Page 92 of When Storms Collide

She ran her finger along the page, reading the transcription from the grimoire and referencing the sigil drawn onto the page of the book Tess found.

“What book is that?” I asked.

Tess shook her head. “I have no idea. All I know is that it had a chapter on dream walking, so we had added it to the stacks to look at.”

Annelise flipped it over, but the cover was bound leather, no inscription on it. The spine was the same. It was an unnamed book of some sort, and the pages were yellowed and worn. The writing and drawings were all done by hand, not printed.

“Is this someone’s grimoire?” I asked, shock running through me as I registered the scribbles in the columns of the page.

Annelise nodded. “I believe so. But whose, I have no clue. It was here, in the library. Among the other texts. So very strange… ”

Alastir burst through the doors, equally rejuvenated as he had been yesterday. He moved to Annelise’s side silently, pushing us out of the way to take the seat beside her.

“Have you finished it yet?” he asked, sliding a piece of blank parchment in front of him and grabbing a quill from the ink pot at the center of the desk.

Annelise shook her head silently before sliding the book towards him so that it sat between them. Alastir worked quietly, writing down words that I didn’t recognize and hastily sketching the sigil onto the piece of parchment.

I had done my best to draw it out of memory and had left the poorly done replication in the library for Tess and the others to reference. I had wanted to find out the meaning of the sigil since the moment I had first seen it, but it hadn’t beenour priority. I had forgotten all about it, to be honest. I was surprised Tess had recognized it.

Who could this new grimoire belong to, and why was it in this library? Had it belonged to someone who had passed, and there was no bloodline for it to be passed down to?

Alastir shook his head as he buried his nose into his work, translating the words that Annelise wasn’t able to off the top of her head. We all watched in strained silence as they worked together. I wasn’t sure if the translation would help us or hurt us, but I was anxious to know what it meant.

Donika was the only wolf I had seen with a sigil before, and a bloody one at that. When she had come to me in my dream, and when I had seen her wolf form in person in The Stone Palace, the sigil had been marked in blood. Trails of it dripped down its edges as if it were freshly applied and hadn’t had time to dry, though it appeared that way every time I saw it.

Alastir and Annelise exchanged a silent glance that had Tess and I doing the same. I swallowed back my anxiety as Alastir returned the quill back to the pot at the center of the table and sat back.

“Well?” I asked, putting a voice to the tension all of us were surely experiencing. I glanced around the table and everyone was focused on the books before us.

Alastir turned to Annelise, allowing her to speak.

“Seven devils,” she swore under her breath, pushing herself back from the table and running a hand through her strawberry blonde hair.

“What is it?” Tess asked, practically bursting from the seams.

Annelise hung her head, rubbing at her temples.

“It’s… it’s a dark spell in which she hoped to achieve immortality.”

“Hoped?” I croaked. My hand flying to my chest as my heart threatened to beat out it. What didthatmean?

“Hoped,” Annelise repeated, “because I am not sure she succeeded.”

“And why do you think that?” Tess asked, leaning over the chair Annelise sat in.

Annelise’s voice was soft when she spoke.

“Because she tied the spell tome.”

“What do you mean, she tied the spell toyou?” I asked, taking a step back away from the table. “What does this all mean?”

Annelise turned towards me as she answered. “It’s a way to keep her alive. She tied a piece of her soul to mine. If I were to die, she would simply take the piece of her soul back and place it in another. She is tying herself to someone living to ensure that if she is killed before that person is… she won’t truly be dead.”

“You can’t be serious… ” Puck shook his head back and forth, backing away from the table.

At first my heart had been beating out of my chest, but now it was a solid a rock, un-beating. This couldn’t be right. It couldn’t.

“The only way to truly kill her would be to—” Annelise began, butI interrupted her.

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