Page 172 of Cursed Evermore

I'd come by last night to take both dragons out for a flight. It was the first chance I'd gotten since returning to Galaythia.

After not seeing me for almost a week, the dragons were overexcited. They were in the same spirits now, and I felt bad I hadn't come to see them for our usual bonding time.

“A mundair alyehemdai?” I asked them if they'd seen anything strange in here.

They both used the dragon tongue and told me they hadn't. I wasn't expecting anything positive, but my heart still pinched at the disappointment.

I'd have to look around myself and search the caves from top to bottom.

Shifting on my feet, I looked at them and wondered how Elariya was able to hear them.

“How did the mage hear you sing?” I asked in the common tongue. I'd warned them about her presence before we docked in Galaythia because they were always restless when strangers were around.

“A mundai dunâi,” Pyrion answered, speaking to me in my mind, telling me she didn't know.

I sighed with frustration. This mystery was thickening like sea fog in the depths of winter, unforgiving and impossible to see through.

One thing at a time, Wolfe.One worry. One step.

The enigma of my little mage burned in my mind, demanding answers, but those would have to wait in the shadows a little longer. I was here to check the caves. That took precedence now.

I closed my eyes, stilled my breathing, and cast my senses wide, letting my powers spread my awareness through the cavern. Then I searched and probed every crevice and shadow for anything that didn't belong or stood out—a disturbance in the ancient stillness, a whisper of recent passage, or the lingering scent of magic that might lead me to what I desperately needed to find.

I came up with nothing.

And I didn't know what that meant. Was the thing I was searching for already here and staring me in the face? Or had it been here and left? I had no fucking idea.

I could no longer feel that pull drawing me to anything, and I didn't know what I was supposed to do. The only thing here was the cave itself and the dragons inside. Perhaps that was it—the clue.The dragons and the cave.

If those were the clue, then I was no closer to figuring anything out than I was when I first got here.

I needed more guidance.

I looked at the dragons, who were staring at me, eager for some command.

Pyrion lifted her wing and grunted.

The only person who could help me was the Seer. So far, she'd been the only one to set me on the path to getting a lead. But one didn't simply summon the Seer, or go to her home,beseeching her help. You had to find her first. Last time, it took me six months to do so.

“I need to see the Seer,” I told the dragons. “Find her for me.”

The dragons roared, sparking blue flame from their mouths, then they chanted, weaving locator spells through the air.

The Seer was a being of unknown origins. Her years stretched back to when the world was still learning to breathe. She navigated the unseen tapestry of the Primordial Realm—the skeleton of reality, where past and future bled into one. To reach her, you needed ancient magic like that of the dragons. Even then you might never find her.

The dragons' voices rose, falling into their timeless ritual as precious minutes crawled by. The ancient chant echoed through the cavern, their voices weaving magic I could barely comprehend. My mind raced between their hypnotic chanting and the spell that hadn't worked, my thoughts turning over every angle, every possibility. But every avenue I explored ended in the same crushing dead end. A problem with no visible solution I could see.

Pyrion was the first to stop chanting, then Hedion followed. Pyrion stepped forward, and the moment she shook her head, my stomach bottomed out, my hopes plummeting through the ground.

“The Seer is not within the Primordial Realm, your Grace. We cannot find her,” Pyrion said aloud, her voice thick with smoke and sorrow.

My insides twisted with the sickening realization that I was back at square one with my damn back against the wall. I'd gone from having a lead to a whole lot of pieces of nothing.

I'd always known what to do when life threw shit my way, but I'd finally met my match. For the first time in three centuries, I had no fucking idea what to do next.

Chapter 33

Wolfe