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Looking at me with intrigue, he shook his head as though something didn’t make sense. “You asked about the ring when we began talking, and said it had to do with everything. Why?”
“Well, the ring is only supposed to glow for the Harbinger, correct?”
“Yes. It was forged especially for him, and the stone it holds only responds to his essence. It never worked for anyone other than Khayden.”
“Wrong. The ring was supposed to lead me to him, but it led me to his son.”
“What?” Kingston stood, disbelief capturing his features.
“And it not only glows in his presence,” I explained, standing too. “I think it might have helped him heal somehow.”
“Impossible!”
“I know, but there is no other explanation.”
Kingston’s eyes travelled all around the room, as though his mind couldn’t catch up with his whirling thoughts. His chest began to rise and fall with accelerated breaths, and he spun. Taking off his sleeping pants, he reached for his trousers and put them on—with no regard for my innocent eyes.
“Where are you going?” I asked, walking towards him.
“We,” he clarified, jumping into his boots. “I’m taking you to the Lost Kingdom. If I am right, we might find some of the answers we need there.”
Only the hissing of the winds swirling around us, and the clicking of our horses’ hooves, was heard in the night as we crossed the fallen gates of the castle. The moonlight above us illuminated half the ruins, making my gaze lift to impossible heights, attempting to catch one last glance of the Dragon statue poised at the very top of the palace.
One of his wings was broken, so was one of the legs that depicted him holding on to the structure the same way our Dragons held to the mountain peaks and towers. Yet, even as the remnants of the carved stone lay forgotten on the destroyed earth, I could imagine the grandeur this palace had held in its heyday.
Before Raithian’s need for power and avarice burned it to the ground, destroying his own legacy.
“This way,” Kingston urged in a whisper, crossing the vast marble archway that led into the building. “We need to reach theHall of the Forgotten,that is where I think we might find what we need.”
Right. TheHall of the Forgotten.The same place I visited before my trip to the Mirror World, to glance one more time at the face of the man I would need to find.
Tying the horses to one of the columns inside, we took our weapons and headed for the stairs, or what was left of them, carefully making our way up to the third level.
When I was a child, my parents had sought refuge in this place, living here with our kin for a few months before moving on to somewhere else. During that time, they had hidden everything that was valuable to us in that hall, knowing this was the one place where Raithian would never dare come again.
The creaking of the door as we opened it reverberated through the entire hall, making us cringe, but there was no one in the vicinity, so there was nothing we needed to worry about at the moment.
“What are we looking for?” I asked, standing my spear next to a table, and glancing all around me until my gaze fell on the torn painting. I often wondered why my parents had saved a portrait of the Harbinger in this hall, with all of their valuable things. All I could come up with was that even after his betrayal, the friendship they had held meant more to my parents than what happened after. So, they kept him here with the rest of their history.
“We need to find leather tubes that hold scrolls and documents. The larger the better.”
With a nod, we each took to a different section of the hall, going through everything we could move, flip, or look under for the tubes. Pushing a heavy dresser out of the way after checking its drawers, I plunged my hands into a large sac that was hidden behind it, instantly feeling a hard cylinder under my fingers. Pulling out the heavy bag, I turned it upside down, seeing several scrolls and leather tubing like the one Kingston described roll onto the tile.
“I think I found something!” My voice echoed through the space and Kingston rushed to my side, kneeling with me on the ground to begin checking the tubes.
“Look for a seal of a Dragon head with its mouth open. It will look like his body is forming an ‘O’.”
“Okay.”
Rushing through papers, my hands opened tube after tube, unrolling documents—some of which looked too ancient to be touched. I carefully placed them back inside their cylinder and locked them; yet I found none with the head of a Dragon. When I reached for the last one, Kingston’s hand curled around it before I could, and I impatiently waited for him to open it.
Our eyes widened when the Dragon seal he had described, appeared imprinted on the top. The detail on the wax stamp was magnificent, you could even see his sharp teeth and tongue. Nevertheless, it wasn’t the intricate seal that left me speechless, it was the drawings below it.
Hand drawn onto the parchment paper with what looked like graphite, each line depicted the golden ring that had belonged to Khayden Skystorm. Every angle you could think of was traced onto each page, inside and out, outlining the metal and crystal to be used, and even the measurements it needed to be. Its specifications were described to a “T”. There was no doubt the forger of the ring had been the one to draw them.
Kingston and I exchanged a glance as he reached the last page, which held two very important details about the golden Dragon. The reason it was forged for the Harbinger, and a spell written to be performed when he first put it on his finger.
“Unbelievable,” Kingston murmured, stunned. “The ring was made to enhance the connection his Dragons had formed to him.”
