Page 11 of Spells of Shadow and Blood

Because they weremine.

Between the time I had left for my last lesson and now…my eyes had darkened.

ELEVEN YEARS OLD

That year following my first foray into dark magic I learnedeverythingI could from Cirilla and the man I came to know as Emil. Cirilla and Emil had once been lovers, and her close friend Persephone had vowed to help her bring him back one day.

And she had.

Persephone had preserved the body with dark magic from her own grimoire, which I was anxious to get my hands on. I hadn’t seen Persephone since that day in Prins, and I hadn’t been back to that city, either.

We studied the spells in the Grishina grimoire on top of my normal studies, and I continued to grow more powerful each day. My eyes hadn’t darkened any further yet, they had stayed that cerulean blue since that first night I had performed a dark magic spell.

Cirilla told me a Stormshade had killed Emil, and one day when she came back to the cottage covered in blood, her hands shaking, I knew she had sought out that Stormshade and slain them.

Good riddance.

I would much rather have Emil around, anyway. I had grown close with him, and he had taught me all kinds of spells I had never tried before.

Cirilla told me he was something called Noctani. The first of his kind. Or that is what the Grishina grimoire called them, at least. Part vampire part witch. The family had noted in the margins of the grimoire that the spell had never been used before. But that didn’t stop Cirilla and Persephone from putting it to use. Emil required blood to live, but the drinking of blood sometimes also stole power from the victim. It was up to the control of the Noctani who did the taking. Due to this, Cirilla only let him drink from her.

The days passed and slowly I could see the magic leaving Cirilla. Emil didn’t take it all at once…it slowly left her body and seeped into his in a slow but steady trickle. She was aware of what was happening, but she didn’t care.

Shelovedhim.

But he hadn’t asked. Hadn’t gained her permission. He had simplytakenit.

Her love for him had made herweak.And if there was one thing I detested, it was weakness. All those years of studying, all her work poring over the Grishina grimoire, and she was going to allow Emil to simply take it from her?

I caught him drinking from her one night, her limp body splayed across his lap. When he picked his head up, blood dripping from his fangs, he only smiled at me.

He couldfeelCirilla slipping away each time he drank from her, but he didn’t care. I was convinced he was doing it onpurpose. If it was up to the Noctani to control the amount of magic that was taken, he could have chosen to stealnone.

But he hadn’t.

I told myself if Cirilla needed to be brought back to life, I could simply use the same spell we had used to make Emil Noctani. But as the days slipped by and Cirilla grew weaker and weaker, I became resentful of Emil.

Who was he to take Cirilla from me? Who was he to steal her magic? If it should belong to anyone, it should belong tome. He was just as bad as the Stormshade bitch who had killed him in my eyes.

When he had fallen asleep one night I had gone to the kitchen and taken one of the blades Cirilla used for our blood spells. They were sleeping together in the bed, side by side, Cirilla curled on her side.

When I approached the bed, the floorboards creaked and Cirilla peeled her eyes open. She saw me there, standing before the bed with a blade in my hand, but she said nothing. I moved to the other side of the bed, and before Emil could open his eyes, I took the blade and slit his throat while he slept. I couldn’t give him the opportunity to fight back, or I would lose.

I took my second life that day.

As it turns out, Noctani were equally as susceptible to being killed as any other Shade. I helped Cirilla bury the body in the narrow backyard of her home in Siraleth. Everyone thought he was already dead, no one was going to come looking for him.

Despite Emil no longer drinking her blood and therefore siphoning the dark magic out of her little by little, Cirilla did not recover. She had grown weaker and weaker each day, until one summer night she passed away in the narrow bed in her home.

She had been a mother to me, in a sense. More of a mother to me than my own mother had been, anyway.

I wasn’t able to bury the body myself, but that was the least of my worries. I had the Grishina grimoire all to myself now.

Cirilla had taught me well, and I was skilled enough in my studies and in Latin to study the spells on my own now. I knew Zion would want me to continue my schooling, but I didn’t mind. The more I learned the more powerful I became. And that was the end goal, after all.

I wanted to be more powerful than anyone. I wanted to taste that dark energy surging through me every day until my last.

That night I returned home to the cottage in Siraleth, the Grishina grimoire in tow. It had never left Cirilla’s home before now, to my knowledge. I had told Zion what happened, leaving out the nefarious details. That Cirilla was gone. He had returned with me to her home to give her a proper burial.

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