lips, he turned to his desk and took a seat.
The Rose Book lay before him, ready and waiting. Almost taunting in its perfect stillness. He rested his hands on the straps holding it shut but did not open the cover. Not yet. Not just yet.
Would he be able to survive the coming battle? It was one thing to reinforce the spell every night. He had time then between sunrise and sunset to recover before the Thorn Maiden rallied for another assault. But with the Night of Noxaur falling across Roseward, would she ever relent?
He tried not to let his mind drift to Nelle down in the chamber below. He couldn’t let himself be distracted. He had to trust that she would heed his warnings. That she would remain inside the lighthouse protections.
Darkness drew a sharp, harsh line across the floor of the tower chamber. Soran recoiled at the abruptness of it and quickly shook his head to clear his thoughts. He must prepare. He must focus.
After first setting candles at the ready in their wooden bowls, he turned his attention to the Rose Book. His hands trembling, he undid the straps and flipped open the cover.
The Thorn Maiden stirred.
He felt her deep in her realm. The writhing, powerful mass of her responding to the Night. He felt her pleasure as she stretched out her many limbs, testing her strength. She sensed opportunity, and she wouldn’t miss it. He must be quick and ruthless with his spell-craft if they were to have any hope of survival.
Bowing to his work, Soran called the words to life. His spirit, unbound by physicality, connected with the physical construct of those written characters, those ideas captured in ink. And in the space between, magic radiated to life, burning up from the page.
But something was wrong.
He sensed the wrongness almost immediately, before he’d made it through even the first page of the spell. The magic was there and as strong as ever. But somehow the Thorn Maiden wasn’t reacting to it as she should.
He reached out with his spirit perceptions, trying to find her again. He’d felt her near when the darkness first closed in. But now that Night had fallen in earnest, he couldn’t sense her. He reached further, searching through the forests of Roseward, along the cliff edges, but still felt nothing.
He reached further still, and . . .
As his awareness crept to the edge of Dornrise, he found her. A snarled knot of power concentrated around the old house.
“Helenia!” he called out in spirit, trying to catch her attention.
She made no response. Something had captured her interest so completely that she had no attention to spare for him.
Soran blinked, bringing his concentration back on the Rose Book spell before him. The words flared with life and power, and the magic shimmered in the air before his vision. But it wasn’t working. Something was different. Something interfered with the magic.
What could he do? He felt the Thorn Maiden crawl out of her own nightmare realm, creeping into this level of reality. Not completely, but one strand at a time. If he had use of his hands, perhaps he could find a way to bind her anew, write new layers of complexity into the spell. But as he was . . .
Soran drew a deep breath, his nilarium-crusted fingers curling into fists. “I’ll have to fight,” he whispered.
It could work. If he took the strongest of his spell weapons with him, he could battle the Thorn Maiden’s physical manifestation and drive her back into the Nightmare Realm where she belonged. Then he could complete the binding and hold her. At least for a few hours.
But once those weapon spells were used up, that was that. He would be helpless the next time she broke through.
What other choice did he have? He’d known this day was coming, sooner or later.
But why must it be now? When more than just his life was at stake . . .
Soran read on through the Rose Book until he reached the end of the fifth page. There was no point in trying to finish it, not yet. Not until he’d driven the Thorn Maiden out of this layer of reality. He put a temporary hold on the spell so that the magic didn’t unravel. If he were quick, he should be able to pick up where he’d left off.
Closing the book, he fastened it shut, then tucked it into the front of his robe. He dared not leave it behind,