Page 110 of The Serpent Prince

Eventually, a minuscule crack appeared where the shield met the floor, no bigger than a small hairline fracture, inches long.

Sweat dripped down her brow, and her arms were shaking, but Imani smiled.

It might not even be what she was looking for, but if it was the only thing in this library that was this protected, it was worth seeing, in her opinion.

She worked for what felt like another hour. Wielding her shadows was natural, but the alteration and enchantment magic took a toll. Swaying on her feet a little, Imani examined her work—there was an opening now, no bigger than a cubby hole, that had cracked near the floor. Dropping to her hands and knees, Imani willed her shadows to seep into her skin, fully covering her, protecting her.

Her breath came in short pants as she crawled forward. Her hands shook.

She was afraid.

The hole might be too small, she might get stuck, there might not be anything on the other side. Her magic might not be able to hold it open.

It was a tighter squeeze than she’d originally thought. Wiggling and shimmying her way through took several minutes, and she could feel the syrupy magic trying to stop her. She wouldn’t stop now—she couldn’t. She’d come too far.

Finally, she tugged her second foot free from the hole and plopped on a mossy, wet floor, trying to catch her breath as she took in her new surroundings. A bookshelf, just like the others in the room, lorded over her, like some fearsome beast. She had no doubt there was more defensive magic she’d need to overcome to reach whatever was hidden here.

She could feel a power emanating like all wands did, except this felt far more pervasive. It seeped into her bones and tingled with a warning.

Standing upright, she found a ladder attached to the shelving, which she promptly climbed. Imani was far too short to reach the manuscripts at the top, but that was where she needed to start. Careful not to disturb too many of the items, she grabbed the first scroll she could.

It was titled Manuscript 1147. The sight made her giddy. Painstakingly, she placed it back on the shelf and grabbed the one next to it.

A zap shocked her, forcing her to rip her hand away as it burned. Shaking it out, she stared at the plain-looking scroll for a moment. This was something special.

With her wand out, she cast more spells to break through the wards and shields surrounding the paper. The shocks grew more and more fierce and persistent. Her hands and arms were covered in welts by the time she’d stripped it bare.

Wiping more sweat from her forehead, Imani took several deep breaths. She rubbed her hands on her leggings to get rid of the clamminess and some of the blood from the burns then reached for the manuscript.

As she unfurled it, something dropped to the floor below, tumbling and rolling away as it hit the hard stone.

Imani could have sworn it was long and slim.

The sound it made when it fell against the hard ground made her think it was perhaps made of wood.

Her entire body froze.

It couldn’t be.

Imani’s heart pounded in her ears. Would finding the Drasil be that easy? Granted, it had taken her almost a year to track it down, plus this room was cavernous and a scrap of paper with numbers on it hardly counted as a clue.

Still, this could be it. Her grandmother wouldn’t have saved that number if it wasn’t important.

Moving as fast as she could, she descended the ladder and jumped down to the ground.

Unlike the gnarled uniqueness of each Draswood wand, this one was smooth and covered with small grooves and patterns, almost like a work of art. The wand seemed to glow the closer she got to it, and when she reached down to pick it up, searing heat burned her skin before shooting up her arm.

With a startled shout, Imani dropped the wand to the ground again.

She tried three more times, and each time was worse than before. She would kill herself if she kept trying to pick it up.

Dropping to her knees, Imani took out her Draswood and whispered several words of a spell she’d used many times with Master Selhey—how to determine what magic a wand held and how to reconfigure it.

Inside the wand was a myriad of layers, more than she’d ever felt before. Counting each one, Imani discovered there were more than twenty layers to the wand, meaning it could wield at least twenty different types of magic at once. She only had eight markings, and the most anyone had in the Mesial realm was twelve. But, since one of hers was from the Under, she surmised that this wand was configured to wield far more magic from other worlds, not just here.

This was, without a doubt, a powerful wand, and she had a feeling which one.

It took her a long time to stabilize the layers. It had to be creeping toward the afternoon by now. Such complicated, intense magic took intense concentration, and she was already exhausted from breaking through two sets of wards. Eventually, she’d forced as many layers as she could into latency—not all twenty, but some—and brought forth her own power to fuse them to the core. The wand glowed again, an intense brightness that lasted for several seconds, then it dimmed into a dull ember.