“Where do you think you’re going?” she asked the scribe.
“I go where the scroll goes.” The woman’s strange violet eyes glanced at the scroll Raven was holding from when they’d worked out the key.
“I need it in case there’s another riddle inside,” Raven said. “It might hold more clues.”
Leena gestured toward the dark interior of the cave. “If there is more to work out inside, chances are it, like the key, will require a translator who reads ancient Elvish. You could use a translation spell, but it would be far easier and less draining to simply allow me to do it.”
Raven sighed. The scribe made sense, and she wasn’t overly excited about going into the dark cavern alone. “Okay, then. Here. You might as well carry this, then.” She handed her the scroll. “If we run into trouble, I’ll need both hands.”
Leena took the precious scroll and carefully rerolled it before tucking it into her satchel. “Lead the way.”
Raising her wand, Raven floated a ball of light high in front of them. The glow revealed a set of stone stairs that led down, underground. Her heart pounded as she descended. As soon as she stepped on the third step, torches lit along the walls, and everything inside blazed to life, shone gold. The tomb was filled with treasure.
“Oh my god,” Raven mumbled when her eyes caught on a large yellow diamond resting on top of the pile of coins and jewels. It twinkled in the torchlight.
“Is that what I think it is?” Leena’s chest rose and fell like she’d sprinted a mile. That was fear in her purple eyes.
Raven knew what it was. She’d held one just like it in her hands once, only it was an emerald, not a diamond. Gabriel’s heart. “It’s a dragon’s heart. I’m guessing Tavyss’s.”
“It has to be,” Leena said. “I read about him just yesterday, and this gem is the same color as the ring described in the text.”
A lump formed in Raven’s throat. Medea had led her to the burial chamber of her beloved Tavyss.
“Where’s the grimoire?” Leena asked. “Why would Medea lead you to the heart and not the book?”
Tentatively, Raven lifted the gem and held it up to the torchlight. It wasn’t just reflecting the light but putting off its own. At first, her thoughts flashed to Gabriel’s heart, to how the emerald once held the light of his soul. But she didn’t feel another presence in the room or sense that Tavyss’s soul was still bound to this gem. What she did feel was the hot rush of power like a pulse in the air around her. Her breath caught.
“It’s here,” she said excitedly. “Inside the stone! Medea stored the grimoire inside Tavyss’s heart.”
Leena’s eyes sparked. “What? Why would she do such a thing?”
Raven smiled. “Because she was truly brilliant. A witch’s magic dies with her, but a dragon’s magic is inherent to their body. It’s why Circe asked the first dragon for her scale in exchange for the ability to shift. That scale could turn anyone who used it invisible… forever. And this heart has magic… magic that fueled the encryption on that scroll and the protective magic of the orbs.”
“Brilliant, yes. But how do we get the book out to use it?”
“I’m not sure. Let me think,” Raven said.
Leena looked around the tomb, hugging herself and rubbing her shoulders. “This place scares me, Raven. I have a strange feeling of foreboding. I don’t think we should linger here.”
Raven adjusted the heart, turning it in her hand and holding it closer to the torchlight. If she held it just right, she could see writing. “I can see it. The pages of the grimoire are open to a spell. I’m guessing it’s the one to extract the book from the gem, but it’s not in English.”
“Do you need me to try to read it? I know many languages.”
“No need,” Raven said with a smile. “I only need to know it exists.” As Leena looked on in confusion, Raven reached out with her magic, the same magic that had allowed her to absorb hundreds of books in every human language from Gabriel’s magical library, long before she knew she could do it. Metaphysical ribbons extended into the dragon heart, probing the facets to find the book within, feeling the magic and absorbing it off the page.
“What’s happening?” Leena asked.
“It’s part of who I am… my special power. I can absorb the magic even if I can’t read the words.”
“Like you did with the scroll,” Leena said.
“Mmm-hmm.” Raven continued to analyze the magic. “I think it’s fascinating how my magic and my sisters’ complement one another. Avery neutralizes magic. I take it in and transform it. It becomes part of me. As long as I practice the spells once I have them, they will always be mine. And Clarissa, she makes magic with her voice. Creates it from scratch. From nothing.”
