Her Cinder Throne (Completed)

Chapter 60

Tanwyn slowly turned around.

Cole looked at him, excitement surging through her. "Baerghast came to tell King Thijs about dark creatures that they were digging up in the mountains," she said. "It's where the king went and why he couldn't be at Bastian's party. The creatures were killing people and he needed to oversee whatever they were doing there."

"I know the mountains where he was," Tanwyn said, new hope surging into his voice. "Meegan got one of his guards to let it slip. It's around two day's travel from here, northwest."

Cole smiled. "I can't believe we know where it is," she said, looking back to her mother. But when she saw the dark expression on her mother's face, she paused. "What's the matter?"

"Thijs is digging for it?" her mother said, eyes shaking with fear. "He could already have the stone. If he harnessed its power, even the Eldritch will struggle to keep him from taking over not only the human realm, but the Eldritch realm as well."

Cole glanced to Tanwyn. "We would have heard something if he had found something like that, wouldn't we?" she asked. "Surely your aunt would know if he was wielding magic? News would travel, right?"

Tanwyn nodded. "If he was using magic, the Eldritch council would know. If he found it, it would only have been very recently. But he is already heading back to the city, so I don't think he must have found it yet."

"The monsters keep it well protected," her mother said.

Cole bit her lip. "If they're attacking even Thijs, then how will we get in there?"

Tanwyn bunched his fists. "We'll have to hope that they don't hate Eldritch as much as they do humans. Perhaps they will sense that we share something with the stone."

Cole frowned. "Except that not a single one of us actually has active magic."

"We may not be able to use our magic anymore, but it will never leave our veins," Tanwyn said. "And your mother has the strongest bloodline magic in the Eldritch realm."

Unspoken was the assumption that so would Cole. But despite what Tanwyn might think, she knew very well that there was nothing at all about her that held any sort of magic. She was as ordinary as they came. If she had magic in her blood, she would have been able to save her father. She would have been able to save herself when she was dying in the mines, forced to work and go insane in the pitch black.

Now that they had a purpose and a destination, Cole lead the way to the small nomad camp that sat just outside the city limits. She knew the people well, as they were treated about as well as the miners were... which was like trash. They had often shared fires with the miners on late nights, offering trinkets and stories for food or items from the city. Cole had passed their run-down camps on her way to the mines, and she knew where they would be set up for the night.

When they reached the lake, it was full daylight. The camp looked miserable in the force of the sun, and Cole wondered if wood and cloth could melt in the heat. A fine layer of dust covered every inch of the cloth covered tents hammered into the ground around the lake. At this time of the year, the lake's shores were expanded as the water dried up and retreated into the center. The nomads lived along the cracked shores, digging in deep for the small squiggly creatures that had escaped the summer sun in the damp depths, or fishing for turtles or fish in the deep center of the lake.

Cole approached the tent that was painted with a swirling pattern of red and blue. It looked almost like an eye, but the nomads had once told her that it meant "giver" in their language. It was the symbol of their trader, a man who wandered from town to city, selling wares and bringing back money and new goods to the village. In the dead of the dry season, he normally stayed at the camp, and thankfully that still held true.