“So where are the rest of the stones?” I asked, looking to him and wondering if there could be any merit to a prophecy from hundreds of years ago.
“Lost. Have been for generations,” Orion sighed. “I found records in some other books which refer to them by various names and I’m almost certain that they are in fact all referring to the same set of twelve stones. The most well known being The Gems of Lariom which were rumoured to be the prized possession of a Dragon called Hermiod hundreds of years ago. He loved them more than life itself and the stars cursed him to lose them for prizing them above all else. It’s a children’s story which I never really gave much credit to, but if there are some tendrils of truth in it then maybe we could track them down…”
“Has anyone ever tried to find them before now?” Darcy asked, drifting closer to him to get a better look at the book of rocks while I dropped into my seat once more.
“Oh, countless Fae have tried, your highness,” Geraldine said, managing to peel herself off of the floor as she moved to look at the books as well. “The Gems of Lariom are a much sought after treasure which no Fae has ever proven really exist at all. And yet many still have taken up the hunt. It is said to be the most hopeless endeavour ever to be undertaken in Solaria. The hunt for the stones is called the endless expanse, the pointless quest, the life of the fool, the most idiotic of journeys, the hope of the madman, the-”
“We get it, Geraldine,” Orion growled. “But maybe it just wasn’t the right time until now – we found six of them already after all.”
The door opened behind us before she could respond and the Heirs strode into the room, Max sporting a bloody nose while Darius’s lip was split open.
“What happened?” I asked, shoving to my feet as my gaze locked on the sight of those injuries and the blood which was splattered over all of them too.
“Don’t worry, babe,” Seth said casually. “Darius just decapitated a Nymph then Max started a fight with him after we got back because he didn’t appreciate the way he handled it. No biggie.”
“Oh.” I dropped back into my seat again and Darius scowled at me for how quickly my concern fell away, but he was clearly fine so I wasn’t going to fuss over him like some mother hen.
“You killed it?” Darcy breathed.
“It was evil, little Vega,” Max promised. “We saw what it had done to our kind.”
Darcy’s shoulders dropped in relief and I had to admit I was relieved too. If there were happy little Nymph friends out there, I didn’t want Darius going around decapitating them, but if he killed one or two who liked to spend their free time murdering innocent Fae then who was I to judge?
“Aren’t you gonna come running over to heal me, baby?” Darius taunted me.
“Fat chance of that. Don’t get into fights with your friends if you can’t handle the fallout,” I scoffed. “Besides, I wanna hear what you guys found out from the Nymph.”
“Yeah, tell us what you discovered,” Orion encouraged, moving to sit on the bed before leaping up again as he almost placed his ass on one of the books.
“Are you okay, man?” Caleb asked him, cocking his head to one side. “Is that ball rash still causing you problems?”
“What? No,” Orion snapped, shooting a death glare a Seth who just shrugged innocently.
“Oh dear, not a rash on your John Ronalds!” Geraldine cried. “I can make you a special ointment for that. Allow me to ask my papa if he still has a store of wartslime and-”
“I have it under control, thank you, Geraldine,” Orion snarled and I sniggered as he shot Seth another look that promised him a slow and brutal death. Darcy and I glanced at each other, nearly cracking up further before Orion’s gaze slid onto us, and his demon professor eyes had the eerie effect of making our laughs die in our throats. Dude was gifted at the bossy teaching shit even if he never had liked his old job. “Let’s just hear what the four of you found out.”
“There’s a rift between the Fae and Shadow Realms which is feeding Lavinia power and the Nymphs have been helping her bolster it with those dark artifacts,” Darius explained, picking up an Atlas from the table and opening up a map of Solaria before zooming in on a section of deep forest to the far east of the kingdom and pointing at it. “There’s a temple or something there containing it and it looked like the place was crawling with Nymphs.”
“Question is, how do we close a rift between the realms?” Seth asked as he dropped into a seat opposite me.