“When you put it that way, I can see why the legends say you’d be unstoppable.”
Raven turned the gem, and the pages in the book started to flip. “We’re not unstoppable. Not yet. But we’re learning.” She absorbed each spell, feeling the gold light bleed into her, transfusing her with ancient power. So much magic. Her head swam with spells. Her body pulsed with it.
“Raven… Oh my goddess, your skin!” Leena gasped.
Raven looked down at herself. Symbols glowed through her flesh, and she remembered her first days in Gabriel’s library. This only used to happen when Gabriel touched her, before she’d understood how to process the magic she absorbed. She stared at the heart in her hands and dropped it onto the pile of treasure, sending a clatter of gold coins to the floor. The symbols faded.
“They’re gone. Are you all right?”
“Fine.”
“Shouldn’t we take it with us? We can’t leave it for someone else to find. It’s too powerful.” Leena frowned at the gem.
Raven laughed. “We’re not going to leave the book.” Unlike when she’d resurrected Gabriel, there was no soul left in Tavyss’s heart. The dragon had moved on to wherever dragons went after they died. The only thing in this golden jewel was the book, and she knew how to get it out.
She drew her wand again, waved it in the air in the shape of the symbol that appeared in her head. A triangle glowed to life, hovered over the treasure, and released rays of golden light that rained down on the heart. The tomb became as bright as day.
Leena stumbled back into the wall, pressing herself against the stone.
Crack. The yellow diamond split in two. Treasure scattered across the room. A book as large as her torso appeared in front of her with a cover of solid gold etched with the image of a peacock.
“Goddess save us all,” Leena cried. “My skin is buzzing. I can feel the power all the way over here.”
“This is pure celestial magic. I’ve never experienced anything like it. No wonder Hera wants it back.” Raven tucked her wand away and lifted the book into her arms. “Let’s go.”
She didn’t have to ask Leena twice. The elf bounded up the stairs and out of the dragon’s mouth. Raven smiled at her sisters as she emerged into the sun with the book on her hip. Avery and Clarissa approached her excitedly, Charlie reaching for her. She shifted the book into one arm and accepted her daughter in the other.
“I found the spell we need,” Raven said to them. “I know how to stop Eleanor.”
But Avery’s face fell, her eyes scanning Raven from head to toe. “What’s happening?”
Raven did feel strange, like every cell in her body tingled with static electricity. Clarissa opened her mouth and sang a defensive note, but whatever it was meant to do, it didn’t work. Raven felt herself fading.
Charlie! She tried to throw her toward Avery, but the babe was bound to her. She couldn’t even move her arms as they both faded away. Just before Raven vanished, she witnessed Leena leaping into the air. The elf collided with her, wrapping arms and legs around her and Charlie. Then a wave of blackness swallowed them all. The next thing she knew, all three of them toppled out of the darkness and onto an obsidian floor.
Raven landed on her stomach. The book flew f
rom her arms, as did Charlie, who wailed as she was thrown across the room. Beside her, Leena landed facedown, her limbs splayed.
“The strength of a magical contract truly is amazing,” a familiar voice rang out above her.
Raven tore her eyes away from Charlie and tried to force breath back into her lungs. On her hands and knees, she let her line of sight follow leather boots to black lace tights, then the handkerchief hem of a dark skirt, and finally, a red bustier. Above it all, Crimson Vanderholt stared down at her with a wicked smile, her matted blond curls swinging with each smug shake of her head. “I’m calling in our bargain, Raven. That baby is mine.”
Colin flew to the tomb when he heard Avery and Clarissa scream. Gabriel, Nathaniel, and Xavier arrived behind him to total chaos. Clarissa’s voice was reverberating around them, a living thing that swept his sides and seemed to dig into the earth itself.
“They’re gone!” Avery yelled, her sword in hand. She circled, pointing its sharp tip at the air around her.
“Who’s gone?” Colin looked into the gaping mouth of the dragon. Surely Raven, Charlie, and Leena would emerge at any moment.
