“I have not solved it,” she replied. “I have been through every type of encryption out there.”
“I might know. At least one line.” I swallowed nervously. Was I right? What if it came to nothing? Just a strange dream. “Can I?”
She shrugged, shoving it to me.
I looked over the markings on the page, my heart thumping in my chest. The song echoing in my brain. The symbols were the only thing on the page that didn’t correspond to a letter—they were numbers. It might take longer to figure out the rest of the encryption if he used another code, but at least I was certain I had one part of it.
Perspiration licked at my lower back, my hands shaking as I wrote down the memory still strong in my mind. The dove, rose, forget-me-nots, violets, and a boat.
Dove=47°, rose=46’25, forget-me-nots=18°, violets=59’06.
But what did the boat mean?
Ling’s head snapped up as her dark eyes filled with guarded curiosity.
“The code is based off a folksong he used to sing to me.” I tapped the page. “But I’m not sure why the boat is there?” It didn’t fit. Was it to throw people off? Was I wrong?
Ling moved, tapping the numbers into the keyboard, her body stilling, her mouth parting.
“What?” Dread slithered down my throat, wrapping around my stomach.
She twisted the screen to us, a place on the map highlighted.
“Shit.” Warwick breathed out, his head tipping back, his palm rubbing his scruff.
“What?” I looked at him then the screen, not understanding both of their dreaded reactions.
“High Castle.” He wagged his head. “Visegrád.” He said the name of the area as if it was a feared nemesis. I had heard of the site a few times from teachers. It was an area not too far northwest of here, following the Danube. We didn’t give it much interest as it was known to be hallowed ground to the fae.
“It’s sacred land to you guys, right?”
He licked his lips, taking in my puzzled expression.
“Sacred is one way of calling it. But I’d say it is more cursed. Haunted and feared. No living fae enters that area anymore.Ever.”
“Why?”
“You don’t know?”
“Should I?”
Warwick huffed, his arms crossing.
“Visegrád is where we fought the fae war twenty years ago.”
Chapter
Twenty-Five
“The High Castle in Visegrád?” Andris’s mouth opened, his eyes rising up to Warwick and me in disbelief. “You think the nectar is hiding there?”
“I don’t know what’s there.” I stepped up to his desk with the journal, coming straight over here from the operations room. Ling took a photocopy, working from that. “Ling is trying to figure out the rest based on the song, but he could have used another keycode. All I know is there’s a reason my father wrote down those coordinates. Something is there he wanted to protect. And his statement about ‘I understand now’...” I stared at the man who knew him best, who understood my father more than even I did. “I have to go and see.”
Andris’s shoulders lowered, peering back down at the markings, his fingers trailing over the pages. “I wish he’d talked to me.” He tapped at the book sadly, then put his focus back on me. “Do I want to know how you figured it out?”
“It’s . . .complicated.”
“With you, my dear,” Andris chuckled lightly, “I have no doubt.”
