Alastair Von Vexx's Arc

Chapter 8 of 13

The false child and its allies slipped back into the dark. Alastair kept Wisteria's hand in his and turned toward the bright cavern walls. Quartz and ruby and emerald shimmered around them, but his eyes went to the gap where the shattered pillar had stood. Behind the falling fragments, something old had been uncovered. He stepped over the bright shards and laid his palm on the exposed stone. The wall was older than the rest of the cavern. Carvings ran across it in a script he half-knew. A door waited in the center, made of clear crystal, marked with glowing runes that pulsed under his touch. Wisteria read the script aloud, slow and steady. The grove had not been built to guard gems. It had been built to hold his bloodline in. "A prison," Alastair said. He pressed his forehead to the cold crystal. The runes warmed. The bond inside him answered, pulling down, toward the boy he had not saved. "For us. For him." The truth settled like a stone in his chest. His enemies had not invented his weakness. They had only found the lock his ancestors built and learned how to turn the key. He drew his hand back. The door stayed sealed, but now he saw it plain. Wisteria's fingers tightened on his. "Then we open it," she said. Alastair nodded once. The secret he had hunted for years was no longer a whisper. It had a door, and a name, and a brother behind it. Tomorrow he would learn how to break it.