Page 41 of When Storms Awaken

Had someone just been here? A potion bubbled in a beaker with a lit flame beneath a hot cauldron beside it. A book lay open before me to a complicated spell in both English and Latin. I cast my eyes to the heading. Awakening.

I reached out, touching the tattered page softly. The book recoiled, slamming shut with a fierce snap. I pulled my hand back just in time as the leather binding wrapped around the book, sealing it shut. It was an old brown book, no bigger than a journal, but thick with worn and yellowed pages. The leather coverlet had started to tear in a few places, and at the center of the book, beneath the leather cords fastening it shut, was a bright crescent amethyst.

Why did this book look so…familiar? I felt the energy of the book as if it was reaching out to me, calling to me. But it was just a book after all. It wasn’t sentient. Or…was it? I reached out to touch the crescent amethyst gem and as my fingers grazed it, a series of visions flashed behind my open eyelids.

A dark king sitting on his throne of shadows. A woman with pale strawberry hair fleeing a stone palace, a bundle pressed tightly to her chest. A woman with blue and white hair, raising a sword high above her head in victory, she turned, and her eyes were endless black pits. A war, witches slaughtering witches, fire burning down an empire. The blue-haired woman sitting on the throne of shadows, a pack of black wolves at her side. A city in ruin, stone buildings reduced to rubble as smoke rises from the ashes.

I blinked, and the images were gone. I was back in the same windowless room. The book had responded to my touch, but what were those visions? What did they mean? Somehow, deep in my gut, I knew this book wasmine. This was my book of shadows, my family’s grimoire. I had found it. I reached out to the grimoire again, trying to open the leather straps that bound it shut, but they did not budge.

“Open,” I whispered, laying my palm flat against the leather jacket. Still, the bindings did not move. This wasn’t just any grimoire, that much I could tell. It had shown me visions, visions from the past. It had protected itself when I had tried to read from it. The grimoire was spelled against intruders, so how could I open it? A long-forgotten memory began to surface, and I tried my hardest to grip it before it slipped away. In my mind, it sounded like a spell…but I didn’t know any spells. Or did I? Had I been spelled to forget? I repeated the unfamiliar words over and over again in my head. Where had they come from?

I closed my eyes and focused, wetting my lips before reciting, “Aperi reginam tuam, aperi mihi.” I pressed my palm to the book one last time, reciting the words that had popped loose in my mind.

“Aperi reginam tuam, aperi mihi,” I said with more conviction.

The bindings slowly unfurled beneath my touch, the grimoire breaking open to the same page it had first been open to, awakening. As I started to read, the room around me became undone. The spell was a mixture of English and Latin words, and despite never having studied Latin, I understood it intrinsically. As the words fell from my lips, it was as if a twister had let loose in the small laboratory, swallowing everything in its path. The vortex began pulling the books and herbs into a whirling column, spinning faster and faster, leaving nothing in its wake. I quickly grabbed the grimoire and pressed it to my chest before it could be swept up in the wind.

“I’m waking up,” I whispered, feeling a new surge of raw energy deep in my belly. I felt more alive, more awake than I ever had before. It was as if everything was coming into clear focus for the first time, as if I could finally, now, see clearly. The wind continued down the length of the room, collecting all the bits of paper and scattered bottles in its wake. I suddenly had the feeling that the tornadobelongedto me. That this was my doing, that I had created it. Within that tornado, I could feel an endless well of energy, waiting to be tapped into. Could I siphon that energy?

“I’m waking up.” The words left my mouth again, as if pulled from somewhere deep inside me. The storm magic inside me was waking up like an hourglass filling with grains of sand, little by little. I gripped the grimoire tightly, afraid that it would get swept up in the storm if I let it go. I could feel the magic swelling within me, filling me with more energy than I had ever felt before.

