“I love when you talk Alchemy to me.” Rose quickly pecked his cheek. “Okay, okay. Compulsion…let me think. I know minor spells that can briefly compel people, but it’s not very strong, and they’re still cognizant of what’s going on. It sounds like what’s happening to Vera is in a class of its own.” She shut the Grimoire and reached for another one on her desk. These pages were more weathered, the binding fraying at the edges.
“This was my father’s,” she commented. “He was a little more…innovativethan my mother.”
Leo snorted. “That’s one way to put it.”
“He did some testing with blood magic,” Rose admitted. “Nothing harmful. He was just curious. Tried to see if it could help with problems the empire was facing—diseases, food shortage, that sort of thing.”
“What’s so bad about blood magic, anyway?” I asked, watching as Rose pored over the old pages, taking in the faintly scribbled words and undecipherable drawings.
“It’s unnatural,” Leo said. “Alchemy uses what we’renaturallygiven—herbs, flowers, stones, the like. While, yes, our bodies are natural, using blood magic requires force. Forcing blood from a victim, taking their bones, cutting their flesh…it’s savage. Magic shouldn’t be forced or taken. It shouldn’t beharmful. But people do it because it makes their power stronger by a hundredfold, and they don’t care about the consequences.”
“Even if it could mean saving lives?” I asked.
Leo sighed. “Once upon a time, I would’ve said no, that we should never use it under any circumstance. I used to see the world in black and white. Everything was either right or wrong, and there was no in between. I hate it, but I’ve learned that sometimes there’s no other way. You just have to trust the person putting that kind of power in their hands.” He laid his hand on Rose’s back and softly kissed her temple. “Just be careful, little wolf. You know it will have a price.”
I tilted my head in curiosity. “What does that mean?”
“All dark magic has a price. Think of it as a way to balance things out,” Rose said, looking up from the Grimoire. “There was this man in my home province who used it to raise his wife from the dead. And it worked, sort of. Her body came back to life, but she was basically a soulless shell. She killed her husband in front of their child, then went on a rampage and killed even more people before she was stopped. There are stories like that up and down our history books, cautionary tales for people trying to conquer forbidden magic.”
She looked down at her father’s Grimoire, her knuckles white with how tightly she gripped it. “But the thing is, it’s unpredictable and not always what you think. It doesn’t have to be the person who casts it who pays the price. Like the man who raised his wife. Sure, he died, but none of her other victims had anything to do with it.Theydidn’t deserve to die. I can only imagine the suffering Scarven and his Alchemist have caused with how long they’ve been practicing.”
“If it means getting my sister back, I’ll pay it,” Nox said.
Leo looked at him with a grim expression. “It may not beyouwho pays it, Nox. Are you willing to risk it? Riskanyone?”
For the first time, Nox faltered. He looked down at me, and I could see the indecision warring inside him. He was always the first to jump into danger, but the idea of someoneelsebeing in that danger, somethinghecouldn’t control, gave him pause.
I swallowed hard and nodded at him, trying to imbue my eyes with encouragement to give him that final push. I knew how desperately he wanted his sister back. “Whatever happens, we’ll face it together,” I whispered.
His jaw twitched. “Together,” he said slowly. When he faced Rose again, his voice was laced with more trepidation than before. “Can you do it, Rose?”
“I don’t know. I need some time to study the texts. It’s not ano, Nox,” she said quickly when his face fell. “We have a couple of days. But…thereissomething you could do to help.”
“Anything.”
Rose reached for a jeweled dagger resting next to the Grimoire, her fingers lingering on the hilt. “I need your blood. It’s the closest we have to your sister’s, and it might make her antidote stronger.”
The air felt heavier, as if the magic wavering in the room knew what Rose was requesting. I swallowed a lump in my throat. A shiver went down my spine, but Nox showed no fear. He strode to the desk and held his arm out.
“Are you sure?” Rose asked, her green eyes cutting to his.
He nodded once, jaw tight. “For Vera.”
She took a deep breath, then drew the blade across his palm in a smooth arc. I flinched at the motion, my own hand twitching as if it were my skin being split. Nox’s blood welled to the surface immediately, a deep, gleaming crimson. It dripped into a glass vial with softplinks, each one echoing in the lair.
The cut was already healing itself when Rose took the dagger away. She corked the vial and set it on her desk. The tension in the room was still taut when she said, “You two better get some rest. We’ve got a busy couple of days aheadof us.”
Nox nodded. “Thank you. You have no idea what this means to me.”
She gave him a tight-lipped smile as the candles around us flickered. “Don’t thank me yet, Nox.”
55
Devora
“Did you think you could hide from me, love?”
Scarven’s words permeated my dream. I could feel him shrouding me, covering me, embedded in the walls of my mind.
