Page 40 of Seized to Sacrifice
At least in this they were on the same side. Neither of them wanted to end up in the dungeons again. How long had it been last time, three-hundred years? He shuddered at the thought. No, neither of them wanted that. He just had to hope that the Beast was sane enough to remember.
In the morning, Thorne woke when the sun came up, shining through the casement. The chains around him were still intact and the bed hadn’t been damaged. The Beast had not visited in the night.
Allowing himself a small sigh of relief, he took the key from the tiny, hidden compartment in the headboard that he could only just reach and unlocked the irons. He hid them back under the loose board in the floor.
After getting dressed quickly, he stared at himself in the looking glass for a time, trying to find some hint of the Beast, but all he noticed was that his dark hair needed cutting and his short beard could use a trim.
He was surprised at how unkempt he looked. If his Brothers didn't already know his troubles with the Beast, they would soon if he kept walking around looking like this.
Taking a sharp blade, he cleaned up his hair so that at least it was out of his eyes.
His beard he cut into an artful shape, shearing it away close to his skin, and when he was finished and saw the result, he admitted he looked much better than he had recently.
He opened a drawer and hesitated before taking out a dusty amulet from right at the back, which he put around his neck and hid under his shirt. At least now if he did change again in the keep, the magick of this shifter’s talisman would ensure that he was clothed when he turned back into a man.
He walked out of his room to find something to eat just as Rye was coming out of his own chamber.
Thorne stopped him in the corridor. ‘What the fuck was that yesterday?’ he ground out.
‘I told you already,’ Rye said. ‘Must we speak of it again? She's been parading around the keep, keeping us guessing with those guileless eyes and innocent looks. We know what she is and it’s neither guileless nor innocent.’
‘Of course. You merely ensured that she knows that she can't fool us … by fucking her,’ Thorne said, not hiding his sneer.
Rye chuckled. ‘Surely you saw her face when I was finished.’
Thorne clenched his jaw. He’d seen just as Rye had wanted both he and Nyx to. A tiny part of him had been disgusted by what Rye had done …. what he’d said to her after.
But Thorne didn’t say that.
Instead, he let out a laugh. ‘You always were creative and cruel,’ he said. ‘What are we going to do about Nyx? If anything, what you did yesterday has made him even more protective than he was before.’
‘I'll handle Nyx,’ Rye said, ‘though he’s already becoming a problem. I had Leia in floods of tears last night saying he’d dismissed her and Rosalie.’ He made a noise of annoyance and rubbed his eyes. ‘Just be ready with the information that we need.’
Thorne was still angry with Rye, but he felt for his Brother. He wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of Leia’s ire either.
‘I’ve made progress on that,’ Thorne said. ‘I’ll show you.’
They went down to the library together, and Thorne opened the great tome he'd been reading the day before.
‘There may be a way,’ he said, pointing at a page in the book though he knew Rye couldn’t read this particular script.
‘This book was taken from a temple in the Islands by the Brothers not long ago. It mentions her by name, says there was something she put power into … that word there. I'm not sure if it’s a chalice or a box, but that’s our best bet.’
Rye didn’t look convinced. ‘She putpowerinto abox? You’re pinning all our hopes on some vague passage in a book so old it’s practically crumbling to dust?’
‘That’s all I’ve got for now.’ Thorne shrugged, ‘But it’s not the words. That plant there,’ he pointed at a tiny drawing of a red flower in the margin of the page, ‘that means knowledge.’
‘It’s not just a scribble?’
Thorne frowned. ‘The Priests of the first age did notscribble. Taking everything on the page into account, she put knowledge intosomethingto keep it safe for some reason. We just need to find that thing.’
‘Knowledge? That could be anything from how to stew nettles to what to feed a stray kitten.’
Thorne shrugged. ‘May not matter. Whatever she put into it might be enough to shuffle her memories loose, give her back what she’s lost.’
Rye nodded, stroking his smooth chin. ‘Where is this thing, this cup or box?’
‘That's the problem,’ Thorne said, sitting down. ‘There’s no record of where it was hidden in this book. I need to look at the archives in the Dark Army Camp. If any of the Brothers ever came across such an object, it’ll be in the lists there.’
