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“You fainted,” Quincy responded.

He didn’t mention that he had intentionally removed her from the terrace and let her awaken on her own without healing. He hadn’t wanted her to be overwhelmed by the presence of the others. She’d likely be embarrassed enough about her faint as it was.

Moving beside Sophia, he checked Ariana’s pulse. He tried to ignore the softness of Sophia’s hair brushing against his bicep.

“I don’t think you’re eating enough or getting enough rest,” he said. “That combined with the news of Kanika’s survival sent you right into a form of shock.”

Swallowing audibly, she caught Sophia’s gaze. “They’re going to want me to find the other two scroll pieces now, aren’t they?”

“Yes,” Sophia said. “You’re my friend, Ariana…you know that. I have to be honest with you. After you fainted, they asked me to speak with you about the scroll.”

Quincy’s eyebrows rose. This made a lot of sense. Trying not to be too obvious, he stepped away from the bed to give the females the chance to talk. Hopefully the one-on-one interaction would be more successful in getting through to the Lekwuesti.

“I knew it,” Ariana said. Her eyes filled with tears. “Sophia, I can’t.”

Sophia gave Ariana’s hand a fortifying squeeze. “I know you’re frightened. It sounds as though whatever awful experience Kanika went through left her with blank spots in her memory. I understand how traumatic it must have been for you, too. But, Ariana, I also know how strong you are.”

Quincy’s lips curved. Sophia was a remarkably smart being. She knew what angle to take.

“I know more than most that physical strength isn’t everything,” she continued. “And I know you’re stronger than Eirik and Deimos combined.” When Ariana wiped her tears and shook her head, Sophia added, “The plan is that you never encounter them again, anyway. You won’t be alone on the trip for the scroll pieces.
Archigos
Uriel intends to escort you personally, along with as many Waresti as he can spare. They won’t let any harm come to you.”

Tears continued to leak from Ariana’s eyes as she slowly sat up. Sophia moved to sit beside her on the bed.

“If you don’t go,” Sophia said gently, “the elders will have to resort to the intrusive mining of
archigos
Ini-herit and Uncle Gabriel’s minds in hopes they can pull out the memories of the locations of the other scroll pieces.”

“Why can’t they just do that?” Ariana asked, wiping again at her cheeks. “Retrieving memories without the risk of confronting Eirik makes more sense.”

Sophia looked at Quincy. Although his breath seized momentarily over having her direct attention focused on him, he understood.

Clearing his throat, he answered, “The amount of power required to retrieve these single memories could cause permanent damage to
archigos
Ini-herit and
archigos
Gabriel. It’s highly likely that their cognitive functioning will be affected in some way. There’s also a possibility that they’ll be left with no memories at all.”

Ariana blinked at that. “Oh,” she said in a small voice. She looked at Sophia through the fall of her black hair. “You must think me the lowliest of cowards.”

“Of course I don’t,” Sophia chided her. “As you said, none of us knows what you went through. I understand why you aren’t eager to venture back out.”

“You may say you don’t think I’m a coward,” Ariana said, her words hitching on a sob. “But the fact is, I am. Sophia…I can’t face Eirik and Deimos again.”

It felt like a long walk back out to the terrace. Sophia was highly conscious of Quincy walking quietly beside her. Ariana had asked them for some time alone to collect her thoughts and neither of them wanted to deny her that.

Sophia was surprised that Quincy didn’t try to make some excuse as to why he couldn’t walk with her. She thought of how he deliberately stepped away from her when they stood so close at Ariana’s bedside. Although he tried to be discreet, she knew he hadn’t wanted to be near her any longer than necessary. She imagined he saw Ariana’s return to consciousness as a welcome reprieve from having to converse with her, a thought that now had her throat and eyes burning.

You will
not
cry
, she told herself fiercely.
Suck it up
.

“It was good of you to come and talk to Ariana,” he said after a moment.

She thought his voice sounded strained, as though he forced himself to say the words. She wanted to snap a response back at him, but was suddenly weary. Her temper drained away. Shrugging as they approached the terrace doors, she replied, “It didn’t do any good. But thanks.”

