Chapter 11

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I recount what the book showed me and how it started with moments of my life that I had already lived and knew to be the truth: my mother dying in my arms, after which her lifeless body was taken away by our jailer.

Then, how the vision had followed her. How our jailer had disposed of her body into the keeper's realm, which was somehow connected to the veil prison.

I tell my pack how the keeper had kneeled at my mother's side and she'd suddenly woken up.

My voice chokes again as I recount the way she'd spoken with Emil, the strange way she'd greeted him, and how their conversation was muted for a full minute, at the end of which he had torn out her heart—a heart that had been unique.

I'm aware of the increasing widening of their eyes as I speak, especially when I talk of the way my mother had woken up and her muffled conversation with the keeper.

But I make myself continue because it's important that they know what happened after the book released me from its grip.

I describe the way Emil had confirmed what the book showed me.

I tell them about the way his power had started breaking when my heart was breaking. And how my father harnessed the light magic keeper's power.

And then I finish by telling them how I ripped through the book.

But I leave one thing out: the dark impulses that flooded through me when I broke the book, those commands that roared within my mind and only stopped when I tore the book apart.

When I finish, the others are very quiet.

Jonah's expression is the most far away and I realize that hearing how my mother died must have a more significant impact on him, since he was once her friend.

As for Lucian and the dark elves, they're all contemplating me solemnly.

Anarchy speaks first with her forehead gently creased. "So… Galeia didn't appear frightened when she opened her eyes to find the keeper of dark magic looming over her?"

It isn't what I thought she would ask first, but it's certainly right up there among the things I don't understand.

"Well…" My own forehead creases. "No."

"And she didn't try to get away from him?"

"No."

"And you didn't hear what was said between them for a full minute?"

"I didn't." My head hurts and I rub my temples before I acknowledge what Anarchy must be trying to say. "I need to know what I missed."

"You do." She nods emphatically. "The book must have hidden that conversation from you for a reason. Most probably because it doesn't align with what the book wants. In fact…" She glances at Lucian, who gives her a firm nod before she continues. "I would even venture to say that that conversation could be more important than anything else the book showed you."

I draw away a little. "Even my mother's death?"

She shakes her head rapidly. "No, of course not. Darkness, you know I would never hurt you by minimizing your pain."

She wouldn't.

It was Anarchy who first reacted with rage when Lucian had even hinted that the woman who'd raised me might not have been my biological mother.

But now she persists. "The book lies. It lies , Darkness. But most importantly, so does Emil."

She searches my eyes, reaching for me again, her lilac hair catching in the firelight. "Darkness, you can't trust that Emil's confirmation of events wasn't a lie, too."

Fuck… me…

I squeeze my eyes closed and rub my forehead harder, but I don't shake off the hand she wraps around my forearm.

I need my pack right now.

I need their help.

But it also feels like nobody can really help me because nobody else was there when my mother died.

They don't know what really happened to her and I don't, either.

Lucian speaks up from Anarchy's other side. "Veda, I've read that book. Other than you, I'm the only one here who has read it." He inclines his head toward where I placed the tome in front of me. "All I know for certain right now is that it may as well be dead."

He glances at Anarchy before his focus returns to me. "I'd like to test it by picking it up."

Anarchy immediately gives a cry of alarm. "Don't."

But Lucian reaches for her. "I couldn't look at that book without experiencing physical pain before, but now it has no effect on me. Trust me, Anna-ve-shaleia , I'm not being reckless. I believe we need to know the status of the book now."

The use of Anarchy's original dark elf name seems to settle her nerves.

"Okay," she whispers. "But I'm ready to tear it to shreds myself if it hurts you."

He leans across the space between them and brushes a kiss to her lips. "I know you will."

Then he turns to me. "May I?"

I give the book another moment's consideration before I nod.

At which he leans forward and reaches for it, scooping it up with both of his hands—an awkward task, given how shredded its pages are and how precariously they're held together at the spine.

I hold my breath, but…

Nothing happens.

Lucian glances around at the rest of us before returning his attention to the book and, moving more slowly this time, he opens the front cover.

The pages inside are as black as they were before I tore through them, although they're also now slightly charred-looking and curled at the edge of each shredded portion.

They're also completely blank.

Not a single image leaps up from them.

Lucian carefully flips through the pages to a central point, where he pauses. "This is where I saw the vision of the future that our father made me watch."

In that vision, Lucian saw bodies, countless bodies of dark magic creatures: shifters, witches, mages, vampires, and others. Claw marks had been gouged deep into the walls of every place where they lay.

And then he saw me.

I was the one killing them.

Lucian places the book back on the ground.

"It's dead," he says, looking up at me. "But I don't understand how."

I chew my lip, suddenly replaying the moment when I'd swept my claws through its pages.

"Die, book," I whisper, repeating what I'd snarled at the time. "I told the book to fucking die."

I meet the startled eyes of my pack.

"You told it to die, and it did?" Riot asks, his blue eyes wide.

Opposite me across the fire, Rumble and Strife are both shaking their heads.

Rumble murmurs, "The power it would take to kill one of the books of magic…"

"No wonder Halle was so alarmed," Anarchy says.

Only Lucian is grinning. A dark smile. "Our father would not have been pleased to watch you do it."

"He was not," I reply.

"Damn, Veda," Lucian continues. "You really fucked up his prized possession."

"I did." A little of the weight inside me lifts because, at least in this one thing, I succeeded at what I'd set out to do: deprive Taiven Nostra of The Book of Dark Magic .

My smile fades. "But what are the consequences?" I stare at the book. "What does this mean?"

Jonah speaks up from the other side of the campfire. "It means you're impossibly dangerous, Veda."

I meet his piercing gaze, my own unwavering. "Jonah?"

"I was fully grown when the books were created," he says. "I never met their creator, and I was grateful for that because her power was terrifying."

"Her?" I ask.

"A woman who wielded the same arcane magic that was used to create your mother's heart." Jonah nods in slow motion. "She used that power to create these books."

He gives me a hard stare. "Even more dangerous is the power that could destroy them."

I'm tense where I sit, fully aware of the friction rising around me and the way my pack is leaning protectively toward me.

"Are we going to have a problem, Jonah?" I ask him.

"Fuck, no," he says, his declaration bringing the tension down a notch. "You're Galeia's daughter. You're family."

But then the tension rises again when he continues. "But until you understand how you did what you did, you're a danger to everyone around you."