Chapter 12
Chapter
Twelve
Asilver hilt rested on a dusty shelf on top of a pile of papers. It appeared strange because it had no blade.
When Torin reached for the silver hilt, I grabbed his arm.
“No, this is silver. You’ll burn your hand. And why would Dad only have the hilt of a sword and not the entire sword?” I picked up the heavy handle and examined it. It was unusual that the handle of a weapon wasn’t wrapped in leather. “Maybe it’s an old broken sword he kept for some reason.”
“But this hilt is beautiful,” he said, his gaze firmly set on the silver piece of a broken weapon. “I’ll just try to touch it.”
He reached out and touched the handle part of the hilt with the tips of his fingers. I expected him to jerk back in pain as the silver burnt his skin.
But instead, Torin smiled. “It didn’t hurt me. I feel like I can hold it.”
My jaw was about to drop to the floor. “How is this possible?”
Torin picked it up, and his smile broadened.
“I can’t believe that,” he said.
“Me too. You can hold it. It’s as if this broken weapon has some kind of protection magic for you not to be hurt.”
His gaze snapped to me. “That’s interesting. The vampire Queen has a silver sword, but the hilt is protected with leather.”
The sword she used to leave her mark on Dad’s shoulder. I ground my teeth but remained silent.
Torin started waving the hilt as if he were fighting an invisible enemy, trying it out. Suddenly, the rest of the sword emerged with tiny sparks flying around, and we both gasped.
The blade wasn’t long, but it curved at the end. The retractable sword was nothing like I’d seen before. As if it wasn’t from our realm. My fingers itched to touch it, as though the sword called to me.
“I can feel its magic,” I said.
“Me too,” Torin said and grinned.
He turned the flat part of the blade to me and pointed to tiny symbols engraved around the carved pentagrams of the shiny surface. They were organized in a line from the hilt down to the blade’s tip.
Torin then pointed to my bracelet. “Same ones, Anna.”
I darted my gaze between the two weapons. The pentagram with the four symbols and missing fifth one matched perfectly.
“The magic sword must have been engraved and blessed with the power of the athame described in The Grimoire Book of Athame. The one the dark witch is after,” I said and swallowed hard. “It’s better if Cordelia doesn’t know about the sword. Let’s leave the sword here. It’s safe.”
The matching pentagrams on both weapons made me sure that the witch’s ritual knife was used on them.
Torin’s eyes glimmered. “It must be a powerful sword.”
He took a few steps away from me and wielded the sword in the air.
“Who knows what it does,” he said thoughtfully. “I’m keeping it.”
The longer Torin held on to the silver sword, the more it seemed to wake up until the blade emitted white light around it.
My eyes widened.
“What’s the missing symbol on the pentagram?” he asked.
“The fated mate symbol. The spirit or soul.”
Torin looked at me. He must have connected the dots. Until I chose my mate, I would guess the fifth symbol would be missing from the pentagrams on the enchanted trees in my dream realm, the golden bracelet, and this silver sword.
“But if the symbols matched, how is this silver sword linked to me?” I asked.
“I don’t know, Anna. But we’re taking it with us.”
“Well, Dad will eventually find out I took the book, and for sure he’ll find out about the missing silver hilt, so either way, we’ll be in trouble,” I said. “We’re postponing the inevitable.”
Torin nodded. “Oh, we’ll definitely face the King when he finds out, but it’s all worth it.”
Torin touched one of the symbols on the curved tip of the blade. When the attacker pulled out this blade from someone’s flesh, the curved tip would do more damage to the body, tearing it apart.
I frowned. “I wish I could ask Dad how he got this sword, but I guess I’ll have the chance when we get caught. Later. We need to buy me time to open the book first.”
“Your dad has never used this sword before, Anna. I’ve been with him for a long time. And thirty years ago, when he fought the vampire Queen, I’m sure he didn’t possess the sword. Otherwise, the King would have used it and not allowed the Queen to damage his shoulder with her silver sword.”
A cold chill ran down my spine. Dad’s body was never the same.
The damage was permanent, and sometimes I’d catch Dad watching in the distance while massaging his shoulder, lost in thought.
Did he want me to finish the war with the vampire Queen as part of his revenge?
Was it more about that than to defend the kingdom?
“Your father must have acquired the sword after the war,” Torin said and closed his eyes.
Suddenly, the silver blade retracted back into the hilt and disappeared. When he opened his eyes again, Torin only held the silver hilt, the blade now gone.
