Page 51 of A Spell of Bones and Madness (Nostos #2)

Chapter Forty

Katrin

W ards were a tricky form of magic, one crafted by the strongest of gods and sorcerers.

They were not easily broken, not even by those with a similarly heightened form of power.

Since the days of the Olympi, power was bound by blood—and only blood could unlock such a carefully threaded tapestry that made up the protection surrounding Cyther.

From what Leighton had told them, you could leave the isle through the ward without a price to be paid—but getting in, that was a different story entirely.

Which led them to the Nexian Library, with mountains of tomes scattered around them.

How many days had they been researching?

How many weeks? Yet, each evening they came up empty handed .

This library was different from those Katrin was used to seeing in the isles—especially compared to the Morentian Libraries.

The books that filled each shelf were just as old, just as read, but it seemed lighter—more accessible, even.

Crystal bookcases lined the walls of the room housed deep within the castle.

Gray wooden ladders glided back and forth along those floor-to-ceiling shelves, young men and women using them to rehome borrowed books.

No scholars ran about the room—nor priests chiding you for speaking too loud, or searching for too complex or too old a book.

Instead it was filled with low murmurs and wide-eyed gazes as citizens dove into the fascinating worlds of myths and lore in Odessia.

The quiet chatter was a much needed distraction for the endless words they had read through on breaking a ward, none more helpful than the last. History books, grimoires, even books of legend led her nowhere.

Ander, Thalia, and Farah found their own research to be of little help as well.

The closest anyone got to a solution was Leighton with a single line in a book that looked as if it might fall apart at the touch of a finger, but the rest was too faded to read.

It told them no more than what they already knew—blood was the key.

The question would have to be, whose blood would match?

Who would need to make that kind of sacrifice?

Katrin decided early on it would have to be her.

She would not let one more person put themselves in harm's way—not after what Ander went through, the fresh scars he bore.

Not a single one of her fellow crew members—her family—would ever bear a mark made by those two men.

Instead, she would find a way, a use of her power to break through the veil .

“Ahem,” a voice cleared behind their table. Dimitris stood, weary-eyed and worn—no doubt from the many hours he’d spent circling outside of Thalia’s room. Katrin would need to ask the seer about that another time. “Father would like to speak to you.”

Brushing dust from his shirt, Ander stood from his seat, collecting the few books they had not read through yet. “Of course he would,” he said with a roll of his eyes.

“Not you, brother. He wishes to speak with Katrin. I’d be happy to accompany her to his study.” The younger Kirassos prince nodded toward her, an unnerving glimmer in his eyes.

“No need, Dimitris. I can take her myself.” Ander walked toward Katrin, placing his hand on the back of her chair.

It was odd, the uncomfortable nature that the two brothers shared.

They’d seemed so happy to see each other when they arrived back in Nexos, yet this—it was a strange shift.

Back rigid, jaw hardened—a stark difference from the pensive demeanor he’d had moments before.

“As you wish.” Turning to leave, Dimitris paused for only a moment, but with a long sigh stomped toward the door and left them.

Damp air swirled around the table, scattering loose papers from their research.

More pale than usual, Thalia squirmed uncomfortably in her seat.

Katrin heard what had happened to her in Aidesian, the voices and pain she would now feel.

Maybe that was the cause of Ander’s odd attitude—if he had slipped into her thoughts, seen what horrors lay in the future, felt the pain of those dying and crossing into the underworld.

“We should go—Father doesn’t take well to tardiness,” Ander’s cool voice floated from behind her .

“Of course,” Katrin replied, standing from her chair, nodding goodbye to the others. But the charge in the air—it told her there was something else going on, something Ander was refusing to tell her.

Rainbows scattered across the study walls from the small crystal pendant Nikolaos flipped around in his hand.

It was the same tick Ander had when Katrin first awoke on the ship, though that pendant now hung permanently around her neck.

It was uncanny, the way both men sat, staring at each other, brows furrowed, jaw feathering.

A struggle for power? Or perhaps just a father and son with a complicated past.

Moments would pass with no one speaking, and yet the expressions on each face would change.

A small smirk. A narrowed gaze. A whisper of fog around Ander’s fingers—black, smokey shadows around Nikolaos’s.

