Stolen Songbird (The Malediction Trilogy, #1)(68)

I picked up the book, hating the feel of the strange leather cover. “What answers do you hold?” I whispered, examining the strange lettering on the cover. Probably the language of the north, where the witch had come from. It was all gibberish to me.

I examined the clasp again, but there was no catch or release trigger that I could see. I tugged on it, but the clasp wouldn’t budge. “Stones and sky!” I swore. “Open!” I pulled hard and my hand slipped, the catch slicing painfully across my finger.

Click.

The book fell out of my hands and landed with a thud on the table, pages open. I quickly looked over my shoulder to ensure I was alone, then shone my light on the pages. The language looked the same as that on the cover, written in a tiny but neat hand. The open pages were thick with words and little drawings, but I understood none of it. Tentatively, I reached down to flip the page.

Dizziness washed through me and I closed my eyes, focused on keeping the contents of my stomach where they were. When I opened them again, I gasped aloud. The words were as clear to me as if they were my native tongue.

“Love potion,” I read aloud. The ingredients were plants and herbs that I’d never heard of – the only thing that was familiar was stallion’s urine. Three drops of the potion were to be served in red wine to the man in question, and it would be at its most potent at the stroke of midnight. “Yuck.” I flipped to the previous page: “Infliction of Boils.” Vile. I turned the pages, and my disappointment grew. The spells were petty and trivial – the sorts of things a silly village girl would use to improve her fortune or embarrass her enemies. There was nothing as grand as how to break a mountain, curse a troll, or live forever. The only spell that looked useful was one for healing, but judging from the lack of wear on that page, healing arts were not where Anushka’s interests had lain.

The spells started to grow darker. I read page after page of recipes that weren’t spells at all, but poisons designed to inflict great pain and even death. There were many that would end a pregnancy – of the witch herself or of her chosen victim. It was here that she began to use sacrifices in the rituals. Chickens, sheep, cattle – it seemed the more difficult and ugly the spell the greater the sacrifice required.

Trolls.

My eyes took in the chapter heading, and then a hand closed on my shoulder.





CHAPTER 20





CéCILE





“Find anything interesting?”



Twisting in my chair, I looked up at élise. She didn’t seem to recognize the grimoire for what it was. “It’s all very interesting,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. The last thing I needed was the trolls finding out I’d opened Anushka’s diary – with my luck, they’d take it away before I got the chance to finish reading it. “None of it was very helpful, though.”

“Oh.” Her shoulders slumped, and I felt instantly guilty. She and all the other half-bloods were relying on me, and so far I had done nothing to prove my worth. But at least I was trying, which was more than I could say for Tristan, their leader. There was no way they knew his true feelings about breaking the curse – they’d have turned on him in an instant if they did. And I had no intention of letting that happen.

“If the answers lay in books, I’m sure scholars would have found them by now,” I said gently. “But at least I know what… happened, now.”

élise nodded. “We should go back – you are supposed to be dining with the King this evening.”

I made a face. “Watching him dine, you mean.”

élise giggled and then clapped a hand over her mouth. “You’re fearless in the things you say, sometimes.”

I shrugged. “Foolish is probably a better word. But you’re right, we should go.”

As she turned, I shoved Anushka’s grimoire into the deep pocket of my dress. “What did you get up to while I was reading?”

A faint smile touched the corner of the girl’s lips. “Once he was finished helping you, Martin, the librarian, that is, he showed me how they keep track of all the books.”

Which sounded terribly boring to me, but I kept my mouth shut as I watched her trail a finger longingly along the spines of books on the shelves.

“Can half-bloods work in the library?” I asked.

“If by work, you mean clean the floors,” she said, looking at me out of the corner of her eye. I gave a slight nod of understanding, but in truth, my thoughts were all for the book burning a hole in my pocket. All I could think of was the grimoire and how for five centuries it had refused to open, only to release its clasp at the touch of my blood. And of that tantalizing chapter title: Trolls.

I walked through the streets of Trollus as quickly as I could without attracting notice. Not once did I even bother to glance up at the moon hole to assuage my sense of endless night like I usually did. When we made it back to my rooms, I made a beeline to the garderobe. It was the only place I was certain I could look at the book without worrying about someone walking in on me.

Sitting down on the seat, I pulled the book out of my pocket and, nipping at my fingertip, I allowed a drop of blood to fall on the clasp. It clicked open. I flipped to the page where I left off.

It was all blood magic. In tiny letters in one of the margins, I read why: The earth holds no power over these creatures who are not her children. No illness, infection, or poison can harm them. Nor would the blood of animals or even of a human suffice; only troll blood, sometimes a little and sometimes a lot. I wondered how she would obtain their blood. Certainly they would not volunteer it for anything that might be used against them. Then it occurred to me that perhaps she wasn’t performing these spells for herself, but rather for other trolls.