They don’t know what really happened to her and I don’t, either.
Lucian speaks up from Anarchy’s other side. “Veda, I’ve read that book. Other than you, I’m the only one here who has read it.” He inclines his head toward where I placed the tome in front of me. “All I know for certain right now is that it may as well be dead.”
He glances at Anarchy before his focus returns to me. “I’d like to test it by picking it up.”
Anarchy immediately gives a cry of alarm. “Don’t.”
But Lucian reaches for her. “I couldn’t look at that book without experiencing physical pain before, but now it has no effect on me. Trust me,Anna-ve-shaleia, I’m not being reckless. I believe we need to know the status of the book now.”
The use of Anarchy’s original dark elf name seems to settle her nerves.
“Okay,” she whispers. “But I’m ready to tear it to shreds myself if it hurts you.”
He leans across the space between them and brushes a kiss to her lips. “I know you will.”
Then he turns to me. “May I?”
I give the book another moment’s consideration before I nod.
At which he leans forward and reaches for it, scooping it up with both of his hands—an awkward task, given how shredded its pages are and how precariously they’re held together at the spine.
I hold my breath, but…
Nothing happens.
Lucian glances around at the rest of us before returning his attention to the book and, moving more slowly this time, he opens the front cover.
The pages inside are as black as they were before I tore through them, although they’re also now slightly charred-looking and curled at the edge of each shredded portion.
They’re also completely blank.
Not a single image leaps up from them.
Lucian carefully flips through the pages to a central point, where he pauses. “This is where I saw the vision of the future that our father made me watch.”
In that vision, Lucian saw bodies, countless bodies of dark magic creatures: shifters, witches, mages, vampires, and others. Claw marks had been gouged deep into the walls of every place where they lay.
And then he saw me.
I was the one killing them.
Lucian places the book back on the ground.
“It’s dead,” he says, looking up at me. “But I don’t understand how.”
I chew my lip, suddenly replaying the moment when I’d swept my claws through its pages.
“Die, book,” I whisper, repeating what I’d snarled at the time. “I told the book to fucking die.”
I meet the startled eyes of my pack.
“You told it to die, and it did?” Riot asks, his blue eyes wide.
Opposite me across the fire, Rumble and Strife are both shaking their heads.
Rumble murmurs, “The power it would take to kill one of the books of magic…”
“No wonder Halle was so alarmed,” Anarchy says.
