CIRCE

xv

The Selenians murmur and mutter between each other, worry thickening the air as half of their guards peel away to join with Tannier. Princess Kahle stands in the center of it as she attempts to assuage the fright of the archeologists and disperse what they know to the remaining guards. Lonan lingers near the wall, a careful eye on the halls and an ear to the mutterings of the Selenians. Sienn stands near, eyes of sea flickering between the three halls that branch off from the entry room, a hand on the hilt of his sword.

"We should leave," One of the archeologists says.

"No - " Princess Kahle attempts to reply, but she's cut off by another archeologist, whose voice wavers.

"What if they follow us?"

"We should stay," A third says. "Let the guards take care of it. They have it under control."

"But what if - "

The squabbling continues, droning into a babble as Lonan sighs softly. They're getting nowhere going around in circles like this, arguing back and forth with no progress made in plan. She thinks they should just stay here, quiet and out of the way, while Tannier and the other guards handle this. She trusts Tannier to ensure their safety. He would never let harm come her way. He had taken an oath on it.

The hairs on the back of Lonan's neck rise.

It's soft sensation that tingles through her neck like the tickle of a breath, but so attuned to the slight in this tense moment, Lonan picks up on it instantly. She glances down the shadowy hall behind her, one that peels off to the side, unexplored with nothing to light the way. Except there is a gentle, orange glow deep within, radiating out as though it calls to her. Lonan shuffles forward and squints her eyes to peer closer.

A firefly.

Mom.

Lonan slips into the hall unnoticed as she gives to the lure of the firefly. Behind her, she hears Sienn call out to her, but so focused on the firefly his words are faint. She's uncertain if he can even see the firefly too. They've only ever appeared for her when she's alone and desperate, guiding her down the path she's meant to take. The supposed thing that makes her Pathfinder.

Lonan steps into the radiant light of the firefly and then it vanishes, reappearing further down the hall a heartbeat later. She chases the trail that they take her down, into the depths of the unexplored Labyrinth, disappearing and then reappearing in a trail of soft, orange light.

Her guardian had always said that it was a trait of her fire magic, but magic itself isn't sentient like this. No. Lonan is certain that these fireflies are some part of her mother, whatever that part may be, that has carried down through the magic in their blood. Some part of her mother's spirit still trying to protect her. Like her mother before her, whose fireflies had led Rhosyn in her time as Pathfinder.

The hall bends around into a small room that branches off into two more halls. The trail of fireflies, however, snakes toward the wall and arches down, to the floor, where a pile of papyrus scrolls sit. Lonan kneels, clenching her teeth as a sharp, heated pain whines in her hips, and takes the scroll that sits on top. She unrolls it and glances through it.

It's in a dialect of Oren she barely understands, the script old and flaking, written in what has to be an older language. Pieces of it are familiar though. Certain words and sentences that are close enough to the modern language that Lonan can piece two and two together. The script is an order form for something that she's never heard of before. Arcanite. To be sent to Delos Stronghold in the Daoine Forest.

Arcanite. Is that that little amulet missing from The Labyrinth? That honey-golden gemstone she had seen years ago? It has to be. What else could they be? Hidden away among Old World ruins, no other literature on them to be found. But then comes the question; what is arcanite?