“Awesome. She sounds like a kickass female. My favorite. But what does it have to do with me?”
“There’s also a universal agreement that we were fleeing an unknown evil,” he continued, ignoring her interruption. “Most books refer to it as some sort of corruption.”
Wynn frowned. “And?”
He waved his hand and the mist swirled to reveal a different engraving of the silver dragon. She was no longer soaring through air. Instead, she was wedged into a large cave with her head bent low as fire bellowed from her parted mouth.
“Gabriela created the rift to bring us into this world and then sacrificed herself to block the opening so we couldn’t be followed by the mysterious enemy that was chasing us.”
“Wait.” A knot twisted Wynn’s gut as the mist cleared to reveal a bright green slime, oozing over the floor of the cave. It was horrifyingly familiar. “That’s the corruption?”
Azh sent her a curious glance. “It’s an artistic representation. I’m not sure how accurate it is. Why?”
Wynn licked her dry lips. “I don’t want that nasty crap coming here.”
“Neither do I. Which is why I’ve been following you.”
“Are you suggesting I’ve been corrupted?”
He narrowed his smoky gray gaze. “No, but your reaction is interesting.”
Wynn snapped her lips together. Her shock at seeing the glowing green had made her reckless. She was giving away too much. With an effort she folded her arms over her stomach and heaved a resigned sigh.
“Well, I’m glad I’m interesting, because you’re not. In fact, you’re starting to bore the hell out of me.”
“You don’t want to hear the story?”
She hunched a shoulder. “Fine, yes. Just get it over with.”
His lips twitched. He wasn’t fooled. “After Gabriela closed the rift and sealed out the evil, she transformed herself into a statue that was left to stand guard at the rift,” he said. “There are some who believe it was left as an early warning in case the corruption attempted to follow us. There are others who claimed that Gabriela had foreseen the day the evil would enter this world and that she left her magic to battle against it.”
Wynn returned her attention to the image in the swirling mist, her heart missing a beat. A statue. That might very well be what had been the start of her misery. She waited, expecting the image to change. When itremained on the dragon, she sent Azh an impatient glare. The spurting fire thing was impressive, but it didn’t give her the answers she needed.
“What did the statue look like?”
“No one is certain.” The mist abruptly evaporated and the book slammed shut, the scent of brimstone wafting through the air. “There are some who swear it was shaped like a small dragon, and another one claimed it was a tall woman with a sword over her head, and there’s those who were certain it looked like a plain stone so no one could find it.”
“Seriously?” Wynn felt a pang of annoyance. “No one knows for sure?”
Azh shrugged, bending down to pick up the book. “The dragons were still traumatized and in a hurry to flee from the rift in case their enemy attempted to follow them. They didn’t bother to sketch the statue.”
“So go back and find it. Surely you’ll know what it’s intended to do once you hold it?”
“That’s impossible.”
“Why?”
Azh gestured toward the small opening into the dragon lair. Moments later a long leather coat appeared. Shrugging into the well-worn jacket that reached past his knees, he tucked the book in a pocket. Then, with a wave of his hand, he shut the opening.
“Because the location of the rift was erased from the minds of the dragons,” he at last admitted, as if he’d been deciding how much to reveal. Fair enough. It was dangerous to divulge that his people had a secret kryptonite. “All they could recall was running through a deep cave and at last finding a tunnel leading to the sunshine.”
Wynn’s frustration deepened. “Why was it erased?”
“Those who were fleeing said that it was a last act of magic by Gabriela. I presume it was to make sure that no one was foolish enough to try to open the rift and return to Kazak.”
And that was that, Wynn acknowledged with a burst of disappointment. Even if she had somehow stumbled across the mysterious statue, she had no way of knowing where or even what it looked like.
She was back to square one. Only now she had an aggravating dragon pestering her every move.
