Page 220 of Sweet Dominion

I could barely breathe because my chest was tight with fear and disgust.

But I had to hold it together.

For TT.

For Lei.

For all of us.

Jo and Chloe can’t come in here until those bodies are gone.

We got further down turned the corner and TT’s laughter echoed again, closer this time, sweet and innocent, completely unaware of the death and destruction hanging just feet above her.

Okay. It’s going to all work out.

We reached TT’s room and got in front of the doorway.

And there they were.

TT sat cross-legged on the floor, her tiny fingers tracing the nearly completed wooden puzzle in front of her.

She’s done. Already?

The pieces formed the shape of an oddly produced map.

Only a few fragments were missing, gaps here and there, but the overall picture was almost complete.

An image of a large town within a forgotten valley.

I took it in.

The wooden daggers, which TT had methodically fit together, gleamed under the soft glow of the room's lighting.

No remaining ones were scattered around her as I would’ve expected.

No, she’d found a place for every single one Lei had given her, slotting them in perfectly.

She’d solved an old puzzle that no child her age should have been able to crack.

And with all the daggers now together, I could see that what was once odd markings and symbols, were more than that. They were boxes representing houses, a school, bank, market, church, the post office, and more.

Additionally, there were tiny, almost invisible writing scrawled across the surface.

Little, faint words and numbers wound their way along the curves and edges of the blades, so light they were nearly imperceptible unless you were right on top of them.

My heart skipped a beat.

So many questions hit me.

Was it a message from the Bandit?

Or clear instructions to the map holder?

But that didn’t matter right now because next to TT. . .was Leo scanning a large, opened Bible encased in blue leather.

He had a bunch of blue highlighters next to him and currently he was underlining some phrase on a Bible page.

I turned to the right.

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