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Chapter XXX
Cole had an ideafor how to get to the Moon Goddess’s realm.
More specifically, he had a plan for how I could get to the realm.
Even Hecate was bewildered at his declaration. “How?” she demanded.
Cole’s gaze never left my face. “Libra demons are thought to be the only creatures that can go between realms. They’re born as slivers of the realm itself, Phaidros being an exception. They’re part of the balance. Neutral, relatively weak entities that provide holes between the realms so the universe can breathe.”
“If Phaidros can’t get in, I doubt another Libra demon will solve our problem,” I pointed out.
Cole shook his head. “I said they’re thought to be the only creatures that can go between realms. But there is one other being powerful enough.” He tugged aside his shirt collar. At first, I thought he was going to flash his mate mark again, but he pulled the other side, exposing the head of his dragon tattoo. He’d had that design for as long as I’d known him—both lifetimes included.
“I’ve never heard of dragons having this power,” Hecate argued.
He arched a brow at the enchantress. “As rare as it is, sometimes your king knows something you don’t.”
“If dragons can go between realms, why didn’t we try this before?” I asked.
“Because we weren’t that desperate,” Cole said plainly. “And it’s not that simple. There are three issues. First, you need to draw out the dragon. Even I don’t know how to do that.”
“How come?” I frowned. “Didn’t you do it before?”
“My circumstances were different. It’s a long story, and it’s not one we have time for now. You can’t go and simply hunt the dragon down either,” he added, ready for my next question. “Dragons come to you. They’re too powerful to be caught against their will. That leads to the second problem, which is you need to offer the dragon something worthwhile.”
I bit back a sigh. “Another deal?”
“No.” Cole’s refusal was sharp. “Dragons don’t make deals. You must offer something freely and forever given. If they consider it a worthy offering, they’ll accept. If not, they take it anyway.”
“What’s the third issue?”
“You’re the only one who can call the dragon. There are two in every realm, in some form or another. The King’s Dragon, and the Queen’s Dragon. The King’s is gone, which leaves yours.”
“Okay. So to recap, I just need to figure out how to summon an ancient powerful dragon which none of you remember how to do, offer something immensely valuable in hopes the dragon decides to help us get into the heavens, and then we can finally decide if we are going to Tartarus for eternity in a tie-breaker match that is decided by the Moon Hag herself.”
“It’s a better plan than we had before,” Cole said simply.
The worst part is he was right.
“Where do we start then?”
“The library would be a likely place to begin, Soteria.” Hecate nodded down to the right, in the direction of the palace’s massive library.
We teleported over. It was even larger than the one in the one in the castle I’d shared with Cole. In a prior life, that had been a pleasant escape for me. I’d loved reading then as much as I did now. The palace library was a hundred times larger. No one had ever read all the books in it—in fact, many of the books hadn’t even been written. Not in the normal means. They simply appeared on their own whims. The tomes numbered not in the thousands, but in the millions. Even with the prior damage to the palace, the library had remained largely intact.
I winced. I knew the size of the library, of course, but being confronted with it visually again made our task seem impossible.
“I don’t suppose you have a spell that can just find us the right book, or put all the knowledge in our brains?”
The enchantress shook her head. “Magic cannot help us here. There is such a spell to immediately memorize every word of text on a page, but applying it on such a scale would leave the recipient catatonic.”
Great. So all we had to do was read a few million books in hopes of possibly finding some long-forgotten knowledge.
“We’re going to need some help,” I said, waving my hand to open a portal.
Help came in the form of Daphne, Xander, Ian, and a dozen shifters from both the Fangs and the Wind-Bloods. As many as could be spared without leaving the territories vulnerable to Moon-Ghost attack. Thirty shifters… and half the palace army.
Hecate had cautioned against bringing living shifters into the realm of the dead. Realistically, even if we had ten thousand people, we were running against the clock.But they were my pack. I needed them.
