Page 51 of The Tanglewood Witches (The Three Sisters 1)
Medea recoiled as if he’d slapped her. “If they hadn’t, I, your mate, would not be here. I would have never been born.”
Her words sliced into his heart and made his breath hitch.
“What harm have we done, Tavyss? We’ve lived here our entire lives, and my parents and sisters have never touched a sheep or taken a bite of an apple until the one you fed me tonight. We live on fish, roots and berries—nothing forbidden. The nymphs have helped us from the beginning. We belong here. This is our home.”
Tavyss heard the pleading in her voice, saw the tears forming in her eyes, and for a moment he wanted to comfort her. He longed to stroke her hair and tell her everything would be all right. Her wild-orchid scent grew stronger with her anger and fear. But there was an undeniable truth that he had sworn an oath to Hera. If he didn’t fulfill his duty to the goddess, what did that say about him? Was he no better than his corrupt brother and sister, having no regard for duty or loyalty if it inconvenienced his will?
“You don’t understand. I am bound—” Tavyss paused his pacing in front of her. A dark thought entered his mind. Her magic was strong, as strong as a god’s. He grabbed her by the shoulders. “Where did you learn the spell you used to project me to Paragon?”
Her mouth dropped open, and he could see fear in her eyes. Good, she needed to be afraid. If it was what he thought it was…
“I learned it from our book of magic.”
“Your book?” Relief washed over him. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe she’d learned everything she knew from her parents. “Your parents taught you everything you know? A family grimoire?”
She looked away. “Not my family’s. Mine and my sister’s. We needed to learn how to use our power, and ours is so different than our parents’. Our magic stems from our tree, you understand. The tanglewood tree. As Tanglewoods, we need to know how to wield the power we were born with; so we used our magic to conjure a teacher, and the book came to us.”
Cold horror crept up his spine, and he gripped her elbows. His dragon was dangerously close to the surface, and he saw the glow of his eyes light up her face. “Show me the book, Medea.”
With a shaking hand, she reached into her pocket and pulled out the gemstone. It was a diamond the size of a walnut, the same one she’d used to cast him into Paragon. At her suggestion, he held the stone up to his eye. He shouldn’t be able to see a thing, not with only the light of a single moon to go by, but the grimoire inside the stone put off its own golden glow. There, contained within the facets of the stone, was a book with an ornate golden cover inscribed with a peacock. Shards of ice formed in his stomach as he turned the stone and watched the pages flip, expand, and come into focus.
Magic spells. A collection of charms and incantations designed by the gods themselves.
There could be no mistake.This was Hera’s golden grimoire!
