Page 62 of An Empress of Earth & Darkness

“I don’t know what to do with it,” she admitted.

“Well, it is here for you when you decide what you want to do. I can keep it in the Blacksteel vault. It was where my father kept it after Gideon took it from you.”

She nodded and bit into her cheek before asking, “Are there any other stones in the Blacksteel vault?”

She had been so busy she hadn’t been able to catch up with Sybil to see if she had made any progress with the ancient grimoire. Maybe she had already unlocked something within the text. Maybe she had worked out where the other stones were.

Torin let out a little laugh. “No. Not until you showed up. We haven’t tended to be successful in finding anything worthwhile.”

She rolled her lip in her teeth. “Well, I do need to let you in on a little secret of mine.”

His brows pulled together in a sort of amusement. “Oh, you know your secrets are my favourite kind of secrets.”

“Sybil and I,” she announced, ignoring the grin on his face, “have been looking into the Gods’ stones. We have been researching where they might possibly be. Well, Sybil has been doing most of the research; she has more education on ancient languages and runes.”

His lips pursed. “And have you found anything valuable?”

“Actually, we think we might have found something. But it could entirely be old witches’ tales.”

“Do tell.” He let his knee rub against her leg.

She gripped the desk to stop herself from flushing with desire for him at this inappropriate time. “I mean, it might be nothing, but—”

“It’s not nothing if you think it’s important,” he said as he leaned back in his chair.

“Sybil has a grimoire.”

“Yeah, the one Gideon gave to her for the winter solstice?”

“Yes, exactly. And she has been obsessed with the ancient magic in it ever since. There are lots of spells and magic long lost to us. But there is a section on enchanted stones unlike anything she has ever studied before. She said something about it being a mixture of Fae and Witch magic, possibly citing an old oracle who could still be living.”

Torin’s eyes raked over Emara’s face as he sat forward a little.

Emara continued, “She also said something about how she still had to translate most of it, but there were drawings of stones, and we believe one is the Protection Stone.”

“Did it say where the stone was?” he asked.

“We haven’t gotten that far yet.” She chewed her cheek. Emara placed her hands on his strong legs and leaned forward. “If we find the two remaining stones, it will mean that the Dark Army can’t. It would put us in a position of power. I believe that my mother only used two of the stones to banish Balan into the underworld, so that would mean that it would only take those two stones to get him out.”

Torin looked to be mulling over her words. “If we have them, it would keep you safe from him.”

“It would keep everyone safe,” Emara reminded him. “Torin, I am not naive to think that it wouldn’t also put a target on our backs. No one can found out about us trying to locate these stones. Only the Empress of Earth and I know about this.”

“You know your secrets are always safe with me.”

Look at us…we have our own dirty little secret.

As the memory of Torin teasing her many moons ago appeared in her mind, she punched his leg. “I am serious. No one else knows I am even looking into this.”

“So am I. We have had plenty of secrets together, and I like it that way.” Torin ran the back of his hand over her arm and her skin prickled, reacting to his touch.

She shook off her body’s reaction to him and tried her best to focus. “We already have the Resurrection Stone. So all we need to locate is the Protection Stone, which is invisible in any of the stories except for what we have found in the grimoire. We’ll need the Dark Crystal too, but there is a whole lot of folklore on that. The one that Thorin slammed into the land in battle to save his men, breaking apart the continent, is said to be lost to the Broken Sea. If we have the majority of the stones, it means that no one can free him.” She looked down at her hands on Torin’s legs for a second before meeting his gaze again. He was patiently waiting for her to continue. “My mother locked him up for a reason, Torin. He is a monster. But having the stones also means Veles will never get free and we can control the Dark Army. Is that not the clan’s true goal, to either stop them or destroy them?”

He leaned forward in his chair. “You, Emara Clearwater, are fucking incredible.”

Her breathing hitched as she fought a smile. “What do you mean?”

“I just love how your brain works.” He grinned a little. “But you are right. It would certainly put us in a position of strength should we have more than one of the Gods’ Stones,” he agreed. “But we cannot go on the quest alone; it is too dangerous to have only a few men on a mission like that. It could take us years to find anything. Should we find any information or one of the stones, we would need something far greater than just myself and two empresses to protect it. And I have just gained more responsibility than I’ve ever had. I can’t go wandering off on a quest. The clan would look for answers.”

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