He laughed, hooking an arm around my waist and half carrying me to where Daniel stood, bemused expression on his face.
Despite the beauty of the redemption world, none of us looked back. There was nothing for me here, no reason to want to stay. I was ready to move forward, with Lexen, with the rest of my life.
And I was ready for some answers.
20
Amultitude of faces stared back at me. The council seemed to be stuck between explaining what had happened and trying to dissect me with their eyes. At least a healer had somewhat dealt with my face and wounds, so now I was no longer in pain while I waited for them to get to the point.
“Get to the damn point!” Lexen snarled, reading my mind. His hands clenched on the table as he glared at each of them.
As soon as we had taken the secret transporter out of the level of redemption, Lexen had summoned the council. We were in House of Darken, in a room with a table large enough to hold everyone, which included Lexen’s parents, Star, Marsil, and Jero, all of whom had greeted me with hugs and shouts. They’d truly been worried about me, and their delight at seeing I was back safely – Lexen too – was enough to mend a few of the broken pieces of my soul.
A female council member stood. Like almost every other Daelighter on the council, she looked to be in her early thirties. She had straight dark hair and large reddish-brown eyes.
“Laous has disappeared, and based on your testimony of his recent actions, he will never rule House of Imperial again. Daniel will be stepping in as overlord for the interim, until he can be initiated into the position.”
Her speech was interrupted by Roland. “If Laous is going after the second secret keeper, how are we going to figure out where he is to stop him?”
Another council member, a blond male who was probably from Royale, let out a breathy sigh. “It appears that Laous has been planning this for a long time. We really should have seen it sooner, but he was always very uninterested in the treaty whenever we discussed it. He never showed any sign of wanting to destroy it.”
“He needed a key,” Lexen informed them. “He was trying to get Emma to tell him where it was.”
The councilman’s eyes shifted to me then. “Did you divulge the location to him?”
I shook my head. “I have no idea where the key is. My parents never told me.”
“Did they ever give you something of value? Something from this world perhaps?” another woman on the council asked, pushing back her long ringlets of ashy blond hair.
I stilled. “Like … a piece of starslight stone?”Holy shit I was slow.Was my stone the key? I’d been so focused on a literal key, something metal and long which could open a lock, that I forgot about the stone I wore. I’d never even considered the possibility, but it made sense.
“I had a necklace … that possibly had a piece of starslight stone on it,” I said slowly. “It disappeared in the justices. I’m not sure exactly when, but it could have been when I was fighting with Laous.”
The blond man let out a huff. “So now he will be heading for the next secret keeper, the one born in House of Imperial.”
Well, shit. “We need to find them first!” I demanded, on my feet as my chair screeched across the floor.
“We’re working on it,” the council informed us. “It is extremely difficult to find these humans without the piece of stone you had. That stone was a sliver from the original piece gifted in the treaty.”
Saywhatnow?I’d been wearing something that important for years and had no idea. My parents really should have told me, but knowing them as well as I did, they no doubt wanted to protect me for as long as they could.
“What will the necklace do? How is it a key?” I asked.
A small woman with silver hair stepped forward. She had been hovering at the back of the council group, not sitting. The moment she pushed to the front, all conversation died and everyone turned to her. She was definitely someone important.
Her silver hair threw me off at first, but her face was unlined, her eyes almost as dark as Lexen’s.
“Did you bleed on the stone, at all?”
Her question took me completely by surprise, and I was a little slow to reply. “Uh, yeah, I probably did.” I touched my now healed shoulder. “I got stabbed by a tree. I had blood all over me.”
The woman gave a single nod. “That sliver of stone is the key to finding the original stone. It can be used as a scrying tool, when activated with the right blood. Your blood on it will lead to the second secret keeper, the Imperial born human. Then it needs to be dipped in the blood of the second secret keeper to track the third, and so on.”
That was why Laous reset the justices. He wasn’t trying to make sure any of us got to safety. He had found my necklace and knew he had what he needed. So he’d tried to kill us all.
“What is our next step?” Marsil asked. As he stood tall, decked out in all black, with shit-kicker boots on and a heavy expression, he totally looked like a warrior.
“With Emma’s permission, we’d like to take a little of her blood and see if we can track the second secret keeper ourselves.” She looked directly at me, and I nodded without hesitation. I would do anything to make sure Laous didn’t get his hands on him or her.
