One thing that I was certain of was that wewouldfind what we needed to kill Matthieu here—wehadto.
Jasper walked over and set me down on an old table before leaning over it and pressing a kiss to my cheek. “I’m going to go look for what we need. If anyone knows libraries and journals, it's me.” He winked
I smiled, trying my best to ignore the pain in my side. “I’m sure I can look for something of importance too.”
Each of the guys replied, “No.”
My lips parted before I pouted out my bottom lip. I understood their hesitance, and my wound continued to throb. “Okay…”
But Aimon stepped forward before leaning in, cupping my face in his hands as his gaze burned with determination. “You will sit here, and you will let us help you. I know it’s hard, but you need to let us, for our sake.” He held his hand out and conjured a plant fiber blanket that draped over my shoulders, and I couldn't help but smile. “Be good.”
“I’m always good.” I wrapped the soft blanket around me, staying seated where Jasper had deposited me.
Aimon’s lips twitched into a smirk, and he and the rest of the guys walked around the library and shuffled through old journals.
My eyes were heavy, and the throbbing in my side seemed to lull for a bit as I fought to keep myself awake. I wanted to stay awake and see what they could find, but instead, I carefully laid down on the table and fell asleep to the hushed murmurs of the guys discussing their findings in whispers I couldn’t decipher.
* * *
When I came to,I pushed up off the table to sit up, and a yelp tore from my mouth.
I covered the wound on my side with my other hand and hissed out a breath. It was still sore, though not nearly as bad as it was when I had fallen asleep.
“You okay, love?” Bastian asked softly.
All five of them sat around the table that I was lying on with their noses deep inside their books. There were piles and piles of journals and tomes on the floor next to them, towering to where they almost reached their shoulders.
“I’m okay. How long have I been asleep?” I rubbed the sleepiness out of my eyes with the heels of my hands.
“About eight hours,” Silas answered, not looking up from the journal.
Shock rippled through me, and I tightened the blanket around my shoulders. I had never slept that long before. Especially not when I wasn’t trying to.
My four cats took that moment to hop out of the runes with sleepy little meows and floated around to their favorite ones of my guys and bothered them for pets.
I smiled, watching how the guys paused what they were doing long enough to give the cats their well-deserved attention. “Did you find anything yet?”
They all seem to pause and glance at each other before nodding.
“We did, love.” Bastian frowned.
“It wasn't anything that we didn't already know, though,” Jasper murmured, flicking through a journal.
“It was the full instruction manual of the ritual that made you immortal,” Casper answered.
“But what we didn't know,” Aimon added, “Was that Matthieu’s ritual didn't differ from yours much at all except for the number of mages that cast the immortality spell during the ritual.”
“So the ritual was to force down an immortality potion, have an immortality rune carved into the chest…” I let my fingers slide along the place above my heart where I remembered the rune being carved deeply into it. “And spelled by spirit mages to bond the spirit to Hexarium before having an abominal’s sharpened femur bone withtenimmortality runes etched into it plunged in the heart. That’s it, right?”
They shared another look before Aimon sighed. “Well, I suppose that's another difference. There were only eight runes etched into Matthieu’s femur bone.”
Silas folded his hands in front of him on the table. “The bone that caused you true harm from the assassins was the same type of dagger that made you an immortal.”
Realization dawned on me as I froze and shut my eyes tightly, trying to process the fact that he was right. I didn't think that it was a coincidence, and I didn’t know how I missed it either.
Maybe everything piling up had just become a rush of insanity, and it was hard for me to process everything.
“The immortality potion includes the scales of a lava lizard, the heart of a dragon, the shell of a vortex turtle, ice wraith dust, glow wisp essence, lochie tooth, and glidaton acid,” Bastian murmured.
