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“What have you found?” Lio asked.
“There’s no doubt the letting site is in the vicinity of Paradum. The Lustra magic is strong there. But finding it when it doesn’t want to be found is another matter.”
“We’ll come with you to Paradum tonight,” Lio said. “Perhaps together, you and Cassia can detect the letting site.”
Kalos shook his head. “That’s just it. I haven’t found Castra Paradum either. How can an entire sunbound keep be so well hidden? But mark my words, no King of Tenebra is sneaky enough to keep me out of his keep.”
Lio rubbed both hands over his face. “We’re running out of time.”
Cassia couldn’t bear to see her Grace so despondent. “If Kalos can’t find Paradum from this direction, we’ll try a different approach. It’s time to see if he can enter the passageways.”
Lio let his hands fall. “Yes. I still think they could lead to the letting site.”
“What passageways?” Kalos asked.
Cassia quickly explained the Changing Queen’s hidden corridors inside Solorum and Patria.
“Habuch joh Bero,” Kalos breathed, and she wondered what Lustra beings he was swearing by. “You nature walked? That really is something out of tales.”
“I don’t know how to do it intentionally.”
“I wish I could help, but that’s a skill only the Silvicultrixes possessed.”
“If only I could nature walk us to the letting site, we would have been spared all of this.”
Lio put a reassuring hand on her back. “Within the corridors, the Lustra magic is so powerful that it almost seems to have a mind of its own. Perhaps there is some kind of tunnel or portal leading to Paradum.”
Kalos’s expression was solemn. “Are you sure you don’t mind me entering?”
“Of course not,” she said.
Lio stepped them back to his room, now empty, and showed Kalos behind the wardrobe. The scout ran his fingers over the stones and pressed his ear to the wall, but it held firm. “I can’t sense anything.”
Cassia lifted the Changing Queen’s pendant off her head and offered it to him.
He held up his hands, shaking his head. “That’s sacrilege.”
“We’re heretics,” she said. “The Lustra had best be prepared for me to be as troublesome a Silvicultrix as I have been a lady.”
“I think it has already received the message,” said Lio, “judging by the moonflowers your magic spawned in place of the Anthros’s fire.”
Kalos’s brows rose. “I’d like to see that.”
Cassia pushed the pendant toward him.
With great hesitation, he put the pendant around his neck. The composed Hesperine visibly startled. “I’ve never touched an artifact this powerful.”
Cassia put a hand on his shoulder and turned him to face the wall.
“Ebah,” he said with reverence, extending his foot. The toe of his boot scuffed against the stone. He pressed the pendant hastily back into Cassia’s hands. “See there? This isn’t for the likes of me.”
“Well, in that case, I will have to introduce you to my matriarchs, as I did Lio, and make it clear you are welcome.” Cassia put the pendant back on and held out her hands.
Lio grasped one, while Kalos accepted the other, and Knight pressed against her robe. She led them through the wall.
These are my people. She focused her Will on the thought and sent it through the pathways of magic around her. If I am to be yours, so must they.
A howl echoed through the corridor, and they all jumped. Kalos’s fangs unsheathed, his eyes wide and catching the glow of Lio’s spell light. Something in his aura called back to that voice in the dark.
