Page 93 of When Storms Ruin

I picked up the Kotova grimoire, flipping to the key spell and setting it down on the table before us. It felt as if the serpentine silver key was staring back at me from its place on the page.

“Have you found out how to remove the key from the book of shadows?” I asked, inclining my head.

“Yes,” she replied curtly.

When she didn’t expand, Tess cut in. “Well?” she asked, shaking her head with wide eyes.

Leave it to Tess to be impatient.

“As you already found out from Phineas Wolfe, the key to this spell, no pun intended, is binding. It requires a bloodline for the binding, two distinct generations. The blood must come from the one who will be bound, and the generation before or after her.”

“The blood?” Tess asked, her eyebrows raised.

“This is blood magic?” I asked, resting my arm across the table.

Liss nodded. “I’m afraid so. Binding in and of itself is a dark magic.”

I deflated with a sigh, resting my chin on the hand I’d propped on the table. We had figured as much but were hoping desperately for a loophole. There was no generation before or after me, andcreatinga generation after me certainly wasn’t an option. Which meant we wouldn’t be able to bind the spell, because both my mother and my father were dead.

What were we going to do with my storm magic being so unpredictable? With it threatening to turn on me, or take me over entirely?

“What options does that leave us?” Tess asked, her hand on the back of my chair.

“None, I’m afraid,” Liss replied, her voice tight.

“Can I hear about the rest of the spell, anyway?” I asked, my voice soft.

It could still help someone else, at least.

Liss nodded, “I think the grimoire sent you the vision as a warning of sorts…about what was to come with your magic.”

“Not much of a warning if I had no idea what it was trying to convey,” I pointed out.

Liss let out a soft laugh. “The visions they send us don’t always make sense in the moment, but they do in time. This spell is not particularly difficult to execute once you have the bloodline. The one who needs to be bound will delve into the grimoire and pick up the key. The bloodline and the one who will bind to the storm witch will pour their blood over the key as a sacrifice to the magic.”

“Wait a second…it isn’t only binding your magic, but binding it to another person?” I asked.

“Yes,” Liss nodded, pointing out this line in her notebook. “The magic becomes a shared burden when the magic is bound. It is shared between two souls, two life embers. A binding of this nature can only be done willingly on both parts. Once bound, the magic will be shared between the two, a balance of sorts.”

I pressed my fingers to the bridge of my nose as I took in everything she was saying. “Can it be any witch who agrees to be bound to you?”

Liss shook her head, moving her hand down to point to a passage further down the page. “The souls to be bound must have some kind of connection to each other. Not a blood connection necessarily, the bloodline is only required to perform the spell, but it can’t be a perfect stranger either. One magic must recognize the other for the binding to take.”

“Would a friend work?” Tess offered.

Liss nodded. “Yes, a friend would work. But the key is for the magic to be equally matched. If the Stormshade is so powerful that they need their magic to be bound in the first place, they would need to find another powerful witch willing to share the burden of the magic.”

“So many conditions,” Tess complained, plopping herself down into the chair across from me and moving the stack of books so she could see us clearly.

“This isn’t easy magic, that’s for sure. This is a complex spell with a lot of requirements, and unfortunately even if we had someone to bind you to, we don’t have a bloodline.” Liss didn’t look up from her notebook, her eyes glued to the words on the page.

“Have you told Isaac and Zion yet?” I asked, suddenly exhausted.

“Not yet,” Liss replied, “I haven’t seen them yet today.”

The sun had set during our conversation, the darkness visible from the window nestled among the vaulted ceiling. Lissmust have been here all day deciphering this spell…all for nothing.

Until I had a child of my own, I wouldn’t be able to perform this spell.

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