Katrin hated it, knowing they were speaking without her being able to hear.

That she was required to sit here in uncomfortable silence waiting for someone to fill her in on what Nikolaos had inevitably called her here to discuss.

Apparently it was not a dire situation if the two men could not deign to include her in the conversation.

While she waited for whatever discussion that was going on in the two mens’ heads to be over, Katrin’s gaze flicked around the room.

It was simpler than she’d imagined—even more so than her father’s study in Alentus.

A single desk sat in front of a floor to ceiling window overlooking the cove below.

Sun glimmered in, casting its rays against not only the crystal pendant, but off the alabaster tile that made up the walls.

A chaise and two chairs lay in the corner, a small table with a tray filled with berries and a decanter of clear liquor sat atop it.

No papers were strewn about like the studies she was familiar with, no charts lay cast aside with figurines depicting the armies and fleets of surrounding isles.

The only curious object in the room was a glimmering blue stone seated on a silver pedestal.

It did not reflect light, but rather sucked the sun’s fiery rays in.

A low hum seemed to radiate from it, pulsing through the room—though neither Ander nor his father seemed to notice.

A vibrant charge began to lace up Katrin’s arms, igniting that starlit fire that lay dormant in her core.

Bright light radiated off her skin and shot through the center of the stone, a bridge forming between her heart and it.

Breath stripped out of her lungs as Katrin attempted to stop the light from shooting across the room, but it was the fog that wrapped around her body and not her desperate attempts at halting her power that calmed the glow.

Sweat trickled from her brow, drying just as quickly as it slipped down her temples.

“As I thought,” Ander declared, finally out loud.

“Excuse me?” Katrin panted through heaving breaths.

“Poseidon—he would have favored you,” he chuckled.

Katrin’s eyes flared open. He was laughing ?

She could have blown a hole straight through the glass window of this room—or worse, straight through one of them —and he was just sitting there, eyes watery, shoulders shaking, laughing.

The strangest part of any of it was that Nikolaos was laughing too.

Such an odd sight to see this supposedly fearsome and decrepit man with fiery light in his gaze and a warm lulling laugh much like his son’s.

“This is a good thing, Aikaterine. It means why I asked you here might just work in our favor,” Nikolaos managed to get out in between chuckles, but then his face hardened, swirling silver eyes that felt so familiar, yet were older, fiercer, struck her.

“We may laugh, but that is only because I have not seen my son in years, and even before then, something was always missing from his soul—that is, until you. This is an extremely dire matter. Alexander told me the books in our library were of no help, but that is only because this kind of lore—this kind of power—has only been passed down for one to know.”

Katrin shifted in her seat, a slight tremor beginning to ripple up her hand. “And you think I am this person?”

“At first I was skeptical. It is why I did not call you into my study the first day you returned. However, yesterday I was taking a walk through the forest with my love, when a burning sensation struck my palm where I held this very crystal.” He lifted the blue stone off the pedestal.

“When I looked through the brush, I saw you training with Alexander, your power giving off the same glow as this did. Now I don’t think, I know. The crystal has chosen you.”

Nikolaos leaned back in his chair, resting his chin on one hand.

“You are aware that each Grechi has an artifact they are meant to protect?” Nikolaos asked and Katrin nodded back slowly.

“Not only did the Grechi inherit these weapons of sort from the Olympi, but some also created talismans, ways to enhance the power of those who were deemed worthy to yield them. I was entrusted with one of these, a crystal from Poseidon’s Lost Palace of the Aegean. ”

“And this talisman, is it like my father’s staff? Your trident? Can this crystal kill an Olympi?” Katrin asked.

“It cannot, but it can give its wielder enough power to trap one. Only the artifact your sister possesses can truly defeat Hades. If you work together we might be able to rid this world of his wickedness before more lives—or worse, entire isles—are destroyed.”

“I will not let him take one more thing from me—from anyone.” Walking across the room, she plucked the stone from Nikolaos’s outstretch palm.

Katrin unlatched the necklace she wore around her neck, slipping the crystal onto the chain where it would dangle next to the sun and moon.

She would not rest until that man—Olympi or not—was resolved to ash.