He nodded, leaving me to my work. By the time I’d read through the handful of books in front of me, my back was getting stiff. I stretched, glancing around for Logan, and found him sitting in what appeared to be a far more comfortable chair by the side wall.
“Nothing here,” I said, gesturing toward the volumes on the table. “I think I’m going to try some of the older ones.”
As I returned them to their place, searching for new material, Logan stopped me. “Brianna, the section here is actually older than those.”
I followed his direction, pleased when the first documents I pulled from the shelves were handwritten in the ancient text. Logan stood, reaching over my head for a sizeable black book with leather tied binding. He pointed at the markings on the first page. “This says ‘The Blood of the Dragon’ and these are the symbols for the specific time period.”
I looked up at him. “You can read the ancient language?”
He smiled. “Don’t you think it’s odder that you can?”
I didn’t, but only because my mother had taught me. Trained me to hear the prophecies. “Do all of you know it?”
“No. Aern, Morgan, most of the elders.” He hesitated, knowing the answer was leaving something out. His gaze went back to the shelf. “And I was shown because of my duty.”
He pulled down another book, this one bulky and worn-edged.
When it became apparent he was done explaining, I asked, “Your duty?”
His eyes met mine, waiting. “To protect the heir to the dragon’s name.”
Morgan.
I winced, but instantly regretted it.
Logan sighed, stacking the three books together on his arm. “I refused. Long before any of this. I would have stayed, had it been Aern …” He glanced at the symbol etched into leather. “But it wasn’t.”
We were both silent after that, but Logan stayed beside me as I worked through the pages of archaic text. It was slow going, as I’d not studied the language since my mother’s death. Before that, I’d only seen it in her hand, in the modern curves of a ballpoint pen, not the scratches and arcs of quill and ink. I knew I had to find something, understood that if I didn’t find a way to change Emily, to fix those connections, then I couldn’t save any of us. And I knew something else, something the rest of them didn’t.
Time was running out.
The words blurred together and I reached up to massage my temples. Logan’s hand touched my forearm. “Brianna.”
I looked up, blinking against the black swirls that marked my vision.
“We should get going, you’ve got to meet Emily in a few hours, and you’ve worked through lunch.”
I glanced at the clock. Almost four. My eyes fell back to the books.
He reached over to slide them out of the way. “Tomorrow.”
I followed Logan numbly back to the garage, grateful for the movement at least, and rubbed my eyes one last time for good measure before finally settling again into the soft gray leather if the car’s seat. It must have been a half hour later when I got an odd sense we were heading in the wrong direction.
I pressed my feet into the floorboard, rising out of my relaxed position to see the road. I didn’t recognize it, but the sun was on the wrong side of the car. I glanced at Logan, still apparently at ease, and then through the window, focusing on the side mirror. There was a line of cars behind us, nothing out of the ordinary, but I couldn’t shake that strange feeling.
Logan pulled into the left lane to pass a minivan, and took a hard right onto a two lane road. I looked at him again—no noticeable signs of distress—and back to the mirror. I’d about given up, decided I was being paranoid, when a black sedan turned too fast onto the road several blocks behind us. It disappeared behind a truck, but Logan’s foot pressed the accelerator, and we were whooshing past the marked speed limit signs. He glanced at my seatbelt before turning a sharp left.
It wasn’t scary, not yet. The car was built for fast maneuvers, and Logan was calm and confident, unquestionably a good driver. But when a second car appeared, this time cutting across a street in front of us, the car jerked hard to avoid it, throwing me against the door. Logan pressed a tiny black gadget into his ear as we swerved left, and then right, dodging slower traffic before veering off onto another street. Logan was reciting numbers, picking them from the navigation screen on the dash, and spun mid-intersection, taking us back a half block to a narrow alleyway.
He barely slowed, spinning again to land us in southbound traffic on the other side. I pressed my hand to the door, finding and gripping a handle I was fairly certain was made for exactly that. I glanced in the mirror and saw a third car join the chase. Well, maybe not exactly that.