Page 7 of Ivy & Bone

Evander’s gaze turned speculative. “Why, Cyrus?”

“Why what?”

“Why do you want to protect this place?”

Cyrus’s brows lowered. “What kind of question is that?”

“Just answer. That is my price in exchange for helping you: honesty.”

Cyrus scowled, biting down a foul retort. He shouldn’t have been surprised. Evander had always seen more than the other brothers had. Cyrus had certainly never treated this realm as something to preserve. Something to defend. It was a valid question. Why would he bother protecting a home he resented?

Cyrus huffed a breath as he considered. “This is the only home I’ve ever known. And . . . it’s the only place where I can truly find out who I am and the full extent of my powers.” His brows furrowed as he realized he wasn’t making much sense. “I can’t explain it. I know I am drawn to the mortal realm, but down here, I can be myself. Whoever that is.”

Evander nodded, despite Cyrus’s ramblings. “I had to ask. I know you’re not like them, but I had to know your reasons.”

“I’ve seen what happens when the souls roam free,” Cyrus said. “It can’t happen again. It would be catastrophic.”

Evander shuddered. “If this place is destroyed, I hate to think what that would do to both realms. All those souls . . .”

A tremble of foreboding rippled down Cyrus’s spine. He knew how dangerous the souls of the Underworld could be if they were unleashed. If freed, they had the power to devour the Underworld completely. Cyrus couldn’t believe his father and brothers hated him enough to risk destroying their home.

A strange whisper brushed against Cyrus’s skin. He stilled, his whole body prickling with a foreign energy.

“Oh gods.” He crammed his eyes shut, but even in his mind, all he saw was the amber eyes and soft smile of the woman who’d nearly destroyed him.

Then, a piercing scream rang in his ears. So familiar and haunting, so full of agony. At first, he thought it was a tormented soul from Acheron, and he was taken back to those miserable days when he’d been the overseer of that wretched place. Before the mortal realm and his explosion of power.

But as the screams intensified, a sickening dread built in his chest. Those were not human screams.

The images in his mind melted away, and a book came into view. The Book of Eyes. It quivered from the intensity of those screams.

It was time.

SAMHAIN

PRUE

The toughest part was enchanting the pomegranate seeds.

Never mind the hassle of cutting open the damned fruit and extracting the seeds with her fingers. After Prue’s fingertips were raw and throbbing, she resigned herself to turning the halved fruit pieces upside down and whacking them with a wooden spoon.

Because, of course, the spell called for every single seed from a freshly picked pomegranate. Prue couldn’t afford to leave any behind. And she didn’t have time on her side.

Sweating and covered in pomegranate juice that refused to be washed out, Prue gathered the ingredients, including every single precious seed, and followed the forest path that led to the village crypt. Once she descended the stairs, she knew she wouldn’t be disturbed. No one came down here except the coven necromancer, and even that was rare. When witches died, their ashes were spread at sea, not buried. It was considered offensive to the Goddess to bury bodies where no one would ever see them.

But the crypt held the ancestors of the coven, those who founded the village of Krenia. It would’ve been disrespectful to destroy the place, so it was left to wither away.

The air was damp and smelled of rotten flesh and decayed corpses, but Prue finally felt she could breathe because she could take her time now. Everyone was in the square, and even if they sent witches looking for her, no one would think to look here.

With a deep breath, Prue lit a torch and swiped cobwebs away from her face. Her bare feet pressed against rocks and roots, and something sharp dug into her heel that she desperately hoped wasn’t a human bone. But the feeble flame of her torch didn’t light the path at her feet.

I really should have worn shoes, she lamented. But there hadn’t been time. Mona and Prue had spent their lives running around the village barefoot, as earth witches were known to do. Prue couldn’t remember the last time she’d put on a pair of shoes.

Heart pounding, Prue searched for an adequate place to cast her spell. The first few chambers contained massive sarcophagi taking up the entire space, but the third one was entirely empty. Perfect. Her throat felt dry as she hauled her ingredients and lay them on the dusty floor, careful not to spill any pomegranate seeds. With painstaking precision, she withdrew her chalk and sketched a pentagram on the ground, having to pause often to pull up roots and knock dust and debris out of the way. Her hands shook as she lit thirteen candles and spaced them around the pentagram, then cut her palm with her athame and spread her blood on each point of the shape.

Wiping her forehead with the back of her hand, Prue took a steadying breath, her body tingling and her nerves thrumming at the prospect of what she was about to do. She turned to the least appealing condition of the spell: presenting the Book of Eyes.

This cursed book was the same one that had attacked their village. The same entity that had taken Mona’s life. The elders claimed it was bound to the river Acheron, located in the Underworld. When the tortured souls had been unleashed, only a blood sacrifice could stop the carnage.

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