Chapter 19 #2
With her free hand, Bridget shoved the blond Warlock. Laughing, Archer wrapped his arm around her shoulders and kissed the top of her head. Cassia watched him whisper something in her ear. Seconds later, Bridget elbowed him hard in the stomach.
Magic pinched her temple.
You’re unusually quiet.
Cassia tried to shove away her brother’s presence. He was the last person she wanted to know about her sudden, lonely spiraling thoughts. Since when do you care?
She barely registered Cade’s surprise before he was gone.
“Where’s Nylah?” Bridget asked, a hint of panic in her voice.
“She’s with Delphine watching over our favorite person,” Archer said. “Can you believe she asked to stay with her instead of me?”
“I can,” Castor whispered to Cassia, holding open the loose shelf so she could climb through easily. She couldn’t stop herself from releasing a giggle.
Cassia slipped into the study and claimed an empty seat by the window.
Sunlight streamed through the glass, warming her back and casting lazy golden beams across the wooden floor.
To her surprise, Castor came to stand beside her.
Without a word, he leaned against the slanted roof, his shoulder brushing the stone wall.
The sunlight slanted across his features, highlighting the angles of his face and casting his deep brown skin in a soft, golden glow.
Cassia balled her fists. She really needed to stop staring.
At the other end of the long wooden table, Cade was murmuring something to Bridget. Whatever he said, it made her laugh. Cade grinned back, a little crooked and helpless. Whatever secret passed between made both of their faces soften. She wasn’t the only one who noticed.
Stellan strode over and slammed a thick pile of papers onto the table, scattering a few of them across the polished surface.
Cassia tilted her head, taking in the sight of their old tutor — relative, apparently, next to Cade.
Now that she was really looking, she couldn't believe she’d missed just how similar their jawlines were and how the slope of their noses matched like mirrored edges.
But for all their resemblance, their differences were louder. Cade, all shadows, with unruly dark hair and a storm behind his eyes. Stellan, composed and bright, his every move calculated and smooth as silk. One dark, one light. Two sides of a very complicated coin.
A muscle in Cade’s jaw twitched. “How’s Marin?”
Busy unwrapping a map, Stellan didn’t look up. “Better. But I told her to stay away today. She needs more rest.” Whatever he found on the map, he must have not liked, because he suddenly shoved it to the side. “We don’t have much time. And there’s only so much I know.”
Finn raised a brow.
“The cost of the curse,” Bridget said. “He’s lost some vital memories. Mostly about Vega.”
“Convenient,” Castor muttered, messing with a loose string on his coat. “Why don’t we start with how you appeared in the Elder Woods? There’s no gate there.”
Leaning over, Stellan drummed his fingers on the table. “Okay, the Tuathan artifacts I can do… For the most part. They’re riddled throughout history enough that most of the legends surrounding them don’t specifically apply to Vega or what happened at Cavamyne.”
Castor pinched the bridge of his nose. “Aren’t those a myth?”
Bridget shook her head. “Apparently they’re very real… not that I know anything about them. Nylah had one.” She glanced at Cade. “That you gave to her.”
“The stone?” Cade frowned. When everyone waited for an answer, he lightly stuttered, “I swear I just thought it was a regular rune. Right after I’d made the decision to go to the human realm, I went to the vault.
I wasn’t sure how magic would work there…
so I knew I would need more than just my pendant if someone ever came looking for me. ”
Finn barked a laugh. “And you just happened to choose the one rune in that entire mountain that is actually the stuff of legend? Only you, man.”
Cassia tried not to glare at him. The reminder of her brother’s actions almost four years ago and why it had happened left her chest stinging.
“There was something about it,” Cade murmured, suddenly looking lost in a memory.
“Something familiar. Like I’d seen it before.
The moment I saw it, I knew it was the one I had to take.
.. I tried to use it once. Right after the Shaman found us at the Halloween party.
Nothing I tried worked.” After a long pause, he cemented his gaze on Bridget.
