Arthur frowned. “It doesn’t match.”
“It’s not supposed to.”
The phrase he’d translated echoed in my mind.Through the depthsto the stars.
“They’re wrong,” I said. “The dragons aren’t meant to be above the water.”
Arthur’s eyes snapped to mine. “They go under.”
We adjusted the panels together, aligning the dragons beneath the waves instead of the sky. The box emitted a low hum, then opened with a clean click.
Inside lay an old compass. Its needle trembled slightly, refusing to point north.
Arthur exhaled. “That’s not normal.”
I took my phone out and started snapping pictures. With my hands trembling from the excitement, I had to take a bunch to get some that weren’t blurry, then I sent them to Percy. I closed the box and slipped it into my bag.
My heart was racing.
“This,” I said quietly, “is why we’re here.”
Arthur looked at me, something warm and unmistakably proud in his gaze.
“Yes,” he said.
I turned back toward the journals, already mentally reorganizing the room into categories I could manage, and cross-referencing by ink color and margin density. I was mid-reach, fingers hovering over a page that referenced something I desperately wanted to understand, when the pressure in the room changed.
Arthur went still, and my attention snapped to him. Every line of his body tightened, his focus dragging away from the walls and locking on the stairs.
“Artemis.” My name had barely left his lips when two massive shapes came barreling down the stairwell.
Dragons.
Their bodies expanded, bones snapping into new shapes, skin hardening into dark scaled armor that swallowed the light instead of reflecting it. Wings slammed outward, shredding what remained of the doorway. Their forms were lean, built for speed.
Everything about them screamed intent. No hesitation. No warning display. This was not about presence. It was about efficiency.
“Assassins.”Arthur’s voice echoed through my mind.
He moved before my brain caught up, putting himself between me and the assassins. He shifted, power rolling off him in heavy waves that made the symbols on the walls vibrate. In a flash, he was on the first attacker, claws tearing flesh as he hurled the other dragon. Heat surged outward as he struck, claws tearing into the first attacker and hurling him back hard enough to crater the stone behind him.
The impact shook through my feet, my ribs. My brain lagged behind my body, still trying to catch up to the fact that this was real and happening to me.
The second dragon didn’t pause.
A metal-tipped chain whipped through the room and wrapped around Arthur’s side, glowing faintly as it tightened. Something slammed into him with brutal force, driving him sideways.
The roombecame chaos.
Maps ripped free from the walls. Pages scattered in wild arcs. A blade clipped a journal and sliced it clean in half.
I screamed at that, which was wildly unhelpful but deeply sincere.
The sound tore out of me before I could stop it. Pure outrage. Something feral and offended at the idea of history being destroyed in front of me.
I dropped to the floor as Arthur swung again, fire ripping past me close enough to lift my hair. Stone fractured. The ceiling groaned in protest. One assassin crashed down hard, but the other was already moving again, too fast.
Arthur staggered a step.
