardless?I couldn’t help but recall my parents’ discussion again.
“Diamond for power. Ruby for love. Emerald for magic...
