Shantel Tessier Books In Order The Ritual Novels & Stories

My eyes landed on Ares, Benedict, and Shantel. “What do you think you are doing?” Benedict said, stepping forward with a frown. “Nothing…” the words hung in my throat as the librarian stepped back in. She didn't seem to understand til she stopped next to me, glancing at the real councilwoman and then back at Kaela and me. “Urh…” she trailed off. The book of forbidden magic was still in her hands, so I reached for it, but Shantel grabbed it first, moving faster than the speed of light.

Her feet carried her down halls she wasn’t meant to know, guided by something between instinct and defiance. She reached the tower. The door was unlocked. That terrified her more than if it had been sealed. Inside, stairs spiraled upward. She climbed. Each step felt like crossing into something that didn’t belong to her. At the top was a single room. In the center stood a table. On it lay a book bound in dark red velvet. The Velvet Oath. Her hands trembled as she touched it. The cover felt warm. She opened it. The pages were not stories.

These shelves were loaded with tales of the Moon Goddess, long-forgotten festivals, and ancient rituals. A book cracked its spine when I opened it after yanking it free. The title was written in beautiful calligraphy: The Bonds of Eternity. I flipped over the pages, looking for anything that caught my attention. The majority of the content consisted of flowery, ambiguous reflections on the sacredness of mate ties. But then I saw only one word: Ritualum Disvinculum. The Severance Ritual. As I continued to read, my heart raced. The ceremony was a method, painstakingly explained; it was not only a fiction.

Watching the road below the way she watched everything, with the particular patience of someone who had learned a long time ago that threats rarely announced themselves. Caelith sat on the edge of the bed and talked. She started from the beginning. The dreams. The feeling on the street that first Wednesday. The black car and the chemical cloth and the ritual room with the candles that didn't flicker. The stranger who appeared and disappeared and submitted her essay and left her on a bench on a road nobody used. Zara, the courtyard, the blood deal. The journal. The friend she called at midnight who knew things she shouldn't have known from footnotes.

Something I couldn’t really explain. Vashti stared long at him. Then she murmured. "The ritual... It’s starting to affect you." What is she talking about? What ritual? What is affecting him? My heart thudded like prey hooves fleeing across snow. Selene said nothing, but I could feel her gaze sharpen beside me. Then it stilled. The wind. The shrine. Everything. Shabari lifted the jar with reverence. Inside, the pelt shimmered. A low, eldritch glow pulsed beneath its fur.

Then, to the right, and at the end of a long row of books, one book jutted out from the shelf. I pulled it out. It didn’t have a name. It was a leather-bound volume, and its cover had a skeletal hand clutching a wilting rose. I opened the book, skimming through the pages. My stomach turned at some of the rituals inside. Selene was too arrogant, too vein, to resort to grave robbing, and there would be no need to stitch me together if her plan was to take over people’s bodies as she had before. The Binding.

It was a perfect match. Hand shaking, she read the complete text for the first time. It was all in Latin, and the words lined up perfectly. She read the ritual again and again. As she did, she felt in every pore of her body that this was genuine. For the first time, her heart filled with hope. Here it was, right before her eyes. A way to save her daughter. With a twinge of guilt, Caitlin delicately tore the half page out of the book, placing it in her folder with the other half of the page. She set the book down, picked up her bag, and hurried across the room to the stone wall, banging on it.

This was a new level of vulnerability, but there was something about Raziel's gaze that made me feel safe and desired. Our eyes met, and I flashed Raziel a subtle smile before slowly pulling my shirt over my head. My shorts followed, sliding down my legs and pooling on the floor. Standing before him in my matching black lace bra and panties, I felt a thrill of excitement as Raziel's gaze devoured me. His eyes roamed my body, drinking in every detail, and I could sense the hunger in his gaze.

"They have, ever since she was born." Cassandra set the little serpent among the piles of gold coins. The creature sagged in defeat and exhaustion after lying before that terrible fire. "There it is," Vasilisa's voice came from behind a mountain of walnut-sized raw rubies. It wasn't hard to find the book. It was placed on a golden stand in between two golden Sirin statues. The grimoire turned out to be the largest book Cassandra had ever seen, with pages made of parchment illuminated with tracery, and it was open to a page thickly covered with elegant, intricate writing.

Most of them were written in tongues long forgotten, but I was looking for one thing, the Severing Ritual. “Middle shelf. Left corner,” Keiran whispered. I followed her guidance, pulling out a heavy, black-bound book with silver runes crawling across its surface. The moment my fingers touched it, the book pulsed, like a heartbeat. My skin prickled. “This has to be it,” I murmured. I opened it to a page marked with a crimson thread. The spell was there, a ritual older than the royal bloodline. A way to sever a bond not by rejection, but by force. By darkness. By blood.