“He’s still at least a day or two away.”
Angelique unsteadily sucked in a breath of air and stepped into the cottage. I’m going to rip this spell apart. I have to!
Angelique scrunched her brow, her eyebrows sinking so low it became harder to see. No matter what angle she looked at it from, she couldn’t make sense of the spell cast on Snow White.
She’d meticulously gone over the symbols used in the spell and the way the strands of it were arranged. With the exception of one or two symbols, the entire thing flummoxed her.
It’s brutish. While it’s twisted with the tang of dark magic, it is also fundamentally cast and created in a different way than the spellwork I was taught.
Shaping her core magic and twisting it into a usable spell was delicate work with lots of specifics to it. The spell cast on Snow White was almost primitive in comparison. It had fewer lines of spell work and used a much smaller variety of symbols, but Angelique didn’t recognize them at all!
Two of the symbols looked familiar. Arranged in that particular pattern, they were used to put the target of the spell into a deep sleep. (Angelique was particularly familiar with them given all the meddling she had done in the curse that made the Princess of Sole fall into a deep sleep.)
It wasn’t a perfect match to those symbols, but Angelique felt confident enough in it given Snow White’s condition.
Sleeping didn’t sound so bad. But unfortunately, due to the shortness of the spell and the way the strands of it crisscrossed—or didn’t—Angelique was confident the spell didn’t include anything that would support Snow White’s body during the sleep. In fact, based on the dark symbols liberally swirled in among the gray, it seemed the spell was set to deteriorate Snow White’s health as time passed.
This isn’t just black magic. It’s got some of that in there, but more than pure black magic, it just seems extremely powerful and ancient.
Angelique tried pinching a few strands of the spell, desperately looking for a spot that wouldn’t be dangerous to cut through. But the deterioration part of the spell likely meant it would instantly kill Snow White if Angelique altered it at the wrong place.
“Magic take it!” Angel snapped.
Marzell paused his nervous pacing. “What is it?”
Angelique planted her palms on the table—which was covered in a few blankets and had been converted into a makeshift bed for Snow White—and peered over the princess, trying in vain to scrutinize the spell once more. “This is the one time—the one time—I want it to be a curse so I can patch in a stupid ‘true love’s first kiss’ fix. But it’s not a ruddy curse!”
“I don’t understand,” Marzell said. “Can’t you tell what is doing this to her?”
“I can, of a sort. But it’s not good news. It’s a spell that has placed her in a deep sleep.” Angelique shoved her purposely-poorly-cut hair out of her face.
“And that is worse than a curse?” Some of the tightness in Marzell’s shoulders eased a little—because he didn’t yet understand how dire the situation really was.
Why did I leave her in the cottage? I should have helped her with those stupid mushrooms!
“With the right opposing force—like love and sacrifice—curses can be broken,” Angelique dully explained. “It usually takes great force to undo it because they are stronger and deadlier.”
“Isn’t that good news, then?” Wendal asked. He was crouched in front of the fire he’d been tending to, worriedly fidgeting with his daggers. “Doesn’t that imply whatever did this to her is less powerful?”
“If we’re looking at sheer strength, yes,” Angelique said. “The problem is I don’t know how this spell was placed on her. Did Faina throw it on her? Did she do something to Snow White? I can’t tell.”
“What does that matter?” Marzell asked. “Aren’t spells easier to break?”
“They are, except this one is strange.” Angelique scrubbed her face with her hands.
How can I make them understand how impossible this is—there shouldn’t be a mage alive that knows how to use something like this. Not even black magic is cast like this.
“It’s like nothing I’ve seen,” Angelique started. “Not because it’s particularly terrible; it’s just weird. The spell strands aren’t like any kind of casting I’ve ever seen. It seems antiquated and outdated. But that’s where the problem lies—I can’t pick it apart since I don’t understand the casting. If I knew how it started, I would be able to unravel it, but since