The barely perceptible frown line smoothed over.
“Why?”
“Intraverso is difficult if you don’t know the person. If you’re not grounded well enough, or your question isn’t specific enough, it won’t work. I tried and failed three times.”
His flat expression that bordered on a scowl lifted to what I wouldn’t classify as a smile, but regarding Cato, it was.
He nodded. “Good.”
Good?That I practiced and failed?
It didn’t feel good.
In fact, it enraged me.
I wanted to get to the last chapter. I needed a way to change my mom’s fate. But I was bogged down by thoughts of Ronen and Aspen. And I had come to a conclusion that scared me—a conclusion I’d have to deal with.
“Are we done then?”
He scrutinized me.
“Do you have more pressing matters to attend to?”
That felt like a trick question.
“The doors are showing me things I need to understand.”
Cato inclined his head toward my table of books. “Very well.”
I got off that easy?
“Thrones are scholars. Research is commendable in our line of work,” he explained after I hesitated to move.
I gave him a small smile. “Great. Oh, and do you have something I can write on?—”
He gestured toward the quill and a few sheets of paper sitting next to my books.
“How—”
I turned back to his spot to find it empty.
“Sneaky Throne,” I muttered, hurrying to my table.
I started at the beginning, two months ago, with the doors’ first image—Ni.
At the thought of her, I wanted to smack myself. I was supposed to ask Ronen to let Ichi see her. It would have to wait until later, along with telling him about the prophecy.
For now, I wrote down every detail of Ni being bitten. From the blond male and his curling horns to what I’d been thinking that day and before I saw the doors, or at least from what I could remember.
I did the same with the image of Michael torturing me, Ni’s bite mark, the symbol I never deciphered before we rescued Aspen, and Michael with his dagger near my exposed back.
Then, on a separate sheet of paper, I wrote down the newest images: the scrolling rune, Hell’s gates, the rune again, my scars, and the prisoner.
I jotted down anything and everything related to those instances and the events that transpired. I needed to find a connection. Something that could help me understand why they showed what they did, when they did.
At first, I tried to make sense of them in relation to each other.
But it didn’t work.
