pressure. As he held his hand out and uncurled his fingers, the three of us leaned forward to examine the thing in his hands.
“What is it?” Rio asked disappointedly after a moment.
It was just a shard of some sort of crystal, no longer than four inches. It was not anything spectacular to be certain. At first I was just as disinterested as the half-blood. Yet, for some reason I could not tear my eyes from it. Something about the blood red color of the stone and the way it reflected the light was but chilling. No matter how eerie it made me feel, though, it was still just a small, uninteresting piece of rock.
It was how unspectacular it was that concerned me, though. The last thing that we had written off as being useless had turned out to be a key and a memento of Rio’s mother. What were these stones, and why were these huge temples and their traps protecting them?
The even more pressing question was something I could not contain as I muttered, “Why on earth is the king of dragons collecting these?”
Just as I looked up at the kin to see his reaction, something whizzed through the air. There was a ‘thunk’ and Levent’s face contorted in a pained grimace. His grip curled around the red shard and growled in the back of his throat as he turned toward the door. The rest of us followed his gaze. My eyes widened.
“Who are you?” I asked.
Another dark-haired dragon-kin stood in the doorway. This stranger’s hair was shorter than Levent’s and his blue eyes seemed to glow as he smirked. His arm was extended toward us, some sort of contraption attached to his forearm. I glanced from it to Levent as he turned toward the newcomer, and I spotted the thick, silver dart that was buried in his shoulder. His cloak was already stained with blood from the wound. I shuddered at the sight.
“That’s Deryn’s!” Kewyn whispered, just loud enough for my faun ears to hear.
“Well, well. Fancy meeting you here,” the new kin sneered, unraveling his wings from beneath his own dark cloak.
My heart went cold. This shorthaired kin not only knew Levent, but I would bet my left leg that he also knew all about his missing wings. Who on earth was this person?