Although I’d been hesitant to come here, my heart ached with unexpected gratitude toward him and Salandar.
My memories of my mother were faint, and I knewnothing of her witch heritage —myheritage. I’d told myself she must have had her reasons for keeping me in the dark about my witch half. If the Coranthe line had been hunted to near extinction, perhaps she’d thought she was keeping me safe.
Still, I couldn’t help but feel angry that the truth had been kept from me all these years. My foster parents might not have known — they’d all been mortal — but Silas had. I was sure of it. He’d let me believe I was half mortal because it kept me weak.
I stared at the books. Was it possible that this was all that was left of my lineage? All that was known about the Coranthe line?
The thickest volume was about two inches thick and bound in leather — its spine worn and cracked with age. The other two were considerably smaller and thinner, with faded cloth covers of sapphire and emerald.
I couldn’t read the worn gold lettering on the spine. The books looked so old and fragile that I was reluctant to even touch them.
Kaden, apparently, had no such reservations.
Pulling out a rickety wooden chair, he sat down and propped his feet on the table, one ankle crossed over the other. I gaped as he cracked the spine of the smallish green book and began flipping through the pages.
When I didn’t move to join him, he looked up from the book and frowned. “Have you developed the power to absorb knowledge by mere proximity?”
“Shouldn’t you be wearing gloves or something?” I blurted. It seemed indecent to be thumbing through these ancient texts as if they were any other book.
“Relax. Salandar wouldn’t have unleashed us on hisprecious books if he thought we could hurt them. Besides . . .” He lifted his gaze to the shop above our heads. “I don’t see a horde of Coranthe witches lining up to read these.” His expression softened. “You might very well be the last witch on earth with any interest in what’s inside them.”
It was a depressing thought, but it alleviated some of my trepidation. I crossed to the table and sat down across from Kaden, pulling the huge leather-bound tome toward me.
An Incomplete Conspectus of Witch Lineage Through the Ageswas printed in faded gold lettering across the cover.
My fingers felt stiff as I opened the book and thumbed through the first few pages. They were so thin and yellowed from age that I was terrified of ripping them. The text on the page was uneven and so crowded that it was barely legible.
The book appeared to be something of an encyclopedia of witches. I carefully navigated to the section on the Coranthe line, but my heart sank when I beheld the tiny block of text.
The Coranthe line is widely believed to be the first line of witches created by the gods. Masters of the oldest written magical language, the first coven of Cornathe witches is said to have woven the veil that separates the realms to protect humankind from the creatures who dwell in the Otherworld.
Coranthe witches were said to be skilled metallurgists, capable of forging iron blades with a rowan core — the only known weapon effective against daemons. These sacred blades were runed with spells specific to their creator or the blade’s intended owner so that no other being could wield them. Handling a Coranthe blade could lead to madness or even death.
Though their language is considered lost, some scholars believerune-casting was a skill innate to those with Coranthe blood. Others say the language was so complex that it could take many mortal lifetimes to master.
The Coranthe line was never robust, and most scholars agree the entire line likely became extinct by the end of the fifteenth century.
As I finished reading, a yawning sense of loss threatened to overwhelm me — not just for myself, but for all the knowledge that had died with the last of the Coranthe witches. If my ancestors had truly created the veil between realms, they’d attained a level of magical knowledge that no other line had even comecloseto realizing.
“Find anything good?” Kaden’s voice drew me out of my melancholy spiral.
Having exhausted what littleAn Incomplete Conspectushad to offer, I set it down and pushed it across the table toward him. “Nothing that’s going to help us use that cipher.”
I watched as Kaden read the passage I’d just finished, and his face fell.
“Nothing new there,” he muttered, more to himself than to me. “This one is almost equally unhelpful, except it mentions a surviving text penned by someone called Mankara.” He slid the book he’d been reading across the table toward me. “Of course, this book is at least a few hundred years old, so it might not be up to date.”
A streak of hope went through me, and I looked down at the faded letters.
While theConspectushad been written in plain English, this text was more like poetry than academic writing. I read the single passage Kaden had indicated four times, and it still didn’t seem any clearer.
Mankara’s last missive lies entombed betwixt worlds under the Watchman’s careful eye.
“What does it mean?” I asked.
Kaden’s expression darkened, and he slammed the cover of theConspectusclosed, releasing a little poof of dust. I knew then that those words had held more meaning for him than they had for me.
It was a long moment before he answered. “It means that the book we need lies in the in-between.”
