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Aspen gently ushered me back to the main library, suggesting I get some more sleep. I was happy to oblige.
A prodding foot to my stomach stirred me awake. Somehow, I had managed to secure a few hours of uninterrupted sleep. I treasured being well-rested for the first time in a while. I hadn’t even dreamed.
“Lazy fangs,” Tess muttered without rancor.
I rolled onto my back to grin at her. “Morning.”
She snorted. “You mean ‘evening.’ We left first thing in the morning, remember?”
“Barely.” I sat up to see the adults bustling around the library, searching for answers. The sound of paper rustling and books thumping closed was surprisingly comforting. Aspen was flitting around, his vampire senses and speed allowing him to look much more efficiently. Em was sitting at the table, poring over a stack of thick books. I jerked to my feet when I remembered what Aspen told me earlier. “Are those spellbooks?”
“Evening, Bas,” Koen called from across the room. “Help the girls find a summoning spell.”
Aspen appeared in front of me with a small gust of wind and handed me one of the blood vials I had packed. “Drink up first.”
I knocked the liquid back. It sent a surge of energy through my veins and resolved me to be as useful as possible. It also made me wonder what Aspen sustained himself on. He didn’t seem like the type to hoard humans. Did he raise animals somewhere?
Tess handed me a spellbook and sat beside Em. “These are all newer,” she explained as I joined them and creaked it open. “They don’t have much in them.”
“I thought a summoning spell would be simple and common,” I remarked, scanning each page with lightning speed. The handwriting was messy, faded, and smudged, making it hard to read certain words. “Why doesn’t anyone know it? Not even Rhetta?”
“Ironically not.” Em sighed. “At least, not the one we need. For a lot of them, you need to have seen and held the object before. Since Aspen can only vaguely explain it, the spell won’t be effective. We need one that doesn’t require knowing what we’re trying to summon.”
“Whichever one we find should be easy to learn, though,” Tess said. “If it gives off a glow, it should be orange—” She cut off in a gasp. “Found one!”
The adults came running as Tess pointed to a page with blessedly neat handwriting. The witches all leaned forward and started muttering under their breath. But it was Tess who learned it the quickest.
She announced the spell. Somewhere in the back of the library, a shelf rattled, and several books clunked to the marble floor. One wriggled free and came flying around the corner, aiming straight for Tess. Impressively, she caught it before it smacked her square in the chest.
We all clustered around it. Tess breathed, “A diary,” as she fanned it open.
It was ancient, its pages yellowed and crinkled inside a tattered cover. There was no name or date, but its degradation meant it was loved enough to be personal.
“That’s it!” Aspen exclaimed. “The tiny bastard must have been stuffed behind other books.” Aspen glanced at the Blackwoods. “Please don’t tell him I neglected it.”
“Promise,” Koen and Sloan said together.
Sloan squeezed Tess’s arm. “Excellent casting, Tess.”
Tess smiled, but it was distracted as she leafed through the book. “This must go back hundreds of years...”
“Oh, yes,” confirmed Aspen. “He’s one of the oldest vampires I’ve met. He gave this to me for safekeeping. He chronicles countless things from his travels. He took a liking to the studies of humans and witches and learned to be a healer of sorts. Like he did for us, he shelters those who need it. This might be exactly what we’re looking for.”
A good chunk of the diary was just useless but very intelligent ramblings. Then, there was a drawing of a black circle with a thin line around it, filling up most of the page. Below it was the caption: Hidden sun.
Underneath it was a longer explanation.
Tess gasped just as I blurted, “He’s seen an eclipse!”
“The sun is completely blocked by an unknown object,” Tess recited urgently, “likely the moon, in a phenomenon I discovered to be called an eclipse. It lasted ten counts of sixty during the afternoon on a heated summer day, turning broad daylight to night in a matter of seconds. Animals silenced as if instantly killed. The warmth became chill—”
Tess suddenly broke off, but before anyone could pick up where she stopped, she delivered the line, “When I stepped out of the shelter of my forest, I found myself completely unharmed by the thing that had the power to burn me alive in moments. I, a pureblood vampire, stood out in the middle of the day for the first time in my immortal life.”
The world seemed to tip sideways. Horror dawned on everyone’s faces, flooding our bodies with heart-stopping dread, filling our heads with a hundred different possibilities of what just a single coven, much less a single vampire with enough reason, could do during the day, the only time when humans and witches were safe.
It was Aspen who was brave enough to whisper, “The covens are going to start a war in the middle of the day.”
“Against who?” Koen asked, his voice steady and grievous despite his heart pounding in his chest. “Amate? Other covens? Will they attack human or witch villages?”
Tess sucked in a sharp gasp that made us all flinch. “Dawnhaven?”
Rhetta looked mortified when she breathed in disbelief, “No.”
“The vampires with Thana said they miss the cattle system,” I said, unsure how my voice didn’t tremble as ideas came to me. “They want to reinstate it. The eclipse must be their way to do that somehow.”
“If enough covens band together,” Sloan continued, “they can form an army and dispatch it to multiple places as a widescale attack. Sanlow and Dawnhaven could be their targets. It seems Sanlow is a given, though. Amate has overstayed her rule.”
“How do we find out what they’re planning?” Tess asked urgently. “And who is ‘they’?”
“‘A new order is coming, you nameless little brat, and I’m going to be at its helm.’” Everyone stared at me, but I didn’t balk. “That’s what Gideon said. So he and Ciel must be involved—if not leading.”
“Redfang was disbanded,” Em continued, “but there might have been survivors. They could have gone to other covens and joined them, sharing information that might aid this...revolution.”
