Blackbird Broken (The Witch King's Crown #2) - Keri Arthur Page 0,116
worn down by time and weather. The soft shimmer that briefly ran around its base told me the blessing remained in place, but it certainly wasn’t as strong as it should have been. I placed a hand into a hollow smoothed by countless others doing the exact same thing and stepped up. There was no slot at the top of the stone to indicate a sword had ever been sheathed within it.
“Any idea where the ring might be hidden?” I asked.
“Afraid not. Mryddin simply said it was in the stone.”
“In? Like the sword was in?”
“Possibly. He didn’t actually clarify exactly what he meant.” She stopped near the step-up point and shoved her hands on her hips. “Can you see anything? Feel anything?”
“No.” I ran my fingers across the top of the stone, and just for a second, energy stirred. It was a distant echo of the electricity that had caressed my fingers when I’d gripped the sword in the stone. “Yes.”
“What?” Her voice was sharp.
“There is something here.” I narrowed my gaze and, after a moment, saw a slight indentation. It was the soft shimmer in the air above it that said it was something more. I hadn’t noticed it before now simply because the sword had always dominated my attention. It had been the reason we’d climbed up here every year, after all, and it wasn’t as if any of us had been aware that the stone held a secondary treasure deep in its stony heart.
I hesitated, then pressed my thumb into the dent. For a second, there was no response. Then, with a soft click, a slot appeared in the stone. From deep within came a bloodred gleam.
My breath caught in my throat, and for several seconds, all I could do was stare. This was it. This was the point of no return. This was where I found out if I was the true heir or not.
This was the moment where my life would forever change.
Mo didn’t say anything. In truth, there was nothing she could say. This decision, this action, was mine and mine alone. I could accept destiny or I could walk away and watch as everything I knew, everything I loved, was destroyed.
As decisions went, it was far harder than it should have been.
But in the end, I reached in and retrieved the ring.
Like the one the Blackbirds had held safe for centuries, this ring was dominated by a huge red ruby onto which a cross and a rose had been carved. But its band was simple silver rather than gold, and there were absolutely no diamonds encrusting it.
At my touch, a bloody fire flared to life deep in the heart of the ruby and began to pulse, quickly falling into a rhythm that matched the rapid beating of my heart.
It had recognized me. Accepted me.
I met Mo’s gaze. Her smile was bittersweet. “I was right, though in many respects, I wish for once I wasn’t.”
“You and me both.” I accepted the hand she offered me and jumped off the rock. “What about the rock? Do we need to protect it?”
Mo nodded. “Yes, but spells alone won’t do that. Not if my fears are right. Keep watch.”
I nodded and stepped away. As she knelt and pressed a hand to the cold gray stone that formed the base of the monolith circle, I pulled Vita free and dropped the ring into her sheath. Not only would it be safe enough there, it was the one place Max would never think to look.
I crossed my arms and kept guard as Mo literally moved the earth—after sinking the real knob deep into the ground, she fashioned another above it. Even I was hard pressed to see any differences between the fake and the real stone.
She pushed unsteadily to her feet once done and scraped a hand through her hair. “That should do it.”
I hoped so. “Shall we go?”
She nodded and immediately took to the sky.
I took a deep breath and then followed. The day wasn’t over yet.
We had a sword to find.
And, god help me, a brother to confront.
About the Author
Keri Arthur, author of the New York Times bestselling Riley Jenson Guardian series, has now written more than forty-eight novels. She’s won a Romance Writers of Australia RBY Award for Speculative Fiction, and two Australian Romance Writers Awards for Scifi, Fantasy or Futuristic Romance. She was also given a Romantic Times Career Achievement Award for urban fantasy. Keri’s something of a wanna-be photographer, so when she’s not at her computer writing the next book, she can be found somewhere in the Australian countryside taking random photos.