Page 85 of Merciless Is My Crown

She leaned her hip into the table. “I heard Lady Wynter blackmailed half the royal court and made a fortune off the Fae. Raked our mortal enemies over the coals, though it sounds like the Wynters’ sins caught up to them in the end.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell Bella the Oracle had had the Wynters killed to further her own schemes. “How do you remember them when that happened so long ago?”

I fully expected her to show me some written history of that day, but Bella laid her hand over her chest.

“Without a library, we resorted to telling our stories aloud, and a favorite was how the Wynters had pulled the wool over the Fae King’s eyes and stole his magic right out from under his nose.” She scanned the library. “I suppose it’s my job now to keep a record of all those stories. Write them down so future generations don’t make the same mistakes we did.”

Bella crossed her arms over her chest. “Vireena’s mistakes are too great for me to list, but her greatest one…”

We both froze when something moved in the shadows. A mouse skittered into the light then scampered across the floor between the other bookcases.

“Vireena betrayed us all when she forged an unholy alliance with that thing you call the Oracle.”

Bella went quiet. “In the end, my mother lost her tongue, my aunt lost her life, but this entire coven…we lost our way.”

“How did that alliance come to be?” The quiet down here was so dense, our whispers rang off the walls like the cracks of a whip. “A brand-new High Priestess and the Fae King’s Oracle forging some unholy alliance. Seems too good to be a coincidence if you ask me.”

“My mother thought so, too. But from that moment, we—our entire coven—have served a different master.” Her glimmering eyes rested on me a shade too long as if she was making a decision. The hair went up on my arms, every inch of skin prickling in warning.

“There is something I must show you.”

Bella rolled back her sleeve. I was too shocked to do anything but stare at the thin black line running from her wrist and disappearing, presumably heading straight toward her heart.

“The day Vireena forged her alliance with your Oracle, every witch in the coven was marked like this. Every child born since has been marked as well, no exceptions.”

“The line terminates in a circle?” I asked quietly. “With a symbol inside?”

She was pale when she nodded, pulling down the collar of her dress to show me. Her mark was fainter than ours, like a shadow, or a reflection. The symbol was nothing that I’d seen before, not even on that polished floor in Corvus’s lair.

Nor the floor here in the library.

A circle within a circle.

“We all have the same one. As if Vireena sold her soul—and ours—to that creature.”

I hesitated, cursed myself for a fool, then lifted my shirt enough for her to glimpse the lightning mark running down my side. She took a step back, her pale eyes filled with a wary curiosity as I briefly described everyone’s markings, explaining the more I used my magic, the more defined our marks became.

“I’ve seen those marks before…somewhere. Wait here. I think I remember which book that was.” She hurried into the darkness, then the faint sound of clanking metal echoed, the dull scrape of something heavy.

A book, maybe.

More rustling while I debated how much more information to safely reveal.

I’d come here with so many questions, and not only were none of them answered…we still had no allies. We didn’t know where we were heading next. I couldn’t remember feeling more adrift, even after I’d escaped Tempeste and was running from Solok.

Bella returned with two books, one thick and well-worn with a silver symbol embossed on the front—the triangle within the circle, obviously the coven’s symbol—a blackened, hand-forged chain draped over her arm. A book valuable enough not to be let out of this room. The other was smaller, with a plain black cover and no writing or title.

Completely unremarkable except for the dark whisper of power surrounding it.

“I found the book with the marks…” She dumped both onto the table. “But here is why I brought you down here in the first place.” She leafed through the bigger book, the vellum rustling as she searched for what she needed.

“Ah. Here, this is it.”

I squinted in the flickering light. “That’s a spell.”

“A spell that heals any illness of the flesh. Your friend who is sick? Is he the white wolf?” she prodded gently, and I nodded, blinking. “We will honor our word, Anaria, as you honored yours. We will heal him in exchange for the crown.”

“What about Zephryn?” I traced my fingers down the well-worn page, as if this spell had been used many, many times before. “His leg…I’m not sure what happened, but if he could walk…”

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