The Hunter and the Mage (The Raven and the Dove #2) - Kaitlyn Davis Page 0,101

had once been used to enslave us, but what if there's more? What if magic challenges the very strength of the gods? What if that's why we've been taught to hate it and to fear it, to cast it out as soon as it's found? Because its presence weakens the very foundations of our world. We loathe Vesevios, but he's still a god. He must know this. And that must be why he sends people with magic to our world, why they took Lyana as soon as her full power came to fruition. The answer is so simple I don't know how it took me so long to see. That man didn't just want Lyana. He wanted to see our world come crashing down, and he was going to use his magic to do it."

"Then why—" The words came out jagged and torn. Cassi coughed, finding her voice. "Then why did he leave? If magic could so easily disrupt the might of the gods, why not stay in the sacred nest until Taetanos was defeated?"

"Because…" Xander's brows knotted as he stared at the maps again, information flowing even faster into his head than the waters to Taetanos's Gate. Was she right? Was he reading too far into things? Was this like all the other theories he'd spun, undone by a few of her carefully chosen words? "There were three people there, four if you count Lyana, all with magic. There are seven god stones. Maybe he needs three more people, one for each stone. Maybe they need to bring them all down at once. Maybe it wasn't the right time. Maybe…I don't know. Maybe…"

Cassi leaned forward, her forearms flattening the ridges of the scrolls as she stretched across the table, holding his gaze with unwavering ferocity. "Do you really think seven people could take down the gods? Even with magic? And do you really think Lyana would ever submit to their cause?"

She was right, of course. Lyana would never betray them like that. Xander knew her heart. Though she yearned for adventure, in the end she'd chosen duty. She'd placed his people and his kingdom above her love, above her desires, above her dreams. The fire god would never beat Aethios in the war for her affections. Her heart was too noble, too strong, and too stubborn to allow it.

Xander slumped back against his seat. He'd been so positive he was finally onto something, so sure he was on the right track, but did a few correlating dates actually lead to his conclusions? If he removed his heart and his yearning for answers from the equation, what did he have, really? Nothing, except a gut instinct and the awareness that his intuition had been wrong only a few times in his life.

"It's a good idea, Xander, really," Cassi continued, a bit of levity back in her tone, though it sounded forced to his ear. "We should look into it more. But we shouldn't get ahead of ourselves either. We need to base our arguments on facts, and we don't have enough of those to draw any sort of conclusion."

"I know," he murmured, still staring at the maps.

In his mind, the parchment had turned to a white blanket of fog stretching as far as the eye could see. There was a whole world beneath the mist, a world his people knew nothing about. Before that day in the sacred nest, he would have said it was nothing but barren rock and fire, perhaps an ocean of flames, inhospitable to life. Now, he wasn't so sure. If that man lived in the Sea of Mist, and the two other mages with him, there could be more. What if the silvery carpet weren't hiding an angry god, like they all believed—what if it were hiding that god's vengeful army instead?

"One option we haven't yet considered…" Xander said slowly. Cassi licked her lips and swallowed, giving him her full attention. "…is that the answers we seek aren't in these pages or our endless debates. They're waiting beneath the mist, and we have wings, don't we? Maybe we simply need to do some infiltrating of our own."

"Who would go? You? The crown prince with the weight of an entire kingdom on his shoulders?"

"No, of course not." Xander frowned. "I would send someone, a team—"

"No raven will risk Vesevios's wrath, especially not now, when they doubt you, your family, and your very reign."

"One raven would."

The words hung between them as though suspended in the air, thickening