“Tell me what you’ve discovered so far about this transformation spell, Rynn . . .”
Six hours later,Rynn and I had a long list of notes with whole passages scratched out, plus additional writing on the side. It was messy and had some gaps we had to fill in, but my insane plan was starting to feel more like a real possibility.
We had two main enemies—Carmilla and Erendriel. The Seelie King was trying to court me to his side; I had no doubt he’d be returning tonight to speak with me. I didn’t want an all-out war with Carmilla, even if I did have the Houses of Devereux, Salvatore, and likely Tepes at my back. Probably a good chunk of House Harker too.
But a war amongst the Moroi Houses would be the death of our realm. So many of us would die. Not to mention Carmillawouldn’t need to lift a finger—she’d just need to use the crown to steal the will of some key players.
It would be a bloodbath.
I didn’t want more Moroi to die in a desperate attempt to stop Carmilla. Wraiths though? Yeah . . . not going to shed any tears over them.
My plan was actually quite simple. Lure Carmilla to the temple, let Erendriel and his wraiths deal with her, secure the crown, and betray Erendriel.
Honor was for suckers.
I’d lie my ass off to save my people.
The problem—or rather one of the problems—was that you had to word things very carefully with the Fae. Draven had explained as much as he could before his head had damn near exploded from whatever magic was still forcing him to hold his tongue.
A bargain with the Fae had power, so I needed to craft my lie carefully.
If I pulled it off, I’d be able to boast that this gorgeous, twenty-three-year-old ass had outsmarted a centuries-old Fae who had stolen her throne.
If that wasn’t motivation, I didn’t know what was.
Yes, I ran on spite. No, I was not the least bit apologetic about it.
Kieran and Alaric had come and gone several times as they continued to negotiate Rynn’s return to the Alpha Pack. Kieran, bless him, had tried to put in a stipulation that Rynn must be allowed to visit the Moroi realm whenever she wanted. Bastian had pushed back on that, so we’d settled on once-a-month visits with exceptions for emergencies.
Those emergencies were explicitly listed because Alaric lived for the small details.
Vail was exploring the temple to better learn the layout, and Draven had gone to join him after answering as many of our questions as he could. We’d also been looking for a way to break whatever magic was forcing him to hold his tongue, but so far, I hadn’t come across any explanations. Granted, we’d only begun to scratch the surface of the knowledge this place stored.
If we survived everything with Carmilla and Erendriel, we might finally be able to learn how everything in Lunaria had come to be.
Cali breezed in at one point, saw Rynn and me conspiring over all the open texts, and promptly turned on her heel and walked back out. She mumbled something about seeing what “that treacherous asshole” was up to.
I assumed she meant Vail and yelled after her to not kill him.
She let out a string of curses, but I was confident that she wouldn’t, because if that had truly been her intention, she wouldn’t have said anything—and I wasmostlyconfident she wouldn’t pick a fight with him either. Though they could both stand to burn off some extra energy, so a brawl wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen right now.
“This is still a problem.” Rynn pointed to one of my notes that had several words boldly circled.Spell requires permission.
The transformation spell to turn one thing into another was complicated, and most of it was out of our league, given our basic understanding of magic. But several texts alluded to the spell being far simpler if whoever it was being performed on gave permission.
The soul crown wasn’t a person . . . but it wasn’t just an object either. I’d conversed with it and had felt its emotions. What if the soul crown wasn’t just named that because it could bind the will of others? What if the Fae had actually bestowed a soul into it?
My plan hinged on performing the transformation spell. If the crown could give us permission to turn it into somethingelse, then that would drastically simplify things. Unfortunately, that created a new problem—how could I speak with the crown beforehand to determine if this was possible?
Because if we waited until the plan was in motion, there was a very real chance I’d end up dead.
Not my preferred outcome.
We were also running out of time. While we were relatively safe here in the temple, our allies were not. Once Carmilla had a plan in place to deal with Cali, she’d figure a way to lure me out. I knew she wanted to limit the loss of Moroi lives, but I also knew she could be a ruthless bitch when she wanted to be.
What if she found Alaric’s parents? Or used any of my friends from House Harker?
I needed to control the information about where I was, making sure it was leaked at just the right time in just the right way so she wouldn’t question it.
