The letter continues. “If you’re reading this right now, I must have already left—I can’t tell you where, Vi. But I am safe and away from this lie I can no longer keep up with.”
My eyes fill with tears. No, Ole. You’re dead.
“Remember my favorite book about dark fairy tales?” I read further. “Between every two pages is an extra page. Sierra handstitched them together and enchanted it all so it looks like it’s part of the story. Blood smeared on every other page should open my journal through all my years at Gorhail. I wrote it addressed as letters to you. I’m sorry I won’t get to say goodbye, but I promise we’ll meet again.”
“Give me your dagger,” I say to Beau, but he just tilts his head at me. “Your dagger, now.”
He pulls it out, and I snatch it from his hands and make a straight cut along the length of my index finger. Then I flip to the first page of Olivia’s book of fairy tales. Before my eyes, the letters change into new words.
The first pages detail her life at Gorhail Institute, her favorite food, her favorite classes, mundane things that she found fascinating, like Arkani-made pens that never ran out of ink, or Arkani-enchanted fabric that stretches. Toward the middle of the book, my eyes catch on a familiar name.
“There’s a new Magister. Lorne. I fell in love so fast. I know I’m not supposed to, but he is everything I’ve ever dreamed of. Maybe one day, after graduation, you’ll meet him.”
The next pages detail more of her recent life at Gorhail. I read them with a pinch in my heart. Her happiness radiates through the page, through her outings with her friends, her new classes, her frequent visits to the Penbryn Gardens. How could Delaney rob her of that? How could she rob me of her?
Then the next page makes me stop.
“Viola.” She used my name; she never used my full name. I sit up, holding the letter tight. “I wanted to tell you in person today, but I didn’t want to risk Mom hearing. It breaks my heart that you think I’d choose Gorhail over you, and I think it’s time you know the truth. Right before her death, Nan told me to hide your magic, to take your place at Gorhail to keep you safe andhidden from a world that would inevitably kill you. I believed her. It killed Dad, after all. So I went, and I’ve never spoken about you, never told anyone I had a sister. I tried. I’ve worked so hard, Vi. I’ve sent you two self-addressed letters; I thought I was going to leave, go far away to the Isles of Carac in the North. But after our conversation today, I think I’m ready to come back. I’ll go to Osneau with you and maybe start a bakery.”
My hands are shaking. She wrote this the Monday I last saw her. I don’t know that I am reading her words right, so I flip to the next page and watch as my blood smears across the parchment and the letters jumble into the right order.
“Viola. Victor died this morning. I have a horrible feeling. Yesterday, Overseer Delaney told me to retrieve a book about relics from Nan’s library— the one you just unboxed last week. She’s always asking to borrow books from Nan, and they’re usually regular textbooks. But this one was different. I read it cover to cover. I tore three pages about resurrection and relic merging out before I handed it over to her. No one should have that much power.”
Every single word I read drives a knife farther through my heart, and every apology twists it. My sister, my beautiful sister, sacrificed herself to keep me safe, because Nansenther to this forsaken place.
Anger surges through me, and I grip the book. I do not doubt that Nan would have done the same to me had Olivia been the mage and I the nonmagi. What happened to telling me I was the most precious thing to her? Was she talking about me? Or was she talking about the cuff she knew I would inherit? Now that I know about Willow’s entrapment, I know it wasn’t me she was trying to keep safe. It was her stupid cuff, one of the six relics she’d used to trap Grimm. The cuff Olivia died for. The cuff Delaney and Grimm will kill me for. It has always been about the magic in the end. How could her love of magic be greater than her love for us?
I flip through the last three pages of the book, meticulously stitched with the rest. By now, the pages and my hand are a bloody mess. Still, I read the words ever so carefully. My conversation with Ysenia resurges. “This details how to carry out resurrections, simple and complex, and how to break tethers.”
Beau shifts closer. “You were right… about Grimm being tethered to Willow.”
The poacher’s riddle is as clear as day in my mind. “Only when themaiden and the crone die at the hands of the usurper will he be free.” Sliding the book to Beau, I explain, “Grimm needs to sacrifice Delaney to resurrect Willow. Ysenia?”
Correct.
Her word encourages me further. “And then he needs to kill Willow to break the tether.” I pause, waiting for Ysenia’s confirmation.Also correct.
Maybe Nan did have a good reason to hide the cuff—Delaney only wants to bring back her daughter, but Grimm lurks in the shadows, waiting for her to do his dirty work before pouncing.
“Delaney wouldn’t stand for that. She didn’t damn herself to the tenth circle of the Underworld to allow her daughter to be killed again.” Beau studies the page.
“What if she doesn’t know?” I wonder aloud.
Ysenia scoffs.Mortemagi have a habit of sacrificing their own in pursuit of… power.
Sylas would’ve loved to hear the Founder of the House of Death lay our sins bare. After what Nan did to Olivia, it wouldn’t surprise me if Delaney was on board for everything.
“Ysenia, didn’t you say complex resurrections were impossible?”
Improbable.
“What happens when he breaks the tether to Willow?” I reach for the book in Beau’s hands. The second page is covered in notes. Some I recognize as Nan’s handwriting, some Olivia’s, and some foreign. Delaney was wrong about one thing: Willow never released Grimm on purpose. Nan’s notes confirm that she brought him back while trying to carry out a resurrection, and this resulted in his soul tethering to hers when it escaped. He needs to kill her to be free.
He regains true form, the full extent of his whisperer magic and his reader magic. I pray you don’t see that day, Viola. The ages of Grimm were dark, if I am to go by the ghosts of the catacombs.
“If we live through this, we owe Olivia everything.” I get up, reaching for a thick jacket. I refuse to sit and do nothing. I won’t let Olivia’s sacrifice go in vain, won’t let Lyria lie half dead when all she was trying to do was find a way to save me. “Does Grimm know about this?”
Grimm, yes. Delaney, I doubt it. Although, when I wrote about it inThe Founder’s Book of Relics, it was a working theory. Of course, I never testedit. If he’s waited this long, he may very well have. He’s not someone who strikes without thought.