I flip the card in my hand to eye the communication rune. My heart races. Jinx’s patchy fur flattens. “Don’t even think about it.”
“Valen was obsessed with the healing arts. The Bauers’ estate has an overflowing medical ward with every sort of ingredient imaginable.” My breath quickens, hope making me light. “Jinx. It’s genius. I’ll convince Valen to give a hair to me.”
Jinx’s lipless mouth curls to reveal sharp teeth. “And how will you convince him to do such a thing?”
“I don’t know. I’ll fuck him senseless if need be.”
Jinx snorts. “Idiot.”
“I was joking. Obviously.” Unless he’s on board for that plan, then win–win for me.
“Think, Tori. What if Vincentius is there? Or Rossana? Or his vicious sister?”
I go cold, my throat working. “I’ll have Valen meet me in Monument Park. It’s neutral ground along the border.”
Jinx shakes her head. “I don’t like it. Playing with the Bauers is like playing with fire. They are possessive and overly protective of what they see as theirs. Valen is more likely to take the opportunity to eliminate a potential romantic rival than to assist.”
My voice scratches. “But what choice do we have? It’s the Amur or Valen. Which is worse?”
Jinx’s silence says it all. She turns away to gaze down at Lucas. A clawed hand gently settles upon Lucas’ forehead and she strokes his hair. Her long fingers tremble. The sight breaks my heart and my breath hitches.
My voice cracks. “I can’t lose him, Jinx.”
“I know.” Jinx’s slitted blue eyes meet mine and she wraps her arms around me, pulling me into a tight embrace. I squeezemy eyes closed, tears escaping to dampen her inky black fur. She continues, “You won’t lose him, because you will not fail. Now, tell me. What did Viola say?”
I sniffle, hastily wiping my eyes and I pull back. “I don’t know. She hid her message under a fake. I didn’t have time to tease apart the enchantment before Lucas came in.”
I smooth out the letter, thumb sliding over the familiar writing. My eyes glow again as the thread glints at me. I shake out my still-aching right hand in hopes that it stops any hint of trembling and snatch at the thread. My throat tightens, teeth touching as frustration tries to rush me, but I refuse to allow it. It’s such a delicate enchantment. I won’t risk breaking it.
Finally, the thread comes free and two glittering words form in looping cursive writing along it.
“He knows.”
CHAPTER 6
MONUMENT PARK, PROTECTED LAND, DELORNIA
With dread hanging heavily over me, I stroll through the thick morning mist that clings to the many statues of Monument Park. I barely slept the night before despite my exhaustion. Lying on my back room’s floor probably didn’t help, but I couldn’t stand to leave Lucas alone and was too weak to carry him to my loft. I try to shake my bitterness towards Valen for making me wait precious hours to meet. He can’t catch onto my desperation for the unicorn hair. It would give him too much leverage.
I slipped on an alternate version of my Aster Rosemont disguise before leaving in case there were other park visitors. Wearing my eyes green and hair tinted red helps ease the rippling unease of being exposed outside of my shop. At least the sun is rising to chase away the darkness.
Viola’s letter constantly spins in my mind, “He knows,” echoing over and over until insanity threatens to take over. It’s why I ensured that the heart of my shop was properly fed, so the wards remain strong while I’m gone. It’s a tricky task, one where I carefully syphon the extra magic from my grimoire inventory to feed the pentagram painted along the back wall in a hidden alcove. My own magic is always suckled on in this process, and though I’d only regenerated a small portion of my usual reservesduring the night, it was well worth the risk to keep my fortress secure.
A lump forms in my throat. Viola’s response to my letters detailing my shop’s heart was glowing with pride. I had to bend all four magic sources to create Peripetia, a feat that usually only the Archweaver and Heir can manage. Preservation magic sits at its core to make the wards near impenetrable, with Entropy woven into it to power the building. Then I layered their counterparts on top. Transformation to shift the store back and forth and Creation to power the enchantments.
Awareness prickles my scalp and pebbles my skin, offering me a much-needed distraction from Viola. In this haunted land that divides Havenport from the Astrum Forest, it is said that specters rise to continue a war that ended five hundred years ago. It drives visitors away, making the park the perfect place to meet Valen.
After all, not many wish to visit a mass grave.
Beneath the lush grass and pretty memorials are bones. Decomposed weavers and magicians form the large hill that the park resides on, a result of people growing tired of digging and performing burial rites. Instead, they piled the bodies after the last battle of Delornia’s Revolution was fought and ignited them. The smoke was so thick that it rained ash upon Havenport for days. I try not to think about the number of bodies required for such an event as I trudge up the steady incline.
Here, the Archweaver Antonia cut down Leon Obdurate, the magicians’ radical leader. With him died the secret of ripping out Soul Threads from weavers and embedding them into objects to create magician tokens. Finally, the magician numbers were capped and tokens became an irreplaceable commodity among the humans skilled enough to master them. The hunting of weavers by the Guild became illegal with the treaty signed by the Order and Delornia.
Order was restored, but the world was changed. The death toll was high, especially among the Entropy weavers whose lands lay along the human boundary. Victorious yet outnumbered substantially by humans, the weavers had no choice but to grant Delornia independence after seventeen hundred years of Archweaver rule.
Delornia was divided. The Astrum Forest and its sprawling wilderness and mountains were given to the weavers and the rest was handed to the humans. The humans elected a Prime Minister to lead them and a Magical Magistrate to control magic within Delornia.
Without Leon to lead them, the remaining magicians bowed to their new government’s rule. Leon’s Guild was fractured and what were once the leaders of human independence crumbled to infighting over the remaining tokens.
