The Mirror (Completed)

ELEVEN

But it is not the part of the journals being written to my mother that throw me off, no, but the part about wolves being able to find a traitor from a long distance. My skin pales as I become nervous, rising to my feet as I look up to see the King and his men watching me. As I meet the King's stare, this time things feel off, as if I am seeing that he is not as blind as he looks.

"Discover anything, Lady Candice?" King Kyril asks, motioning towards the entries as I think of what to say.

I take in a shaky breath. "It seems that every time Heka visits this Temple he leaves a journal on the walls of this marble slab," I explain, telling the truth. "This first one discusses his first visit to Iduna. This one (his newest one) tells of his long journey from a village in the North, by a lake." I have no idea what the geography of the North is here. The King looks to Duke Gravon, as if awaiting some motion from the noble that watches me right now. "As to why he has left flowers here, I cannot tell why."

"How much time does Heka have ahead of us?" Duke Gravon asks, looking around to the trackers also in the room, a few of them holding up magnifiers to the marble walls, looking for any other writings. "How many days? Hours?" One man approaches the marble slab, picking up one of the roses, inspecting the flower as he looks to the stems, feeling them as my body remains tense. I am treading on thin ice and am close to falling in if not careful where I place my next footsteps. King Kyril walks around the marble slab, standing beside me as he too looks at the writings. Fingers running along the carved words, he reaches into some pocket, pulling out what looks like a paintbrush, a gold handle, flaming red thin feathers on the end as it reminds me of some holiday-themed makeup brush. "Would a phoenix feather help? We have tired this before on older words, my King, but it rarely works on these."

A phoenix feather helps translate. How would it do that? "Duke Gravon, phoenix feathers translate an Idunian language dating back to creation when their first forms roamed the land. If this is an Idunian language, it will translate." But this language is not Idunian. This language is nothing from this realm, but my own. Due to only reading Idunian for the past so many days as well as speaking it, looking to a language I grew up studying took a little to adjust to, but as I look at it now, I can see it is Arabic. The phoenix wand that the King holds will be unable to translate this because it is not Idunian, meaning that these men will want an explanation for how I was able to read it.

"My King," I state, looking to the King who holds the tip of the feathers over the first few letters. "The feathers will not work because the language is not from Iduna, but from Heka's world," I inform, knowing I need to step up and make sure I do not fall through the ice and face my death today. "When Heka came to my pack, this is a language that he taught me as well as other children how to read."

Kyril puts his want away, shaking his head as he grabs a handful of the roses, his hand opening as a fire ignites and the roses turn to ashes in a blue flame. As the eyes of the King meet mine, I am met with a color of eyes that mirror those of the phoenix feathers, bright red with streaking of orange and gold that flicker just as flames would. The King does not look pleased, setting his hand upon the marble slab as flames engulf the top, swallowing whole the flowers in high and dangerous flames you would expect from a bonfire. This is not a man I want to upset more than I have already. Looking to the roses that have become nothing but part of the fire now, the slab I woke up on is not something I wish to touch again.

"Enough is enough, my King," Duke Gravon shouts, throwing out his hands into the air as the flames vanish with a gust of cold air, only smoke emerging from the slab as the white marble is stained in a black layer from the past fire. "Throwing a small fit will not get us closer to this savage." Small fit? That was nothing close to some small fit you would throw. "What we need is a set plan to find this male. Going about only looking for sightings or signs and giving up when we seem to have approached a dead end will get us nowhere."