Chapter 21

Flora’s P.O.V

“Ezra will kill us if she finds out!” Emma warned in a hushed whisper as we made our way to the library.

“If she finds out.” Daphne shrugged confidently, making us believe that this wasn’t the first time she had done something like this.

“It’s the middle of the night.” I offered. “Wouldn’t it look less suspicious if we came in the morning?”

“Do you think I can last till the morning?” Daphne turned to ask me the question. “Will you last till the morning? I’d rather have a good night’s sleep than wait eagerly for morning to come so I can find out about some forbidden ritual.”

Well…she did have a point.

“Ezra will kill us!” Emma repeated once more.

“Oh, hush, pussy cat!” Daphne scolded Emma. “Ezra hasn’t hurt a fly in centuries and she isn’t about to start now.”

“Didn’t you guys hear the rumors that she used to be a Viking Princess?” Emma gave us wide eyed stares.

Daphne and I both burst out laughing, much to her astonishment.

“Emma, I’m sorry to say this but Ezra is only three centuries old. Viking’s were gone five hundred years before her birth.” I told her with a hand on her shoulder.

“Ezra is as delicate as a freshly budded white rose.” Daphne added. “I couldn’t even picture her as a warrior in my dreams. Don’t believe every rumor you hear, Em. Not all are true.”

“But…but you saw how angry she got today?” Emma looked from me to Daphne helplessly. “She never gets mad! And she got really mad today.”

“At Andre, for bringing up a ritual she didn’t want us to know about.” Daphne shrugged. “What if the Blood Moon Ritual is a mate summoning ritual? Or a fertility ritual?” She looked at us hopefully. “Flora has already found her mate so she is fine with it, but what about us?”

“And what if it says to sacrifice something?” Emma frowned at Daphne. “It can be some kind of dangerous ritual as well.”

“Well, then we should find out about it rapidly!” Daphne seemed even more determined than ever. “So we accidentally do not perform them.”

“Some logic you have, Daphne.” I shook my head at her, but I had to admit, even I was intrigued at this point. “Let’s get going before someone sees us.”

“Yep!” Daphne clapped her hands together. “I knew you would understand my thirst for knowledge, Flora! Let’s go!”

Thirst for knowledge? I found myself impressed by Daphne’s own explanation of her nosiness, and found myself following her willingly.

Lindersay Library was possibly the biggest library on ancient documents and Moon rituals; however, most of these documents were also classified and reserved only for the Alpha, the Shrine Maiden and some high ranking soldiers. But that didn’t mean we didn’t know how to get inside the classified section.

Daphne and I used to make a hobby out of getting into the ‘forbidden section’ to read the ritual books when I had first started working as a Lunar Maiden. On the outside, Daphne might appear to be the perfectly poised young lady, but we both knew she had a wild streak to her as well, that she somehow always came with a rational explanation for her actions.

Right now, we borrowed one of Emma’s bobby pins to pick the lock that divided the main Literature and History library section and the section on Ritual books. Once we heard the click of the lock, we took it off and entered the room and shut the door behind us.

“Are you sure we should be doing this?” Emma asked for the thousandth time as Daphne gave her a death glare over her shoulder and frankly, she was starting to get on my nerve as well.

“If you’re so worried about getting in trouble, maybe you should’ve stayed back?” I asked her with a glare of my own.

“But then I’d have been worried sick about you guys.” Emma said in a small voice, her head bowed to the ground and I instantly felt bad.

It wasn’t Emma’s fault that she was a worry wart and it wasn’t her fault that we had suddenly decided to do something like this. Emma was a maternal female wolf and that was why she was mostly given nursery duties. She also taught physics to the teens in Lindersay’s schooling system.

“Well, we’re already here Em,” I spread my hands to point at the rows of old hardbound books that were still in pristine condition. “It’ll be a wasted opportunity if we backed out now.”

Emma didn’t have any further arguments, so we started to look through the rows of books, divided by year or occasion.

“This is going to take all night, Flora. We need something to narrow it down.” Daphne said after about fifteen minutes of us going through books containing Lunar Rituals. “We need to look for specifics.”

“Wait…” Emma came forward. “We are looking for Blood Moon rituals or a Red Moon specifically and Ezra told us directly that the ritual was banned several years ago, right?”

“Centuries to be specific, but yes.” I nodded.

“Then there is no way it’s going to be out here in the open, just waiting for lock-pickers like you to come in and read it!” Emma pointed out. “Ezra has her eyes everywhere, trust me on this. So she must have hidden all the books that aren’t supposed to be for just anyone to read.”

“So we search for hidden compartments…or drawers?” Daphne looked around the room as did Emma and I.

“There!” I pointed towards the end of the room, as my eyes landed on an ornate mahogany table at the farthest corner of the room, partially hidden between two book racks.

We rushed over to the table and as expected, found three drawers on either sides of it. Daphne instantly started looking at the drawers, pulling on the knob to find which one was locked.

“Three of these are locked.” Daphne said. “The bottom two on the left and the middle one on the right.”

“Search the ones that are open.” I told her. “Even if Ezra is careful about what she keeps out in the open for us to read, I doubt she had any idea Andre was going to bring up the Blood Moon ritual out of the blue. So she must not have hidden the keys yet.”

“You’re right.” Emma raised her eyebrows at me. “Your mate sure knows some interesting stuff.”

“Probably why I don’t feel the mating bond yet.” I muttered under my breath, only to get a mean look from Daphne. All I could do was shrug in return.

“Got it!” Daphne exclaimed in joy, holding up a bunch of keys in one hand. “Now to find the ones for the drawers.”

Emma and I waited patiently behind Daphne while she tried the locks for the drawers. I didn’t know about them, but I literally had my heart in my throat and I didn’t even know why. My gut feeling kept telling me this was important, this Blood Moon Ritual that Andre spoke about, and not just because of the obvious reasons…there was a deeper meaning to it all.

“Got it!” Daphne’s voice broke me out of my trance and both Emma and I hunkered down next to her, to look inside the contents of the first drawer. “Wait…what’s this?”

We pulled out the large, thick file like thing that was wrapped in a piece of cloth that looked old enough to have been Cleopatra’s floor rag. But when we took it off with care, there was a hard-bound file with several thick papers inside that appeared to be the handmade kind.

“This doesn’t look like the book we are looking for…” Emma muttered a bit unsurely. “Should we keep looking?”

“Yeah…I think we can come back to this later.” I told Daphne who was looking at the papers with such intensity that it worried me a bit. “Daphne? What’s wrong? Can you understand what’s on these papers? Is it about the Blood-”

“No.” Daphne shook her head immediately. “This isn’t a ritual book…this is a record book.”

“Record?” Emma frowned. “Like financial records? Daphne, if this is a spending book for the Shrine, we really shouldn’t be snooping around! Those are private!”

All Daphne did in return, was place the book on the floor, right in the centre so all of us could read it…and the first paper had my heart literally leaping out of my chest.

Flora Argentine. It was written in bold letters.

“It’s a record…of the Shrine Maidens.”