Page 52 of This Dark Descent
It was a dog.
It turned about so its little snout could reach her face and proceeded to lick her cheek repeatedly.
“What in the—” She caught sight of Ari in one of the armchairs by the fire. Damien sat at the desk, half-buried in house ledgers. He’d been in meetings all day, a steady stream of jockeys, bookies, and district tenants knocking on his door.
“You said your sister wanted one.” Ari gestured at the dog. “Enchanted for companionship and protectiveness.”
Mikira gaped at her. She had no words. What did you say to someonewho granted your little sister her heart’s desire? She hadn’t even realized Ari had been paying attention when she said that.
“Thank you,” she croaked out at last. “I—thank you.”
“Keep it away from Widget.” Reid marched past her into the foyer. “Or I’ll feed it to Atara.”
Mikira clung to the wriggling ball and grinned.
CHAPTER 18
ARIELLE
THAT EVENING AFTERMikira had left, Ari set the spellbook on Damien’s desk. He looked up from the letter he’d been writing to his father. He spent hours on them, often rescheduling meetings and turning aside messages to focus, but when his eyes landed on the spellbook, they widened with the slightest wisp of curiosity. That she could recognize that thrilled her a little. She enjoyed the challenge of reading him, though she’d started to suspect that he’d been letting his mask slip more and more around her.
She’d been studying him most of the night: the sharp slope of his jaw, tight with concentration. The flare of his slate-gray eyes. With each purposeful stroke of his pen against the page, she remembered the heat of his gaze when she brought Atara to life. He had never flinched away from her. Would he if he knew the truth of what she’d done?
No.
She didn’t know how she knew it, but she did. And it scared her. Because perhaps, for once, she was not as alone as she thought.
It was why she was willing to share the book with him. That, and the fact that the voice had only grown stronger after she’d charmed the dog, confirming her suspicion that using her magic was making it worse. Her attempts the last few days to find answers in books had failed, which left only one person who might be able to help her.
“Do you know what it is?” she asked.
Damien ran a reverent finger along the book’s binding. “Shira suspects that it’s a book of the old magic.”
“The what?”
“You’re familiar with the Burning?”
“Generally.” Her parents had homeschooled her and Rivkah, and had never spoken much about it. “It was when the Enderlish government commanded the burning of all the texts they saw as profane after the Cataclysm. I always thought it was part of their control of magic.”
Damien leaned back in his chair. “It was. After the Heretics’ magic made Kinahara uninhabitable, it wasn’t just Kinnish magic the Enderlish feared anymore, it was all magic. So the Council of Lords ordered the Burning, destroying centuries of research and knowledge, and instated the registry.”
A move that had effectively stripped the Order of Sendia of a large portion of its power. With people’s newfound hesitancy around magic, the Order struggled to preach its merits to a frightened flock. Enderlain itself hadn’t fared much better. With its army weakened, the Empire broke apart.
“Most of the history of that time was lost during the Burning,” Damien continued. “As were, supposedly, the books the Heretics used to gain their power. They were called the Racari, and they were said to have belonged to the four Harbingers. Some stories say the Heretics stole them, others that the Harbingers left them behind when they departed from humanity. Sendism and Kinnism differ quite dramatically on the subject.”
It felt strange to know that information herself. After weeks of reading books she’d only ever dreamed of having access to, she knew that while Kinnism believed the Harbingers moved on once they’d taught humanity all they could offer, Sendism preached that humanity drove the Harbingers away with their greed and lust for power, a sin all souls had to atone for when they died.
“Do you think this is one of those books?” She felt foolish asking it, but whatever the spellbook was, it wasn’t normal.
It is strength, said the voice.
“Shira thinks so.” His gaze dropped to the book. “Would you let me inspect it?”
Her reflex was to refuse. Parting with the book, leaving it in someone else’s hands—she shut the thoughts away. They weren’t hers, just like the voice that whispered in her ear. The spellbook was doing something to her, and she needed to understand what, preferably without revealing that she was hearing voices.
“You may,” she agreed. “But in exchange, I’d like your help furthering my magic.”
He smiled, a soft, tentative thing that looked out of place on his cool features. She liked it. “You don’t have to bargain with me, Arielle. I’ll give you whatever you want.”
