The Black Bird Oracle

“But sometimes, words just aren’t enough. Sometimes, I need you to experience it with me rather than through me as though I were already a memory bottle on a shelf.” The raw emotion in Matthew’s

“Angele Dei, qui custos es mei,” he murmured. “Me tibi commissum pietate superna; Hodie illumina, custodi, rege, et guberna.”

occidens, septentrio, and meridies—

There’s nothing for you here, he said. Hearth and cauldron will never be home for witches like us. You must climb higher to find what you seek.

pentacle held in concentric rings, with an elemental circle at each point of the star.

“Vultures feed on what others leave behind in the mistaken belief that it is of no value.”

“Darkness is already interested in us. Stay in Shadow.” That meant embracing the uncertain outcome of our mission to Isola della Stella, rather than worrying about what might go wrong.

It’s what led to the Rites Revision Covenant of 1919.” “What rites?” Baldwin frowned. “The bell, book, and candle ceremony at age thirteen; choosing a path at the Crossroads before age twenty-one; walking the Labyrinth, for those witches who showed promise in higher magic,”

What nourishes me, destroys me. It had been Matthew’s motto long before it was Kit Marlowe’s.