Page 28

CHAPTER 28

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“S o the map leads to Carthage?” I ask as I peer over Saint’s shoulder at the paper I still can’t read. The giant circled “Carthage” written on top of his notes is a pretty big clue as to what it says, though.

Saint is working on translating the map because Malachi has some alpha stuff to take care of. While he’s in training to take over the pack, he has to help Vale with pack responsibilities from time to time. He hasn’t had much opportunity to focus on pack stuff because he was spending so much time trying to find me. After our conversation yesterday, I can’t help but wonder what all he has to do today.

Since the translation is relatively simple, Saint was confident he could handle it himself. He already figured out that the map was created sometime in the late nineteenth century.

Xander, Bastian, and I have been hanging out in the study with Saint. They’re providing moral support because Elemental is also taking a day off from the hunt for Ryker. Although, I’m pretty sure if we find Dido’s tomb, we’ll find my least favorite Knight.

Saint finishes scribbling something on one of his pages of notes before nodding. “It appears so.”

I narrow my eyes at the map because I could’ve sworn Carthage isn’t a modern-day city. “Does Carthage even exist anymore?”

Bastian hops up on the table next to me and swings his legs cheerily. “The city? Nope, but the ruins of it are in the city of Tunis, which is the capital of Tunisia.”

Fantastic.

The map is to a city that doesn’t exist anymore. I honestly don’t know why I expected anything else. Everything about this freaking prophecy is convoluted, confusing, and almost impossible.

“When exactly was it destroyed?” I ask, not sure I really want to know.

“Ancient Carthage was destroyed by the Romans in the third Punic War in 146 B.C. There’s hardly anything of the city from Dido’s time left, though. The oldest of the surviving ruins are from the second century A.D.” Bastian rattles off the facts about Carthage without even having to look anything up. His history knowledge is always so impressive. While he comes across as the joker of the bunch, he’s incredibly smart underneath his carefree persona.

“So this map should still be pretty accurate, right?” If the city was already destroyed by the time of my great-grandma, the map hopefully won’t point to something that’s no longer there.

Bastian tilts his head back and forth as he thinks about it. “I’m honestly not sure. The map is from the eighteen hundreds, and there’s been a lot of urban sprawl in Tunis since then. I’d bet the whole landscape is quite a bit different now.”

I groan. “So the map’s worthless?”

Xander shakes his head. “I don’t think so. We should still be able to get to the general area of the tomb with the map’s help. Even though the streets and buildings have changed, we should be able to compare it to a map of the city today and figure out where we need to go.”

“Have you tried asking Dido where her burial spot is?” Bastian asks.

I look at him with wide eyes because it never occurred to me to ask her about that. Resisting the urge to facepalm at how I constantly forget to ask her anything, I close my eyes.

Dido? Do you by chance know where you were buried?

Dido appears in my mind, her brown hair waving softly around her. She shakes her head apologetically. “I do not know. That is one thing no spirit can see. I cannot remember the exact location of the pyre or the castle, either. We are blind to our final resting place.”

That’s news to me, but then again, I don’t know a whole lot about spirits. It’s kind of hard to know much about something I can’t see or interact with. Why can’t spirits see it?

Dido’s brown eyes swirl with sadness. “The only spirits who remain on this plane are ones who had traumatic deaths. Not being able to remember every detail about how or where we died helps keep us from going insane. Not knowing where we are buried removes the temptation to stay close to our bodies and encourages us to move on.”

Why don’t the spirits that stay move on? Dido is cursed to reincarnate, so she doesn’t really have a choice. I would think most spirits would want to be done with this life and move on to the next, assuming there is a next.

“They stay because they have unfinished business or because life irrevocably damaged their souls and they are unable to move on.”

What happens to those souls? I ask.

Dido flattens her lips into a harsh line. “They are forever trapped on this plane until their soul withers away. They never get a chance at another life.”

That’s really sad. My heart hurts for a bunch of people I don’t even know. No one deserves that fate. Or, well, most people don’t. I can’t say I’d be all that upset if that’s what happens to Ryker.

“It is,” Dido agrees before her gaze turns serious. “ The path you are on has a high likelihood of you becoming one of those damaged souls if you are killed in the process. Fulfilling the prophecy is not worth your life or your soul, child.”

Her words sober me, and I feel the self-doubt begin to creep in. Do you think I can break the curse without dying?

Surprising me, Dido nods. “I do. I have been reincarnated into many of my descendants. You have come the closest of any of them to unraveling the Knights of Aeneas’s spell. You are tenacious, clever, and you have many willing to help you on your journey. Use them, for none of us can reach our full potential alone.”

