* * *
Charlie had convinced the guards to skip our cells for bed check, and since he’d won his last fight, they’d agreed. As much as I hated to admit it, him being a fighter for the club had perks.
When Charlie and I arrived at the Lair that evening, Marcus was floating through the air. Kallie was levitating him with her wolven telepathy magic, and he was getting flecks of paint on his face as he spray-painted the only bare spot left in the Lair, which was the ceiling.
Marcus had spray-painted the entire interior with cool designs. There were pictures of a city skyline, of all kinds of magical creatures, of skulls and wings and faces, and all kinds of graffiti art. Everywhere you looked, on every wall, there was a unique design to look at, colors blending seamlessly into each other. I wasn’t sure how Marcus had managed to smuggle so much paint from the Arts & Crafts room, but apparently he could do anything, if it was for his art. I ran my fingers over the impression of a door he’d painted on the rock. The flower arch spanning the doorway almost looked real.
The rest of the stuff we’d stolen from Contraband was scattered around the room, along with spray paint cans, snacks, and other stuff we weren’t allowed to have at the prison. Kallie had conjured illusions of plushy purple couches to sit on, along with a stone fireplace that she’d created to be real. The fireplace cast the entire room in an eerie glow.
It looked pretty wicked in here now, and was a badass place to hang out. It was a shame we couldn’t come here every day.
“So, what’s up?” Charlie asked. I led him to the couch, and we took a seat. Oberi, who was in her unicorn form, lay beside the fireplace and made little fire butterflies rise out of the hearth with her horn, while Rishi immersed himself in a bag of catnip.
Kallie levitated Marcus down from the ceiling. They took separate armchairs, and Kallie said, “You guys wanted us to look for information on demigods. There wasn’t much to go on.”
“Until we figured something out,” Marcus said. “The material in the library on demigods is rare, but we found every time a demigod was mentioned, it always led back to the Elves.”
“The Elves?” I blinked. “Why is that?”
“We aren’t sure,” Kallie said. “The two are connected, but we don’t know in what way.”
“There is something we figured out, though,” Marcus said. “Ava, you were able to translate the words on that bow, right?”
“Kind of.” I got up and walked across the room, to where we’d stowed the Elven bow. I placed it on the table in front of the couches. “The runes on the bow roughly translate to,Beneath the bones lies our forevermore.”
I’d thought it rather gruesome when I’d interpreted it. It was a similar inscription to the Elven gate we’d found in the woods during the Darke Games;What is hidden remains secret from all but the demigods, forevermore.
The runes on the ships in Kinpago were all names, but underneath each ship name was inscribed the same word; forevermore, over and over.
I blinked. “Do you thinkforevermorewas a code word amongst the Elves?”
“See, we thinkForevermoreis a location,” Kallie said. “Not a warning.”
“A place?” I asked.
“Yes. Otherwise, why would it be mentioned over and over, on the gate, the ships, and on the bow? It’s a clue,” Marcus said.
“Look at this book we stole from the library on the Great Supernatural War.” Kallie placed a book on the table and rifled through a few pages before pointing to a paragraph. “This passage says, ‘The Elves are gone to forevermore.’I thought it was a mistake made by the writer, and that the sentence was supposed to read, ‘The Elves are gone forevermore,” but what if it isn’t? What if Forevermore is aplace, and the author didn’t capitalize the name, in order to keep it safe from people who didn’t know about it?The Elves are gonetoForevermore.It makes sense!”
“Who’s the writer of this book?” I asked.
“Aeson Decimus. He’s long dead and gone,” Marcus said. “But when he was alive, he was an expert on Elven lore, and the Great Supernatural War. During our research, we found out he might’ve had Elven blood. If there’s a hidden place of the Elves, he would’ve known about it.”
“And that’s what we’re looking for. A secret, lost city of the Elves,” Kallie said confidently.
My mouth twisted. “Are you guys sure about this? It isn’t a lot to go on.”
“I have a gut feeling. We know the Elves used to live on Darke Island, but if that’s true, where are the ruins, the artifacts?” Kallie asked. “There aren’t any.”
“That’s because the other supernatural races destroyed them all. They wanted to erase the Elves from history,” I said.
“They couldn’t have gotten rid of everything,” Marcus insisted. “Even after genocides are committed, there are always traces left behind of former civilizations. Why aren’t there any on Darke Island?”
“There are,” I said, excitement surging through me. “The gate Charlie and I found during the Games had Elvish runes on it.What is hidden remains secret from all but the demigods, forevermore.The city must be behind the doorway!”
“Then we have to figure out how to get through it,” Kallie stated with conviction.
“Agreed,” Marcus said.
