I curl my hand behind his neck and drag his face to mine to provide the proper incentive, then Njål takes me to bed, and I don’t sleep for half the night. In the morning, I’ve breakfast to cook and a goat to milk, but afterward, I settle at the worktable, staring at the necklace and the tome. Experimentally, I nudge them together with a wooden spoon, but nothing happens when the items touch. I was hoping for a hiss or a shower of sparks.
How can I destroy these?
The enchantments on the necklace are less potent, so I close my eyes and center myself, examining the article from all angles. Then I send testing charges against it, seeking a fissure, and the place where the leather threads through the fang vibrates slightly. There, I scrape my energies against it, over and over, until a soft glow starts, like I’m starting a magical fire. The shield reacts and I imagine my power as a knife, levering between protections, forcing them apart. One layer cracks and it’s weaker below. I keep going like this, until the necklace quivers on the counter and then stills.
I did it.
But I’m exhausted. I can’t even look at the spellbook today. The remainder of the afternoon, I rest and commune with Agatha. Njål joins us eventually, regarding me with fond amusement. At least, that’s how I choose to interpret his smile.
“I succeeded with the necklace,” I tell him, as he settles on the straw next to me.
“You stripped the protections from it?”
I should probably be offended by his shock, but weariness has a bony hand wrapped around my throat. Nodding, I indicate the book tucked beneath his arm. “You came to read to us, I take it?”
He answers by pulling me onto his lap, starting the next chapter as the goats quiet for the night. In the morning, I repeat the prior day’s pattern and apply myself to the spellbook. This time, Njål appears as I settle down to work. His presence is a bit distracting, for he watches me intensely, but I close my eyes anyway.
The tome is like a beacon, darkly glowing in the ether. Shadows flutter all around in my peripheral vision, drawn to its malice. I shouldn’t let my guard down, not even for a second. I imagine myself enfolded head to toe in a bright patina of protection. I can’t let a lesser threat derail me.
Brute force won’t work; I’m not strong enough to power through such an ancient, intricate aegis. What does the book want? Perhaps if I can figure that out, I can trick it. I let light flutter around it, not a threat at all, and fill that spell-wisp with the surety that I have a secret, knowledge passed down through generations. The cover stirs and the pages flutter.
Yes, I’ve read it right. The grimoire knows that I can use magic, and its pages are full of terrible spells. Yet it still yearns for more. Such is the nature of endless hunger; no matter how much it devours, it can never be sated. As the book snaps at my spell-wisp, trying to capture it, I snag the red ribbon that runs down the center, a small thing left to mark the page, but here, it’s also a weakness I couldn’t grasp until the book opened on its own.
I tug hard and envision the ribbon that connects to the bindings unraveling the book from the inside out, cover falling off, pages unbound, a broken vessel. Fierce resistance meets my efforts, a terrible game of tug-of-war, but I’ve weighted my side because the spell-wisp lands on a blank page and the words spread like spilled ink.
Give everything for love.
It’s not a spell, but my heart’s truth, and the shock of my devotion sends a magical ripple over the book, allowing me to dig in and unwind. Once the unspooling starts, the power bleeds in a spinning pinwheel. I can only absorb the shocks, even as I start to feel numb. How much of this can I withstand? Even the spirit realm grows dim, but I hang on, refusing to yield until the thrashing stops.
I tumble sideways as I pop out of spirit sight, and Njål catches me. He has no eyes for the grimoire, every iota of his attention locked on me. “Can you speak?”
Trembling, I hold up a hand and point, but my throat is too dry to ask, even in a croak. Fortunately, he follows my gesture to the carafe of water, and he fetches me a cup quickly, even bringing it to my mouth to let me drink. I take long, deep pulls, until my tongue no longer feels like a withered husk.
“I did it.”
After a stunned moment, Njål picks me up and whirls me around. “I’m starting to believe that you can set me free,” he says exultantly. “I never dared hope, before. You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for you, Amarrah.”
Thanks to the dream-walking, I do have some notion, but it’s unsettling to contemplate. I wrap my arms around his neck as he slides me down his body. My knees will barely hold me, but we’re almost there. I need to rest a few days before the final battle, but once I recover my strength, we’ll finish this.
For three days, I bide my time, eating well, doing the bare minimum in housekeeping and tending to the goats. I sleep a lot.
On the fourth day, I slip out of bed, crawling over Njål in the process; he spends his nights with me now instead of on watch in the east wing. Either he trusts me fully or he doesn’t think there’s any risk of the baron or baroness getting out. I wish I knew which it is.
It’s time. I will never be stronger or readier than this.
I fetch the heavy kettle I’ve been using for laundry and build a fire in it. Then I drop the grimoire into