“I gave it to Nylah in case something happened to us. I knew if a Shaman or another Fae saw her with a rune, they would hesitate long enough for her to get away. I never expected…”
Head spinning, Cassia cut him off. “Okay, we get it. You didn’t pay attention to anything in this library while we were growing up. If you had, you wouldn’t have recklessly taken an unknown rune from the vault across the gate.”
Cade glowered at her. “Like you ever—”
“Can we get back to the main reason we’re all stuck in this stuffy excuse of a room?” Cassia snapped. “Every history book I’ve ever read theorizes that the Tuathan stone can open and create gates.”
“And your father has been keeping it to himself all these years?” Castor asked speculatively. “Is that why Quinn tried to blast her way into Astraeus? Are there more here?”
Stellan shook his head. “Based on the timing of Quinn’s attack, I assume her target was Cade.
Without him, she can’t bring back the Sanguis.
The stone was the only artifact left in Astraeus.
Deckard had no idea it was in the vault,” he said.
“Believe me, he would have already used it for his own advantages by now.”
“Okay but no one else has brought up the biggest issue with all this,” Bridget interjected. “It wasn’t Stellan that brought us here. Nylah used it. She’s human. Us and magic usually don’t mix.”
“The stone…” Stellan choked. Taking a deep breath through his nose, he clenched his fists.
Hoarsely, he spit out, “Only someone with pure intentions can wield it, even if they’re human.
It’s how it was designed. As long as it remains in her possession and her intentions stay the same, it will only obey her. ”
Alarm trickled down Cassia’s spine. Blood dripped out of Stellan’s nose, like the admission had cost him a great deal.
There had to be more the curse was costing him than just his memories.
Not only was magic taking a toll on a Tuathan rare, but he spoke of the artifacts like they were living, breathing entities.
Archer loudly snapped his fingers. Cassia jumped.
She’d almost forgotten the exasperated Warlock in the corner.
“We already went over most of this back in your Lincoln Log cabin. There are four. They all sound equally dangerous. We happen to have one of them. We still need to find the others. What else do we need to know?”
Cassia couldn’t help but agree with him.
Just a little. They already had one of them.
It didn’t matter what the others were or what they did.
The sooner they could find them, the sooner Quinn’s use of the Bloodstone and assault on Elyria would stop.
It had to. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched dark clouds swirl in the sky.
Even through the window, the air outside seemed heavy.
“The more we know about the artifacts, the easier they will be to find,” Finn argued. “There’s so much lore surrounding the artifacts, even I’m not sure what’s true.”
Cassia watched a bead of sweat form on Stellan’s temple.
If no one helped him explain anything soon, he was going to pass out.
She cleared her throat. “It all starts with the lake, right?” Ignoring Cade’s stunned stare, she quietly continued, “It’s rumored Tuathans received their power from an enchanted lake.
They proved themselves and the land rewarded them… at least, I think so.”
Stellan ran a trembling hand through his hair, leaving the normally slicked back blonde strands slightly ruffled.
He gave Cassia a quick, grateful half-smile.
“Even I don’t know exactly how the artifacts came to be.
That happened long before our time. All I know is what we figured out while we tried to beat Vega to them. ”
Bridget and Cade froze. Cassia watched them share another meaningful look before they locked eyes with Stellan.
Their unspoken conversation sent a wave of anxiety up Cassia’s spine.
The weight of their history stifled the air.
Would she ever be able to wrap her head around the fact that her brother and Bridget had lived a whole life over five hundred years ago?
Beside her, Castor cursed under his breath, his frustration clearly visible. She wondered if the next question pressing her mind was the same as his.
Would any of them ever be able to find out the truth about it?
Bridget’s throat bobbed. Her voice was raspy as she asked, “How much about that can you remember?”
“It started when…” Stellan flinched. Closing his eyes, he balled his fists.
“Damn it. Okay… let me go a little forward. There’s only so much Marin was able to break free and some of those memories still want to stay locked up.