All eyes turned to them as they stepped outside. Sophia tried not to flinch over the expressions of hope on her Aunt Amber and Clara Kate’s faces. Swallowing hard, she decided to get right to the point.

“She’s not ready yet.”

There was a collective sound, almost like a sigh, as everyone processed the announcement. Sophia took her seat, appreciating the pat of understanding that her dad gave her shoulder when she did. She watched all of the elders exchange glances and figured they were also exchanging thoughts.

In the end, there were nods from each of them. Aunt Amber frowned. Her worried expression made Sophia feel like a failure for not having convinced Ariana to try.

“Then we face a difficult decision,” Jabari said in a grave voice. “Kanika was tortured by Eirik for her knowledge of the scroll. Any number of other beings could be at risk of the same treatment. Although the Waresti are hunting Eirik and his followers, we must take immediate action to ensure those scroll pieces are not found by anyone else. We must take Eirik’s unholy motivation away from him. In short, we have no choice but to proceed with the memory extraction…and pray that it is successful.”

“I don’t understand,” Tate said, drawing Quincy’s attention. She twirled a sparkling, dark blue curl around one finger as she thought about Jabari’s announcement. “Even if Eirik gets the three scroll pieces, he won’t be able to make it work, right?”

“That is correct,” Jabari replied. “But he doesn’t know that. I suspect that even if he was told that, he would choose not to believe it.”

Uriel added, “Eirik is dangerous because he has a vision of what this scroll will do, and he will never let go of that vision, regardless of how warped and incorrect it might be. Any being who stands in the way of that vision risks a fate like Kanika’s. Or worse.”

“Is there some way to deactivate the scroll’s power?” Clara Kate asked. “I know you mentioned that it was created by all nine of the original elders, and because Volarius—one of those elders—is now dead, it can’t be destroyed. But what if you combined your powers to try and reverse or counteract the scroll’s properties?”

“I wish that was possible,” Jabari said solemnly. “Without Volarius, there is no altering the scroll’s inherent properties.”

They all considered this in the ensuing silence. Quincy snuck a glance at Sophia. She was deep in thought, pulling at her lower lip with her fingers, as was her habit. Only when he found himself envisioning capturing that lip gently between his teeth did he turn his gaze from her. He couldn’t help but wish that he could look at her for more than a few seconds before such thoughts entered his mind—especially at such inappropriate times—but that hadn’t been the case for a long time now.

“What’s the real harm in letting Eirik find all three scroll pieces?” Tate asked. Quincy belatedly realized that she had moved so that she sat beside her twin on a divan. He guessed she had seen Tiege’s distress over Ariana’s faint and sought to comfort him. “You’re saying that even if he gets all of the pieces, he won’t be able to use them.”

“A sound question,” the Orculesti elder,
archigos
Malukali, responded. “It is correct that Eirik can’t use the power of the scroll on his own. It wasn’t designed that way. Because the idea behind the Elder Scroll was to create a ninth elder in the event one of us was lost, the scroll’s power is only activated by the coming together of eight specific minds and souls.”

The elder’s words touched on a memory at the far edges of Quincy’s mind. Something about the coming together of eight different paths…

“Eight? So, all of the remaining elders?” Tiege asked.

“No,” Malukali replied. “We didn’t want the activation of this powerful artifact to come down to something as obvious as our joined abilities. The new elder was meant to work for his or her role. Part of the scroll’s success depends upon the challenge that is overcome to claim it.”

“Who are the eight, then?” Sophia wondered.

Knorbis answered, “There were no specific beings in mind when we created the scroll. We focused more on the traits of the individuals. Those traits would have to be joined to imbue the new elder with his or her abilities. The necessary traits relate to each Estilorian class: strength, loyalty, intuition, creativity, compassion, ingenuity, hospitality, leadership and faith.”

Again, Quincy felt that nudge.
The aligning of eight
. What was it that stuck in his mind about that number?

“Well, if those eight beings don’t ever come together, the scroll will never be a danger, right?” Tate surmised.