My mouth tilts up in a small smile because she sounds like Malachi did yesterday. Even you, the legendary queen of Carthage, who founded the city herself?

She smiles at me, a rare expression I’m not used to seeing from her. “Yes, even me. I did not found it myself, child. I had the help of my mates and a supportive community I leaned on when times were challenging.”

I don’t plan to tackle it myself, Dido. I promise.

With one last nod, Dido disappears from my mind. When I blink my eyes open, I see Saint staring expectantly. “Did she have any ideas?”

I scrub a weary hand over my face. “Nope. Apparently, spirits don’t know where they’re buried. Dido says it’s to help them move on.”

Saint hangs his head. “Well, it was worth a shot.”

Bastian slings an arm around my shoulders and tugs me into his side. He drops a quick kiss on top of my hair. “If nothing else, we have a map. Sure, it’ll take some work to match it up to modern-day Tunis, but we still have an idea of where to go. It’s not like we’re having to wander around the world and hope we stumble onto the spot at random.”

Bastian’s right. While it would be nice for Dido to be able to tell us, it isn’t the only way to find it. “So should we grab a map of Tunis and get started?”

Xander is the first one to hop up. “I’ll go find one.”

He comes back a few minutes later with a giant folding map of Tunisia. I blink at him because I didn’t expect the Wyldhart library to just casually have a map of a random country in northern Africa. I wonder if they have a giant map for every country because that’d be super cool.

Xander unfolds it on the table next to the one Saint’s working at so he doesn’t mess up any of the notes. Smoothing the paper out to get rid of the creases, Xander puts his hands on his hips and scowls down at the map. “So how do we want to do this?”

I shrug because map reading really isn’t my strong suit. Regular reading, now that’s something I’m good at. But maps might as well be written in Latin for all the sense they make to me. “I guess we just place the old map on top of the new one?”

Saint taps his pen against the table as he stares between the two pieces of paper. “The problem is that it gives no context. It’s a map of an area. In the very corner, I can see a coastline, I think. Other than that, I have no idea which part of the city it refers to. It’s also probably a different scale than the modern one Xander found.”

Bastian rubs his chin in thought. “Let’s just put it along the coast and see if it seems to match with any of those areas.”

Taking the map to where Dido’s buried from Saint, Xander lays it over the other one. He moves it around the coast, but nothing seems to fit. He pushes a rough hand through his hair in frustration when he gets to the edge of the modern map without matching it to the older one.

Bastian stares intently at the two maps. “Move it back a little, twinnie.” Xander looks skeptical but does as Bastian tells him to. “There! Right there. Do you see that little hooked pointy bit? That matches up exactly to that part.”

I lean in to see what Bastian’s talking about. He’s right that the edge of the map we found in Rome lines up with a pier in Tunis. The only problem is that it extends the city out into the ocean, which the real city clearly doesn’t do. “Can we turn it around?”

Flipping the paper around, Xander puts it back in the same spot. That orientation flips the port so that it no longer lines up.

Saint braces his hands on the table as he squints at the papers. “That doesn’t make any sense. The map says the city should extend into the ocean, but it obviously doesn’t.”

A light bulb goes off in my mind, and I grin as I figure it out. “According to the human maps of the area.”

Tilting his head, Saint asks, “What are you saying?”

I point to the old map that shows a different part of Carthage. “I’m saying that the human part of the city ends there. That doesn’t mean that’s where the city ended in Dido’s times or now for the nonhuman inhabitants.”

Bastian’s eyes widen. “You’re a genius, pretty girl. Mages must’ve camouflaged this part of the city from humans, so it’s not on any maps we can find. That’s something they could do, right?”

Saint glances between the map and Bastian. “I mean, yeah, theoretically they could do that. But it would take a metric shit ton of magic to keep that spell constantly in place.”

I don’t really know much about spells, but if it’s possible, that’s something. “The Knights are working with the council, and council members tend to be pretty powerful. Couldn’t one or multiple of them be powering the spell?”

Rubbing his hand on the back of his neck as he thinks, Saint eventually says, “Yeah, they could, I suppose. It could also be concealed by an artifact from Dido’s time that still has enough juice to keep the spell going.”

Bastian looks between the two maps for a moment before he shrugs. “Does it really matter how it works? We know it’s possible, and we have a map that shows us where to go. Now, we just need to go to Tunis, find Dido’s tomb, and kick some Knight ass.”