Page 113 of Alchemy of Souls

I lean closer.

“What if we try touching it?” she asks, and I tense.

“No way. We don’t know what it is or what kind of ancient magic it contains. We don’t want you blasted across the room or your hand burned off.”

I look up at the round library that’s floor-to-ceiling books and turn in a circle. “There must be a thousand books in here,” I say like it’s a bad thing. “And all of ten minutes to go through them.”

Sage and the Lawless are in danger. Every minute we spend in here could mean catastrophic harm out there.

“We need a place to start. We spent hours going through Brachan’s poetry and only made it through a couple stacks,” she agrees.

“I’ll try a sifting spell,” I say. “It’ll at least point us in the right direction, hopefully to books with powerful enough spells to subdue my uncle.”

I lift my hand to cast, only there isn’t that familiar flutter or even a light hum, there’s no charge running down my fingertips or spark in the air. There isnothing. Nada. Zilch.

Horrified is an understatement. “I can’t cast.At all.”

Eloise reaches for her magic, but as she lifts her hand, her face scrunches.

“Nothing,” she says. “Can you still read my emotions?”

“If I couldn’t I’d have noticed as soon as we walked in,” I say.

“How can a room mute magic?” she asks.

“Well, it’s one hell of a protection, that’s for sure,” I say. “Aisling’s spellcraft was supposed to be legendary, but I’ve never heard of anything like this.”

“Maybe there’s some kind of catalogue or index?” Eloise suggests. “It’s hard to believe someone would collect all these valuable books in one place and not keep a record of them.”

We both immediately look at the heavy wooden desk and rush over to it. Eloise sifts through the papers on top while I pull open the drawers. We find old quills, empty ink bottles, and parchment, but no ledgers of any kind, and definitely not an index.

Eloise moves to the books on the coffee table, and I can scent her worry as I move to the nearest bookshelf.

I curse at the room, the one that’s supposed to have the answer, but is proving difficult.

“Anything?” I ask her and she shakes her head. But she doesn’t immediately rush to the next stack of books to check them. She pauses like she’s thinking.

Then suddenly her scent changes from worry to hope and I stop scanning book covers to look at her.

“Grayson, what if we don’t need a spell?” she says and meets my eyes.

I move toward her. “Explain, Claws.”

“We’re looking for a spell to counteract your uncle’s magic,” she continues. “But why do we need a spell when we have this room that mutes magic?”

I stop in my tracks. “Are you suggestingwe bring him in here?” I say, barely able to get the words out. “To the Archive Room that is supposed to contain every spell ever recorded and god knows what other secrets?”

“Look, I know it’s not ideal,” she says quickly, and that’s the understatement of the century. This is the exact thing I swore I’dneverdo. “But think about it, Gray. Your plan was to get him to admit the truth. If we brought him in here, we don’t need to subdue him with magic, we can just… talk.”

“Eloise, there is nojust talkingto my uncle. And there’s no way to bring him in here without giving him the Key.” I stare at her, hopingshe gets the gravity of this, of what a man like my uncle could do with free rein in this room. “We don’t even know what that glowing dome is, or what secrets lie in these books. One wrong piece of information and he could solidify his hold on the magical world. He could kill all the Lawless. He could—”

“It took both of us to open the door. He wouldn’t be able to get in without us,” she says.

“For how long, though? Do you really think you wouldn’t call it for him if your family was in danger? Or that I wouldn’t if you were in danger? It’s a huge gamble.”

“What’s the alternative? Even if we find the right book, we have no time to practice a spell. This is our best shot,” she says, and I hate that she has a point.

I press the heels of my hands into my forehead. After a long second of intense conflict, I say, “If we’re doing this, we need a plan. Not mine and Sage’s, a new one. One you and I come up with… together.”