Page 108 of Revenant

“Calders are the vessel, bound to serve the glass. Where power sleeps in depth waiting to amass. It thirsts for blood, it thirsts for death, a hunger none can tame, only through sacrifice will it kneel and serve your claim.

Syphon every power forth to feed the ancient scales, take what mother nature gives as payment when flesh fails. The magic will not stir for anything less than this; only when it’s gorged will it surface from the abyss.”

Air seals my lungs when I notice the drawing at the bottom of the page. If anyone else could see it, the image would look like any other mirror. But it’s not. It’s unmistakably my mirror. It’s the same one my mom gave me that’s now in Koen’s room with all my stuff.

What does my mom have to do with any of this? She wasn’t a witch…right? Or at least…she didn’t know she was? I would’ve known; I would’ve seen something, I would’ve—but would I? This is stirring up a whole new set of questions…and I’m not sure I’m ready for the answers to them. I ultimately decide to keep this little piece of information to myself. This has gotten a little too close to home, and I need to digest it first, figure out what it means before I tell any of them. Because if my mom had anything to do with the curse…I’m not sure how I’d survive that truth.

Clearing my throat, I carefully close the book, aiming to avoid Eldritch’s suspicion, though his curious expression hints my heartbeat is giving me away. But he doesn’t press the issue, and I feel a pang of gratitude.

“Sacrifices? Death? Is that how the curse started? Veil killed them for what exactly? Power?” The questions pour out of me like a dam, and I’m not sure how to stop them from circling the drain.

“Sacrifice can mean a lot of things…” He says it with the certainty of experience, and then it dawns on me. The coven Clara belongs to, the Sisters of the Reliquary, required his sister to sacrifice what she loved most. Him.

After that, I started viewing him differently. He was no longer someone out to get me, but a person with far more humanity than I’d given him credit for.

“I didn’t mean—”

“I know. I wasn’t attacking; I was just trying to give other alternatives.”

Sinking back down into the chair, defeat quickly becomes a prominent force. “I’m not sure. Maybe the guys know something else? But from where I’m sitting, it’s looking like we have one option.” Apparently, it’s to slaughter as many people as needed for the vampires who can’t die, so they can finally leave campus. It sounds completely insane when it’s written out as balancing some kind of metaphorical scale. But one thing I’ve learned is that nothing is black and white.

“What if…what if it’s not sacrifice as in…death.” Eldritch pauses, mulling something over as he thinks aloud. “What if it’s something else? What if the blood that needs to be spilled is…yours? By shedding blood to lift the curse, do you ultimately give up something more valuable?”

“Like what? What happened exactly during the curse? During their…creation?”

He’s silent for longer than I appreciate. I thought we were done with secrets, and if they won’t be more forthcoming with information, what am I even doing here? “The full story of their deaths isn’t something I’m able to tell, I’m afraid.” He’s honest at least, but that’s not exactly what I mean.

“I understand that, but was there anything else that you could think of that could’ve possibly been a ‘sacrifice’ when everything happened?”

His eyebrows lift, as if the thought had never once crossed his mind in all this time. “I mean…prior to them becoming vampires, they were witches; perhaps the sacrifice mentioned in your grimoire refers not to a life but to magic.”

I study him, trying to figure out what exactly he’s implying. “I’m afraid I’m not following.”

“Think about it...” He stands as though this is the revelation of a lifetime. “What if she needed to syphon their magic—the passage said syphon—to complete her spell? Her own power wasn’t enough. There had to be a sacrifice of power to get what she wanted. But perhaps the scales were never balanced, and the curse was the result. Which means for the curse to be broken, the sacrifice has to be greater. Greater than the five of them.”

“Okay, but even if you’re right, and that’s a very big if. Where are we going to find enough witches that are not only strong enough but also are willing to give up their magic?”

Eldritch lets my question linger, staring at me. “I never said they had to be willing.”

That’s what I was afraid of. “We can’t just take people’s magic, Leon. Strip them of the very thing that makes them who they are. That would make us no better than Veil.”

“What if…what if we don’t need to take it all?”

“Explain.”

“The gala. It’s the end of year fundraiser Veilcrest throws every year. Alumni return, witches and non-witches alike, and they’ll all be gathered in the campus ballroom,” he explains, and I’m momentarily caught off guard. I vaguely remember the gala and charity event listed on the welcome paperwork when I arrived, but I hadn’t given them much thought. I’m curious whether the guys will bring it up; part of me hopes they’ll ask to take me. It’s stupid given the overall circumstances we’re facing. But underneath everything, I’m still a girl who craves a sense of normalcy.

I push the selfish thoughts to the back of my mind, and focus on what we’re doing now. “So you think that at this gala there will be enough magic to syphon that it won’t matter?”

“I’m saying, the most powerful witches who have attended this university will all be in one place, at one time. That might be our best shot at this. Syphon what you need to break the curse, pull from all of them at the same time, and maybe it will be enough that none of them lose everything. And nobody has to die.”

“I think…I think that could work,” I agree, considering what he says. Still, I keep the knowledge of my mirror a secret, needing to figure out its importance for myself first.

“Didn’t it say something about a mirror?”

“Huh?”

“The passage referenced glass, was it talking about a mirror?” Fuck, fuck, fuck. I was hoping he wouldn’t have remembered all of it, that maybe he would be too focused on the sacrifice part to think of the other moving pieces that apparently need to happen.