Clarissa stopped singing, her eyes wild with panic. “Nothing is here. No one is here,” she babbled.
Gabriel swept into the sculpture’s mouth and emerged as panicked as Clarissa. “Her scent ends here, but she’s gone.”
For the first time, Colin engaged his own senses, a chill icing his blood when he caught Leena’s fading sent. “What happened?”
Avery sheathed her sword, her gaze finding the safety of Xavier’s before she answered. “Raven found the book. She came out with the golden grimoire in her arms. As soon as I handed her the baby, she started to… to fade. It was like she was fading out of existence. And then Leena…”
“What happened to Leena?” Colin’s voice dropped two octaves, his dragon raging inside him.
“She leaped onto Raven. Wrapped her arms and legs around her and the baby,” Clarissa said. “I think Leena was trying to stop it, but whatever took Raven took her with it.”
Colin’s wings punched out, his blood surging in his veins. His gaze darted around the sculpture. “Nathaniel, what type of magic is responsible for this? Are they invisible or gone?”
Nathaniel packed a new bit of tobacco and fired it up. He inhaled deeply and blew a puff of purple smoke over the area in front of the sculpture. Colors flashed, and then symbols Colin didn’t know formed in the air. “Gone,” Nathaniel said. “This reeks of Mother and her blood magic. My smoke is picking up her unique signature but also something else, something…odd.”
“What do you see, Nathaniel?” Gabriel growled, ready to come out of his skin.
Nathaniel looked toward Gabriel. “It’s voodoo.”
Colin’s stomach turned as Gabriel stopped breathing and collapsed to his knees. The pain he was feeling from Leena’s loss must be a shadow of Gabriel’s pain. A mate and a child—no wonder his brother looked like someone was peeling his scales off his body one by one.
“We have to get them back. Eleanor’s been after Charlie from the start. She wants her dead.” Gabriel’s beast seethed, his skin bubbling with his need to shift and his eyes glowing green with rage. His older brother dug his fingers in the dirt, his eyes burning.
Colin felt it too. His dragon burned with the need to get Leena back. His heart pounded relentlessly, and his skin felt too tight. His wings arched over his shoulders with his rage. He’d gut his mother with his own talons if she hurt a single hair on Leena’s head.
Through the panic and the pain, a voice like silver bells rang through Colin’s head. You’ll help me find the grimoire, won’t you? Queen Penelope would do anything to get that book. The Defenders of the Goddess had three kingdoms ready to go to war.
“We’re going to get them back,” he said. He was the leader of the resistance. All he had to do was pull the trigger.
Gabriel, Xavier, and the witches stared at him expectantly.
“How?” Avery asked.
“We go to war with Paragon. Now.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“You stay away from her!” Raven screamed at Crimson. She clawed forward on the obsidian, scrambling to get her feet under her.
Crimson reached for Charlie, but her hands never connected with the child. Her body buckled in half as if something hard socked her in the stomach. The witch crumpled to the floor. Raven found the source of the blow in Leena, who was sneering at Crimson, her arms holding an invisible bow and arrow.
From the shadows, magic pulsed. Leena went flying, her back slapping the far wall hard enough that when she dropped to the floor, she didn’t get back up. Bright-red blood darkened her temple.
“Leena!” Raven cried.
Like something out of Raven’s darkest nightmares, Empress Eleanor stepped from the shadows and hovered over Crimson’s fallen body. She reached into Crimson’s gut, her hand passing right through her skin and bones, and withdrew whatever poison Leena had rooted there. The black veins that had branched out across Crimson’s flesh followed as if Eleanor had plucked them out, a weed by the roots. Leena’s poison arrow sizzled away in the palm of the empress’s bony hand.
Eleanor turned her full attention on Raven, pointing a long nail at Crimson, who was brushing off the remnants of elf magic from her torso, her teeth bared. “You forged a witch’s contract with this woman for your firstborn. She’s calling it in.”
Raven reached her arms out for Charlie. Crimson stepped between them and lifted the baby from the cold obsidian. Her little girl looked scared and confused in the stranger’s arms and started to wail.
