Such a simple object. An envelope. And yet the emblem depicted on it has made my heart pound.
“This insignia.” I run my fingers across the pearly-white paper, tracing the mark: an insignia that looks like an arrow surrounded by rays of light.
It feels like a lifetime ago that I stood for the first time within the Iron Forge while Antony buttoned that heavy leather coat around me. An oracle vision had struck me then. A vision for which I had no context at the time.
In it, I was hurrying along a hallway as pearly white as this envelope, reaching for a panel on the wall bearing this same insignia.
“Thyra?”
Carefully, I ask, “What is this emblem?”
“It’s the Vividari’s symbol.” He pulls himself off the wall. “Why? What’s wrong?”
“I’ve seen it before. In a vision. But I couldn’t make sense of it.”
Quickly, I take a seat and slip open the envelope, trying to process the information inscribed on it as fast as I can.
“This is happening tonight.” My back is unbearably stiff with tension as I hurry on, murmuring as I read, “On Mount Vividari.” The implication of this isn’t lost on me, the cruelty in it. Neither is the timing of the event. “Well before sunset.” I set the envelope down. “Galla wants to demonstrate her power in my presence.”
But how does my vision fit into this?
“There’s more.” Antony steps to the side of the table, a shadow looming over me.
He keeps his explanation brief, clipped, and emotionless, telling me he went to see Victor in the night and relaying to me everything they spoke about.
All the impossibilities of gathering together the tools that created the blade.
“Lost, unattainable, or unknown,” he finishes. “And once again, Galla Vividarihas power over my kingdom’s future.”
My bare hands close so tightly around the invitation that I’m scrunching it. “No,” I whisper. “Not entirely.”
I reach for him, grateful when he responds by kneeling beside me, placing his hand on the table where I can rest my smaller hand in his.
Again, speaking carefully, knowing that my question could force him to remember things he wants to forget, I ask, “Do you know what the tomb looks like?”
His eyes narrow, and he stays quiet for so long that I don’t expect he’ll answer me.
“White stone.” The corners of his mouth turn down, and his shoulders hunch, his voice becoming low and harsh. “The bodies are in individual chambers in the walls. What was left of them.”
Pearly white stone walls with panels and chambers.
One of which hides the hammer.
As much as this information gives me what I hope is clarity about my vision, it also brings him pain.
I lean toward him, opting for actions instead of words, pressing slowly to his chest, nudging my forehead to his chin until his breathing quiets.
Then, “Antony?”
“Yes?”
“I think I can open it.”
His hand flies from the table to my back, a firm grasp. “How?”
“I had a vision I couldn’t reconcile until now. I saw myself walking alone along a corridor made of white stone. I stopped at a panel marked with the Vividari emblem and opened a small chamber set into the wall. Whatever was inside that chamber, I was pulling it out when the vision ended.”
“You can open the tomb?”
