Chapter 13

"What is all this, Bexley?"

I gestured to the table overflowing with potions and books and piles of scribbled, barely decipherable notes. "And what were you up to all night? Besides baking bread?"

The mage looked exhausted. We'd taken turns keeping watch last night, but Bexley hadn't slept. I knew because every time I'd passed by this room, a thin strip of light had glowed beneath the closed door.

"Some might call this an obsession." Bexley's wary smile wobbled. "Others would call it folly. But this is all that's left of my research." Bexley swept his hand across the chaotic table, the ring on his finger glinting. "My life's work, what few scraps remain."

"And what is your life's work?" I flipped one of the books closed. Ancient Rites of Forgotten Races.

"When I was but a wee boy, my master in Tempeste told me a rhyme from an old fairy tale." He paused, then quoted,

"From the void, relentless and grim,

Their whispers chill, their presence dim.

They came to rend, to tear apart,

Our world of dreams, our fragile hearts.

Worlds quake as they weave their plight,

And in their wake, oblivion"s blight."

He slapped my hand away from the pile of books I was fiddling with. "My master became convinced beings from another world arrived in Old Valarian. They came as conquerors to drink our world dry, but someone fought back. And won."

His fingers rested lightly on the table. "The invaders became stranded here, trapped in an endless battle with those who defied them."

"Who were they?" I asked curiously. "The ones who stood against them?"

"My master died before he found the answer. All I have is the riddle that has been handed down from mage to mage since the beginning of our order. But if there was ever an explanation, it was lost to time."

"Or merely a well-kept secret," Raz suggested from the doorway.

"The poem is about the Old Gods," I guessed.

Bexley nodded. "Yes. Over the years, I have carried on my master's work, somewhat half-heartedly, I'll admit. But since the poem mentions blight, I have redoubled my efforts, though it seems I am too late, given our current state of affairs."

There were pivotal moments in life, times when you wondered if you were on the right track. The fact that Bexley was here, looking for the same thing we were…

I didn't know if I should be grateful or terrified.

I hesitated then tugged Anaria's handwritten piece of paper out of my pocket. "And what can you tell me about this?"

"Where did you get that?" Raziel surged forward when I flattened the piece of paper on the table, the edges curled, the deep creases dog-eared. "I thought I fucking lost it the day we rode to Nightcairn."

"Anaria retrieved this from your jacket," I told him shortly. "Bex, can you read what it says?"

Bexley's hand shook when he reached for the paper, his eyes alight with excitement. "Wherever did you find these markings?"

Raz shrugged, the very picture of carelessness. "Some old book Anaria found in a library. She was curious about the symbols and wondered if the writing explained what they meant."

Bexley nearly tripped over himself as he rounded the table and pulled out a worn book, no bigger than a diary. "Those markings are in my master's journal. There is no writing beneath them, but the symbols…" He frantically flipped through the pages. "Yes, they are the same." His finger skimmed down the page then over Anaria's handwritten paper. "Yes. They're a perfect match."

"What about the writing? Can you read that?"

Bexley picked up the page and peered closer then pursed his lips. "Some. Hardly any, in truth. This is a very old language. The best I can do is recognize some root words in Old Valarian and extrapolate the meanings. This…this word means battle, and this means…fight. Or party. The etymology is quite close."

"Enough you could translate?"

"Enough I could interpret every tenth word, and even then wouldn't be close to being correct."

"Do it," Raz said with no hesitation. "As quickly as you can."

"Do you want to give me a hint of what this is about?" Bexley's eyes shone with the kind of excitement reserved for small children and madmen. "I mean, if I knew why you had this paper, and what purpose these symbols served, my translation might be more…accurate."

"Because those symbols you're so enamored with are etched into our skin." I yanked back my shirt, revealing the black mark branded over my heart.

"And because we are those conquerors. Five of them, anyway. We need to figure out how to kill the other two before they destroy this world."

To his credit,after some hyperventilating and too much strong liquor, Bexley was taking the recent developments in stride.

But in my world, liquor fixed everything. Usually.

"The problem is twofold. The Oracle and Corvus are older, stronger, and their roots run deeper in this world." He blinked happily as I refilled his glass.

"You lot are babies by their standards, no matter how far back your bloodlines run. You are merely the watered-down descendants of once-powerful gods. Attaining your full power could take you a thousand years, maybe longer."

"And turn us into monsters in the process," Anaria pointed out wryly, shooting me another glare. "I can't believe you didn't wake me up for this, Tavion Montgomery."

"You were fast asleep and things progressed swiftly. In ways Raz and I did not foresee," I said, glad when she turned her evil eye to Raziel. Better him than me.

"Monsters would be bad," Bexley agreed. "But there is something else. If the two of them are twins, chances are they share magic between them."

His brow cocked. "Can you share powers? Do you even know how to access each other's magic? I think not." He tossed back the entire glass in one swallow, his thin throat bobbing.

"Given time, you would learn, but the Oracle will never give you that time. She will never allow you to become strong enough to defeat her and her brother and break the stranglehold they have on this world."

