Mal looked over at her guiltily. “How can I find them here?”
“Like calls to like,” recited Maeve. “You weren’t trying to find that ring on your finger. It found you. I have a feeling the rest will too.” She smiled. “Don’t look so grim. I have an idea.”
Emilia Brighton looked up at Maeve with wide eyes in the Dining Hall. The Draconem daughter of Walter Brighton, the head curator at The Magical Antiquities Museum, dropped her fork as Maeve sat across from her.
“Alright if I sit?” Maeve asked.
Emilia nodded quickly.
“Hello, Emilia,” said Abraxas as he slid onto the bench at Maeve’s side.
Her mouth dipped open. “Hello-”
“Emilia,” came Mal’s voice from Maeve’s other side as he took a seat.
Emilia’s mouth fell completely open. She snapped it shut quickly and then looked at Maeve, but her face was already pink.
“We’d like to invite you to join our weekly training sessions,” said Maeve sweetly.
Emilia sat up straight and leaned towards them. She sputtered for a moment and then said. “It would be an honor!”
She beamed at Maeve.
“Wonderful,” said Maeve.
“I’d also like to train you privately,” said Mal. “I see a lot of potential in you.”
Emilia’s hands flew to her cheeks. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Say yes,” said Abraxas. “And then thank you.”
Emilia did.
It had been Maeve’s idea for Mal to train Emilia privately, but as the two of them walked out of the Dining Hall together, her stomach twisted.
Abraxas snorted. “You should see your face.”
It didn’t take long for Emilia to spill what little she knew about her father’s search for the Dread artifacts. But the tiny lead she did divulge was a start.
The Dread Crown had been lost for two hundred years, since the Double O was created and took power. The Crown vanished at that time, but Emilia bragged to Mal that her father had solid reason to believe it had been stowed and protected deep inside the Yatir Forest. She rambled on quite a bit about his life’s work there.
Maeve had numerous maps strewn out across a large table in the Library. She reached for an encyclopedia.
“That’s in Israel,” said Abraxas from the head of the table. He was reclined with his feet propped up.
Maeve and Mal looked over at him.
“I soak up information like a sponge,” he said with a wink.
Maeve pulled out a smaller map from under the pile. “That forest is massive.”
Mal leaned over the map.
“So are either of you going to tell me what’s going on?” Asked Abraxas.
“No,” they replied in synch.
Abraxas huffed and kicked his legs off the table. He crossed behind Mal to make his exit. Mal smiled softly and met eyes with Maeve.
