Senna sat alone in the small witch room below the great library.
Round walls. Cold stone. No window. An oil lamp threw yellow light from the eastern shelf, and the smell of the burning wick was the only warm thing in the room.
She’d left her boots at the door. That was the southern way. You didn’t work magic with your boots on. She’d stopped wondering why centuries ago.
She drew a chalk circle in the center of the floor.
She set the grey stone inside it.
Then she sat down and breathed.
The stone had been in her hand before three weeks ago, when she’d felt for Selene’s binding thread, and again when she’d listened beneath it for the older pull of Morwen’s work. Small and grey, no bigger than her thumb. The kind of stone a child picks up near a stream and forgets in a coat pocket. A wo
