Page 38 of Bedrest Blues & Otherworldly Clues
Nina nodded, her expression troubled. "I can detect it now that I know what to look for, but I’m not sure we can fix it in time."
I reached out and squeezed her hand, pride momentarily overriding my concern. "You've saved us from walking into a trap. Now we just need to figure out what to do about it."
"I've already started purifying what I can," Nina said. "But some items are beyond saving. We'll need to rebuild our emergency supplies from scratch."
"With what?" Nana asked pointedly. "Our resources were limited to begin with. We can’t exactly leave the property very easily, and bringing in food is Tseki’s priority."
Before either of us could answer, a commotion erupted downstairs. I was getting so used to it happening that I barely flinched. "Check it out," I told Nana, who nodded and hurried from the room.
Nina moved to the window and peered out cautiously. "Someone is here," she reported. "It looks like... Stella! And she's not alone."
Hope flared in my chest. "Stella's back? She's been gone for days tracking Lyra's movements."
We both turned and looked at the door when we heard my best friend’s voice. She was walking through the door less than a minute later. She looked trail-worn but triumphant. Her clothes were torn and dirty, and her hair was wild. She looked nothing like the usually impeccably put-together woman we all knew and loved. Aidon, Murtagh,Tseki, and Jean-Marc followed behind her. They wore expressions that combined hope with grave concern.
"We found it," Stella announced as she dropped a worn leather satchel on the foot of my bed. "The ritual site where Lyra plans to perform the Trifecta Ascension."
My heart skipped a beat. "You're sure?"
Stella nodded, pulling out a hand-drawn map and spreading it across my bed. "It took us days of tracking, but we followed the corrupted ley lines to their convergence point. It's an ancient power nexus hidden in the mountains about fifty miles north of here."
Aidon sat next to me and placed his hand over my abdomen. "The place predates human civilization. It's where multiple ley lines naturally intersect, which created a power nexus that Lyra needs for her ritual."
"The good news," Stella continued, "is that now we know exactly where she'll make her move. The bad news?—"
"Let me guess," I interrupted dryly. "Getting there is a suicide mission through monster-infested territory?"
"Pretty much," Stella confirmed with a grim smile. "The approach is guarded by some of the most dangerous magical traps I've ever encountered. Corrupted nature spirits, temporal distortions, reality warps—the works."
"She's created a gauntlet," Layla explained. "Anyone trying to reach the ritual site would have to fight through layers of increasingly deadly defenses."
I studied the map, noting the marked danger zones and the winding path that led to the central ritual space. "This is where she plans to take me and the babies once I go into labor? I didn’t expect it to be so close. Or to be on this plane."
"It might not be,” Jean-Marc pointed out. “The map indicates there are magical pathways directly to this house. That can’t happen on this plane. We’ve warded againstthat. And they’re holding now. When the time comes, she could potentially create a direct portal from here to the ritual site."
"Bypassing everything. Including her own defenses," I concluded. "Clever."
"We have an advantage now that we know where she is planning things," Aidon said, his voice hardening with resolve. "We can look for a way to get to her before."
The triplets stirred within me as they responded to the surge of emotions in the room. Their combined magic pulsed visibly beneath my skin, creating a shield of light that covered my entire belly. Aidon smiled and ran his hand over it.
"Well, well," Stella remarked as her eyebrows rose in surprise. "Looks like the little ones have been developing some new tricks while I was away."
"They've been getting stronger," I explained, placing a hand over Aidon’s. "And more active even though things are tighter for them in there."
"I'll need to analyze the intel about Lyra's ritual site and traps," Jean-Marc said, running his hand through his already disheveled hair. "And factor in my research on countermeasures. But with this, I think we have a fighting chance."
"You've been researching countermeasures?" I perked up. That beat the hell out of no chance.
He nodded, yanking a battered notebook from his jacket. The thing looked like it had survived a war zone. "I've been mapping how our family powers interact with the triplets. There are patterns we can exploit."
"Like what?" I shifted and rolled into Aidon, knocking him off the bed with my girth and the momentum I had to use to move. "Sorry!” I laughed.
Shaking his head, Aidon stood and returned to his place with a smile. “You’re moving much better now.”
It was my only workout during the day. Smirking at Aidon, I turned to Jean-Marc. “You were saying?”
My oldest son had a smile on his face when he explained, "I was saying that when Aidon's shadows merge with little Nyssa's, they create a barrier that corrupted magic can't penetrate for shit." He flipped through pages crammed with diagrams that looked like magical circuit boards. "Nina and Melaina together can scramble hostile signatures. And my connection with Thaniel creates temporal shields that buy us precious seconds during an attack."