“I’m waking up.” I bit down on my lip to stop from screaming out, the energy filling me to the brim, to the point where it was almost painful. I fell to my knees, the book of shadows still tight within my grip. When I felt as if I couldn’t handle one more ounce of energy inside of me, that I was ready to crack under the weight of it, I opened my mouth and let it flood out of me on a deep, guttural scream.

The room became infinitely still. All the loose materials suspended in the air for one long moment before they fell to the stone floor with a clatter.

I was a Stormshade, and I waspowerful.

I felt an entirely other source of magic within me now, waiting to be called upon. It was as if it had always been there inside of me, familiar, but out of reach. Hidden away. I could access it now, and I feltalive. I felt hungry.

“Diana, wake up.” I could hear a voice off in the distance, but I glanced around the room and all I could see was the mess that I had created. Books and papers were scattered about, bottles of liquid had broken open and seeped into puddles across the floor. The laboratory was utterly ruined.

I couldn’t bring myself to care. All I could think about was the new flame in my core, as if a new ember of energy now flickered deep within my soul. I had awoken something powerful inside of me.

“Diana! Wake. Up.” The voice came again, and my vision started to blur, the room before me spinning out of focus. I could feel something pushing on my chest, but I couldn’t see the invisible force.

“Wake Up!” the voice sounded, over and over. Ihadwoken up. The room drifted away, and I was plunged into darkness once again.

When my eyes fluttered open, the brightness that welcomed me was blinding. I lifted a hand across my face to shield my eyes.

“Finally,” the voice said, and after a moment of adjusting, I peeled my eyes open to find Jake bouncing up and down on my bed with excitement. “We have asnow day,” he exclaimed, jumping down beside me on his knees. “Can you believe it? An actual snow day!”

“Then why are you waking me up early?” I grumbled, tossing the arm back across my face. Jake had opened the blinds on the windows and peeled the duvet back, leaving me with only the thin sheet covering me. I felt a shiver roll over me as I tried to pull the comforter back, but Jake grabbed it with his little hands.

“Early?” Jake laughed. “It’s not early, silly. Mom turned off your alarm so you could sleep in. It’s almost noon!”

I turned towards the nightstand and sure enough, the numbers on the alarm clock read 11:47 a.m. How had I slept that long? Andwhatwas that dream?

“Mom’s making pancakes,” Jake announced. “Let’s go! Last one to the table is a rotten egg!” He leaped off the bed and fled from the room, satisfied that I was awake enough that I wouldn’t roll over and go back to sleep.

I let out a groan and rolled over, reluctantly tossing the sheets off me. We hadn’t had a snow day in…forever. It always snowed in Silver Oaks; it was no big deal. They never bothered to close the roads since everybody was capable of driving in it. How bad had the unexpected storm gotten last night?

I glanced out the window to see that the snowfall had stacked on the roof of the deck high enough that it obscured half of my view to the backyard. Digging my car out later would be super fun.

With a groan, I pulled on a knit sweater over my pajamas and some slippers, tossing the sheets back over the bed. I could still feel the residual ember of energy in my core from the dream I’d had last night. But that was impossible…wasn’t it? It was just a dream. But somehow, I felt…different. More in control. More awake. I could feel the well of energy as I had yesterday, but it somehow felt easier to access. Easier to dip into.

I had dreamed of that same dark corridor again, but this time it had taken me somewhere. It had taken me to my book of shadows. But where was that place? I had never been there before, but I thought maybe Nik had since he had sketched it, too. Did it actually exist, or did it only exist in my dreams? I was sure I had seen that book before; it had feltsofamiliar. But where had I ever seen it?

I picked up my pillow and fluffed it, tossing it back down on top of the covers. I grabbed the second pillow and lifted it, stifling a yawn. When I went to toss it back onto the bed, a soft gasp escaped my lips. There, beneath the pillow, lay the leather-bound grimoire with the amethyst crescent. My book of shadows. My grimoire. Somehow, against all reason, I had taken it out of the dream with me.

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