“Can we go somewhere quieter to talk?” says Ronan, looking around the inn nervously. “Taran, was I seen?”
“Possibly,” he says, shifting into guard mode. “Let’s go back to the cottages.”
The rest of our crew has been staying in Castle Pyka since they returned from their latest journey. Typhon is still there, going through orders and plans with Karis, but it’s probably for the best. I didn’t truly want everyone to know about the relics or our tomb-robbing plans, but I guess I’ve given myself little choice in the matter now.
We enter the larger cottage where Seth and Taran are staying. Taran wanted Ronan and I to have it, of course, but Seth insisted that they needed the separate bedrooms, and I went along with that, hoping it was true.
Unlike our cottage, there’s room for everyone at their dining table. I retrieve the torch from our living room and place it in a groove in the table so it stands upright. Ronan places the sickle next to it, and suddenly the light in the room changes completely.
The torchlight reflects off of the sickle, and the strange shadows resolve into symbols. It’s a script in the same language carved into the handle of the torch.
“Are those words?” asks Quinn. “Someone tell me what the hell this is.”
I fill everyone in on what we’ve learned so far about the relics, the Shadowbound Prophecy, and our strange dreams. “None of you can read the text either?”
“It’s not Orsan,” says Taran. “Or Serican,” he adds with a blush.
Seth scowls at the mention of Serica. Although he dislikes everyone on principle, he’s taken a particular disliking to Xu Fushi.
“It’s not Brakkari or Parthian,” says Ronan. “Not Epiran or Gallic. It’s nothing I recognize.”
Seth huffs at Ronan’s knowledge of languages.
“Great,” says Quinn. “So you have no idea what these things do, except that they feel like you, and they seem to want you to go to a door in a cave that you think is a tomb to fulfill some kind of destiny you don’t understand to obtain some kind of extraordinary power that is so secret it’s literally been wiped from the face of the earth.”
“Well, when you put it like that,” I say, scowling at her. “That’s why it’s Plan B. I don’t think it’s going to help us defeat Adria, but I’m not sure we can ignore it even if we wanted to. Whatever this is, whatever is between us feels…” I turn to Ronan for help. “Predetermined? Inevitable?”
“Like fate,” he says. “It’s a prophecy, after all. Can prophecies be stopped once they’re set in motion? If the gods are real, can their plans be denied?”
“Ifthe gods are real? Aren’t you supposed to be a god?” asks Seth. “You’re telling me you don’t believe in yourself?”
“I’m not a god,” says Ronan with more conviction than I expected. I didn’t know he’d become so certain of it. “If I were, if I had a divine right to rule, it doesn’t seem like I would have lost my crown.”
“You’re still the God-King, Ronan,” says Quinn. She has always been his number one believer. “You’re just in exile.”
“The church crowned Adria. The Temple of Vayla, even,” says Ronan. We’d heard the news a few months earlier, just after the new year.
“What choice did they have? She took the city by force. They had no armies to defeat her. She can put a crown on her head as much as she wants, but it doesn’t make her queen.”
Ronan holds up his hand to quiet her, not wanting to have this argument right now. “It doesn’t matter. Sylvie and I have to go to Avaris on the way to Faros. Maybe what we find there will be the miracle we need to take back the city without any bloodshed.”
“Or maybe you’ll both die if you go there. It’s a tomb, Ronan. Why don’t you just go after we retake Faros if you really feel like you have to? Or let us go for you. Seth and Taran were able to find the sickle. Let us go check out the tomb for you.”
I shake my head. “It has to be us.” I don’t know how I know that, but I do, somewhere deep in my bones. The torch hums at me that we should go right now. “But it will have to wait,” I tell it.
“Because there’s a wedding to plan between now and then, and weddings need a torch.”
The day of our wedding is drizzly and cool, the first rainy day in over a week.
Quinn paces about the cottage I share with Ronan, dashing from the window to the small dresser where I sit with her cane while Octavia braids my hair, giving minute by minute updates on the rate of the downpour.
“It’s stopping,” she says with a sigh of relief.
“Are you sure? Don’t you think you should check again?” calls Octavia. She smiles at me in the looking glass, her eyes flashing mischievously.
“We’ll be under the trees anyway,” I say. “A little rain never hurt anybody.”
Truthfully, I’m not disappointed at all. I love the way the forest looks after the rain—the deep colors painting the bark of the trees, the lushness of the drenched understory. The way the sunlight filters through the branches and catches on the water droplets.