“I just willed it to close, and it worked.” He smiled. “The King either can’t hold the sword because of his bad shoulder or can’t open and close it since I’ve never seen him use it.”
“Torin, you can’t use the sword against Cordelia. You’ll set her off more, and Dad will see you.”
Torin reached back to the waist of his jeans and placed the hilt there, freeing his hands. “I know, but it’ll come in handy later on.”
I frowned. The glimmer in his eyes was pure determination.
We were running out of time. Dad could return at any moment.
I looked around the room and spotted my book on his shelves by the other door. Dad said that door led to the secret passages in the kingdom.
I stepped before the door, picked up my book, and stood there.
“Anna? We can’t be gone for too long. They’ll notice we are missing,” Torin said from behind me.
“But aren’t you curious where the secret passages lead?”
“Cordelia can show up any moment, but if you want us to go inside, I’ll go with you.”
I turned my head and looked at him, smiling.
“Thank you,” I said. “Dad said that the royal families used these passages in the past to escape danger, but this doesn’t seem right.
They should be shared with everyone in the kingdom.
What if we find a place within the secret tunnels to hide everyone from the kingdom there? It could be large enough.”
Torin smiled and pressed down the handle. “After you, Princess.”
His support meant the world to me. The kingdom was unfamiliar with this part of him, and I planned to show everyone that Torin was a good man. He was thoughtful and empathetic, even his vampire.
As soon as we stepped inside, the temperature dropped several degrees. A cold breeze brushed over my bare shoulders, and I shivered. Brown and orange stones surrounded us. The tunnel ahead of us looked man-made, as did the rusty light fixtures connected by a black cable on the walls.
Our boots crunched over gravel as we walked deeper into the tunnel.
“Many human societies have lived underground. They used tunnels like this one mostly for emergencies,” I said.
As we advanced, the light turned dimmer, and goose bumps rose on my forearms.
“It’s so creepy in here.”
With the corner of my eye, I detected some movement. A large black spider the size of my hand crawled over the wall and disappeared into a crack in the ceiling. I almost screamed. My breathing turned shallow, and I placed my hand over my chest.
Torin placed his arm around my shoulder and pulled me into his warm body. “So, you never got over your phobia of spiders as a child?”
“How did you know?” I gaped at him.
“I know a lot of things, Anna.”
I groaned. He wouldn’t tell me, but obviously, Torin had watched me growing up in the kingdom more than I gave him credit for.
“I’m also not a big fan of rats,” I said, and he chuckled.
The dirty bulbs within old, rusty lanterns barely lit up the way. I desperately tried to adjust my human eyes to the darkness. Torin must have sensed my disturbance when he grabbed my hand.
The more we walked, the more my stomach tightened, and I started to ramble.
“Before we entered the passages, I thought humans would want to explore secret tunnels on their vacations, like a fun activity. But the darker it got, the more I thought against it.”
Torin squeezed my hand.
“So far, we haven’t gotten to a place we can use as an evacuation route,” I said.
After a moment, we reached a fork in the pathway. Torin pulled me to the left side, and we kept walking.
I caught a stink of something rotten and pinched my nose with my free hand but released it immediately.
“Bodies,” I said as I finally made sense of the acidic scent that made my stomach churn.
“Prison cells must be nearby,” Torin said.
The smooth stones surrounding us so far on our journey turned pointy and sharp. Holes appeared in the ground around us and on the pathway.
Torin navigated them with ease, pulling me behind him. I kept up with Torin’s large strides.
I couldn’t hide the kingdom’s people in tunnels with holes. Many families had children. I hoped we could find a better place.
On one side, several metal doors were etched within the stones. Torin peered into the small opening in the middle of the door, and I lifted on my tiptoes next to him.
My pulse sped up as I gazed around the dirty room. Silver chains, darkened and unused, hung from the ceiling. A thick wooden log with wrapped chains around it must have been used to raise and lower the silver chains.
“Torture chamber?” I squeaked.
Dad didn’t mention anything about torturing supernaturals or humans. Did the werewolves do that here in secret? Perhaps the hunter leader was correct to call me na?ve.
“Those were different times, Anna. Under your dad’s rule, these were never used,” Torin said as if he’d read my mind.
“But still.” I swallowed hard as the truth made my throat parched. “Werewolves are no different from vampires.”
I recalled the memory of the vampire master holding Alpha Mark chained in their torture room in the London nightclub.