Page 108 of A Time of Witches

After all, she had the solution she’d been tasked with finding.

Now, how to relay the message to the past?

Lilith flipped through the grimoire, but the pages were all the same as they had been previously, not revealing anything new.

Not until…

A page slipped off the back of another as if what had been stuck together released to reveal a new entry in yet a different style of handwriting.

Another woman’s story. Another secret revealed.

Chapter Fifty-Two

Sybil

Sybil stared at John Griffin, wishing he had not come. Regretting most miserably that he should see her in such a broken state.

Those familiar gray-green eyes she had never forgotten now searched hers in a way that made the tight fist of her heart unfurl. “I have been waiting seventeen years for a word from you,” he said softly.

She blinked.

He had been waiting for her?

All those difficult moments in her life when she had longed for him to be at her side. That painful year after he left. Her mother’s death, having to scrape together skill enough to sell tinctures and simples to keep herself and Jacinda fed.

Even her marriage to Henry and their vow to one another, to respect and care for the other, knowing love to be impossible. And after Henry’s death, the pain of his absence, the guilt of her role in his demise.

“Sybil, I love you.” John stepped closer.

But she pulled away, overly aware of the sharp odor of her person. “I’m…I’m not the same woman anymore.”

“But you are,” he protested. “Strong. Caring. Opinionated. Beautiful.”

A sob choked out of her, unbidden.

He approached again, slowly, cautiously, and lifted his hands to her face. “The same full lips I dream of at night and those golden hazel eyes that see me in a light no other has since.”

“My hair—” Her voice caught.

“Will grow back, as lovely as it ever was.” There were new lines next to his eyes, a sunburst of crinkles she had not known. Carved from laughter she had not heard and smiles she had not witnessed. Those lines transformed him from the boy of her memories to the man he was now.

So much had changed since that boy and girl who fell in love.

And yet, as he stroked his fingertips over her jaw, as her body responded with a hitch of her breath and a quickening of her pulse, she realized some things had stayed exactly the same.

She thought of Edith then, so convinced that she was ugly. How to those who loved her, she was beautiful.

Her loss struck Sybil anew in a blaze of agony.

Hot tears trailed down her cheeks before she could stop them.

John opened his arms, and she fell into them. The rasp of his wool robe scratched at her cheek, and she breathed him in. He still smelled the same, fresh like a rainstorm with the underlying spice that was so unique to him. And when he put his arms around her, she still fit perfectly against him.

He whispered her name as he held her, his voice warm with quiet affection. Slowly, his words melted into her heart, bolstered her spirit. Until a semblance of her humanity finally returned.

When at last her sobbing ran its course, she straightened and apologized for having wept so unabashedly on his robe. The dark stain of her tears showed against the wool.

“I worried I would take too long to arrive,” John said. “I was in Ipswich when I received word from Kat. Then I was waylaid by storms, and my horse threw a shoe. I thank God I am not too late. Surely there is something I might do.”