Valentine Morgestern

Valentine Morgenstern- Part 13

Paranoia is an odd thing. It makes you cautious and careful but it can drive you insane as well. Paranoia only served to benefit me. It made me perfectly cautious, it made me plan and think beyond the counter attack on the uprising.

What would I do after the uprising? I pondered that question as I planned my back up in case things went awry. Walking to Ragnor's cottage outside Alicante took me just about an hour but I enjoyed the peace and the time it afforded me to plot. Ragnor was going to help me, I hoped, have a potion or a draft of some description which would allow me to hold up under torture or kill me before Valentine could force me to confess my actions against him.

The paved path up to the cottage door was short and cracked. With a slight shake in my hand I knocked the door softly. Much to my surprise it was opened quite quickly. As always I stood for a moment just admiring Ragnor's green skin, something which was still so unusual to me yet it was so familiar to me as I couldn't remember a time in my life when I hadn't seen it.

"Yes Jocelyn? What brings you here?" Ragnor asked as confusion coloured his tone. Shadowhunters did not simply call by to speak to a warlock, it just wasn't done so I understood his confusion and curiosity.

"May I come in?" I asked.

"Of course," he said as he moved out of his doorway.

I moved through into the poky kitchen/living area and sat on the faded red sofa. I ran my left hand over the velvet fabric marvelling how it felt so strange against my skin.

"So Jocelyn?"

"Ragnor, I need your help," I admitted, "But you must not tell anyone I've seen you."

"No warlock nephilim confidentiality," he joked weakly but he sat beside me.

"I've been planning to thwart my husbands plans for an uprising to ruin The Accords," I bluntly stated, "But I'm afraid I won't hold up under torture, which I know Valentine would not hesitate to do. Is there anything I can do to protect myself Ragnor? Anything, even a spell, a potion. Something even if it kills me because I'd rather leave the world on my own terms than at his hand on his terms." My conviction in what I was doing was proven to Ragnor in my words as his expression shifted to one of awe and he smiled.

"There is one thing I can do for you," he said as he stood up and made his way to his cramped bookshelf.

Carefully he ran his fingers over the spines of spell books and he paused at one with a lilac coloured cover. Running his finger down the spine which held the books name in Latin. Then with a thoughtfulness I had never attributed to him before he slipped the lilac cover off the book revealing a cream cover and the books true name was embossed in gold writing on the front. "The Book of White." Ragnor flipped idly through the pages and when he found the page he required he handed the book to me.

I read the page which mercifully was in English. The page was yellowed with age but the writing remained as black as the day it was written. I read the words. The potion would send me into a deep sleep and I would only be revived with the antidote which couldn't be mixed by anyone but a warlock and could only be mixed prior to being awakened.

"Can you mix me the potion to make me sleep please?" I requested.

"Certainly Jocelyn but before I do who do you trust to know the location of this ancient spell book and know how to revive you?" Ragnor raised one dark eyebrow expressively in question.

"I know someone," I said as my mind latched on Madeline, whom I hadn't seen since my engagement party.

Ragnor nodded and did not press for details.