Chapter 4

Chapter

Four

SELESTE

" D o you have some ceremonial blood sacrifice dagger to do this with?" Sorscha drawled.

Grimm snorted at her question that was directed at Asa, who, in turn, stood still as a statue. They were all crowded around the door to the catacombs of Araignée, a heavy anticipation hanging in the air.

Sorscha was, as expected, covering her nerves with wry, inappropriate humour. Aggie was poised on the balls of her feet, moments from intervening—ever the leader she didn't want to be nor saw herself as. Winnie rubbed at her temples, but Seleste knew her Sister Winter's pulse was beating as quickly as the rest of theirs.

Asa regarded Sorscha with what, most likely, everyone else thought was mild disdain, but it was fabricated. He harboured a deep connection to her Sister Spring. If she were to hazard a hypothesis, it was so deep that it frightened the powerful general. Seleste watched as his hand curled into a fist, the strong muscles of his forearm and bicep tightening. She rather liked his sarong—it reminded her of her own isle clothing—and the crawling ink on his arms. Given the chance, it was the first thing she would ask him about.

Speaking of ink …

Asa finally said something to Sorscha, but Seleste's attention had slid from him to the Prince of Bone. There were slashes of ink on his forearm, just at the crook of his elbow, that had not been there before he was taken hostage by Chresedia and The Order. She'd noticed that his other hand absently came up to graze the marks often. Each time, his eyes would flick to Aggie as he did so. At present, Grimm worried his lip between his teeth, attention seemingly fixed on the small crowd in the corridor, but there was a glaze over him. As if he was somewhere else.

Agatha spoke, some simple statement of let's get on with it , and Seleste watched as her Sister's voice pulled Grimm back from wherever it was he had been. She made a mental note to have Aggie brew him a ginkgo biloba potion…

Asa unsheathed a dagger from his hip, the lamplight glinting off the blade, and handed it to Sorscha. " Please go first if it will shut you up."

Gaius snickered next to Arielle, the sweet but hiddenly fierce girl Seleste could not wait to get to know.

"Hilarious," Sorscha uttered, taking the knife. Watching Asa defiantly, she held his gaze as she slid the sharp edge across her palm, cutting far too deep. With rebellious dawdling, she smeared her blood on the door. The Araignée General's jaw tightened just before he lashed out and yanked the dagger from her grip .

"You're such a child," he scolded as he sheathed the dagger, quickly ripping off a piece of his sarong. Winding it around her hand, he failed to notice how Sorscha preened beneath his attention.

Seleste hid her smile by tucking her lips into her teeth. Aggie stifled a laugh, and Winnie rolled her eyes.

Grimm stepped forward and clapped Asa on the back. "I'm afraid you played right into her hand, General." He beckoned for Aggie, hand outstretched. "Your turn, little witch."

Aggie elected for a less dramatic measure of drawing her blood, using the tip of a sharp fingernail and a whispered spell to prick her thumb. A plump, red droplet welled on the pad of her finger, and she pressed it against the door. "I like my blood right where it's supposed to be." She looked Sorscha up and down haughtily, doing nothing to hide the twitch of her lips.

Winnie went next, using her bejewelled dagger to draw a crimson droplet from her finger. She ran the tip of the bloodied dagger against the door, cutting into the wood.

Seleste chuckled inwardly at her Sisters' need to be different from one another as if they weren't the perfect conundrum of entirely unique, yet the same in their stubborn desire to be unique.

There were only so many ways to cut a hand for this type of spell. With little fanfare, Seleste made a small cut in her palm with her own ivory dagger and approached the door. Just before she placed her hand there, she noticed a brown stain ingrained in the wood, presumably where Sorscha had previously tried to open it on her own. Or, perhaps, where others had tried before her .

When Seleste's palm made contact with the rough wood, the outline of the entire door illuminated in a glowing purple light, similar to the shimmering barrier at Araignée's cavemouth. Before Seleste could take a full step back to view what was happening, the door vanished completely, leaving only a dark descent yawning open before their feet.

With a shrug at the others, Seleste went through the opening first, calling forth a golden orb of light to illuminate the way. Aggie came in behind her, her own orb of stormy grey light bouncing along. Winnie's pearlescent orb and Sorscha's red followed suit. The descent was not overly long, and none were prepared for the magnitude of artefacts that met them as they all spilled out into the musty, cavernous space.

Instantly, a headache began forming at Seleste's temples. Some days, her altered vision with only one seeing eye was still difficult to manage, but she suspected her headache would only grow worse as her cunning began to take in every iota of detail concerning the many objects in the catacombs.

"Goddess teeth…" Aggie breathed as her gaze swept across the torchlit expanse. "Asa, you helped our mother catalogue all of this?"

