Page 25 of When Storms Ruin

“And how do you plan to do that?” she asked.

“I haven’t quite figured that part out yet.” I laughed humorlessly.

Donika was right…she has been practicing magic since before I was even born, not to mention I hadn’t even touched my magic since I escaped the Stormvault. We had a hell of a fight ahead of us, and I needed to prepare. I needed to train, to grow stronger, and Ineededthat grimoire.

We had dinner with Jake, and a knot formed in the pit of my stomach knowing this was probably the last time we would be together like this…just the three of us. I would spend the night in my old room, then return to Istmere tomorrow with the grimoire. I was anxious to hear about how Tess’ confrontation went with her parents, knowing that they aren’t mortal like mine. It almost felt worse…knowing that they actively had magic this entire time and still kept it from her.

That they were Shades themselves.

I know they thought it was for our own safety, but all it ended up doing was letting us go into this whole situation blind. We might not have ended up right in Donika’s clutches if we had known the whole story. If we had been prepared.

I took my time helping my mom with the dishes, promising to visit and write often so she knew I was ok. I cursed that cell phones didn’t work in Istmere, it would be much easierto text her on occasion. So much of our modern technology interfered with casting spells, and it was a serious pain in the ass.

When I trudged up the stairs to my room for the last time, I felt the exhaustion of the day wearing on me. I couldn’t wait to collapse into the safety of my own bed…but first I had to make sure the grimoire hadn’t been taken by Donika’s guards.

My chest felt heavy as I slowly opened the dresser drawer, expecting the worst. But there, among my underwear, sat the book of shadows.

How had Fletcher and his men not found it? And the other guards Donika had sent to ransack the house? It was practically lying in plain sight. Had the magic in the grimoire truly shielded it from the intruders, hiding it? I was relieved that it was safe and sound, and confused that even my own mother hadn’t seen it here when she had gone searching.

I reached out to grab it, and as my fingers connected with the worn leather of the grimoire, an electric shock travelled up my arm. My eyes were open, but I was no longer seeing the bedroom and the dresser before me.

This had happened once before…when I had first found the grimoire in the laboratory. When I had seen The War of Siraleth, and Annelise fleeing The Stone Palace with me tightly wrapped in her arms.

The grimoire was sending me a vision.

Iwas seeing through the eyes of someone else, someone holding an intricate silver key. The hands before me weren’t mine, but they were distinctly feminine as they caressed the elaborate metal designs, twisting and turning in curves resembling a den of serpents. At the center of the key’s metalwork was a teardrop shaped translucent crystal, and when the stranger’s hands passed over it the crystal began to glow a subtle green, light emanating from its surface.

The hands delicately placed the key atop the tattered pages of the book of shadows before me, the very same grimoire currently in my possession.

The Kotova grimoire.

The pages of the book of shadows began to sizzle, flame sparking at the edges of the parchment as the page went up in smoke and ash. When the smoke cleared the key remained, but it was no longer a physical object. They key was now drawn onto the pagein the book of spells with small, cramped handwriting filling the margins. The hand reached out to close the book softly.

I snapped out of the vision as quickly as it had taken me. I was suddenly back in my room, my hand clasped around the grimoire still sitting in my dresser drawer. I stepped back, shaking my head, trying to make sense of the vision the grimoire had sent me. What significance did that key have, and how had itbecomea part of the book?

The only other time the grimoire had sent me a vision was of The War of Siraleth, of Donika killing my father Osiris, and our mother fleeing the castle after she was cast out for her magic.

What was the grimoire trying to show me?

I brought the book onto my bed and clasped it in my lap. The pages softly opened at my soft whispered incantation, the book of shadows recognizing me immediately. I flipped and flipped through the pages, but I couldn’t find a page with an intricate silver key. By the time I had searched every page, my eyes were bleary with sleep, and I could barely keep them open.

I glanced at the alarm clock on the bedside table and realized it was too late to text Tess and tell her what had happened. I put the grimoire back in its not-so-hidden hiding place and climbed into bed. I knew I needed a good night’s rest to make the journey back to the safe house tomorrow. I reminded myself to ask Liss for more skin spells once we met up again, I could sense that these were wearing off quickly. The black lines on my stomach and ribs were already fading.

Sleep didn’t take me quickly as I had expected. I lay awake, tossing and turning for hours before my body was too exhausted to fight any longer. With my eyes wide open and trained on the ceiling above me, all I could think about was the key. Why had the grimoire sent methatparticular vision, and what did it mean for us?

The next morning I had packed my bag quickly, kissed my mother and Jake goodbye, and raced out to the car idling at the curb. I was anxious to tell the others about the vision, and to hear what they thought. On the way to the meadow Tess and I rifled through the grimoire once more, but I hadn’t imagined it, the page with the key spell was nowhere to be found.

We left the car in the same spot, parked at the edge of the dirt road leading towards the meadow. Liss led me through the portal this time, despite the sharp glare Nik gave her as she took my hand.

As we walked from Siraleth to Prins, Tess and I fell behind the rest of the group, the others realizing we needed a moment to catch up alone. I told her all about my mother, how she was mortal and how my birth mother had entrusted her to raise me. That she had planned to come back for me, but she was killed in the war. How the spell binding began towear off, so my mortal mother brought me to Silver Oaks, as my birth mother had instructed.

I understood her reasoning for hiding this from me, thinking she was doing the right thing. Thinking she was doing right by my mother and doing exactly as she asked. Tess’ parents were an entirely different story.

“Your parents fled before the war, not wanting to get caught in the middle?” I asked, walking along with Tess while I fidgeted with the strap on my pack, the grimoire safely tucked away inside. I could recognize its energy humming softly around me.

Tess nodded in response. “I was a toddler, they were raising me in Siraleth when the fighting started. They didn’t want to be caught between the Nightshades and Stormshades, being only Shades themselves. They knew that things would end…badly. They still had friends left behind…friends who died in the war. They knew of Osiris, obviously, what with him being king and all. They knew your mother, but they were never close.”

“At least they weren’t killed in the war, caught up in the fighting,” I told her.

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