An Isle of Mirrors (A Shade of Vampire #88) - Bella Forrest Page 0,65

The real stuff, not what we weave with leather strings and river pebbles. Look.”

He stopped by one of the shelves where several decorative boxes had been stored. Dust covered them, but I could still make out the mother-of-pearl inlays and brass edges. Loren opened one to reveal a stunning set of earrings and a matching necklace. The rubies stood out because they were considerably larger than similar jewels I’d seen and were a vivid, bloody red. I couldn’t look away. The gems were framed by tiny diamonds and mounted on white gold. They looked old, parts of the facets chipped away. The original sheen was gone, and rust had settled in the tiny nooks between each element, but they were still beautiful. Still eye-catching.

“How did these pieces survive for so long?” Unending asked. “We’re talking millions of years here. Even metal changes its properties over such a period of time. Why hasn’t everything in here turned to compressed carbon?”

Loren smiled. “Death was kind enough to cast a spell on this place when my ancestors built it. The magic slowed time to such a degree that it seems as though it has stopped altogether. Eventually, maybe in a billion years, what you see in this place will be nothing but dirt. In the meantime, my people will start remaking and rewriting everything so that when the originals fade away, our future generations will still know what this is and what it means.”

We continued down the corridor until we reached the far end. A multitude of death magic symbols were scribbled on the wall, and Unending couldn’t help but run her fingers over the runes. “These are the wards you mentioned. Aside from the key, that is,” she murmured.

“Indeed. But only a part of them. Death had the ceilings and the floors inscribed, and Joy added spells of her own. I doubt there’s an inch in this place that hasn’t been warded, all for the sake of protecting the objects within. No one can walk out of here with the Mixer, that much I can tell you. Not even I.” Loren searched through one of the bottom shelves and took out a box, barely the size of a shoebox. “This is it…”

Gingerly lifting the lid, he showed us the contents. The Mixer was nothing like how I’d imagined it. It was a ring-shaped object, about as wide as a regular bracelet, and I wondered how it worked in bringing multiple scythes together. The interior of the band was etched with a multitude of death magic runes, every inlay filled with some type of black crystal. The exterior was smooth gold, matte, lacking the usual metallic sheen. It was an odd thing, but its craftsmanship was out of this world.

“The Mixer,” Unending whispered, her galaxy eyes widening as she beheld the object, barely a couple of feet from her reach. Loren put the lid back on rather abruptly, nearly startling her.

“When Joy comes back, I will happily hand it over. Until then, and assuming you’re not the biggest fans of large gatherings such as the one currently unfolding along the riverbank, would you two like to come upstairs? I believe I have more ceramic art you might be interested in,” he said.

We nodded and allowed him to lead us back into the house, but just as Loren reached the wooden door, Unending tapped her blade against his shoulder. He dropped like a log, face down on the floor in a deep sleep. “I am sorry about this, Your Majesty,” she said, then looked at me. “We have to hurry. I need to find the wards that keep the Mixer from leaving this place.”

There was very little time to do that. Loren wasn’t the problem, of course, but rather the Reaper we’d knocked out earlier. The Reaper with the strength of a First Tenner who’d snapped upon seeing Anunit—though her incontrollable rage had very little to do with our mischievous runaway. Joy was going to cut our heads off unless we got what we came for and left the village before she woke up. Or maybe Death would manage to hold her back. We’d had trouble reasoning with Joy before, however, and she’d absolutely lost it this time around.

“Joy’s issues stem from isolation, right?” I asked. “Or some design faults, too?”

Rushing down the creaky wooden steps, I swallowed the nervous lump in my throat. The first trial was proving to be more difficult and more dangerous than we’d expected, and it was Anunit’s fault.