“I think it’s safe to assume that Eirik will never stop searching until he finds the eight beings needed to harness the scroll’s power once he has it reassembled,” Gabriel said. “And if we stop Eirik, there’s always the risk that someone else will step in where he leaves off. We need to recover the scroll ourselves to avoid anyone else trying to use it.”

“Is there a way that you could perform the ritual without the physical scroll?” Sophia asked. Quincy was glad for the excuse to look at her again, even though he knew that made him exceedingly pathetic. “If you know someone who would make a great elder, couldn’t you just perform the ritual and void the scroll’s usefulness or something?”

“I’m afraid not,” Jabari said. “The physical scroll is what contains the power. And we no longer recall the words penned on it. When we initiated the protocol that erased our knowledge of the locations of the scroll pieces, we made sure to erase the ritual words, as well.”

“Of course you did,” Amber said dryly.

“It was deemed safer for all of us,” Malukali explained. “No one could possibly pull the locations of the scroll pieces or the ritual words from our minds if they weren’t there to find.”

Quincy couldn’t deny there was a certain logic to that. Of course, all of their precautions hadn’t prevented Eirik from learning of the scroll’s existence, and he seemed to be doing quite well at circumventing their efforts to keep the locations of the scroll pieces a secret.

“Despite our precautions,” Knorbis said, “when Malukali and I performed a scan of Gabriel’s suppressed memories, we were able to glean a portion of the words on the scroll piece that he hid. The words tie directly into the joining of the eight.”

Malukali nodded and recited, “
To unfurl the force herein, Eight journeys must now begin; Once separate and undefined, different paths somehow align
.”

The blood drained from Quincy’s face as the words echoed in his mind. He was momentarily pulled back to a memory he had long ago buried…the memory of an adventure that had ultimately led to his best friend’s death.

“We’re hopeful that since we were able to recover this much the first time, we can access the memory of the piece’s location without unduly impacting Gabriel’s mind,” Knorbis said.

Although he wasn’t sure how, Quincy managed to say, “That won’t be necessary.”

Everyone turned to look at him. He saw a few expressions of concern and imagined he didn’t look much better than Ariana had before she fainted. He turned his gaze to the cliffs in the distance and took a deep breath to center himself.

Then he said, “I know where the scroll piece you just mentioned is hidden.”

Sophia had never seen Quincy so visibly upset. His complexion was pale and his silver eyes couldn’t seem to focus. She fought the urge to reach out and comfort him, knowing he wouldn’t welcome it.

“How do you know where the scroll piece is hidden?” Ini-herit asked. As usual, the elder’s tone was without inflection, but Sophia sensed his curiosity.

“I’ve seen it,” Quincy said. He ran a hand down his face as though to compose himself. Still, he had to clear his throat before he continued, “It’s in the ancient library.”

“Do you mean the library where our dad found the scroll that he used to try and save our mom’s life?” Aunt Skye asked, her light blue eyes wide.

“Yes, I—” Quincy stopped himself and clenched his jaw, looking toward the door leading back inside the castle. “I need a moment.”

He got up and left without looking at anyone, closing the terrace doors behind him. Sophia’s heart wrenched with realization.

“Quincy was with our dad in the library?” her mom asked, exchanging a look with her father.

“Yes,” Knorbis said. “As you know, they were best friends. When Saraqael said he needed Quincy’s help to save Kate, Quincy helped him. They went together in search of a possible cure for Kate’s illness.”

Sophia found herself unable to look away from the doors through which Quincy exited. She knew he had been friends with her grandfather. It only now occurred to her, though, that he rarely discussed their relationship. She was rather stunned by how much he was still affected by her grandfather’s death after all this time.

“They had no way of knowing that the scroll Saraqael found would result in his death,” Malukali said in quiet tones. “But Quincy still feels…”

Sophia closed her eyes when she fully understood the weight Quincy carried. She hadn’t realized the depth of feeling he kept inside. He always acted so normally—interacted so typically with everyone—that she hadn’t ever guessed there was so much more beneath the surface. What else was he keeping contained from everyone?

How much more did he feel that she had never bothered to try and discover?

“Well,” Malukali finished, “I have spoken with Quincy at length about this, and I will talk to him again. But he has just given us an invaluable piece of information.”