Path to Destiny

Chapter 43

Chapter 43

For propriety's sake, Titus slept in his own chambers that night. I really didn't want Ezra (or even Rowan) asking questions, to be honest.

The next morning I headed out with Titus and Rowan to search the ruins for possible leads on Mikkel's ancient past. Ezra said he would be sleeping his wounds off and noted that he'd probably bleed to death while no one was looking. So I knew he would be fine.

We all stayed together, as the ruins had a tricking mind of their own. Rowan, thankfully, used to live in Balshoin. The magic "favored" him, as he put it, and sensed that he was not other (and, Ezra mentioned before we left him sitting alone in his room, the ruins favored him as well and allowed him to use the magic within). So we reached the temple in no time. It was a skeleton of the original, and it was surrounded with piles of rubble from being either destroyed or worn away from time. It was hard to tell.

"This is the ancient temple where the historians gathered," Rowan said proudly. "But it was forbidden to children like me." His tall frame was cloaked in a cream robe of the same shimmery material of the Tia'in. As he knelt to examine runic script on a broken piece of stone, he pointed at it. "We must look for the writing of the elves. That will tell us the history. We had a mural of sorts to claim our history." His gaze was distant, reminiscent of things long gone.

Titus, wearing an identical robe, frowned at the skeleton-like structure of the building. "We have a lot of...excavating to do."

In our search of the temple, I remembered Ezra's continual bragging about how he would have been useful in the hunt for runic scripts. Originally, I thought it would be easy because all we had to do was gather things that looked like writing. Very simple.

It turned out to be one of the hardest tasks I'd ever set myself to do.

The runes should be around here somewhere, Rowan had said as we all searched around the structure. As bits of sand and grime made a home in my hair and clogged my boots, Rowan assured us that we were so close. We just had to make the pile of possible runic rocks bigger.

One possible runic rock after another, we slogged through the ruins. Rowan sorted through the ones Titus and I brought to him. He was trying to remake the back wall of the temple, which looked like something had kicked the rubble in.

Every inch of Titus's face looked like the robe he wore because he was so covered in dust and sand. He called me over to help him with a particularly large rock with a runic script on it.

When we heaved the rock in front of him, Rowan rubbed a finger across the possible-rune-rock. His hand came away smudged. "This is just a dirty rock," he said.

For the first time in my life, I felt the need to strangle this blessed child.

"I am stating facts, Lannie," Rowan said, quite seriously, possibly from my look of venom that may have pierced through his curly hair and into his skull.

I sighed, and we returned the rock to its original position. The more rocks we found — mostly small pieces of sandstone with faint black markings on them — the more Rowan pieced together the puzzle of temple lore from the mural.

Rowan would have been excellent as a slave trader because he drove us into the ground and was merciless and unrelenting. When I told him this, he shook his head in disapproval.

"I prefer not to be reminded of my time as a captive," he said to me. "What an awful thing to say." His eyes, a violet-tinged blue, crinkled at the edges. He was irritated with me.

Bless him.

Two hours crept by at an aching, exhausting pace. When we fully scavenged through the rest of the rubble around the northern wall of the temple, Titus and I collapsed against the large rock that was covered with "just dirt."