“Because I know Hell. Lived in that dimension for many,manyyears. Right, little bro?”
Bastian wrinkles his nose, which makes his glasses slide down. He presses them back up.
“Your papa can do his worst, Cadence. I guarantee I’ve already been there. Had it done to me. Andsurvived.”
Slate’s confidence tempers my fear.
“Foster care was really that bad?” Adrien asks as we start up the stone stairs to Second Kelc’h.
Bastian joggles his head from side to side. “Ourfoster families were . . . not good. But I know there are some kind families out there. We just didn’t land in the right spots.”
As all three start discussing the system, I hang back with Slate. “Why do you want to see the translation of theKelouenn?”
His gaze shifts off the back of Bastian’s head and settles on me. “I noticed something when I was staring at it in your dad’s office.”
I frown. “Something?”
“In the middle of the scroll, when you let your eyes go blurry, a quatrefoil appears.”
I come to a stop. “Really?”
“Yeah. It’s the way the words are spaced out. Here let me show you.” He removes his hand from my lower back to fish his phone out of his sweatpants, then flicks it on and opens up his photo app, bringing up a shot of the scroll. He squints at the screen as though to test out if he sees the shape again. “Here.” He props the phone in my hands.
I stare at it, but nothing happens. “I don’t see it.”
“Relax your eyes.”
This time, I fix the image until my vision goes hazy. Suddenly, the shape all but leaps out at me, and I clap a hand against my mouth. “Mon Dieu!”
The others stop walking and whirl around, already scanning the area for a threat.
“Guys, you have to see this.” I stride up to where they’re standing, phone flipped their way and quickly explain what Slate just told me, what he just showed me.
Adrien cups the back of his neck. “Incredible . . .”
“Whoa,” Bastian says.
“Why is this so groundbreaking?” Alma asks. “I mean, it’s cool, but—”
“Because the text has never made sense,” Adrien says. “But perhaps, we’re supposed to be reading it differently.”
Bastian plucks the phone from my hand and blows up the image. “You think only the text contained in the quatrefoil should be read?”
“Or only the one around the shape.” Slate rubs his jaw, and even though a torrent of vital things are going on at the present moment, I can’t help but latch on to an incredibly insignificant one—the rough, sexy sound of his stubble. “Or maybe, I’m wrong about the entire thing. I don’t want to get your hopes up for nothing.”
“What do you think it’ll tell you guys that you don’t already know?” Alma stuffs her hands inside her coat pockets and shifts around on her wedge booties, surely freezing in her tiny dress and fresh pair of tights I lent her, which bunch at the knees considering our vast height difference.
“It’s never made much sense.” Adrien smooths a palm over his head. “Maybe now it will.”
I exhale a deep breath. “Let’s hope Slate’s right, and there’s something more on the scroll, because something more would be extremely welcomed.”
I study the photo again. The ink is smudged in several places, but there’s a large splotch in the middle. I zoom in. Something about it makes my brain tingle.
When I was young, theKelouennfrightened me. Until Papa picked me up and held me in his arms so that the scroll was at eye level. “There’s nothing to be afraid of,ma chérie. It’s simply one big word search, like the ones we print out and do together, except in a different language.”
Suddenly, it hits me. There’d been a big red dot ringed by tiny words at the heart of the scroll—the Bloodstone. Not a black splotch.
Although, maybe I’m mixing things up. I’ve studied so many texts about Brumian history that all of them have begun to bleed together.
