Lights Flicker And Fade : Kol Mikaelson [3]

280: That's Not How Our Story Ends

MAY 2018

Kol found himself in a city he hadn't visited since the 1400's, his belongings scattered through a room at the top of an elaborate cathedral tower. Beneath him, the rusting jails cells and rooms of praise had been converted into coven storage spaces and bedrooms. He had to respect the Austrian coven for taking over the place – not many covens could say they now operated entirely from a building that once prosecuted them, able to harness the power of all the lost souls he'd technically damned.

He'd unintentionally damned.

Kol didn't think it was entirely his fault that the inquisitor's decided to track everyone he slept with, and, in the end, the worst one had fallen for his charms too. And the coven clearly didn't blame him either – oh, no, quite the opposite. They had a century's worth of information on him thanks to the church's archives, and they had welcomed him with open arms. Trialling magic for Kol Mikaelson was an honour!

While they'd initially been incredibly overbearing about observing his process, once the first few feeders had been dropped out the tower window, they'd taken the hint to give him space.

He sat in the centre of that top floor room, the tower not quite curved, more, an amber brick hexagon, three of the walls replaced with bookshelves; grimoires, research papers, and coven history. Two others had large windows, starlight spilling in, the third decorated with a portrait. His face. The ornate gold frame was almost flattering, the attention to detail something someone could only craft through the eye of love...or obsession. Back then, Kol had thought those words were the same thing, and his only object of it was witchcraft.

He'd dragged out a collection of books he deemed most relevant, marked up the pages he'd used, then shoved them all to the edges, half-scribbled papers encircling him, repeating the key phrases he'd pulled out.

When MJ had returned to Mystic Falls after breaking up with him, he'd been alone with Qetsiyah's Grimoire, and he'd taken it with him when he'd left. He'd made pages of translations, carefully reviewing them, next to his mother's Grimoire, flagging any section with Ayana's initials on it. He also had a few pages of the Prison World Bennett Grimoire, then, The Verite Nwa. At the start, he'd been cautious when opening it, fighting against the bindings and trembling, and oddly quiet noises. Part of him still wasn't entirely sure the noises were real, but then it had caused an incredibly realistic MJ hallucination, so, Kol was responding to anything it offered. After four years, that spell book had become his constant.

It was nestled into his left side, a gentle warmth against his skin, Kol unable to stop himself smiling at it. It was a book. He knew it was just a book.

But MJ's soul was in it.

A piece of her – and Kol couldn't help but think that was why it had taken a liking to him. Or, why it was trying to be helpful, even if the majority of spells weren't relevant to his quest.

"How to breach an ancestral plane," He murmured, "We know how to make one, how to destroy one, and how to transfer one, but not how to breach without destruction."

Candles encircled all the papers, dotted randomly, like tangled fairy lights, across every table, pushed towards the walls as two humans perched on stools, one slitting their wrists every half hour, filling up goblets, the other on his right side, arm hanging out, so Kol could simply bite up without having to move from the floor. There was a third body slumped in the corner, heartbeat just about floating in his ear, fate yet to be decided.

"Breach, Kol," He crumpled up a page, chucking it towards the window, "Breaching is just like travelling, only, we are having to make a new hole."

He knew Bonnie had the Essí grimoire, leaving him to write out everything he could remember from it, without any way to check.