The general nodded stiffly where he stood by a wall of rock with carved-out shelves, little nicknacks lining them. "My sister and I both did. We were very young. Lorelai was, ah—" He trailed off, glancing at Winnie, almost embarrassed. "She was with child. It must have been Wendolyn. I don't remember much, neither does Lena. We were only here because our mother was very ill at that time. She had, we learned later, reunited with someone from her past in Merveille. A doctor whose family line practised heavily in the dark arts. When he discovered our mother was meddling in his affairs, he poisoned her."

Seleste's attention left the relics, landing squarely on Asa as her pulse responded to too much information that felt oddly familiar, though she wasn't certain how.

"The abbey healers," Asa went on, "aided her in recovery, and Lorelai stepped in to take charge of us. She would bring us here with her while she worked and Ambrose was away ona Hunt." He paused, his head lilting to one side. "We, ah, hunted down relics back then, along with bringing in mages and witches who needed help." One of his bulky shoulders lifted indifferently, and he reached out to lift a small vase off a shelf, inspecting it. "Our job was to sort the relics." The barest hint of an almost smile curved his lips. "Lorelai liked things to be very much in order. She was meticulous like that. I don't remember specifics, only that I was usually tasked with the non-breakable items."

"Bull in a china cabinet and all that?" Sorscha crowed.

His eyes narrowed at her as he turned toward Agatha, gesturing at the rows upon rows of shelves lined with items. "We haven't any idea what most of these are or why it was necessary to lock them away. Lena believes they are simply things deemed important at the time or items that should be kept safe. A vault, of sorts."

"And what do you think?" Aggie asked, both a curiosity and a challenge.

Asa seemed to rise to her prodding, watching Aggie intently before replying. "I think your mother suffered great losses and believed in the power of sentiment. I've often wondered if many of these things were objects that once belonged to people she and Ambrose knew. By relationship or by happenstance." He paused, the despondence his words had caused settling amongst them like silt at the bottom of the sea. "Every person she ever laid eyes upon mattered to Lorelai."

Seleste blinked at the sudden rush of tears assaulting her. Sorscha sighed and began cursing the likelihood of Asa's assessment.

Curiously, Grimm had stopped listening moments prior and was wandering down an aisle of what looked to be ordinary household objects. Seleste watched as he picked up an innocuous serving spoon, a smirk slipping onto his face just before his lips parted. Seleste expected him to make a snarky remark about a pointless spoon since he'd missed Asa's speech, but his countenance quickly shifted, disturbingly so. Where he'd been pensive before, he suddenly looked shocked and anxious. He dropped the spoon back onto the shelf as if it had burned him, shaking his head roughly. Seleste turned away just as he looked over his shoulder to see if anyone had witnessed the event.

"Seleste." Winnie came up next to her, holding a dusty, emerald-encrusted hair clip, her lip curled. "Do you have any idea why all this junk is important? Do you think Asa is correct about why Mother spent all her time doing this?"

"I truly have no idea, Sister. But we do know there is likely an answer to the star map down here, and, most likely, Mother's journal we can only assume belongs to Sorscha."

Amidst their conversation, the group had split up into pairs, curious and roaming, and Winnie twirled her braid, eyes darting between all of their comrades. "All right, then. Let's see what we can find."

"Winnie." Seleste caught her arm and spun her Sister Winter around, met with an arched-brow stare. "I like the look of Druid life on you."

Winnie peered down at her tan riding pants and white tunic, remarkably and therefore likely magically clean, and then she smiled up at Seleste. "Thank you."

Seleste turned down an aisle of items that also seemed to be of little consequence, eyes roving over them until she settled on a clay bowl to pick up. How could any of this possibly mean anything? she thought while she studied the unimpressive thing. Did their mother see the catacombs as some sort of mausoleum?

"Goddess above!" a soft voice whispered.

Seleste quickly moved a stack of dusty tomes and four candlesticks to see Arielle through the shelf on the other side. She was holding a set of earrings, her face pale. "Arielle?" she prompted. "What is it?"

"I thought it might be you on the other side of the shelf," Arielle said quietly. "Gaius says you have a cunning." Arielle paused, tilting her head as if she were listening for approaching footsteps. Seemingly satisfied, she stood on her tiptoes and whispered through the little opening Seleste had made on the shelf. "Has your cunning revealed anything about these objects?"

"No, I'm afraid it doesn't work like that for me. I mostly piece together bits of information—" She gasped. "But you're a Death Seer!" she whisper-shouted. "Hold, please!"

Seleste hastily put the items back on the shelf until Arielle's bright, open face disappeared behind them. Taking her skirts up in one hand, she ran down the aisle, nearly bowling over Sorscha in the process. She rounded the corner and skidded to a stop next to Arielle .

