Page 37 of Gift from the Source (Source of Elementra #5)

Thirty-Two

Oakly

Five years later

Easy does it, Oakly. Don’t fuck this up.

You blow up the lab you pulled the sister card to get, you’re not getting another one.

“Should I be concerned you’re talking to yourself?”

“Shit!”

My shriek ricochets off the walls and the tips of my finger graze the relic as I attempt to catch it before it hits the ground.

Thankfully, an air bubble encases it and gently sets it back on my desk.

I slowly turn to my sister with my hands on my hips, and she sits on my couch with her feet kicked up and arm thrown over the back.

“You’re as bad as your ghost boy, you know. What the hell are you doing sneaking in here like that? You nearly made me drop that relic I’ve been working my ass off on figuring out.”

“Yeah, and that sample you were about to scrape was going to make the whole thing turn to dust. It’s sensitive about where you touch it.”

My gaze falls from her to the molded figure that resembles an hourglass, then back to her repeatedly.

Well, shit.

“In that case, what the hell took you so long to distract me? I was seconds away from scraping it.”

“The vision just came to me. I left the amplifier room immediately and came to you.” She chuckles like this is hilarious while I’m sweating fucking streams.

“What else have you seen about this little shit? I’m getting to my breaking point with it. Two years and not an ounce of progress with it. I’m ready to stick it in the room.”

I point my finger furiously at the wall that, if we commanded it, would lead us to another secret room we built.

That one is just for us.

We hide in there often and drink too much coffee, sometimes happy juice. It’s starting to be a collection of random things we find and like. There’s of course a mixture of our favorite things. Relics, books, artifacts and what have you, but it also holds some of the most dangerous things we possess.

Namely, the second Gods Binding, the Charm of Compulsion—which Keeper told me I could keep and study for however long I needed, aka forever—the Acidiate Cube, and the dagger the Summum-Master used to mark people.

We actually have rounded up a few of those in the past few years.

Each one we find comes here.

As does anything else that interests us.

Our reasoning for moving everything was simply because it’s easier to study them here. When they were in the room we created in CC’s bedroom, I constantly had to transport back and forth between the palace and academy.

That was fine before I took a more active role in the archives as well as helping when I’m needed for the E.F. Granted, that isn’t much, thankfully, but there’s always going to be little squabbles around the realm.

Now it’s all in one place and easy to access for me and Willow .

“How much trouble are you willing to get into today?”

“Depends. Are we getting in trouble just to get our guys’ attention or in the name of science?”

“Technically, in the name of science, but it’ll no doubt lead to being in trouble with the guys.”

I rub my hands together excitedly. We’ve traveled within the realm plenty in the last few years, but she’s only taken me out of the realm once with them on their second trip to the Keep.

“Then as much trouble is needed to complete whatever little mission you’re cooking up in your mind.”

She jumps up from the couch and rushes to my side. “How long do we got before our trackers alert the guys?”

“Aww, shit, I forgot about that. Why did we decide that was a good idea again?”

She gives me a look that screams ‘really.’

“Because Elementra forbid anything happens to any of us again, any of the others can find us.”

It wasn’t long after the war, I finally had a little mental break about what happened to me. I thought I was doing good on my journey, but then my mom decided what was best for her was to take her own life rather than live out the five-hundred-year sentence Aurora gave her and my dads.

Stupidly, against the advice of my men and Willow’s men, I asked her to give them a little grace.

Turns out immortality means nothing if when she got done with that sentencing, she couldn’t have the social standing and popular lifestyle she wanted.

That was like the final nail in my heart when it came to her and my dads.

I couldn’t sleep at night, though. Between the thoughts of Willy and of me being kidnapped over and over, I told her I needed something to make me feel better. The nightmare of us getting kidnapped together, or me and one of my men, her men, played on repeat every night. It always came and I was never found .

So the two of us put our heads together and came up with the brilliant idea of searing permeant tracking imprints on all our magical signatures.

They’re dormant until activated and they don’t activate if we’re all within a certain radius of one another.

After a certain amount of time, it’ll automatically alert all of us if we transport somewhere outside our ‘safe’ zones. The Academy, the palace, the mansion, Terravile pack, Willow’s mom’s, or my lake house.

“An hour. Can we get where we’re going and back before then?”

“Pushing it, but we can try. We’re staying within the realm, so we should be okay.”

I have no qualms about it.

I trust her with my life.

“Ready?” she asks.

“Let’s do it.”

She sweeps us away through a transport and when we step out, she snatches onto my arm quickly.

“Holy fuck, Willow. What the hell?” I scream as I almost step off a massive-ass volcanic cliff. “Why are we on a cliff in the desolate lands?”

My eyes travel the distance until they land on Pyra and all her vicious glory and reminders.

“Shit, sorry, I meant to drop us a few feet back. Come on,” she says, pulling me behind her.

“How in the…”

My words trail off as I follow her down a few of the rock formations until our feet hit a flat surface and she travels into the mouth of a cave.

“What are we doing here, Willy?” I ask as her hands light a flame so we can see where we’re walking.

“Looking for something, well, two somethings. One is going to look like a shiny black dagger, just like this.” In her hand, her shadows form a dark dagger that looks almost made of glass. “And this.” In the other palm, the same exact texture of the dagger forms a triangle, but instead of being black, it’s a deep burgundy.