His smile faltered. "She will kill you all before you become a threat."

"I had a theory that the answer was somewhere in there." Anaria jerked her head toward the ratty paper. "Now, I suppose we'll never know."

She was getting desperate. We all were. Here we were, pinned down in a palace we all despised, surrounded by creeping rot meant to kill us, and we were no further ahead than we'd been months ago.

All we knew for sure was that in order to kill Corvus and the Oracle, at least two of us had to die.

Which was total bullshite.

"I'll work on the writing." The mage's face softened as he looked at Anaria. "Knowing all of this, as unbelievable as it sounds, helps. I'll try to find the answers you're looking for."

"Thank you, Bexley." Anaria's smile wavered, but that hope in her eyes glowed brighter, despite our fading odds. "What we really need is a magical weapon that will kill them," she grumbled. "Enough with the riddles and clues. Just give me a chunk of steel I can stab into their chests and be done with this."

She grinned up at me. "I know Tavion would love to stab something right about now."

"You have no idea what I'd like to do now, wife," I whispered, sliding my hand down her back and cupping her arse, her sweet, warm curves filling my hand perfectly. Raz watched us with a slow, anticipatory smile.

Tristan had gotten a taste of her sweetness last night, but I was fucking starving for my wife.

Thankfully, the mage was staring off into space not paying a bit of attention to us. "But a weapon does exist. There was a picture that kept cropping up during my master's research on the Old Gods. Somewhere in here…maybe toward the beginning…"

He kept flipping pages until he reached one covered in renderings of a weapon.

And not just any weapon. A sword, elegant but oddly made, with a curved blade——and a handle decorated with the same, strange writing that Anaria had copied all those months ago.

"I've seen that before," Tristan murmured, rubbing his chest. "Somewhere. Somewhere."

I could hardly breathe because Tristan was right. This weapon was familiar in a way that had nothing to do with the now me.

This weapon struck a chord inside the past me, of fear and terror and dread. Had we seen this in a past life? Been killed by this weapon?

Anaria drifted closer, her fingers reaching for that picture as if she couldn't stop herself.

"According to legend, this weapon was made to kill the invaders. Either during the Fae wars when Astragulus Centaria marched his entire army into the mountains and returned with only a handful of soldiers. Or when the Vanguard Conclave fought the Mystara, long before the Fae even arrived on these shores."

Bexley's eyes landed on Anaria's fingers tracing the delicate handle, the carefully drawn details.

"I've seen many mentions of this weapon over my years and every one shows a red stone set into the end of the pommel. The stone, they say, imbues some special power to the sword, rendering it capable of channeling great magic, turning magic itself into a weapon."

"That curved blade distinctly reminds me of the witch blades." Tristan nodded to the rendering. "They have to be the same, don't you think?"

"Not in the way you think." Zor, who'd spent the past hour leaned against the wall in the shadows, came forward. "This blade isn't made for battle. It's too slender. And see that open area in the center of the fuller? At first I thought the hole was decorative, but I don't think that's what it's for at all."

"What are you thinking?" I took a closer look at the drawing. The cutout was a strange shape, a line intersecting a…I sucked in a breath. "It's the same as our markings." A line leading straight up the fuller to a circle, and in the center, cleverly suspended by two prongs, was a polygon.

"Five sides." Tristan's eyes gleamed brighter. "Five of us."

"Magic united into a fearsome weapon," Bexley said quietly. "A weapon to kill a god. Or gods, as it were."

But Zorander wasn't looking at the symbol cut into the blade. He was staring at the pommel. "Do you have any other pictures of this? Ones that show this stone clearly?"

Bexley eyed the teetering stack of books. "Three that I can think of off the top of my head. I can find them if you give me time."

"We need that language translated," Anaria pointed out. "Not pictures of a weapon we don't even have."

"I'd rather take my chances with steel than indecipherable words."

"I'm sure you would," Anaria snapped, a touch of ice in her tone. "We're not going to beat them with steel, Zor."

"You were the one who wanted a magic blade." Zor nodded to the book. "Well, there you go. A magic weapon. Fit to kill a god."

For a moment they stood like that, nose to nose, the queen and her general, tempers flaring between them, tension turning the air in the room molten.

"Why can't we take our chances on both?" My gaze flickered between them. "Anaria and I will search the books for any mention of the weapon…with Bexley's help, of course, while he translates the writing."

Zor's eyes narrowed. "And what are the rest of us supposed to do? Twiddle our fucking thumbs?"

"I'll fly out and take stock of our situation," Tristan offered quickly. "See what our options are if we have to evacuate."

"I could come along," Zor offered. "Better than sitting around doing nothing."

Anaria glared at the back of his head so intently I was surprised he didn't combust.

"Fuck no. It's one thing to carry you like a pack mule when you're a half-dead sack of meat, but I'll be godsdamned if I'm taking you on a sightseeing tour of Caladrius. I'll report back what I find."

"Thanks a lot," Zor muttered.

"I'm not saving your arse," Tristan murmured on his way out. "You want out of here? Grow your own godsdamned wings."