Chapter 40 #3
Andrei patted my shoulder. “Every report has said he’s fine. He may just be out there for longer than we anticipated.”
I reached for that familiar warmth to reassure myself that Griff was alive when something changed. It flickered—not dimming, but shifting somehow. A spike of alarm accompanied it, sharp and sudden, before settling back to its normal glow.
My heart hammered as I pressed deeper into the connection and I felt him press back. He was alive certainly, but something had happened. Something had startled or worried him.
What the hell was happening out there?
Zachariah dismissed the messenger, who bowed and retreated from the room.
“We are pulling the army back from the border,” Zachariah said.
I knew this, having seen the encampments around the castle, but stayed silent as for once he was addressing me without scorn.
“They’ll regroup here and at strategic points throughout the realm.
For the eventual battle that will occur should the Veil continue to deteriorate at this rate. ”
I felt echoes of another conversation. History was repeating itself, fifty years later.
For a moment, I was transported back to that tent with Violet, hearing her talk about the army’s movements.
Yet again, there was fear in people’s voices.
The knowledge that we were facing impossible odds.
And the resignation that we would go to battle once again in order to fight for the survival of our way of life itself.
But Violet had clearly known something we didn’t. She’d believed in a power so strong it could turn the tide. Light to banish darkness. She had been so confident in it that she had tied her life force to it, to save her home.
I addressed my grandfather. “I need to ask you about Starfire.”
“Starfire,” Zachariah mused. “The word is… familiar.”
I blinked. I had just spent the morning entrenched in Violet’s memories, watching him drill her over and over in attempts to reach it. And the word was simply familiar?
Whatever Garrett had done was not going to be undone easily.
“It’s not just familiar,” I said, throwing caution to the wind. “You’ve been searching for access to it your whole life. You tried to get Violet to access it. You pushed her toward it because you believed it was the answer to this whole mess.”
Zachariah froze. “How could you possibly know that?”
Andrei made an involuntary movement as I said, “Because I have Violet’s memories.”
“You what?” Zachariah blanched.
Andrei sat heavily, hand over his eyes.
“I have Violet’s memories,” I said steadily. “And what she showed me convinced me that you know more than anyone else still living about Starfire. Someone made you forget, but it’s still in there. It has to be.”
He stared at me like I was crazy, and maybe I was.
Taking Finn’s notebook from his hand, I sat down across from my grandfather and pushed the completed prophecy in front of him. But he ignored it and continued to stare directly at me.
“How do you have Violet’s memories?”
“I went back in time. Now look—” I pointed at the page.
“You did what?” His voice rose to a shout as he shot to his feet. His eyes flickered between me, Andrei, and Finn, who was trying to stifle a laugh, unsuccessfully.
“I went back in time,” I explained quickly. “I met Violet. Anyway—”
“This is what you meant.” He rounded on Andrei, who had a pained expression on his face. “When you said she was doing plenty that I would never understand to try to protect this kingdom.”
Andrei exhaled heavily, closing his eyes. “I told you there were things happening that you weren’t privy to. You didn’t believe me.”
“And you, both of you”—he whirled back on me—“kept this from me? Why?”
“Because you’re so easy to talk to and care about what I’m doing,” I muttered. I tapped Finn’s notebook. “Now, this is what I’ve pieced together from Violet’s memories.”
He settled down in his chair, still looking at me like he was seeing me for the first time.
I pointed at the notebook once more and he turned his attention to it.
As Zachariah read, his brow furrowed and I saw the moment he understood what he was reading.
In a rare moment of something akin to tenderness, his cold, turquoise eyes softened enough to almost call them warm.
“You are so much like her,” he said softly.
For the first time, I felt myself softening toward my grandfather.
He read it again, rubbing between his eyes. “The crown… something about the crown…”
“‘When bearer’s head, the crown does lay, light of the kingdom will have the say,’” Finn quoted. “‘Light of the kingdom’? Could that be Starfire?”
“The crown binds the wearer to the land,” I mused. “But the crown’s been lost for decades.” Could that be one of the three bonds that Finn had theorized were necessary to access Starfire?
“Not lost,” Zachariah countered. “Waiting. Biding its time for someone worthy.”
Great. Now I had to convince a missing, mystical artifact that I was worthy for it to reappear. In the midst of a war for our kingdom.
No big deal.