“Do you want to walk it?” Evie asked, taking my hand in hers.
I shook my head. “Maybe someday.” My chest constricted with the realization that, once I destroyed Raithian, I would never really get to share this experience with my ancestors.
Wrapping her arms around my neck, she pulled me down for a kiss. I didn’t resist her. The more I acknowledged how this would end for me, the harder it was to accept that I would have to say goodbye to Evanna.
We began to walk around the park, searching for a place that might hold the crown or a clue we could use. Unfortunately, there was nothing but ruins and statues.
“What exactly did the Truth Teller say?”
“Just another weird riddle,” I huffed at Kingston, rubbing both hands over my face in frustration. We’d been here for over an hour, but we hadn’t found anything that could help us.
“Can you tell us?” Asher added. “Maybe we can help you understand.”
“We might as well try,” Evie encouraged, caressing my back.
“Right.” It took a moment to remember the exact words, but once they came to me, they rang as strongly as the first time I heard them. “‘The hands that cover my eyes may not allow me to see, but they will uncover the crown if you can see through the flaws.’”
“Okay…” He sighed, turning around to search again. So did we.
“The hands that cover my eyes...” I recited, walking towards a dead tree at the edge of the park and turning to face the space. “Maybe I need to stop seeing and feel or hear something.” Lifting my hands, I placed them over my eyes and tried to focus on everything that surrounded us.
Kingston echoed the words, walking to my right while he tried to decipher it too.
“The hands that cover my eyes...” Evie and Asher repeated too, moving to my left and before me.
Nothing. I could hear or perceive nothing other than them moving all around me. What the hell did the riddle mean?
“Maybe is not a riddle at all!” Evanna suddenly gasped across from me. “Brax, look!”
I dropped my hands to see her pointing to something behind me.
“Another fountain,” Asher added, rushing past me.
About twenty feet behind me was indeed another fountain, a pretty large one, but that wasn’t what Evie saw. A statue stood at its center, a figure with covered eyes, but a multitude of thorn-filled vines wrapped around the entire structure like a cocoon.
Swiftly pulling out our spears, we attacked the overgrown plants together, slashing and cutting, pulling, and freeing until the image of a beautiful woman in a flowy gown stood before us—both her hands covering her eyes just like I had done.
“It’s her. It’s the Truth Teller,” I declared as my pulse began to race with recognition. I had no idea how I knew that. It wasn’t exactly Asher’s mother, more like a symbol of every woman ever born with that purpose, but it was her.
Rushing to the edge of the fountain, Evie attacked a mass of dead branches, revealing a golden plaque. “It reads, ‘Truth Teller, Goddess of Destinies.’”
“Princess Evanna is right,” Asher added, and we could almost see the wheels turning in his head. “She didn’t give you a riddle, Brax. She gave you a location.”
Blinking, I tried to focus. “‘The hands that cover my eyes may not allow me to see…’ It’s literally about her. ‘But they will uncover the crown if you can see through the flaws.’” I stepped into the dried fountain, stopping in front of the Truth Teller. “Maybe she is facing the direction of the crown,” I added, turning to see what she would see if her hands were not over her eyes. Kingston, Asher, and Evie entered the fountain too.
Nothing.
There was no cave, no boulders, no water, no bushes, nothing that might hide a crown.
“It’s not out there,” Asher announced from behind us, so I turned, finding his gaze focused on the head of the statue. “I think it is inside her.”
Walking to his side, I glanced at it too. The flaws! The back had been opened and plastered again, leaving visible imperfections.
Shit.
“We have to destroy the monument,” Evie whispered, pain etching her words as she realized the same thing I had.
Noticing a small, broken piece along the back of her hair—probably from when we hacked the vines off it, I stepped closer. “Wait, I might be able to look inside.”
Lifting my hand, I called to my power, and the magic slithered down my arm swiftly until it reached my hand, creating a ball of light between my fingers. Although the vessel was deep, the glow instantly illuminated its hollow insides, gifting me a glint of metal within it.
My heart began to slam against my chest, my widened eyes meeting Evanna’s. I couldn’t believe my luck. “It’s in here,” I breathed. “We just found the Dragon Crown.”
“I’m sorry, Mother.” Asher’s words were our only warning before his spear swirled in the air, crashing against the statue.
I pulled Evie against my chest, turning our bodies away just as the eons-old monument exploded into a million pieces from the force, plaster raining all around us.
When we all turned again and my gaze fell on the crown, the air was sucked out of me. At that moment, I finally understood why Raithian, once known as King Xavier Devenish, wore the demon mask.
14
Accelerated breaths escaped me as I stared at the golden crown amidst the clouds of dust. It wasn’t a regular crown, not like the ones I knew from movies and shows in the Mirror World.
It was a Dragon mask.
Crouching before it, I was helpless but to stare at the masterfully crafted piece of art on the ground, appreciating its every detail. In all honesty, it was hard to describe. It was somewhere between a Dragon inspired masquerade mask and an Egyptian headdress.
Curling towards the sky as they rose, six horns of different sizes graced the top regally. Intricately carved scales and reptilian skin extended from the horns, down the forehead and temples, all the way to the protruding top half of the Dragon’s mouth. The two slanted holes of the eyes were large but not empty—two pieces of the Anima Crystallum had been fitted into them.
Now out of the statue, the sculpted gold piece softly glinted in the dim light, showing two bands that curled around the back of the head to keep it in place when worn. Blood pounded through my veins as I stared, one hand instinctively reaching for it to wipe the dust from its surface.
The instant my ring neared it, its crystal ignited, connecting to the eyes of the Dragon Crown. A current of power jolted me the second they glowed, jerking my back straight, and making my head snap up while the golden hue captured my vision.
My eyes glowed too, but I hadn’t even touched it.
A slight whistling noise filtered into my ears, making everything sound like I was under water while the power held me in place. Vaguely, I could feel my mouth open and close, but no words came out of me. I couldn’t move; I could barely breathe.
“It’s too much magic!” Evie’s muffled voice shouted too far away to make sense. She’d been right beside me.
“Get it away from him!” Kingston roared when shadows shifted around me.
“It won’t move!”
What wouldn’t move? The crown?