She paused upon meeting Dorian's eyes, and Dorian didn't try to stifle the sneer on his features.
"That's not disconcerting at all," she muttered, apparently talking about the blackened scar on his face. She glanced to Reverie then, but the pair merely shared a quiet nod as Katla pushed herself onto the countertop to sit.
Hagen pulled the nyghtfire down and began pouring himself a drink. He shot it back, poured another, and then offered it to Dorian.
"I don't want your whiskey," Dorian countered. "I told you what I want."
"Yeah? And I'm telling you you want one for this, mate," Hagen said as the whiskey slammed down at the table. "Drink and sit."
Dorian eyed the drink, but he didn't do as Hagen instructed. He leaned back on the counter, mirroring Hagen, and he crossed his arms over his chest. Hagen took another drink.
"What happened?"
Dorian started from the beginning.
With their attempts at burning it with his fire, to their sending Reverie in, to the Infi ambushing them in the cave. Hagen and Katla didn't speak as they continued. Only shifting and looking at each other when he told them about the entire town being Infi. And when he told them about the deal he made, Hagen pushed off the counter and poured another drink.
"I'll need you to recount this entire venture in front of Falke and Marius tomorrow," Hagen said once Dorian finished. "Falke will need to know not to stop there on his way home. Katla, put the word out tomorrow: the Byrn is off-limits. No one goes there. Anyone coming into the town will be monitored and questioned—“
"The Infi aren't leaving the Bryn," Dorian cut in.
Hagen stared at him. "What about those not at the Bryn?"
Dorian looked down at his arm, the cuts like nerves, almost like his form on the surface but breaking the flesh. "I don't know what this bond does," he admitted. "And I don't know how to figure out the extent of it. Whether I can bend them to my will or if it means something different." He reached into the bag again, grasping the crown, and he let it thud on the table.
Hagen and Katla exchanged a wary glance, and Dorian began to crack his knuckles.
"The meeting tomorrow will need to be brief," he told them. "I need to get to the Umber. I need to know if my sister is okay."
Hagen nodded slowly, apparent he would not be arguing with the Prince on whether he should leave so quickly. "You'll need to hug the Forest. Deads have risen, so you'll have to camp quietly."
"We'll do as we did when we left Magnice," Corbin said.
"Naddi needs to get these Scrolls back to Lake Oriens," Hagen said. "I'd send you there on your way south, but without a guide through the Mortis Lunar Pass, you'll never make it out alive. Especially during the Deads. He and a few of the Venari are the only ones knowing how to pass through. And the Martyrs, but if the Nitesh finds out some of the Scrolls were in the hands of the Infi, she will lose her mind. Especially that one," he added with a nod to the one with the red circles.
Dorian looked to the parchment, feeling that power radiate off it as it sat open in the middle. "You haven't said why it is so important," he said, looking back up the Hagen. "Why it feels as though it is alive when I look at it and why my form cowers from it when I hold it in my hand."
Hagen’s eyes flickered to the Scroll, swirling his drink in his hand. "Because that Scroll is the most powerful thing in all of Haerland, mate. It's not a retelling of our history. It's a ritual. It's how our world gains its freedom."
Dorian he shifted to his other foot and hugged his arms tighter around his chest. "Tell me."
As Hagen told Dorian exactly what the Red Moons ritual did, Dorian sank onto the chair in front of him. His heart numbed, stomach knotting. Almost to the point that he puked. He gripped the chair to keep himself from falling on his face. Suddenly dizzy with the notion of what he was telling him.
And when he finished, silence encompassed the room.
Dorian's stomach lurched into his throat, and he ran to the door before he vomited all over the table. Fire from his insides melted the snow. He turned, chest heaving, and he met Corbin's eyes, remembering what Corbin had said when the Infi had told him to choose a sister.
Corbin seemed to know what he was thinking.
"I told you," he muttered, to which Dorian flipped him off.
He stammered his way to the chair and sat. Reverie moved behind him and started rubbing his shoulders as he bent his head in his hands.
"You said the Infi asked you to choose one sister over the other?" Hagen asked.
Dorian could only nod.
Hagen exchanged a glance with Corbin. "They’d have never allowed you to complete it. Using this ritual would end their kind. It would free Duarb from the curse—“
