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“Finally,” he bellowed, leaning forward, and clapping his hands together. I wrinkled my nose at him, thoroughly grossed out. I was suddenly very grateful that the bond had been blocked, while Amon and I had mated.
“Don’t smell me,” I grumbled. I glanced at Amon, but he looked strangely pleased. I realized he liked that Rycon could smell his scent on me, and I shook my head, rolling my eyes. I would never understand males.
‘Try not to look so pleased with yourself,’ I snipped into his mind, but his smirk just grew wider. The rest of the team turned to us, and the moment Kasha and Dossidian took in the mating stones around our necks, they both burst into applause. Conrad and Meredith followed suit, smiling at us, eyes shining.
“Congratulations, you two,” Meredith grinned, coming forward to get a closer look at my stone. Kasha hopped out of the pit, beaming.
“Took you idiots long enough!” She also rushed over, pulling the gem from Meredith so she could examine it.
“You can’t rush matters of the heart Kasha,” Dossidian said sagely, and came forward, clapping a hand on Amon's shoulder. “Congratulations, my friend.” He smiled at Amon, who smirked back. Kasha snorted, dropping the gem and turning to Dossidian.
“And what exactly, do you know about matters of the heart, Dossidian? “You’ve never spent more than a night in a female’s bed.”
Dossidian let out a giant bellowing laugh, “I suppose, but each of those times, I certainly didn’t rush,” he wiggled his eyebrows at her, and she rolled her eyes.
“Congratulations, Raven, Prince Amon.” Conrad said smoothly, coming up to join us. He dipped his head, and I felt my heart leap to my throat. I grabbed him and pulled him into me, hugging him fiercely.
“Mi so happy for yuh, Rayven. Di two of yuh will change dis world, and the world beyond Di Veil for di better. Mi know it.” He pulled back, looking at me, his eyes shining with pride. “Yuh come so far, from when mi first meet yuh dat day. Yuh rememba?”
I did remember. The day he had walked into my anger management class felt like it had been a lifetime away now. I thought of the person I was then and didn’t even feel like I recognized her anymore. She had been so lonely and angry. Now, I was surrounded by people that weren’t just friends but so close, I considered them family. I had found my life partner and a kind of inner strength that I would never have imagined I could ever have.
I nodded and pulled away from Conrad. “How could I forget?” I asked him, laughing. “You walked in that day and said hi, and I nearly fell off my chair. You were the first person who had ever voluntarily spoken to me in my life, outside of my parents.” My voice broke, “You were my first real friend, Conrad.” He smiled at me and mussed up my hair affectionately.
“Yu cyaan shake mi off,” he joked.
Looking around at my friends, all so happy and proud of us, I realized just one person was missing from this perfect moment. Jeremy. I peeked down the line of the trace I had installed to check in on him, but when I reached the other end, everything was dark. I frowned. That was strange. Did that mean he was sleeping?
“Let’s tell them the other news,” Amon said softly into my ear, pulling me back. I grinned; oh yeah. I had almost forgotten. I immediately held out my hand, uncurling my fingers to reveal the Omnikey. It took a moment for the room to register what I was showing them, but when it finally clicked, there was a collective gasp.
Amon and I grinned at each other. We were just full of surprises today.
69
“You found it!” Kasha exclaimed; brandy eyes wide. “But how? Where!?” She snatched it from my hand and held it up into the light, examining the iron skeleton key closely.
“After we… ahem. After we were mated, it just appeared out of my ring of ravens,” I explained, and Amon slid his hand into mine, squeezing my fingers gently.
Rycon scoffed. “So basically, after you guys fucked, it just conveniently decided to manifest? We could have saved a lot of time if you had just listened to me back in Olkuyrbe.”
Amon glared, and I rolled my eyes.
“Shut up, Rycon,” I snipped at him, but I couldn’t keep the corner of my mouth from twitching up. He wasn’t wrong.
“You said it came out of your ring of ravens?” Kasha asked. She moved away from us and hopped into the pit with the key, returning to the book she had been reading.
“That actually makes sense. I was going to show you what Rycon and I found when you returned. This whole book is on the Omnikey. It was much easier to find information once we had its actual name. It says here that when the power of the Omnikey is triggered, it can unlock any assortment of things. Remember that day on the docks? When your necklace released you from the triquetra’s magick? I bet that was because your aura triggered it.”
“Interesting,” Amon said, raising an eyebrow. “Shall we see if it can unlock the box?” With a wave of his hand, the case that held The Flute appeared on the table. We all crowded into the pit, and Conrad slipped a hand into his pocket to pull out The Lens. He handed it to me and I held it up to my eye again, examining the box on the table before me. The strange whispers from the pages inside the box called to me softly, the foreign words musical and melodic.
Just as it had the first time I had examined the box with The Lens, the keyhole and seam manifested, and my heart sped up. This was it. Everything we had been working for. Kasha handed me the Omnikey, and I took it with my free hand before sliding it into the keyhole in the box's side. I turned, and it gave one satisfying click before the lid to the box sprung open.
A simple, unassuming wooden flute lay inside the box, resting in a bed of red silk. Within the lid, several sheets of paper were folded and clipped to the top. The whispers grew louder now that they had been released from the confines of the box. I reached out a hand to run over the smooth wooden surface of The Flute. It felt somewhat unnerving, as if my heart wanted to speed up and slow down simultaneously.
“That’s it?” Rycon eyed the bland-looking instrument incredulously. “All of that for a boring tube of wood? I could have whittled that out of a kapok branch.”
“I always forget how numb your kind is to magick,” Dossidian said as he leaned forward to examine The Flute himself. “This artifact is powerful. It has a very strange energy coming from it. I don’t trust it.” He sounded wary. I couldn’t blame him. The waves of heady music that slipped through the air and settled between my ears made me feel slightly dizzy. I reached out and pulled one of the pieces of paper out from the lid of The Flute’s case and unfolded it in my lap. Amon put his arm around me and leaned close to examine it.
The sheet was filled with strange symbols that spiraled in a circular pattern out from the center of the page. The symbols were blotchy and seemed to follow a muted color scheme that I didn’t understand.
