Only a few paces away from me, the keeper has dug in his heels, leaning into the explosion, his dragon wings extended, cutting through the magic and forming a shield between me and my father.
The keeper’s dark magic billows outward, a storm of fire and malice, beating back the deadly light.
He’s shouting and I can barely make out his words above the maelstrom. “Your father has a keeper! He controls the keeper of light magic!”
In the distance, the woman’s silhouette disappears, like some kind of ghost melting back into the stonework, but the power my father wields is all too real.
How?Did he free her like I freed the keeper of dark magic? Or did he somehow invade her realm?
I have no answers.
All I know in this moment is that I’m lucky to be alive.
I’m doubled over, lying on my side, suddenly aware of another force around me. Some kind of… sphere… against which the raging light magic is swirling and swelling.
For a moment, I think the keeper—my keeper—must have placed a shield around me and then I become aware, with a sinking stomach, of the hard edges of the object pressed to my chest.
TheBook of Dark Magic.
My fingertips had touched it just before Taiven’s magic exploded and now, I’m clutching it to my chest.
I try to right myself, making it up onto my knees as the fight rages in front of me, my keeper and my father locked in battle.
The book’s outer cover, where my arms are closed around it, is tugging violently against my hold. When I try to keep it shut, its edges sharpen, slicing across my arms and drawing blood.
In pure reflex, my arms open and the bookthudsto the floor in front of me.
“Read it!” My father’s shout reaches me above the storm of power raging around the room. “See who your real enemy is.”
Before I can jump to my feet, the sphere around me glimmers, solidifying where I kneel. My back collides with it, a solid force that bites me with sharp energy, sending me to my knees.
At the same moment, the book’s binding unravels into ropes that whip around my wrists, yanking my hands flat to the floor beneath its lower edge.
I struggle against the ropes, trying to free my claws to cut the restraints apart. When I can’t, I duck my head toward them, aiming to sever them with my teeth.
My mouth closes around the ropes, only to encounter sudden spikes, sharp needles that shred the roof of my mouth and my tongue.
I jolt backward in shock, spitting blood as more of the book’s binding unravels, another thicker rope shooting upward and wrapping around my throat. Its front section solidifies between the book and my neck into a pole that stops me from darting forward again, lest I ram it through my own throat. A second later, I sense it split down my back, ropes rushing around and around my torso.
I scream and thrash, but the restraints only tighten, constricting my breathing while the sharp end of the pole slices across the front of my throat. Warm blood sprays across the floor and the exposed blank front page of the book.
My black blood soaks into the dark paper, the droplets disappearing as fast as they can fall, the paper appearing instantly dry again. Thirsty.
This book wants blood.
With a sob, I stop struggling, aware of my keeper’s furious shout as the book opens and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Images leap up from the page, moving across the black parchment in front of me.
My younger self is huddled on the floor of my cell, my filthy hair clumped down my back, my dress not so short as it was when I escaped ten years later.
Tear tracks cut through the film of dirt on my young face.
I’m holding Sosia in my arms, her head resting in the crook of my elbow, her body laid across my legs.
I’m trying to get her to drink a few droplets of water, but she refuses. “Don’t waste water on me now, Daughter,” she says, her voice a rasp across her cracked lips.