Koen started to pace. “Piroska is one of our best options.”
“She’s impossible to get ahold of,” Rhetta pointed out, “but I have her token. Should I find her?”
“She was undercover in Redfang,” I reminded everyone, “but we foiled her plan to truly infiltrate or gain the title of coven leader. She might know more than she wanted to let on, but she said, ‘I also lost access to critical information about the fate of the near future.’”
Koen glanced between me, Tess, and Em. “Why didn’t she tell any of you about them when you were with her?”
The three of us shrugged in helplessness and frustration. “She kept disappearing and being vague,” Em said. “Was she ever not cryptic?”
“Always was, always will be,” Sloan muttered with unexpected bitterness. “But it is our best lead, at least at this moment. Rhetta, I think you should.”
Rhetta pulled her locket out from under her shirt, but Koen placed a hand over it to stop her. “No,” he told her gravely, “it’s too risky. She could be in the middle of another coven.”
Sloan glared at her brother and repeated more harshly, “But it is our best lead. Where can we start if we don’t have her knowledge? We need to find out who else is involved. How can we do that—”
“My mother is involved.”
The adults all hissed in warning, “Aspen!”
For the first time, the half-blood looked deadly serious. “They deserve the truth.” He turned to me, Tess, and Em and said, “My real name is Arik Kirsi.”
Tess retreated a few steps but couldn’t get out any words. I stepped halfway in front of her. I wasn’t afraid of him like she was, but I did feel a stab of betrayal.
“As in... Agana Kirsi, the old leader of the Bloodfrost coven?” I asked as the adults sagged. Clearly, they didn’t want us to know that, probably for our own protection.
Aspen—Arik—nodded. “Her only heir. Please still call me Aspen.”
I swallowed. “That doesn’t mean...”
Aspen’s icy blue eyes flashed with indignation. “No. I’m not allied with her. I want nothing to do with her or my former coven. She’s a monster. If there is going to be a war, I’m not going to be on her side—or any of Sanlow’s old leaders. I don’t know for sure, but the chances she has a hand in an oncoming war are very high. Agana... She wants the cattle system back more than anyone.”
Suddenly, Em grabbed my sleeve as if her life depended on it. Her voice cracked on the words when she whispered, “It’s a trap.”
As if on cue, seven bodies stepped into existence across the room. A female vampire was at the front of the group with waist-length black hair braided with white ribbons and clinking with small bones. Her sclera was black, her irises an unearthly blue, and her inch-long fangs pure white. I felt a blast of cold air and looked at her clawed fingers—their tips were white and giving off curls of smoke. There was a terrifying sense of power rolling off her like a heatwave.
A Sanlow coven leader, the Bone Jeweler. A threat like I had never known before.
But I didn’t let myself cower. The Kairos jolted into action.
Several voices shouted, “Penagrum!” and the fiery traps started to carve themselves into the library’s pristine marble floors. I lunged for our pile of bags to yank out our objects to use for transfiguration. Tess and Koen were close behind as the others plunged into battle.
“Verto!” Tess ordered her stone. It transformed into a double-headed axe.
Koen and I repeated the spell. Long, curved scythes appeared in our hands. Entering the fray of vampires who hissed and clawed at Emalyn, Sloan, and Rhetta, we tossed them their objects. They were caught expertly, and more deadly, sharp weapons entered the fight.
There were two witches and four vampires, and they all fought with terrifying speed, power, and accuracy. My Kairos companions were fast, but they were quickly overwhelmed, struggling to guard their backs as the vampires corralled them together. Any spell anyone cast, they dodged or blocked.
Agana’s witches were brutal. They were throwing spells I hadn’t heard of. One of them sent Em flying across the room. The second one made a rope appear from thin air and whip around Rhetta’s neck, strangling her.
Koen roared her name and left his opponent to swing his scythe at the witch, who simply ducked—and a vampire leaped over her, snarling, to tackle Koen to the ground. Koen’s weapon was knocked aside, but he managed to stiff-arm the vampire as it snapped and clawed at his neck.
Tess was ferocious, expertly slashing and casting simultaneously as if the two styles were born to be used in tandem.
But no one was killing anyone. Though the Kairos aimed to behead the vampires, the immortal creatures seemed to be toying with us. They managed to scratch Sloan up—she wasn’t the strongest fighter, her skills lying in healing—but otherwise, no one’s throat seemed in immediate danger.
It was somehow scarier than anything else.
I looked around madly for Aspen, but the half-blood wasn’t anywhere to be seen as I wrestled with my own opponent. He was laughing huskily, eyes gleaming with hunger, his fangs bared and gnashing. “Pay attention to me,” he snarled, “not the half-breed traitor.”
Despite everything, I felt a flare of hope. If Bloodfrost was still calling Aspen a traitor, did that mean it wasn’t a trap for the Kairos but for Aspen?
“Where is my backstabbing son?” Agana screeched as she stalked along the far wall.
Without thinking, I shouted, “Leave him alone!” and shoved my opponent off in a surge of strength to charge toward her.
She grinned savagely and tensed to attack, but then her eyes flashed with recognition, and I could sense her change tactics. Far faster than me, Agana closed the space between us, grabbing my scythe handle and snapping it while it was still in my grip.
Her clawed hand snatched my throat next, her freezing cold touch rooting me to the spot—before she hoisted me off my feet and slammed the back of my head into the floor.
I heard Tess scream my name as my senses swarmed together like ink dropped into water.
Agana dropped to her knees and loomed over me, pinning me with her weight, her nails digging into my skin. Her breath reeked of blood when she hissed, “I know who you are. You’re coming with me, heir.”
