My heart pounded in my chest, the air around me feeling thick and heavy, as if the very room was closing in on me. I opened my mouth to argue, to protest, but before I could say anything, Elder Theron spoke.
“Elena, you should rest,” He turned to me, his expression cool, detached. “We will handle this matter.” His gaze darted to the mage. “You can handle the Shadow King now, can you not?”
I stood there, frozen in place, unable to believe what I was hearing. I almost laughed.
They were dismissing me, pushing me aside as if I were nothing more than a child who had spoken out of turn.
As if I was still their puppet.
“I’m not leaving,” I said, my voice hardening as I straightened my spine. “Not until I get answers.” I let my magic spark in my fingertips, a subtle warning. “And no one is touching Dario.”
Rindais chuckled softly, his eyes gleaming with amusement. “Stubborn, aren’t you?”
I glared at him, my anger flaring. “Tell me the truth. What areyou hiding?”
Elder Irina’s expression darkened, and I could see the faint flicker of annoyance cross her face. “Elena, you must trust that we are doing what is best for the city.”
I opened my mouth to argue again, but before I could, I heard something. A faint murmur, barely audible. A groan of pain.
It was coming from the room behind them.
I hesitated for a moment, but Dario made the decision for us.
With a flick of his hand, his shadows threw the door open, and a flick of my fingers sent a ball of light into the room, illuminating every corner.
In the corner, two bodies lay unmoving. A woman and a child were strapped to two altars. The child was breathing shallowly, but even from a distance, I could see that the other had lost too much blood to still be alive. My heart froze, and I stared at Rindais.
“What in god’s name are you doing?” I whispered.
“He’s keeping our city safe,” Elder Kathar said, and I shivered.
“Like this?”
Dario’s shadows darted into the back of the room and back to us, holding a book aloft. Rindais made a grab for it, but Dario was quicker.
In seconds, the book was in our grasp. We flicked through the pages, struggling to understand what the Elders were doing.The book was cold against my palms, the leather damp as if it still wept with the blood of those who had died for it. My hands shook as I opened it, the pages stiff and stained, the ink thick and almost wet-looking.
Each line I read scraped against my soul.
“Necessary for the experiment to succeed… without the Phoenix’s blood, the chimaera will never come to fruition.”
My breath snagged.
Chimaera.
The word leered up at me from the page, circled and annotated in margins scrawled with frantic hands. I could barely keep reading, but I forced myself.
“Stop her,” Kathar hissed, as I flipped more pages.
“…children… unsuitable… unable to bond with the phoenix power…”
My voice broke. I pressed a fist to my mouth, the parchment blurring before my eyes.
And then I turned the page.
“…need younger test subjects…”
The next word was circled in red, a dark question mark beside it.
