Gothghul Hollow by Anna Stephens

Author:Anna Stephens
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2021-12-16T16:51:04+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

Gothghul Castle, the present

‘To say she became obsessed would be an understatement,’ Aaric said softly, breaking the spell he’d woven with his tale. Edrea blinked, coming back to the room slowly. She’d been almost able to see her mother, a whirlwind of energy out on the moors, a coiled spring here in this very library, only her curiosity and lust for knowledge pinning her in her chair long enough to read and study and learn.

‘I should have seen it,’ Tiber­ius said mournfully.

Aaric tsked gently. ‘We both should have. You were still recovering. And she was my wife.’

‘And so you were used to her fancies,’ the priest contradicted, almost aggressively. ‘My duty is to see people’s needs and their weaknesses, to nurture them through illnesses, physical and spiritual. In this I failed.’ They spoke as if they’d had this argument hundreds of times before. As if Aaric’s guilt was an old friend – or an old enemy. ‘You’d become desensitised, almost, to how intense her focus could become. And you were recovering too. It made sense for me to work with Lady Heph­zibah while you healed and dealt with correspondence from the Guard, so the responsibility was mine to see when she began to spiral out of curiosity and into something… darker.’

Edrea didn’t say anything to comfort either of them. It sounded very much like one of them should, in fact, have noticed if her mother’s research had taken a turn into compulsion. Especially for a sorceress as powerful as she knew Heph­zibah to have been. Obsessions among spellcrafters often led to catastrophe. Edrea had a sudden, uncomfortable inkling that that explained her father’s concern over her own studies. And yet I am not my mother. Her intensity is not mine.

She resolutely didn’t think about how far she’d pushed herself only in the last day and night in order to reach this point. It wasn’t the same thing at all.

‘It took weeks for my books to arrive from home,’ Tiber­ius continued when it was clear Edrea wasn’t going to give either of them the comfort of a denial. She focused back on the conversation. ‘We had more than enough here to keep us occupied during the wait, and we found several other references, some to the hauntings and killings across Shyish, others to the number four. None of them appeared linked on the surface, but when taken together, it was clear there was a pattern emerging.’

‘Is this to do with the Curse of Null Island?’ Runar asked.

Tiber­ius rocked his hand from side to side. ‘Yes and no,’ he said. ‘The curse is simply this region’s connection to the wider pattern of activity.’

‘What pattern?’ Edrea asked hoarsely.

‘According to the research your mother found, the initial lives taken served to strengthen the apparition, the spectre, or whatever it was,’ Aaric said, taking over the narrative. ‘All the accounts and legends concurred that only once it had gathered its strength through the killings could it impart the message of the Four. Or the message of Mhurghast.

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