Crown of Crimson (Underworld Gods 2)

The mother stares at Hanna. She doesn’t move. Her eyes widen. Torben tries to get her to take the baby but she shakes her head. She doesn’t want anything to do with her, looks at Hanna as if she’s afraid of her own child.

Then baby Hanna starts to cry.

I watch the page but the story gives me no more. I flip it over and see Hanna being spoon-fed baby food by Torben. She’s maybe half a year old. Hanna’s mother watches from a distance, distrustful.

I turn through the rest of the pages I have looked through before and I can’t find out anything else except that Hanna’s mother disliked her from the start. I ache a little, knowing all too well what that feels like. My own mother was more Goddess than nurturer to me and my siblings, but because she could never touch me, I felt the isolation more than my siblings did.

We are the same, I think, running my fingers over Hanna’s face.

But the thought is foolish. We are nothing alike. She is a mortal and I am a God.

And yet, I doubt she really is mortal after all. That’s the reason I’m looking in her book to begin with. It’s more than her being Torben’s daughter and for her shaman bloodline to come through.

I think she has the blood of a Goddess in her as well.

But, after looking at her book, the only thing I’m convinced of is that her mother is not her mother at all. Torben had brought Hanna to her, but Hanna came from someone else…

Or somewhere else.

I close the book and exhale. I know I have eternity to figure this out. With Hanna as my wife now, she’s not going anywhere, not if I can keep her under lock and key this time. I will get to the bottom of her lineage, and if not me, then Vipunen may eventually lay his cards down.

Until then, there are bigger, more pressing things to worry about. Louhi. The uprising. I need to stop thinking I have two different enemies out there and start thinking of them as one. Louhi and the uprising may have different motives, but the goal is the same—me out of the picture.

I put Hanna’s book back on the shelf and then walk down the aisles toward the eastern wing. It’s different here, quiet. The ghosts that haunt the library don’t come down this way. I think the eons of magic scares them away. Some spells can conjure the spirits forward, pulled into this world in a corporal form. If dark magic is practiced, the spirits can be enslaved, much in the same way that my Shadow Self can. The very possibility of that happening must keep the ghosts at bay. No one wants to be a slave for eternity.

I pass by the rows of dried herbs, crystals, salts, and tinctures, past the bone altars and terrariums and small statues of various creatures, Gods, and Goddesses carved into obsidian, death wood, and empathic glass. At the very end of the hall is a small ceremonial room, shielded by tall velvet curtains. I draw them back, step inside, close them behind me.

It smells musty in here, like old smoke and frankincense. I haven’t been here in ages. I should come more often just to make sure everything is in its place. Even though no one except me, Sarvi, and Kalma have access to the library in general, sometimes magic itself can become sentient under the right conditions.

The room is small, shelves on either side with books, jars, and bottles. There is one window, tall and curved, as if the eye of a giant dragon is peering inside the castle. Unlike the stained glass or cathedral windows of the rest of the library, the window here doesn’t look onto the wild sea or the sharp mountains beyond Shadow’s End. It looks out into the etetteri, the very fabric of the veils itself. A glimpse, a portal, to the dimensions of the universe.

Truth be told, it’s fucking creepy. It’s like the ominous dark void of Oblivion, but with galaxies, planets, stars, black holes, crystals, rainbows, all stretching into an infinity that even my own brain can’t comprehend. There are shapes and colors that shimmer past the window that I know aren’t visible to any mortals, there are worlds that exist on the smallest of atoms, universes in which this one is just a grain of sand. It’s everything all at once and it’s what I, what anyone, really, must tap into when accessing magic.

Below the window to the veils lies another altar, this one carved from the ametrine that grows in the tunnels to Vipunen. Right now, the color is the purple of snowdrop flowers but will turn yellow when the magic is activated. On top of the altar is almost everything I need: a long knife with a tourmaline skull at the handle, a thin unlit black candle, and a quartz bowl.