“There are only four types of creatures that I know of that can fly,” Ahyana told me. “Insects, birds, bats, and dragons.”
“You think Luna’s a dragon?” I asked. “She doesn’t really look like one.”
“Maybe dragons are like frogs or butterflies, where they start out as a tadpole or caterpillar and become something else,” Ahyana said.
“Is she an air dragon?” Io asked as she ran her fingertip along Luna’s back. “They’re the only ones with wings.”
“She’s the wrong color,” Zalira said. “Although I’ve only seen drawings.”
Part of me hoped Luna wouldn’t change colors. I loved her silver skin. “We were all thinking the same thing earlier. That Luna has aether. Which must make her an aether dragon.” Because dragons connected to a specific element. The other dragons wouldn’t have aether.
“They were thought to not even exist,” Io whispered, shocked. “I’ve never seen a drawing of one. And there’s so little information about dragons that I can’t even think of anyone who might know.”
More lost knowledge.
There was a way to test whether Luna had aether.
Picking Luna up again, I took her into Io’s room to the scroll. I brushed against her sides and sparkles fell from her body onto the papyrus. They dissolved into the scroll.
And it made the rest of the lines form.
The scroll was complete. It was a map.
A heavy silence fell on us as we all stood there, staring at it.
Uncertain of what to do next.
Io read out loud the writing at the bottom of the page.
“When Asteria was stolen, not to be found
In agony Dea hid her face
In a cave where no man or beast may enter
Let the flame-kissed savior who is worthy
Pass the tests of the goddesses
To claim the greatest weapon”
“It has to be her golden sword,” Io mused. “The one she used to create the world.”
“Asteria?” Ahyana asked.
“That has to be the goddess’s daughter,” Zalira said.
Suri pointed at the map. The cave was located in Mount Idaia in the Syrilline Mountains, east of Troas.
“How far from here is that?” I asked.
No one knew. It looked close on the map.
Ahyana traced the path that the scroll had created for us. “We have to go and get that sword. Then you’ll have a god-weapon to use against Artemisia.”
“Me?” I asked.
“None of the rest of us are the flame-kissed savior,” she said with a smile.
