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“And if these boys refuse?”

“Many die in the bonding. They would be just another tragedy.”

My thumb pressed into the edge of the page, grounding myself against the sudden rush of heat in my chest. They had tried to oath-bind Riders to their Kings. It seemed conflicting that a Rider who was bound to the Skyworld would also be bound to an Earthworld King. A King cannot be a Mage or Rider; those were the rules to keep the balance.

But how clever it was to make those filled with Skyworld magic bound to do the bidding of their King… and if the Riders knew that this was written down, then that would be the reason they wanted the book. I wondered if Bronwen suspected what was really inside.

And then horror filled my veins. Lex would have been bound to our Uncle… and what would a tyrant such as King Oban do with Riders at his beck and call? Oaths were made all the time, and surely those Riders made the oath willingly. But what if they hadn’t? Lex hated our uncle. He never would have…

The ink shifted again. The book was a record of meetings held decades before Lex became a Rider.

Behind me, on the shelf where I had left it, the little book rumbled. I turned to stare at it, pulse quickening.

I hurried to it. “What do you know that’s not in here? You’re far older; you must know more than the codex.”

With shaking hands, I pushed the codex aside—sooner or later the men would be back, standing over me, watching. My instincts told me that I didn’t want them to see what was inside the little book. It wasn’t like the codex. It wasn’t some grand document on political history, which everyone was so desperate to get their hands on, but maybe that’s not where accurate knowledge lay. Maybe that was what the little book had been trying to tell me.

“What do you know?” Morlan had said that the little book had chosen me.

I returned to the table and placed my hand on the codex. “My oath is done. The book is restored.” My arm tingled. The oath was fulfilled, and Bronwen would know it too. I didn’t have much time left with the book. I had done as Thorn had asked, but as I scanned the rest of the pages, there was no mention of the curse or how to break it. But there was a page on the Kings using the FootPaths.

In other books I had restored, I had read about the ancient FootPaths through the mountains, but I had never seen a map of them or where the doors to these pathways were. One of the reasons I gave the book Wild Witch Tradition to Ember back in the Grand Library was that the book mentioned witches travelling at great speed through these FootPaths.

There wasn’t much time now, and I prayed that the little book was the one to tell me about the curse or, at the very least, the FootPaths and how to use them.

That’s the thing about working every waking moment in a library, reading books everyone assumed a farm girl couldn’t read. And even if the other Annatalian women hadn’t entered knowing how to read, they all did now. It’s the thing those Masters forgot. They believed rebellion was blood-soaked clothing and daggers in their backs. They forgot that the most powerful rebellion is committed in silent acts—ones that go unnoticed until it’s far too late.

All their re-education did was fine-tune our resistance. It made us dig deep in those long, dark nights that first year and find the strength that survivors need—and it formed us into a new type of community.

When I lifted my hand off the codex, I gave the book a nod. “Thank you,” I whispered. “If I hadn’t taken you, then I would never have had a bargaining chip.”

Picking up the little muslin-wrapped book, I hurriedly undid it. The little book was larger than my hand, but not by much. It had a strip of leather that wrapped around the book a few times and kept the soft cover together. When I unbound the strap and opened the book, it was clear what had happened. Someone had torn the book in half, but the outer leather had remained intact. This wasn’t age or accident—not like the codex—someone had wanted to make sure that the words inside couldn’t be read.

But then…

The page trembled, and heat seeped up through the book, into my palm, all the way along my arm to my shoulder. I snapped my hand away, but forced it back before one of the Riders could walk in. The fix wasn’t extensive—the cover needed removing, and a couple of pages sewn back together.

I had sliced away the stitching as the surrounding air changed, grew colder and more charged. I closed the book and searched every dark corner of the workshop—I was alone. But that didn’t stop the deep-in-my-bones dread that began to rise.

Night had settled over the mountains. The sixth night of Yule was moments away, and it was the turning point. There was no going back.

The Sixth Night of Yule

— The Turning Point

The sixth night is the midpoint of Yule.

This is the night of no return.

What arrived at your door on the first night has taken hold. The balance between light and darkness is always shifting, but tonight the light begins to crack through.

The line between what was before and what comes after might be jagged and broken. But whatever changed during the first five nights cannot be undone.

Beware, for what was once hidden now shapes what follows.

The Ashen Grimoire

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