Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
The symbols blurred together. Thea blinked hard and rubbed her eyes, then put her glasses back on. The symbols were still blurring.
I need sleep. Proper sleep. Not just passing out face-down in ancient texts.
But she couldn’t stop, not when she was so close. She could feel the answer hovering just beyond her reach, like a word on the tip of her tongue that refused to materialize.
The library was dark except for the oil lamp on her table. The shadows pressed in from all sides.
Vorlag had left hours ago, insisting that she get some rest, and promising to return first thing in the morning.
She’d agreed—lied—and kept working the moment he was out of sight.
The text was right there. She’d translated most of it. She understood the structure, the grammar, and the historical context, but something was missing. A piece that would make everything else snap into focus.
“You’re going to go blind.”
She jumped, her elbow knocking into a scroll, but Khorrek caught it before it rolled off the table.
“How long have you been standing there?” she demanded.
“Long enough to watch you try to read the same line fifteen times.”
“I’m not—” She stopped, and looked at the text. He was right. She’d been stuck on the same phrase for the past twenty minutes.
Damn it.
“You need to eat,” he said.
“I’m not hungry.”
“You didn’t eat dinner.”
“I had bread.”
“Three hours ago. And it was half a piece.”
She waved a hand dismissively. “I’ll eat when I figure this out.”
“You’ll collapse before you figure it out if you don’t take care of yourself.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re exhausted.”
“I’m close. I can feel it. If I just—”
“Thea.”
His voice was gentle. Firm.
She looked up to find him standing next to her chair, looking down at her with those golden eyes that held more concern than anyone else had ever directed at her.
When did that happen? When did I become someone worth worrying about?
“Five minutes,” he said. “Take five minutes. Eat something. Clear your head. Then you can come back to it.”
“But—”
“The text isn’t going anywhere.”
“Lasseran’s deadline is.”
“Which is why you need to be sharp. Not running on fumes and stubbornness.”
She wanted to argue and tell him she was perfectly capable of managing her own research schedule, but her stomach chose that moment to growl. Loudly.
His mouth twitched. “Five minutes.”
“Fine. But only five.”
He produced a plate from somewhere. Bread. Cheese. Dried meat. A small cluster of grapes. When had he prepared that?
“You planned this,” she accused.
“I knew you wouldn’t stop working, so I came prepared.”
“You’re very presumptuous.”
“I’m very right.”
She scowled at him, but took the plate. The first bite of cheese was divine. Rich and sharp and exactly what her body needed. Okay. Maybe he had a point.
She ate, and he watched. He wasn’t hovering, just… present in a way that was oddly soothing. A solid anchor in the chaos of ancient languages and impossible deadlines.
“Better?” he asked when she’d finished.
“Marginally.”
“I’ll take it.”
She pushed the plate aside, and pulled the text back in front of her. Stared at it.
Come on. What am I missing?
The translation was complete, she was sure of that. Every word accounted for and every phrase analyzed, but the meaning was still opaque.
“It’s like there’s another layer,” she muttered. “Something beneath the surface text.”
“Maybe there is.”
She glanced up. “What do you mean?”
He was looking at the scroll, his expression thoughtful.
“The humans he employed to teach us would sometimes leave messages for each other hidden in other texts.”
“Steganography,” she said automatically. “Hiding information within other information.”
“Is that common?”
“In espionage, yes. In ancient religious texts…” She trailed off.
But why not? If you wanted to preserve dangerous knowledge, you’d hide it and make it look like something else.
“Show me,” he said. “What would that look like?”
Her mind raced as she considered the question. Steganography took many forms. Acrostics. Null ciphers. Coded references.
“The simplest method would be an acrostic,” she said. “Using the first letter of each line to spell out a hidden message.”
She scanned the text.
Nothing. The first letters were random. No pattern.
“Or maybe…” She grabbed a fresh piece of parchment. “What if it’s not the first letter? What if it’s something else?”
She started writing. Testing patterns.
The first word of every third line.
The last word of every fifth line.
Every seventh character.
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
“I’m missing something,” she said, frustration bleeding into her voice. “There’s a pattern here. I can feel it. But I can’t see it. What did your teachers use when they left messages for each other?”
“I don’t know. I never saw the actual messages. Just overheard them talking about it once.”
She closed her eyes and tried to think. What were the common methods of steganography in medieval texts? Invisible ink, but that wouldn’t survive centuries. Microdots, but those were modern. Code words, but she’d already checked for those.