"You sense something, don't you?"

Arielle nodded slowly, an emerald ring sitting in her open palm. "An imprint."

"An imprint?" Seleste took a compulsory step forward. "As in a shade of the living person who owned this ring?"

"Yes." She squeezed her hand into a fist around the ring. "I mostly sense the dead, and not all of the time. It's similar to how I aid in speeding the healing process along—little threads of life. This is different, though. It's more like sensing the vague essence of a person. A bit like the way I can tell if a person is coming from far away."

"The essence of a person. That sounds quite similar to the journals our mother created for each of us," Seleste mused, half to herself. "Little bits of our essence, written or drawn before we were even born."

"Yes!" Arielle gave a little hop. "Quite like those." She blushed. "Gaius told me about them."

Seleste chuckled. "I assumed as much. And what is the essence you feel in this ring?"

Arielle's face scrunched in thought, lips twisting in a pucker to one side. "It's difficult to describe. I feel a distinctly female presence, but…young. I can't quite tell if she was young when she owned the ring or when she died."

"Based on your abilities and their tie to death, I would say the object is acting as a talisman for the soul, holding a piece of who they were when they perished, unfortunately."

Arielle nodded, her shoulders drooping. "How tragic."

"What can you tell about her?" Seleste encouraged, pointing Arielle to the brighter side of her gift.

Chewing on the inside of her cheek, Arielle considered for a moment before speaking. "She was not a child, but still very young. It's almost as if she was in a balanced state of melancholy and peace." Her face broke into a smile. "I can sense more! Her father gave her this ring. She'd just learnt how to cast spells." Holding the ring briefly to her chest as if in an embrace, Arielle then set it gently back on the shelf. "She was a mage."

"Aha!" A voice drew them away, and Gaius popped up from where he was crouched before a shelf of relics at the far end of their aisle. "Sorscha!" he called, everyone rushing over to him at once.

It was a comical sight, and Seleste suppressed a smile. It was nice to have them all together. They were an interesting bunch, the lot of them, and she hoped to the goddess more times were in store of them gathered.

"What is it?" Sorscha pushed through the small throng.

"If this doesn't scream our beloved petit serpent , I don't know what does." He held a tattered book aloft, identical in shape and size to the other three in the Sisters' possession. It was open to a page that depicted a young woman lounging in a field of wildflowers, a black snake wrapped around her bare feet.

"My, my," Seleste came up beside Sorscha and ran her finger over the page. "This is the most detailed of them all…"

"Come on!" Sorscha shouted at them, snatching the journal and rushing for the stairs. She must have decided it was taking too long because she threw, " Meeting chamber! Now! " over her shoulder just before she disappeared.

"As if any of us know where that is," Winnie griped, gliding up the stairs.

Grimm began to follow her as the rest of them did, but something snagged his attention, which, in turn, snagged Seleste's. "Winnie, wait," he called out.

As if something were calling to him, pulling him forward, Grimm approached a shelf and picked up an object. "I know this one," he said, his voice hardly audible as he gingerly picked it up.

Seleste came to inspect it as he flipped it over in his hands. It was a wheel carved out of wood. No, two conjoined wheels. The centre wheel gave a little spin as Grimm turned it over again. Holding it up for the rest of them to see, he addressed Asa. "These are Druid markings."

"They are," the general confirmed. "I don't know all of their meanings, but I do recall many Druid relics in these catacombs."

Grimm's eyes grew wide, and he turned to Winnie like a child about to open their Yuletide gifts early. "Would Laurent know them?"

Winnie shrugged, one hand still on the bannister of the steep stairs. "I would assume so. He's only third generation descended from the Elves."

Seleste's mind whirred, calculating information. They all bustled up the stairs while she stood, letting the silence of the catacombs aid in her thinking. The journal clearly meant for Winnie had resided with the Druids, descendants of the Elves, only in their realm because of Morgana's fall—Athania's fall.

Her journal had resided in Coronocco with humans tied to necromancy and Morgana—a dark tangle in her own past she'd rather not think on.

Sorscha's had been in a magi rehabilitation abbey, the former location of The Fourth Order—a place designed to protect the realm against Morgana .

Agatha's had been hidden away in Eridon by a family descended from Druids to keep it safe from Morgana until the birth of the Son of Bone.

Soon after the journals were placed with these people groups, Athania abandoned Morgana's body and identity and took that of Chresedia Gauthier.

Thoughts aflutter within her, Seleste ambled up the steps after her chaotic, beautiful family, giving a passing look over her shoulder at all the relics. Something within that cave of artefacts had to lead them to where the eclipse would take place, and she was determined to find it before she needed to leave for Coronocco. With any blessed goddess luck, Grimm already had, if his strange pull to it were any indication.