Chapter 529

Nina

I stared down at the book in front of me, my breath catching in my throat as the strange blue glow intensified. The moonstone in my hand glowed as well, its light almost seeming to pulse in tandem with that of the book.

“What the hell?” I muttered, reaching out to touch the book.

Gasping softly, I quickly recoiled my hand when, upon my fingers grazing the leather, a small electric shock lightly touched my fingers. With my eyes wide, I looked down at my hand—unharmed, but still almost fizzling with that strange energy.

There was magic here.

The realization struck me then: maybe this moonstone, somehow, was a key to finally decoding this book.

Drawing in a shuddering breath, I tightened my grip around the still-glowing moonstone, feeling its warmth melt into my palm. Then, before I could second-guess myself, I pressed the crystal down onto the open pages and watched in fascination as the glow flared brilliantly.

For an endless, breathless moment, the room was consumed in a blinding light that stung my eyes and made me grind my teeth.

But then, just when I began to fear I had made some catastrophic mistake, the illumination slowly ebbed away. Both the book and the moonstone stopped glowing; for now, at least.

Dazed, I blinked away the spots dancing across my vision, refocusing my eyes on the yellowed pages in front of me. They looked the same. Utterly the same.

“What the…” I whispered to myself as I flipped through the pages. “What the hell was that?”

“Nina? Everything okay?”

I flinched violently at the sound of Tyler’s voice, whirling toward the door with my heart in my throat. My brother leaned against the frame, eyeing me with a mixture of concern and confusion as he took in the scene in front of him.

“Tyler—I—”

For a split second, I hesitated, unsure of where to even begin. But then, finally, the words poured out. I quickly scooped the book up off of the desk and explained everything to him.

When I was finished, he furrowed his brow and sat down on the edge of the bed beside me, where I had moved to during my speech.

“So what do you think happened?” he asked.

“I… I’m not sure,” I admitted, still flipping through the pages. “It doesn’t seem any different, but…”

Tyler cocked one eyebrow quizzically. “Have you tried decoding it since then?” he asked.

The realization hit me, and I gasped. With my eyes wide, I quickly pointed at my desk, where the decoding sheet was sitting. “Quickly!” I breathed. “Let’s try before… whatever this magic is dies out.”

I didn’t need to tell Tyler twice. He quickly jumped up and grabbed the sheet, handing it to me.

And together, over the following hours, we worked.

The book didn’t snap shut once. It was as though, somehow, whatever had happened between the book and the moonstone had pulled the magic out of the book—or maybe it had… calmed it, somehow.

Either way, the book seemed placated for now. It felt as if it had allowed us entry, like the moonstone was the key we were missing.

When we were finished, though, all we could do was sit there in shell-shocked silence. The translated words sat in front of us on a crisp, clean sheet of paper, and their contents were… horrifying.

And that was putting it lightly.

“I can’t believe it,” I whispered, still staring down at the page. “All of that for… this?”

Tyler drew in a ragged breath and picked up the translation, poring over it one last time. “A ritual for binding spirits to unborn children,” he said softly, letting out a low, disbelieving whistle under his breath. “That sounds…”

“Dark,” I finished for him.

He nodded and threw the translation back down on the bed between us, his gaze meeting mine. “Maybe we shouldn’t have snooped around,” he said.

“Maybe we should burn it,” I added.

Tyler chuckled. “Something tells me that that book is too… intelligent to let us burn it. Like something bad will happen if we do.”

I sighed and ran a hand through my hair. Tyler was right; the book was quiet now, but I could still feel its energy thrumming without even touching it. Whatever magic had been soothed because of the moonstone would likely not react well to being burned.

Which was likely why it had been shoved into the back of a high shelf in the library.

“Well… It was fun while it lasted,” Tyler said, standing. “But it seems like the sort of ritual that wasn’t meant for us.”

I swallowed, nodding, and instinctively went to cover my belly with my hand—as though that could somehow protect the little life inside of me.

“Yeah,” I managed around the knot that had formed in my throat. “I guess it wasn’t.”

…

That night, I laid in my bed, staring up at the ceiling. My mind whirled with a thousand different thoughts, the strange book and its contents the least of them. No, my thoughts were focused on Enzo.

I hoped he was safe. I hoped that whatever Mila had planned for him was reversible, and certainly not fatal.

And I hoped that he would come home safely to me once more.

Eventually, I began to slip off into sleep. But as I found myself in the world of dreams once again, I almost wished I had stayed awake.

The dream played out in flashes of disjointed images and sensations—the cloying scent of rot and decay, the phantom sensation of icy fingers trailing down my spine, the deafening silence that was only shattered by a scream torn from my own throat.

Then, before I could even orient myself, the very fiber of my dreams split apart to reveal the entity itself looming over me—those hollow, malevolent eyes boring into me as it cocked its head in that sickeningly choppy motion, that toothy grin splitting its shadowy face.

Terror pierced my chest as I stared wide-eyed at the entity, but I couldn’t move. The entity moved closer, reaching for me, grinning wider and wider. I felt my dream split and fragment around me, as if…

As if the entity was escaping my dreams and re-entering reality.

“Nina.”

The voice cut through the thick layer of fear, and instantly, familiarity washed over me. I knew that voice; I had heard it a hundred times before, thousands, millions, before I was born, maybe even before the universe existed.

“Nina! There isn’t much time!”

Selena. My sister’s name formed on my lips, although my voice remained stubbornly trapped in my throat, choked off by the shadow entity’s presence. But as it turned out, maybe I didn’t need to speak it.

I just needed to think it.

As if on cue, a bright halo of light splintered around the entity, causing it to hiss and bubble like hot oil had been poured over its very being. The entity shrieked and recoiled, clawing at its face. It fell to its knees, and finally, I could breathe again as the threads of my dream began to coalesce and merge once more into a single tapestry.

I turned then, gasping, and that was when I saw her. Really saw her this time.

“Selena,” I whispered. “You look…”

She stood in front of me facing the entity, her once-dark hair now a brilliant golden color in the light. It billowed out around her as if moved by an unfathomable wind, almost like a halo.

Her palm, from which the bright light poured, was outstretched toward the shadow entity; she was the source of the light, or rather, the light itself. And she was killing the entity. Or at the very least, maiming it. Punishing it.

Suddenly, she whipped her head around to face me. Her eyes; they were a bright gold, almost metallic. They were beautiful and blinding at the same time, like the sun just before sunset. Just looking at them made my eyes water and burn, but I couldn’t look away.

“You have to hurry!” she cried out over the entity’s shrieks. “You have to finish the ritual…”