Hidden Dragon (The Treasure of Paragon Book 7) by Genevieve Jack (best ereader for manga txt) 📗

stare. She trembled in his presence. Truly, she was so weak, and she deserved to die at his hand.

“Sylas, you’re scaring her,” Dianthe whispered. “Aborella, we won’t hurt you. We’re going to get you out of here. We just… this is a lot to take in.”

“You say the orb is in the mosaic? Like, it’s part of the picture of the dragon wrapped around the fruit tree?” Sylas clarified.

Aborella nodded. “It’s gold. One of the apples hanging from the tree. They all look identical at first glance. But one is the orb.”

“By the Mountain.” Sylas swore. “And you say Eleanor is looking for the orbs as well?”

Aborella sighed. She was so tired. So weak. How she wished she could just fall asleep. “She’s looking for the book. The golden grimoire. She’s been searching for it for Hera for centuries. Those orbs hold the key to reaching the book. It’s here on Ouros, and if Eleanor finds it, she will use it to kill the goddess of the mountain.”

“I heard her say that before, when I was her prisoner.”

“I couldn’t believe the depth of wickedness to her plan. Hera has been helping her. The goddess of the mountain is currently in a deep sleep thanks to their blood magic. Hera promised that if Eleanor finds the book and uses it to kill the goddess of the mountain, Hera will raise Eleanor to take her place. Eleanor will become a goddess.”

Dianthe covered her mouth with one hand. “She’s insane.”

Aborella sighed. “You might think so, but there are forces at play here even I don’t understand. I know her, Dianthe, probably better than anyone. Eleanor has dabbled in magic that is slowly killing her. Evil magic. Blood magic. It’s the type of magic one might learn from a god. Don’t dismiss her as crazy. She is mad, but her madness is fueled by a dark and terrible truth.”

“Should we try to get the orb while Eleanor’s gone?” Sylas asked Dianthe.

His mate closed her eyes but shook her head. “I can’t see it.”

“I can,” Aborella stated. “You must retrieve the orb now or it will fall to Eleanor.”

Sylas stared at her and stroked his chin. She knew what he must be thinking.

“I hurt you. Worse, I helped Eleanor hurt you in unimaginable ways. I am sorry, Sylas. I am not the same fairy I once was, thanks to your mate.” Her eyes shifted to Dianthe. “I’m telling you the truth.”

“It will be faster if we fly around the outside of the palace. I’ll have to carry you.”

As soon as she agreed, Sylas swept her into his arms. Aborella winced as the stubs of her wings brushed against his arms. But then Sylas stepped into the sunlight and the heat of the afternoon baked her skin. She closed her eyes and moaned.

“Am I hurting you?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “Go now. We’re running out of time.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

They had to move fast. There was no other choice but for Sylas to carry Aborella. She had no wings to fly, and he wasn’t about to let her out of his sight. Even as weak as she was, she was too powerful to allow to fall into enemy hands. He stopped short of actually trusting her. Not yet anyway. Oh, he believed she’d changed as much as a person could, but he wasn’t ready to put his or Dianthe’s life in her hands.

He wasn’t sure he could ever forgive her for what she’d done to him and his family, not entirely. Her wicked magic was behind Marius’s murder, and she’d tried to kill Raven and her sisters, along with other serious crimes. Her actions were beyond overlooking no matter how much she repented. But he could and would treat her humanely, and he’d trust Dianthe’s judgment about her visions.

He slipped out the window and around the palace to the grand veranda. Keeping three people invisible required concentration and a drain of power and magic. He was relieved there was no one there when he landed on the mosaic of the dragon and the fruit tree. The jeweled floor twinkled up at him. Funny how things came back to you. He remembered playing here as a child, the stones smooth and colorful under his bare feet.

A configuration of black diamonds formed the body of the dragon, its topaz eyes staring out of the floor for all eternity. The artist had created a curled red tongue from red rubies. Brown agate and emeralds formed the tree the beast wrapped around, and in the tree was perfectly round golden fruit. They might have been apples or some otherworldly variety he’d never tasted. But they were all large, round, and gold. Why had he never noticed how strange they were, perfect round crystals rather than constructed of pieces of jewels like the rest of the mosaic? Now that he knew what was hidden there, they stood out as laughably obvious.

“Which one?” he asked Aborella.

At her prompting, he set her on her feet, and she lowered herself to the floor, crawling across the picture and resting her hand on each golden fruit. “I need to feel it,” she murmured and closed her eyes. “This one.” She pointed to the bubble of gold crystal closest to the dragon’s head.

Sylas focused on the one she’d selected. There it was—the inner light, the swirl of bubbles within. If you weren’t paying attention, it would look like a trick of the light, simply an unusual sparkle in a faceted gemstone. And who really paid attention to the floor they walked over every day? “It’s like a universe trapped in glass.”

“Sylas?” Dianthe pointed over his shoulder.

From their high vantage point, he could see over Hobble Glen, all the way to the river that divided Paragon from Nochtbend. There was definitely a formation of black and red crossing the river. The Obsidian Guard was coming home.

“The suns are descending. She’s retreating from Nochtbend before the vampires wake.” Dianthe gripped his arm.

“If she’s in Nochtbend at