I eye the print-out of the scroll. “Ink’s a different color. Closer to black, while the rest is dark brown, so it probably wasn’t.”
Everyone gapes at me.
“What? I’m not fucking colorblind.”
Bastian’s eyebrows lift. “The difference is really subtle, but Slate’s right. It doesn’t look like an original spill.”
Cadence turns to Adrien. “You think we can scrape it off, or use a light to see through it?”
“Maybe, but we’d have to remove it from the frame, which could damage it.”
The quiet patter of snow falling against the stained-glass cupola becomes the only sound apart from the constant ticking in the temple of knowledge.
I approach Cadence’s chair and lean my head over her shoulder, grazing her cheek with my jaw. To anyone watching, I’m feigning interest in the scribbled text. But quickly, my interest is unfeigned. “What do you guys make of this:The new moon will abscond with the leaves unless cradled in Brume’s beating heart at eventide?”
“Unfortunately, it’s nothing groundbreaking or new.” Adrien sighs. “If the Quatrefoil isn’t assembled, the leaves disappear with the new moon.”
Alma nibbles on her pinkie nail. “What’s eventide again?”
“An older word for twilight,” Adrien explains.
Bastian’s eyes spark. “But twilight’s broken up into three phases, so I’m guessing, since the clock is astronomical, it would mean astronomical twilight: when it feels dark, but you can’t observe stars with the naked eye.”
“Not sure how that helps, considering the fog.” Alma points to the cupola. “Not much star-gazing happening in Brume during winter.”
“You don’t actually need to see the sky. All you have to do is calculate the solar depression angle . . .” Bastian lets his sentence slide away when he notices our collective bafflement. “I’ll just calculate it and get you the number.”
Alma grins. “What did they feed you when you were a kid? Wikipedia bytes?”
“You’d have to ask Slate. He was the provider.”
“I made sure he got all the good stuff. I needed one of us to be smart enough to get us off the streets.”
Cadence tips her head to the side to look at me and wraps her fingers around my wrist, squeezing it gently.
“Since eventide happens every day, does that mean you guys could somehow lock the leaves in every day?” Bastian asks, back on track.
Cadence’s attention jerks back to the others. “You mean, individually?”
I read the last part of the sentence out loud again: “Unless cradled in Brume’s beating heart at eventide.Seems to say there’s a way to lock them in.”
Adrien sits up. “Which would mean that if we somehow failed to get the last leaf—”
“—which we won’t.” I shoot him a glare.
“Which we won’t,” he repeats slowly. “All wouldn’t be lost.”
I tap the Bloodstone against the table. “You’ll be able to pry the ring from my cold, dead hand and finish the wicked hunt.”
Adrien has the decency to blanch. “Slate, sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“It’s fine, Prof.” I press away from the table and straighten.
“Why dead?” Alma asks.
“The ring can only come off once the four leaves are reunited, and this has to be done before the new moon,” Cadence explains.
Alma cocks her head to the side, her long curls sliding over her shoulder. “Still don’t get why Slate would die.”