Eventually, Cade concluded that the first Tuathans decided the power the lake had given them wasn’t enough.
They channeled more magic from the lake into four artifacts…
to be an endless source of power. For any creature. Even humans.”
“But magic is unpredictable,” Cade said, crossing his arms. “The artifacts took on a mind of their own, didn’t they?”
Cassia took Stellan’s silence as a yes. After a moment, he nodded. “If you want to channel their power… you have to pass their tests. A fact we didn’t understand until it was too late.”
“Tests?” Finn asked.
“Or price. Whatever you want to call it,” Stellan replied stiffly. “If you haven’t already figured it out, we didn’t get much of a chance to test our theories.”
“Which artifact did Vega want?” Castor asked. “Or was it all of them?”
Bridget’s cat-like eyes cut to Stellan before she sat her hip on the edge of the table. “We think it’s the crown. Stellan said it could raise the dead. Apparently, it went missing around the same time Cade and I died.”
The last words fell out of Bridget’s mouth in a quiet, slow cadence, like she still didn’t quite believe them. A muscle in her brother’s jaw twitched as he rubbed Bridget’s lower back. Cassia couldn’t stop the twinge of sympathy that sprung in her gut. Still, did they ever stop touching?
“And you think they had something to do with it?” Castor asked Stellan.
“I think she did.”
Cassia scoffed. “Of course, she did. Leaving chaos in her wake is Bridget’s specialty. What about the others? The sword hasn’t been seen since around that time either.”
“That one is in Andarre,” Archer said. “The joy that is Alexia helped us figure that one out.”
“It was taken by another Tuathan there for safekeeping. It’s the first artifact we found and it…
” Suddenly, Stellan bent over and coughed roughly.
Bridget tried to reach out for him, but he waved her away.
Droplets of blood were splattered across his hand.
“Don’t. I need to get out what I can. The sword…
” Stellan struggled for a moment. “It’s the first one we found.
It’s how we figured out that once someone passes an artifact’s test, it only answers to them. ”
Cassia’s stomach twisted.
“He’ll be fine,” Castor whispered in her ear, his hand on her lower back.
But Cassia’s gaze was no longer on Stellan… it was on Bridget. She’d paled considerably. Once Cade gripped her hand, she seemed to find her voice. “It’s Cade. That’s why this whole plan to bring us back was created… Because it has to be him.”
The slight glow radiating behind her brother’s eyes told Cassia he was trying to search Bridget’s head for answers.
The crease between his brows deepened with concern.
Without thinking, she pulled on the heat radiating from Castor’s hand, her only thought the desire to find out exactly what Bridget knew.
Before she could blink, an intoxicating spark of magic funneled through her veins. Cade’s presence flooded her mind.
What did she see? Cassia demanded.
Before Cade could respond, she tugged on a memory that he was analyzing. Bridget’s memory. It was dark, and hazy. More dreamlike than real. He was in a dark forest holding a sword that glowed. A beast almost identical to the one outside the wall charged at him.
With a gasping breath, Castor removed his hand. The image she’d been analyzing disappeared with a searing pop.
Cade’s eyes narrowed at them both. Had he realized he hadn’t invited her in?
“And the scroll?” Finn asked. “That one is even less documented than the crown.”
Stellan rifled through the same papers, then roamed his eyes over a far bookshelf. “From what I recall, that one alluded us, as well. There might be something in a book that I remember, but—”
“This is just your theory, though, right?” Cade challenged, effectively stopping Stellan’s perusal.
“You don’t actually remember what Vega was after.
Why do you assume it’s the artifacts? She was powerful enough to almost decimate the Tuathans.
She completely destroyed Cavamyne. Why would she need them? ”
“Because of who she is. It’s why she’s obsessed with blood magic,” Stellan answered, his mouth falling into a hard line.
“A psychopath?” Archer chided.
Stellan’s throat bobbed. Silence pierced Cassia’s ears as she waited for him to answer. Finally, he said, “A Druid.”