Hierophant Green Requiem Novels & Stories

Problem solved. The clearing glows with lanterns, fairy lights in the trees, and floating balloons lit from within. Flowers are everywhere—decorating the altar, trees, chairs, and tables. Hemlock, black poplar, monkshood, and cyclamen for Hecate. Myrtle, white roses, poppies, and lilies of the valley for Selene. Unlit candles ring the altar. Caleb, Citra and Michael’s son, plays guitar as I walk down the aisle. When I reach Nathan, his eyes are almost entirely taken over by his irises.

But as Kaelen half-carried me up the stairs, past the unconscious form of the mercenary, Lyra’s voice stopped us, thin and reedy with a new terror. She was pointing at the grimoire in my limp grasp. Where the symbol on the cover had glowed with soft, silver light, a new, ugly color was now bleeding into it. A vein of corrosive, sickly green was crawling through the spiral, like a poison working its way through a bloodstream. “The Defiler felt it,” she whispered, her face ashen. “He felt you use the Symphony. You have shown him the key is not just alive… but that it can already turn the lock.”

I love you all. Sabrina looked over the items filling her small altar. There were rosy red apples, a small orange pumpkin and marigolds in deep red and yellow. Four candles stood on the altar, a white candle for the Goddess, a gold candle for the God, a black candle for the southern point and a pink candle for the spell she would work. The censer was already filled with spice incense. She lit it now, along with the black candle and the candle in the clay pot. The white handled knife and silver pentacle lay ready to hand, as well as her dull athame blade.

“This could be another trial. You need to hear what Andronika has to say.” The skald pushed free of his grip, then wrapped her cloak more snugly over her body before saying, “What did you see?” I had to be careful, for whatever I said to Philomela may be disclosed in one of her songs, and I had not forgotten Tristan’s assumption that she was spying on Alpha Orion’s behalf. “ The specter. I saw it up close. It was scorched right down to the bone and speaking seemed to give it pain. Only its eyes were complete. They were”—human —“green. The tint of leaves.”