Page 126 of The Edge of Darkness

I slid the book fully in front of Nivelle. “Here. See if there is anything that would be helpful to us. I . . . I don’t even know what I’m looking for at this point.”

“Well, spells are good for two things: doing things, and undoing things. It’s the undoing that is the most difficult. Casting a spell usually only requires words and an anchor to the earth. But rescinding one takes more effort. It often calls for specific physical objects, and sometimes things that are . . . darker.”

Maeson propped her elbows on the table, placing her chin on her hands as she watched Nivelle dissect the journal. “Darker?”

“Blood, body parts, sometimes even death.”

“Oh. Old Magic doesn’t require those things. It is drawn from the earth.”

“This is far different. We conjure it into being.”

“You actually sound quite terrifying when you say things like that.”

“If you think that sounds terrifying, just wait until you witness dark magic.”

I could hear Maeson’s gulp as she met my eyes.

“Here,” Nivelle said, turning the book for me to see. “Binding and unbinding.” The top of the page showed a swirling rune encased in a larger circle, and next to it, the same swirling pattern, surrounded by a square. “The circle represents power being bound to an object. The square represents a physical being.” She moved her fingers along the depictions as she explained.

When she came to a subsection beneath it, she stilled.

“What is it?” I asked.

“This . . .” She pointed to the depictions of the same runic patterns, except they had two X’s attached above the shapes that encased the swirls. “This is for unbinding.” She turned the page and gasped, practically shoving her face in the book.

“What? What?!” Maeson squeaked.

“It’s here,” Nivelle breathed. “Aether.” She traced her fingertip over the symbol that looked like a vertical figure eight with a vertical line cutting through it.

I studied the rune and the crudeness with which it was drawn, compared to all the others. Like it was an afterthought, or the scribble of a fleeting memory. As if whoever wrote it was in a hurry to do so. “That’s the symbol for the Aether?”

Nivelle nodded, still shocked that what we were looking for was actually in this strange book.

“And there’s a spell,” she said softly, pointing to the words that were written next to it.

Blood of my blood, bone from my flesh,

stone of the hearth, bird from the nest.

Untangle my bonds, these words are my thresh,

Release me, oh burden, unbind and let rest.

We all stared at the words for a long moment.

“That sounds so . . . simple,” I said.

“It’s not.” Nivelle’s voice deepened. “It is never that simple.”

“This is for unbinding the Aether?”

“It would seem so.”

Maeson paled. “It obviously requires blood. And bones.” I felt her nervous gaze on me, but I was too busy trying to decode the words to offer her any sort of consolation.

“Hearth . . .” Nivelle chewed on the word, and frowned when she came up with no plausible explanation. “Why would it require a stone from a hearth?”

I looked closer at the incantation, noting the placement of certain words. “It says ‘stone of the hearth,’ not ‘stone from the hearth.’ ‘From’ is a more literal sense. So, what if it doesn’t mean what we think it means?”