Marked By Magic by Christa Wick
Chapter Fourteen
"Isthat what I think it is?" Iris asked as Esme unfolded a silk scarf to reveal a hard, flat object no bigger than her palm, its cream-yellow texture wrinkled and almost translucent where it was thinnest.
Esme didn't answer directly, but she slid Iris one of the journals Denver had recovered on the treasure hunt with Oscar. The wolf half of her brain struggling with the witch script, Iris squinted for a few seconds before the scribbles coalesced into letters and the letters merged into words.
I now have only a witch, not a wolf.
Iris paged backward until she found the entry's date.
It was more than a quarter century earlier.
"That is my mother's writing," Esme said before sliding a second journal bound in black leather across the table. Unlike the witch script of Camille's entry, this one was filled with the kind of elaborate loops and flourishes that could be found on formal documents written in English centuries earlier. "This seems to be Quentin's. It puts his kidnapping me last year in context. He thought he could transfer my witch energy into the crystals then control them through…"
Esme's gaze slid toward the creature as she trailed off. She shrugged, then pulled out several more black journals, each more aged than the one before, but each filled with the same handwriting.
"You're kidding me?" Iris said, then flipped through the first black journal Esme had presented until she found the date that matched that in Camille's diary.
The one has become two.Apart, they will render the wolves in half.
"Isn't this like a year or more before you were born?" Iris asked. "I mean, like pregnancy time plus a year?"
Esme nodded. "They perverted the natural order, warding my mother's pregnancy so no one would know and then…."
She trailed off for a few seconds, her skin suddenly as yellow as the petrified witch's caul wrapped in silk.
"Did Denver show you the crystal geode he found?" Esme asked.
Iris nodded, although calling it something as pedestrian as a geode seemed like a massive understatement. It also didn't look like anything that could have formed naturally. With an outer shell of black volcanic glass, the hollowed interior contained various crystals.
While the growth pattern looked seamless, Iris knew the geology and chemistry were off. A perfect ruby shard would be made of aluminum oxide mixed with chromium. But the equally perfect amethyst shard directly next to it was a silicate mineral. The emerald shards required beryl—an aluminum silicate—but also chromium, vanadium, and iron. The assortment was rounded out with diamond and sapphire shards, such that the interior contained all five cardinal gems.
"It was big as a…" Iris started, then stopped as her gut twisted with implications.
"A doll's bassinet," Esme finished for her.
"Did they use it like the crystal room we put your mother in, but sized for—" Not wanting to think about a newborn nestled atop the sharp tipped crystals within the geode, Iris shook her head. "How long?"
"A little more than six months," Esme answered, her hand flicking at the journal as her source. "They elongated the pregnancy then put me in complete stasis inside the geode. Doing the math, I was conceived around the time the All-Mother first fell sick."
Tears she had kept dammed escaped down Esme's cheeks.
"Quentin and Camille harnessed the magic of my conception and birth to slowly kill Riya and deny her an heir. The effect on her was like a severed limb that grew gangrenous year over year."
Grabbing Quentin's journal once more, Iris expelled the breath she'd been holding in. "Okay, so how do we fix this?"
Gaze drifting away from the journals and artifact on the table, Esme didn't answer.
Iris put the book down, took hold of the witch's cold, pale hands and gently squeezed. When Iris spoke, she used the same tone she had cultivated when she was a police detective interviewing child abuse victims.
"Look at me."
Slowly, Esme lifted her gaze.
"This is more than repairing what was done to you. I understand the feelings of betrayal, I understand the urge to blame yourself for something that happened to you, even if it was not because of you." Pausing, Iris offered another soft squeeze. "But you wouldn't give up on finding a solution if this was anyone else. And you can't give up on yourself without giving up on the entire clan. We need you. Another like you won't be born for half a century or more—if ever after all the damage Quentin has done."
Esme removed her hands from Iris's grip. From there, she slid them onto her lap as her gaze moved among the journals and then to the tall piles of loose paper in Quentin's writing, the contents including drawings with some sort of alchemical shorthand and mathematical symbols.
"Okay," Iris said. "We get Michelle and the other latents in here and start reading. We take pictures and send them to the rest of the Witches' Council, especially Silantra. This arcane stuff is her specialty if I remember right."
Feeling someone on the other side of the door, she paused right before the visitor knocked.
"Come in," Esme called as she hurriedly wiped away the evidence of her tears.
Denver entered, his topaz gaze clouded when it landed on his mate.
"Lana just radioed," he told the women. "Silantra is dead."
"When did she die?" Iris asked.
The answer came not from Denver, but from Esme.
"A few minutes before I handed you my mother's diary." With a gesture as listless as her voice, she pointed at the stacks of paper and journals. "As you just said, Silantra was our best chance for interpreting everything Quentin left behind."
* * *
Finally alone withhis mate but for the creature's constant presence, Denver sat in the oversized chair holding Esme, much as she had held Oscar when she tiptoed through the cub's memories. He couldn't go inside her head like that, could only offer the strength of his arms and the fierce heart that beat for her alone.
A few candles lit the room, their orange-gold glow chasing away the worst of the gloom. Most of the journals and papers had been removed for the night, divided among the latents and Iris in a collective effort to start making sense of the spells and other magic rituals they referenced.
Oscar slept in the room the latents used. The last Denver had checked, the cub was curled up next to Michelle as she read through one of Quentin's journals and made notes.
A moment's levity curled Denver's top lip as he thought about the cub unintentionally cockblocking Tanner. The old wolf seemed like he was finally coming around to the idea of having a mate.
In a perfect world, Tanner and Michelle would have all the time and privacy to work out the issues they faced. But no shifter lived in a perfect world. They all had experienced a loss in their lives that cut to the bone.
Quentin had spent more than three centuries making sure of it.
Esme grew restless as the bastard's name snaked through Denver's thoughts. He pulled her a little closer, held her a little tighter, his wolf caressing her until she relaxed.
He still couldn't believe the day's revelations. It wasn't just his mate he held in his arms. He held the woman who had been born to be the queen of all the clans across the world, to unite, lead, and protect them in all things.
Fingers stroking through Esme's dark blonde hair, Denver angled his position to kiss her forehead. His skin itched to take her out of this room, to let first the moonlight caress her then the sun as it climbed above the horizon. She shouldn't be stuck down here in the cold, damp cellar.
No solution on how to help Esme had been found before he sent the others from the room for the night. Going under the theory that the health of Esme and the golem were inextricably intertwined, there was talk of how to sustain the creature. From among the garbage in the room when they first discovered the mansion, Cade had found an IV line. Combined with passages from Camille's diary, it was evidence enough that blood had been fed to the thing.
Blood and magic—there was no separating the two. With the hope of keeping Esme alive, experiments would begin in the morning after transfusion equipment was obtained.
Until then, Denver thought, his cheek pressed against the top of his mate's head, it would be the longest night of his life.