“Put her down. You’re scaring her!”
“She’s mine now, Raven. We had an agreement.”
Raven’s mind couldn’t fathom what was happening. Crimson was here? Alive? All she could manage through the thickening lump in her throat was “How?”
Eleanor grinned. “You of all people should know that sometimes the dead don’t stay dead, Raven. After all, as I understand it, you resurrected my son once.”
Behind Eleanor, a peregrine falcon perched on the back of her throne and flapped its wings.
“You had it follow me to Earth?” Raven started putting it together. She’d seen that same bird in the tree on the beach in Aeaea and its silhouette outside the window at Blakemore’s. Eleanor must have used the falcon to learn about Crimson and then resurrected her with dark magic.
Raven’s heart pounded, panic gripping her. She reached for the first spell that came to mind. Forming a triangle with her fingers, she twisted it to the right and uttered, “Diaíresi.” The spell, meant to shred Eleanor, dissipated with a wave of the empress’s hand. Another fling of Eleanor’s wrist and Raven was bound in yellow lightning. She’d grown stronger. Much stronger. They were doomed.
The empress stared down her nose at her. “Give it up, Raven. Your heart rate is much too high, and you are far too unfocused to manage even a basic spell. And now I have this.” She bent down and picked up the golden grimoire. “Ransom!”
The captain of the guard manifested in the room, panting, hair matted in sweat. Wings spread, he gripped a sword in both hands. He sounded exasperated when he said, “Empress, Rogos and Darnuith have attacked. They’ve crossed the border into Hobble Glen! The Obsidian Guard is on the defensive. You must put me back.”
“Never mind that, Ransom. Once I use this child’s blood to complete my spell, I will turn them all to dust. Take these two to the dungeon.”
There was nothing Raven could do but scream as Ransom cuffed her and dragged her and an unconscious Leena away.
Raven hated the Obsidian Dungeon. She’d spent weeks here once, a pawn in Eleanor’s scheme to bring Gabriel into her twisted plan. The empress hadn’t succeeded, and Raven had sworn she’d never set foot here again. Yet here she was, and despite being exponentially more powerful than before, whatever enchantment was in the walls of this particular cell was strong enough to leave her magically impotent while Crimso
n held her baby upstairs.
She sat beside Leena’s unconscious body and cried, wept with the sort of despair she’d never felt before, not even when she was dying of cancer. This was far worse. Eleanor had the book, Crimson had Charlie, and the empress was going to win.
“Ow.” Leena woke and rubbed the back of her head. “Goddess, that woman is a demon in dragon skin.”
“You’re far more polite than I am.”
Leena looked her over and frowned. “She has Charlie, doesn’t she?”
“And the book.”
“Goddess help us.” Leena looked around her, gaining her bearings. “And I thought last night was the worst thing that could happen to me.”
“What happened last night?” Raven studied the scribe. She didn’t know the woman well, but it was certainly valiant what she’d done to try to help her. When Leena didn’t answer her question, she said, “Thank you for trying to save me. It was brave of you, both when you tried to keep me in Rogos with your physical body and when you shot Crimson with your elfin magic the way you did.”
Leena shrugged. “I go where the scroll goes.” She flashed a weak smile.
Raven pointed to the satchel on her hip. “You had the scroll.”
“So I did. I guess I must have been brave, then. Brave or crazy.”
“I’m leaning toward crazy.”
Leena looked down at the bag that held Medea’s scroll on her hip. She started to laugh. “Wait… They threw us in here but left me my satchel? They locked us in the Obsidian Dungeon but didn’t take my bag?”
Raven wiped under her eyes and nodded. “The dragon who brought us down here was in quite a hurry. It seems Rogos and Darnuith have attacked. He was anxious to get back to the battle.”
A laugh bubbled up Leena’s throat, this one stronger than before. “What an idiot.”
“There’s no way out. The walls drain your magic.” Raven shook her head. “I doubt anything written in your scrolls is going to help us now.”
The Dragons of Paragon Page 16