“But you need to ask Harlow,” she muttered.
He grunted. “Not about this. This, I know she’d be absolutely behind. If we get married, you are our flower girl.”
“How do you know? I thought you said her mind was a mystery.”
“Sometimes, but the one consistency when it comes to Harlow is her heart, and she loves you, Charlie. She insisted I come in here after you.”
“But I’ve only met her once!”
Marius thought back. They would have met at the coronation. He beamed a smile down on her. “I guess once is enough.”
Her face lit up. “Then I love her too.”
“Harlow’s easy to love.” He stiffened when two silhouettes briefly appeared at the end of the hall. They were being watched. “Get behind me, Charlie. There’s another test up ahead.”
She did what she was told. Marius reached for his sword but then remembered he’d lost it to the spider. Fuck. He dropped into a fighting stance.
“It’s about time you showed up, son. We need your help figuring out this puzzle.”
Marius rose to his full height and strode forward, tugging Charlie along with him until her light illuminated the faces of the two beings he’d seen repeatedly in his dreams since he was resurrected. Killian’s dark features stared at him from beside Brynhoff, whose shifting eyes and ratlike appearance hadn’t changed at all since he’d been gone.
His father opened his arms and pulled Marius into his embrace. “I wondered if you were getting our messages. I knew you wouldn’t fail us.”
Brynhoff snorted. “Speak for yourself. Eleanor’s spells aren’t easily broken. The boy is here, but can he get us out?”
Marius hated the way his uncle referred to him as the boy. The man had always been useless, and his ongoing respect for Eleanor despite his circumstances grated on his last nerve.
Killian interrupted before he could take the bait. “Who is with you, son?” His eyes fell on Charlie and lingered on her feather wings.
“Charlie.” He offered no explanation. The sudden realization seized him that her very existence might fill both Killian and Brynhoff with terror. It was once a popular belief that the offspring of a witch and a dragon would destroy Paragon. In a way, Charlie had, but only the part that needed to be destroyed. It was too much to share. Too much for their minds to grasp.
“Hello,” she said sweetly.
Killian’s gaze fell on Charlie’s satchel, heavy with their two hearts. Could he feel a piece of himself there? If he could, Brynhoff didn’t seem to share that feeling. His arms were folded, and he was staring at the floor between them and the wall as if he were trying to figure something out.
“What do we need to do to open the passage?” Marius asked.
“Arrange the symbols in the slots.” Killian pointed to six indentations in the side wall and a pile of stones painted with symbols. “We think the floor contains a clue to what the code should be, but we can’t read it. We don’t understand the language.”
As happy as Marius was that this was a challenge of intellect, given he’d lost his sword in the skirmish with the spider, he was equally dismayed when he looked at the floor. The symbols weren’t anything like Paragonian or the other languages he’d learned over his lifetime. They looked ancient.
“The one who passes here must prove their worth,” Charlie read, edging her toes to the bottom of the last symbol. “Enter, thee, the name of thy soul’s first guide.”
“You can read that?” Marius asked her.
She nodded, her fist pressing into her lips.
“Did your mother teach you?”
She shook her head.
“Well, good luck for us.” He ruffled the girl’s curls.
“Sounds like gibberish to me. Worthy? Soul’s first guide? It’s impossibly obtuse.” Brynhoff huffed.
Killian stroked his beard. “Charlie, can you spell mother with those stones?”
Charlie nodded. She went to work arranging the symbols on the floor, but when she was done, the word was too long.
