Page 92 of Summer of Sacrifice

But worry clung to her lungs like smoke.

Wiping the dirt from her skirts, Seleste rose and began searching for the weasel’s burrow, for surely there would be the bones of a raven close by it.

Sure enough, within a few moments and with the aid of her glowing orb of magic, she found the burrow and a plethora of small bones.

“Discerner.”

With her hand hovering over the pile, she stopped when her palm warmed. Immensely grateful she would not have to kill another creature, she took up within her fingers the bone of a raven and nestled it in her basket next to the items she’d already had on hand.

Cayenne

Black pepper

Rue

Tourmaline

Orange

Blood of a weasel

Water charged by the moon

On her way back to Whitehall, she would pluck some fresh coriander from the herb garden.

With everything procured and mortar and pestle in hand, Seleste found a secluded spot on the grounds to kneel in the soft grass beneath the moonlight. She was unwilling to risk being caught in the kitchen brewing a potion. There had been no reason to bring her cauldron with her when she came to Whitehall, but she took a moment to summon in from her Isle. For an extra measure of peace she desperately needed, she not only summoned it but closed her eyes and envisioned exactly where it sat in her hut, right next to her potion shelf.

When her eyes opened, the ancient black cauldron sat before her in the grass. It did little to provide her the comfort she’d hoped it would. Alas, there was no way but forward.

Swallowing down the bile in her throat, Seleste placed the black tourmaline crystal and raven bone in her mortar and set to crushing them. At the last moment, she decided to take a page out of Aggie’s book, and withdrew a jagged piece of the crystal, tucking it in the bodice of her dress, close to her heart. Immediately, she felt its calming effects, but it wasn’t nearly enough.

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