Page 45 of The Half King
Daerick leaned over the puzzle and inspected it for a silent beat before his face transformed into a smile. “It’s a cipher.”
“To a code?” Kian asked.
“To a code,” Daerick echoed. He picked up the journal and strode closer to the window, where he thumbed through its margin-less pages in the morning light. Thank Shiera they hadn’t just ripped the pages out.
“And to think,” he muttered to himself, “I accused the old woman of flimsy recordkeeping. She was more brilliant than any of us gave her credit for.”
“I knew her journal entries didn’t make sense,” Cerise said. “I should have put it together sooner.”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Kian told her. “I doubt the temple prepared you for a life of code-breaking and intrigue.”
“Well, either way, we’re lucky that Father Bishop brought the journal back.” She peeked at Daerick, who was furiously scanning a new page. “Do you think he noticed anything suspicious about the entries?”
“I doubt it,” Daerick murmured absently. “Otherwise, he would have kept it and tried to decode it himself.”
She supposed he was right. Still, she worried that Father Bishop might have discovered more than he’d let on. If Mother Strout had helped raise him from infancy, he would have known her better than anyone else at the palace.
Kian tapped his booted foot as he watched Daerick scan the journal. “Do you need parchment?” Kian asked him. “A quill?”
“Only silence, thank you,” Daerick said, his eyes wide and fixed on the page.
The waiting was torture. Even Blue, who had curled up to nap in a patch of sunlight, seemed to sense the tension in the air. He lifted his head from the carpet, peered sleepily at Cerise, and then gave a tremendous yawn before setting his head down again.
“I’ve got it!” Daerick closed the journal between his hands with a loudsnapthat caused Blue to flinch. “I know the message she was hiding.”
“Which was…” Kian prompted.
“The location of the Petros Blade.” Daerick wobbled a palm in aso-somotion and added, “Sort of.”
Kian growled, pinching the bridge of his nose in annoyance. “Lord Calatris, I am not in the mood for riddles.”
“All right, all right,” Daerick said. “Cutting right to the chase.”
“Please do,” Cerise told him. She wasn’t in the mood for games, either.
Daerick held up the journal for show. “Here’s the short of it: I don’t know where Strout found her information or even if it’s correct, but according to her, the Petros Blade was hidden on the blighted mountain by Shiera’s followers. It’s under an enchantment that moves it to a new location at every full moon. The only way to find it is with sunset runes.”
Kian wrinkled his brow. “Sunset runes are real? I thought they were a myth, like the Chalice.”
“So did I,” Daerick said. “But Mother Strout believed otherwise.”
Cerise had never heard of sunset runes. “What are they?”
“Imagine a set of dice,” Daerick said. “But with distances carved on one and directions carved on the other. You cast the dice before sunset, and they show you which way to travel the next day and for how far. Supposedly, they can lead you to any object in the world, and then they vanish when you find it.”
“But what leads us to the runes?” Cerise asked, trying not to think too hard about why the temple hadn’t taught her any of this. She could worry about that later. “How do we findthem?”
Kian chuckled under his breath. “There lies the irony.”
“Ah, but Mother Strout had an answer for that as well,” Daerick said, holding up an index finger. “She claimed the runes will present themselves to a worshipper of pure faith who makes an offering of darkness and light at the Blighted Shrine.”
Of course. The Blighted Shrine!Cerise knew of that. It had been built as a tribute to Shiera’s resilience, named for its location on the mountain peak where the Great Betrayal had taken place. As for the nature of the offering, Cerise had an abundance of light to give. But she didn’t know what manner of darkness the goddess would require.
“A worshipper of pure faith.” Daerick teasingly tapped his chin while grinning at Kian. “Does that describe anyone you know?”
“Hmm,” Kian said, pretending to think about it. “That’s a tough one. We might have to turn the kingdom upside down to find a person like that.”
Both of their smiling gazes turned to Cerise. She knew they were making fun of her, but she couldn’t help but smile in return. Now that she had hope—real hope—of breaking the curse, she was finally in the mood for games.
