Page 158 of Tale of the Heart Queen

Nadir rubs his chin. “What if Father was communicating with the Lord through the Torch?”

“Do you think he went . . . to the Underworld?” Amya asks. “Is that even possible?”

“Maybe if you know where to look,” I say, holding out the crumpled piece of paper in my hand.

Nadir reaches for it. “Is that a map?”

“It appears so.”

He studies the page before looking up and pointing to a spot. “He went under the mountains. Is this a door of some kind?”

“A door to the Underworld?” Amya asks, her eyes wide.

I retrieve the map from Nadir. “What if Herric asked him to get the ark?”

“But what good would the ark do him?” Nadir asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. “If he’s still planning to kill Zerra, he’ll need all of them, right?”

Neither Nadir nor Amya answers as I continue, “Or rather, he’d need to destroy them, just like we’ve been doing. What if we’ve been . . . helping him all this time?”

Cold dread spreads through my chest, trickling down my limbs.

“That . . . can’t be,” Nadir says, but the words sound uncertain.

“Herric must have promised him something,” I say. “Who is the ‘her’ in those notes?”

Nadir and Amya share a look.

“I don’t know,” he says. “But something tells me we need to get the ark back immediately.”

“At least we finally know where we might be looking,” I say. “And we can assume he can’t do anything with it until he has me.”

“So we get the Torch, we perform the bonding, and then use the map to . . . travel to the Underworld,” Nadir says, swallowing hard, like he can’t believe he’s just uttered those words.

“I don’t like any of this,” Amya says.

My gaze wanders to the window where the northern lights ripple across the sky.

I think about all the lonely nights I looked upon them, wishing for another life, wishing for freedom. I remember shivering in my bed, cold and hungry. I remember the hopelessness and the certainty that I would never get out of Nostraza alive. I remember my icy rage and my vows of revenge that became the only things that kept me warm.

I remember everything.

“I don’t think we have a choice anymore,” I say.

I hold up the map and look back at Nadir and Amya.

At my mate. At my second sister.

This family I never expected to find.

This family I’ll do everything in my power to keep.

“We have to find him, and we have to get the ark. One of us will die, and I’m going to make damn sure it isn’t me, but I won’t live under his shadow anymore. This ends now. Once and for all.”

CHAPTER 55

GABRIEL