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Ziyi’s voice sounded stunned over the comlink. “Dragonfly located a climate-controlled town three miles from the gate.”

“What is the town’s name?” Lucienne asked.

“There’s no record.”

Could it be Eterne? Lucienne felt her heart skip a beat before hammering her ribcage. The inscription on the scroll said the Destined One, descendent of the rightful bloodline, would activate the Eye of Time. Only when that happened could they find the path to Eterne.The unnamed village can’t be the quantum realm, merely one of the lost cities.“If the lost city exists, then the scroll is accurate. Eterne isreal.” Lucienne gazed at Vladimir. Her eyes reflected the sunlight, turning the color of champagne.

“We’re getting there, Lucia,” Vladimir said. His callused hand reached out and for the first time in months, their fingers interlocked.

“Visual on the town,” Vladimir said.

A futuristic town, embedded in an evergreen garden with lovely blossoms, came to light on the screen. The camera lens continued to pan, pulling in a long shot of snow-covered Alaskan islands, and then a bird’s-eye view of silvery mountains encircling the sparkling town.

“A paradise on Earth,” Orlando murmured from the back of BL7 amid the humming of the machine.

“Howisit possible to hide a place like that for centuries?” Vladimir rasped.

“A membrane.” Lucienne drew a shaky breath. “Forget about the town. We must secure the Eye on the gate.”

The screen switched back to the bleak wilderness, where the gate had materialized. As the lens of the Dragonfly zoomed in on the Eye, the blazing Eye stared back, as if sensing it was being watched.

“What are those people doing at these coordinates?” Lucienne scowled. “Pan on them.”

The lens swept in an arc, catching sight of the group as the howling wind assaulted them, their thin outfits clinging to their trembling bodies. As the wind passed by, an empty wheelchair rolled toward the group out of nowhere.

The blond boy stared at the wheelchair and cursed, and the redhead lunged at him. Three guards shoved the girl away. She fell, her back hitting the wheel of the wheelchair. Her head slammed against a button. A stream of blood mixed with sand shot straight out at the blond boy from the chair’s handle. Lucienne wondered why anyone would equip a wheelchair with homemade weapons.

The queen rushed to the screaming boy, frantically wiping the blood off his face with her sleeves, saying something and looking daggers at the girl.

“Can Dragonfly pick up sound, Ziyi?” Lucienne asked.

“Sorry, there’s no audio sensor at the coordinates.”

“Then close in on whoever speaks.” Lucienne leaned toward the screen to read the queen’s lips, but the queen’s words were beyond her understanding, even though she spoke seven languages fluently and could identify many others. “I’ve never heard a language like this before,” she said. But to her surprise, the boy answered in English mixed with Spanish. “Mother,” he wiped his face and stared at the blood on his fingers, “Ashburn Fury has been planning to murder me. He might have just done that!”

“It’s not your blood, heart,” Lucienne lip-read the queen’s Spanish.

“Then whose blood is it?” the prince demanded.

“It’s . . . pig’s blood,” the male farmer said sheepishly, also in Spanish. “A few nights ago I saw him mixing the blood with sand. He was only experimenting. He didn’t mean harm—”

“Didn’t?” the prince yelled in English. “He’s built many nasty things trying to get to me, the Crown Prince!”

“I’m very sorry for my son, Your Highness,” the female farmer explained in Spanish. “There must be a misunderstanding. I—”

Lucienne had a hard time keeping up with this multilingual group.

“There’s no misunderstanding! You raised a rotten son!” The king backhanded the female farmer across her cheek. He was a big man and she was petite. The force of the blow sent her to the ground. The king rotated his wrist, as if he had hurt his royal hand. He thencocked his chin toward the guards, and two of them advanced on the woman with a lewd smirk.

The male farmer lunged, covered his wife with his body, and looked over his shoulder at the king, pleading. “Please don’t hurt her, Your Majesty. I’m the one who spoiled my son.”

A leading guard, whose legs were thicker than tree trunks, delivered a hard kick to the man’s gut. The other guards joined him.

Lucienne narrowed her eyes. “How soon can we land?”

“One and a half minutes if I push it,” Vladimir said. “We’ve entered the sky over Attu Island.”

“Push it,” Lucienne said, her eyes locked on the screen.