I pinched it between my thumb and forefinger and lifted it from the folds of the duvet.
At first, I couldn’t make sense of it. It seemed like nothing more than a charm. It was no larger than a coin. It appeared flat and translucent, with a faint green tint at the edges, but when I held it close, I could feel my mother’s magic.
I knew it instantly.
The Priestess was right about us all leaving remnants of our magic…
The charm pulsed once.
I looked down at the open book, and words appeared in tiny silver letters across the page it fell from.
Maeve, if this finds you, don’t trust the pretty doors.
My throat tightened.
I pressed my other hand over my mouth before any sound could escape. The room seemed to tilt softly around me as the letters faded.
Of course, my mother would leave a warning that sounded like something from a fairy tale right in the middle of a nightmare.
I turned the charm carefully, but nothing else appeared.
I looked down at the book and flipped the pages, but the others were all written in a language I didn’t recognize. Symbols curled across the parchment in long lines, some sharp as thorns, others soft and looping. The drawings in the margins showed doorways, mirrors, wells, and strange circular rooms lined with vines.
The page where the charm had been hidden showed an archway with a star, a root-like symbol beneath, and a shadow.
It reminded me of the root-like symbol I had seen earlier in the silver veins running through the compound walls.
My pulse quickened as the charm pulsed again in my hand, and I blinked.
“Oh.”
My voice sounded too loud in the quiet little room, and I glanced at the door.
Nothing moved outside. There were no footsteps in the corridors or shadows sliding beneath the threshold.
I looked back at the charm, and it tilted again, pointing toward the wall beside the fireplace.
Not the door.
It was absolutely turning toward the wall.
My stomach twisted with the kind of nervous excitement I had no business feeling in enemy territory.
I slid off the bed and crossed the room, keeping one hand in my pocket around Twobble’s pebbles and the other wrapped around my mother’s charm.
I held the charm up near the wall, and it pulled my hand slightly to the left, so I followed.
It tugged me toward the plain wall where ivory plaster covered old stone. I pressed my fingers to the cracks in the plaster, and my shadow mark flared.
I jerked back, biting down on a gasp.
The pain wasn’t like before. It rippled outward, warm and unsettling, as if the mark recognized the charm in my hand and wanted to help, which was extremely worrisome.
But I pressed the charm to the crack, and the wall jiggled, revealing a beautiful door with inlays.
My heart pounded.
“The pretty door,” I whispered.
