Page 88 of Cruel Daddy Dragon

“Same here, but I know Sarahreallydoesn’t want to go,” I say.

“Yeah…” Kaius replies, “Same with Julie… it’d break her heart to have to give up the museum.”

We all walk in more sullen silence for a moment.

“Well, I’ll admit that I like it here too,” Evander says, “But if Cyrus decides we have to leave, I wouldn’t be surprised. We don’t just have ourselves and our own comfort to think about. We have to think aboutallof Soleilus.”

We all keep our silence; he’s right. We know he is.

“I’d expect the worst, everyone,” Evander states.

We tread along the rest of the path, arriving at the edge of the cave. I see Cyrus and Lena stop first, then Julie and Sarah, then the rest of us.

“Well… here we are,” Lena says.

Cyrus nods and then gives us all an ordering glance. We all shift at once, and those of us with mates go to their sides andpick them up. I go over to Sarah, and she smiles and loops her arm around my neck, knowing the deal by now.

I parachute down with my wings, and everyone lands at once. Lena takes Cyrus’s hand and leads him to one of the walls.

“So this is the carvings that we were talking about,” Lena says, “I’m fairly sure a lot of these are witchy sigils.”

Cyrus walks toward the witchy sigils on the walls. His eyes are wide. He treads as if sleepwalking toward the wall and places a hand on it.

“I’ve identified some of them in Gram’s old journals, but others, I can’t figure out,” Lena says.

“You won’t,” Cyrus answers, “Because some of these are ancient draconic symbols…”

“What?” Evander says first, voicing all our thoughts.

We all gather around Cyrus as he looks over the wall from top to bottom.

“They’re draconic?” Evander asks, “Are you sure? I don’t recognize anything here.”

“That’s because a lot of these symbols areveryancient andverypowerful,” Cyrus replies, “It’s one of those secrets they only tell Alphas ascending the throne.”

I freeze for a moment. I can feel burning gazes and look over to see everyone swapping aghast looks.

“So… an ancientAlphawas part of this?!” Evander says.

“It must have been,” Cyrus answers, “But what’s even more bizarre is how they’re woven together.”

“The witch sigils and the draconic symbols, right?” Lena says, coming to Cyrus’s side.

“Right,” he says, “They’ve been blended together to make something even more powerful. This… is the most powerful spell I’ve ever seen. I haven’t even read about the magic of this power in our oldest texts.”

“Well,” Lena laughs, “that explains why I couldn’t find what some of these symbols meant.”

“What’s the spell meant to do?” Evander asks.

“From what I could tell,” Lena says, “it’s some kind of protection circle. One large enough to cover the entire town. I think it’s what’s been keeping our town safe over all these years.”

“Yeah, that’s what it looks like to me too,” Cyrus says, “I… just wonder what the hell was so powerful that both witches and dragons needed to pull out magicthisstrong…”

“Maybe you should have a look at these carvings,” Julie suggests, “These aren’t symbols, but they seem to be commemorative paintings, which might give us some answers.”

Cyrus looks over in her direction and approaches the drawings on the other side of the wall. He gives the same wide-eyed expression when he looks over them.

“Incredible,” he says, “I’ve seen paintings just like these back in our old base. The ones there had been carved out from the walls they’d been originally painted on and taken to our base—it was an important part of our history. They were lost in the attack recently…”

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