He brushes the rat off his shoulder and walks to one of the thick books lying on the table. It’s larger than the rest, its yellowish pages brittle. Overwhelmed by my cursed curiosity, I follow and take a peek.
“The Gospel of Seuta—” I gasp. He nods.
“A very damaged one, one of the few which still exist.” His long fingers brush the pages with fainted pictures and unreadable text.
“Seuta—the Elder of fate and relationships—” Desmond clears his throat and Aeidas rolls his eyes, preparing for a lecture, “—was so outraged by the fratricidal war between the Fae, that she convinced the other four Elders to unleash the Hex and doom this world.”
“And I will feed you to the kitchen cat if you interrupt us again. I found this in Seuta’s oldest temple, and it nearly cost me my life to retrieve it. The sanctum of this holy place is now overrun with shadows and foul things,” Aeidas whispers, gently flipping a brittle yellow page. “It’s written by Seuta devotees, probably in the first years of the Hex. Look at this, Talysse. The prophecy was much longer, but this is all I managed to recover before the page crumbled:
When shadow dances with the light,
The curse of old shall lose its might.
++++++
As moon and sun in silence blend,
Their union marks the curse’s end.
In darkest depths and highest skies,
The hidden path shall arise.
My finger follows the pale letters. Fascinating.
“Does your family know about this, Aeidas?”
He shakes his head and starts pacing around, tension locked in his shoulders.
“Imagine how many clues like this are out there, Talysse. Imagine what a king with an army devoted to this could achieve!”
“It was believed that there’s a spell hidden in our Ancestral Marks,” he says, back turned to me. “Yet all it contains is a fragment of a sentence that just doesn’t make sense. So there must be another way, another answer out there.”
I lean onto my knuckles over the book, re-reading that cryptic phrase again. By Seuta, how I hate riddles.
“There is more.” He stands before another thick book, his dark lashes casting shadows over his cheeks when he looks down. “The nights are getting longer, Talysse.”
My heart skips a beat.
So our fears are confirmed.
I peek behind him, looking down at the pages. It is some kind of journal, with dates and moon phases skillfully drawn on every page.
“We’ve been keeping records for ages. Soon, the sun will set forever.” His voice, usually so confident, now wavers with a rare vulnerability.
There’s no deception, no trickery in his eyes. I suck in a ragged breath.
Soon, the sun will set forever.
I break out in a cold sweat.
“Out there is more than Shadowfeeders and Taint, Talysse. You should see it! Life is out there, dormant and beautiful, waiting for the right time to wake up—”
He’s not a monster anymore. A different kind of monster, perhaps, but not the blood-thirsty, power-starved one I believed him to be.
“How much time do we have?” My voice trembles.
“Nobody knows for sure, but if we trust this simulation, no longer than three full moons.”
