Page 21 of The Tanglewood Witches (The Three Sisters 1)
“We need to leave here, Orpheus. Now.”
“What do you see?”
“Get dressed.”
He chose another apple from the basket. “We should take the food in your satchel.”
She raised a hand to her mouth and stifled a gag. Her stomach roiled. “It is rancid. Full of maggots.” She turned away and heaved, but there was nothing in her stomach to eliminate. When he still didn’t put the apple down, she retrieved the rest of the mint from her bag and placed it on his tongue. As soon as the magic took effect, he tossed the rotten fruit back into the basket in disgust.
“Gods, it is another trap. But I thought you tested it!”
Alena pulled the pale green crystal from her pack and placed it in the water. It turned dark almost immediately. “It did change. I just couldn’t see it through the illusion!”
Orpheus began to dress quickly. “This entire time, the gods have been slowly starving us to death.”
“We should have known.”
Alena tried not to reveal her shock when she saw how thin Orpheus looked. They must have been in bed for days. She finished dressing and lifted her bag onto her shoulder. But Orpheus wasn’t moving.
“Hurry. We have to find the grimoire before one or both of us collapses.”
“Was itallan illusion?” he asked her.
Their eyes met.
“No,” she said quickly, surprised at how much she wanted him to know the truth about her feelings. She paused and offered him a soft smile. “Now let us live to prove it.”
He nodded and charged toward the door. Her legs felt frail as she followed him into the corridor, but she pressed on. As they passed through the hall, she saw the house for what it was. Each of the rooms was filthy, some with pairs of skeletons still embracing in the beds. This was a place of forgetting. A place where one could sleep their life away.
They left the house and continued along the path they’d been following, which led up a steep hill. The climb was difficult in their debilitated state, but as they reached the top, they saw a Greek temple in the distance, its white marble pillars gleaming against the rich green of the surrounding hillside. Panting and exhausted, they helped each other across the glade and up its marble steps. There, on the altar, lay their prize, a massive golden book engraved with the same ornate peacock they’d observed on the doors.
Alena swayed on her feet and caught herself on Orpheus’s arm. “Do you feel that?”
He nodded. “Power. Pure, unadulterated power.”
The grimoire was as long as the full length of her arm with a width as wide as her shoulders and a thickness at least a cubit deep. It looked to Alena to be both ancient and brand-new. “How will we even carry it? It’s monstrous.”
She approached it cautiously, scanning the altar for any source of danger. It couldn’t be as easy as just taking it. Despite the fear and foreboding flooding her senses, she forced her aching legs to move her toward the grimoire.
“Alena, look!” Orpheus pointed to her right.
The gold doors they’d come through had sprouted from the earth beside them.
“This is it then,” she said, reaching for the book. “The end of the path. Let’s take it and return home.”
“No!” Orpheus yelled as energy crackled in her ears. He lunged for her. “Don’t touch it!”