“What do we need that for?”

“Can’t tell you. You got to figure it out. It’s going to be so exciting.”

Tease.

Her laugh eventually fades as we start our hunt. The lantern she made me flickers with every step I take, and I find myself trailing my fingers over the walls. It’s mind-blowing to know all of this was made from explosion after explosion from Pyra.

It’s built up so much, it’s like its own little realm, ready for us to explore.

“Damn it,” I hiss and pull my middle finger to my mouth.

The salty tang of my blood bursts across my tongue and I hold the lantern higher to see what the hell that was.

“Shit,” I breathe, dropping my hand. “Come here, I got something.”

“Did you find them?”

I point to show her the red tip that just sliced my poor finger. “Yeah, I think so.”

“Hell yeah, Oak. Good job. Sorry about your finger, though.”

I snort as I hold it back to my mouth to stop the bleeding. My sweet and sexy healer would die if he knew I was doing this.

He’ll just have to take real good care of me later.

“Eww, stop that. I’m trying to focus.”

“Sorry.”

The caress of her earth element glides across me and I lean in real close to watch her every move. She slowly removes the rock around the sharp tip and barely catches it as it, plus the dagger pops free from the stone.

“Fuck yes, that was—”

My cheer is cut off as the entire cave starts trembling. Debris from above starts falling all over the place as more violent shakes wreak havoc. My arms fly out in front of me to catch myself on the wall and Willow latches onto me.

“Gotta get our asses going.”

We take a few unsteady steps before boulder-sized rocks fall and shatter to the ground in front of us. Our screams echo around us for a hot second, then her shadows swarm us and move us through the falling rubble.

She keeps moving us until we’re plenty enough space away and can land our feet on flat ground .

I bend over with my hands on my knees, breathing heavily until a manic laugh falls from my chest and I plop my ass on the ground.

“What did you do?” I ask.

“I didn’t do anything. How was I supposed to know it was going to cave in?”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe this little thing called the sight.”

“Yeah, well, we got no warning there. Shit, we’ve got to go.”

Her eyes widen at me when she glances down at her timekeeper, and I already know what that means. I scramble my ass up and transport us back to the academy.

A sigh falls from both of us as we pop into the middle of my lab. “I think we’re good.”

“You’re so fucking far from good, firecracker, you don’t even know it.”

The two of us nearly jump out of our skin as we shriek and spin around. The stern faces on Ry and Tillman would have anyone else at this academy cowering in fear.

“We’re in so much trouble.”

“It’ll still be worth it when you see what these things do.”

As she and Tillman have their own little stare-off, I cross my arms and hold Ry’s glare.

“I’m not sure what you’re so worked up about. We were fine and only gone an hour.”

“Yeah, and I’m surprised the realm isn’t catching fire right now since the two of you were on the loose.”

“We aren’t rabid animals.”

“You’re most certainly an animal.”

That little wink of his has me struggling not to crack a smirk and laugh.

“Well, let’s see what these things can do. Also, you still had two minutes till the tracker went off. We were just coming to see what you two were up to,” Tillman says smugly.

I knew they weren’t really concerned or neither would’ve dropped it that fast. They’re barely uptight these days about where we go. We just like to ruffle their feathers every now and then .

Damn, so after nearly dying, I could’ve had a minute to properly catch my breath.

Tillman’s head whips to me as he narrows his eyes. “Excuse me?”

I pointedly turn on my heel to ignore his big ass.

“Okay, so you gonna tell me what to do or what?” I ask Willow as we crowd around my desk.

“Use the dagger to scrape, the triangle to look. Say the spell, ‘Through a grain of sand, times traveled across the land.’”

“I’ve never heard that spell before.”

“Obviously,” she says, waving my attention away from her.

Rolling my eyes playfully, I lean down until I’m eye level with the relic. I blow out a deep breath and follow the instructions she gave me.

“Through a grain of sand, times traveled across the land.”

My gasp rings in my ears as my eyesight zones in on the small little opening I scraped away. Within the confines of the hard exterior is what looks to be a real hourglass and as one sand grain falls, I fall into wherever it pulls me.

Oh my Elementra.

My mind is released, and I suck in a struggling breath. I grip my chest as I attempt to get my heart to stop its pounding and Ry flies to my side.

“What happened? What’s wrong?” he asks frantically.

“I just…” I shake my head and look at Willow. “Was that…was that Elementra making the daughters?”

She smiles wildly at me and shrugs her shoulders. “I have no clue. You see what it wants to show you of the past. One grain, one true event in time.”

My mind shatters as the information stored within races to the surface. I run my finger down the relic where it’s already covering itself back up.

I know what it is.

“It’s a Looking Glass. They’re thought to all be destroyed.”

“Correct. Except this one,” she squeals.

“Wait, when you found this and gave it to me two years ago, did you know?”

“Nope, I had no idea. I just knew it wasn’t some piece of pottery. Who else was I supposed to give it to other than the realm’s most renowned Archivist?”

A watery laugh chokes out of me as I look between her and the relic.

She just gave me the biggest piece of historical records ever known to our realm.