Page 72 of Mantle
His eyes locked with mine.
“What?” I asked, at the grave look in his eyes.
“To be clad in armor… it’s a signal that you need to actnow,and thatyouhave the power to intervene. Possibly that you’re the only one who can.”
I pulled my hands from his and shoved them through my hair, trying to reconcile it all.
“I don’t like this… him coming at you in this way… the invasiveness of it.”
“He needs help, Nyx. He didn’t really have much of a choice.”
He stilled.
“Damn. Of course,” he uttered. “He knows me, right? He remembered me, even when I still can barely remember him. But with that on his end, he’d know what I’m capable of. He might have been counting on me being able to use my abilities and dreamwalking knowledge to interpret the symbolism he placed in that dream.”
“That makes so much sense. By doing that, we’ve already discovered that he hasn’t left the mortal plane like we were led tobelieve. Somebody must have planted and falsified that marker that had the best trackers in the world believing that. We also know he’s trapped and that some ancient, twisted magic is being used to hold him. He’s being used by someone or something that’s also trying to keep him quiet and keep that knowledge from us and everyone else.” I grimaced. “And he’s being hurt, Nyx.”
“You told us that he said he used his blood to heal you instead of his Celestial Light because he thought of it first as he’s part vampire. But maybe he really did it purposely, as a failsafe, because he was concerned that this being or group would try to control him again once he broke free onto the mortal plane.”
“It could very well be.” I rolled off the bed and strode to my desk in the corner.
“What are you doing?” Nyx asked. “Halo, despite this cry for help,andme being with you on Ketheron having humanity and not just being a monster made to destroy, he still was created to kill you. Kai was right that we can’t just downplay that because you and me are empathetic to Ketheron.”
“We’re not downplaying it. If we can find him and help him, we also nullify the threat aspect.”
“I mean… possibly. But things aren’t in place, theInhibitorspell isn’t ready yet, none of that, so we can’t just track him down and have you in his presence while we don’t have a defense against him.”
“It will take time to track him. Burial grounds? There must be hundreds across the mortal realm.”
“Thousands. But combined with the dream pointing to ancient, twisted magics being used, we can narrow it down.”
“To do that, we need help. From somebody who has unmatched Celestial knowledge. With his Fall, Grandfather was cut off from the full extent of it, a lot of what he did know even taken from him. And my dad won’t be on board for this, sodespite him being imbued with Draco’s knowledge that’s a no-go for now. He won’t sanction this.”
“He won’t stop seeing him as anything but a threat to his baby girl.”
“Exactly, cutie pie.” I opened my desk drawer and rummaged around, telling him over my shoulder, “Also, he only has Draco’s knowledge, so there’s still a disconnect there to the higher echelons of the Celestial Plane and their knowledge, as Draco was their instrument, not their equal.”
“Cassius, then.”
“Yes,” I confirmed, holding up what I’d grabbed from the drawer.
The Echo Coin.
A small, mystical disk etched with Celestial script, a shimmer of stardust swirling at its center.
He frowned. “I thought you were avoiding him until you figured out what the hell he was thinking by making you learn that spell, which destroyed those Threniths so brutally?”
“I did figure it out. That’s the problem.”
He arched an eyebrow.
“Last night,” I revealed. “I was studying the book he gave me and I made a connection to another section that focused on Celestial Law and Limitations.”
Before he pressed it, when it was Cassius who I needed topress itwith, I rubbed my fingers over the Echo Coin and uttered, “Vocare.”
I’d intended for us to head outside, at the edge of the ward around the Maven Academy grounds, figuring we had a few minutes—at least—before Cassius showed up, especially with him still embroiled in that heavy and highly-complicated research with Mom and Dad regarding finding a way to break the mortal plane’s link to the Celestial Plane.
But then his familiar white light erupted, the ward Kai had sweetly employed around my dorm room shuddered, and Cassius blew right on in.
