I shook my head, baffled at the strange markings scattered across the scroll.This is what Tynan sent us after? This is what will defeat Sintarrak?
My thoughts drifted to Drystan.He should be here for this.He’d see something we would miss…
I ran my hand over the wrinkled brown leather and slipped my fingers over the raised markings. Why did these feel so familiar?
My fingers froze as a gut-churning realization washed over me, and I jerked my hand away.
“This isn’t parchment,” I breathed, snapping my gaze to Kellan’s bare torso and the lines of scars stretching down his chest. “This isskin.”
Color drained from Isla’s bronze face, but she leaned closer, examining the large patch of dried, ancient skin.
“Fuck that,” Aeriden blurted out, standing and distancing himself. He brushed his hands against his leathers, despite not having touched it.
“Let’s take it back to theHydra, and we can examine it in better lighting,” Kellan cut in, offering me a hand.
I let him pull me up, his thumb running a line over the top of my hand.
“And then we can figure out what the hell this is for,” he continued, raising the strange, crystal decanter and striding past the Itherian sculpture. My eyes snagged on the Itherian woman, her empty hands reaching up toward the basin still holding our dark sacrifice. Slow ripples spread through the blood as Tiberius clomped closer.
“Kellan,” I murmured. “A key…”
He paused and turned toward me, following my line of sight and cocking his head.
“A key to a map helps translate it,” Isla said. “And we can’t read this language.”
I nodded as Kellan knelt beside me next to the little statue. He slid the U-shaped crystal decanter into the petite hands of the winged Itherian, sliding the wider of the two openings just beneath the center of the bottom of the basin.
Aclicksounded, and a dark crimson line streamed into the decanter, filling it with our thick, combined blood and emptying the basin.
I blew out a breath as Kellan pulled it free.
“What do we do with it?” Aeriden asked as he leaned over my shoulder.
“You’ll find answers when new life waters ancient hide…” I mused, recalling Tynan’s cryptic instructions. My stomach pitched as his phantom shadows licked along my spine.
Kellan’s body shifted closer to mine, his knee sliding to the edge of my thigh.
“New life…” Isla’s black braid slipped over her shoulder as she examined the decanter. “New life is our blood, the blood of the living. And the ancient hide?—”
“The scroll,” I finished for her. My eyes skipped to the sheet of scarred skin. “Let’s get back to Borva so we can really look at this.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
DRYSTAN
High Priest Helmar has escaped.
– Correspondence from Stynguard forces to Lord Pavel.
Drystan – Western Sultira
My blood froze.Windsor was not who he said he was.
High Priest Helmar raised a grayed brow at me, and I forced my lips into a thin smile as I locked down the part inside me screaming in terror and rage. Nightmares lunged from the depths of my memories. The high priest’s sinister grin as his kingsguards pinned me down… The blade on my skin… The water over my head… My lungs screaming…
My short nails cut into my palms, and I willed my hands to unclench. I offered the old man a soft wave and forced myself to take a couple slow steps as I moved to where my blade leaned in the corner, a desperation urging me toward the weapon.
Why was one of the most powerful mages in Sultira, King Saros’s most trusted adviser, thehigh priest,here, hiding in theforest? He should be dead.He deserved to be dead.I saw him staring blankly at the ceiling in Stynguard when Nivis attacked… When Cyril took Lyvia and the Obscura Bone…