Unless…
“The scrolls,” she said suddenly.
“What about them?”
“When I first started working, there was a set of scrolls that were commentaries on ancient texts. I thought they were just religious philosophy, but what if they weren’t?”
She stood too quickly and the room spun, but he steadied her. “Careful.”
“I’m fine. I need those scrolls.”
“Which ones?”
“Third shelf. Southeast corner. There was a set of six. All by the same author.”
He retrieved them for her and she unrolled the first one. It contained a lot of dense text, philosophical meanderings about the nature of balance and power. She’d skimmed it days ago and dismissed it as not relevant to her immediate research.
But what if I was wrong?
She grabbed the main text and placed them side by side, scanning them both. And then she saw it.
“Oh my God.”
“What?”
“Look.” She pointed. “This phrase here in the main text. It says ‘the gift of the Beast.’ Standard translation.”
“And?”
“And in the commentary, the same phrase appears, but with an additional mark. See? This character here. It looks like a scribal flourish. But what if it’s not?”
He leaned closer. “What would it be?”
“A reference marker. Telling the reader to look deeper. To find the hidden meaning.”
She scanned the commentary, looking for more of the marked phrases, and found dozens of them scattered throughout the text.
“I need to map these,” she said, already reaching for fresh parchment. “Every marked phrase. In order.”
She worked fast, writing out each phrase and numbering them while he watched patiently and the lamp burned lower. Finally, she had them all. Seventeen phrases, all of them seemingly random philosophical statements. Except they weren’t random.
“Look at the structure,” she said. “These aren’t complete thoughts. They’re fragments.”
“Can you piece them together?”
“I think so. If I…” She rearranged them, testing different orders, and suddenly, it clicked.
The fragments aligned and formed complete sentences. A hidden text within the commentary. A secret preserved for centuries.
“Read it to me,” he said quietly.
Her hands trembled as she began. “The Beast is not curse but covenant. A gift freely given. Strength for protection. Instinct for survival. Balance between man and wild.”
She paused, swallowed.
“But gifts can be corrupted. Power stolen. Balance broken. The bloodline of kings learned to draw upon the covenant. To take without giving. To consume the very essence that sustained it.”
Her voice cracked. “With each generation, the theft grew greater. The covenant weakened. The orcs, bound to the stolen power, paid the price in blood and barrenness.”
“Keep going,” he said, his voice rough.
“The final theft approaches. The last king seeks to claim all that remains. To bind the covenant completely to his will. To make the gift a chain and the blessed into slaves.”
She looked up and met his eyes.
“When the final theft is complete, the covenant will shatter. No more children will be born. The line will die. And the king will stand alone, crowned in stolen power, ruling over silence and ash.”
The words hung between them.
No more children. Ever.
“The Beast curse,” she said slowly. “It was never a curse at all. It was a blessing. A symbiotic relationship between the orc people and… something else. Some kind of primal force.”
“A covenant,” he said.
“Yes. And Lasseran’s ancestors have been parasitizing it. Drawing power from it, and throwing off the balance. Probably almost from the beginning.”
“Which is why there are fewer orc children every generation.”
“Exactly. The covenant is dying. Starved by centuries of theft.” She grabbed another scroll and started scanning. “And if this is right, Lasseran isn’t trying to break the curse. He’s trying to complete the theft. To take the last of the power for himself.”
“Leaving us with nothing.”
“Leaving you extinct. Within a generation, maybe two, there would be no more orcs. Just Lasseran sitting on a throne of power he stole from an entire people.”
He turned away, his shoulders rigid.
“He knew,” he said quietly. “All this time, he knew what he was doing.”
“Yes.”
“And he didn’t care.”
“No. He cared about power. About control. About being more than human.” She went to his side. “But this also means there’s hope.”
He looked at her. “How?”
“If the power was stolen, it can be returned. If the balance was broken, it can be restored.” Her mind was already working through the possibilities. “I need more time, more research, but I think I can reverse the process. Take back what was stolen and return it to the covenant.”
“You can cure the curse.”
“I can heal the blessing. Restore what it was meant to be.”
A muscle in his jaw twitched. “That would mean…”
“Children. A future. Everything Lasseran’s bloodline stole from you.”
He closed his eyes. “That’s not possible.”
“It is. The knowledge is here, waiting for someone to find it.”