Mark of Betrayal (Dark Secrets #3)(132)
Author: A.M. Hudson

I looked at Arthur. “Do you agree with that, Arthur?”

“I’ll look over them once you’re done,” he said, keeping his eyes on the few loose leafs he was reading, sitting in the armchair across the room.

Jason rolled his eyes when I looked back at him. “Anyway, as you can see, the English translation reads, A time will come for the Pure One to rise. In Her reign of light and hope, she will free the land of the fated curse and bear a child with great power.” He grabbed the other piece of paper and placed them side by side. “Here’s where it gets tricky. See, this line says something along the lines of, A child, possible only if conceived of pure—” He pointed to the English words. “But can also mean noble blood—knight. Not necessarily even knight with a capital K.”

“So, it could be any knight—any noble blood?”

“Right, and this word—” He pointed to another between the words Born as and Son. “This symbol actually has no translation. It’s similar to a word meaning firstborn, but also to one meaning disguised.”

A line of question marks floated past my eyes. “That makes no sense.”

“I know.”

Arthur glanced up from his papers and watched us for a second. He looked like an old man, like he should be wearing a silk robe, smoking a pipe while drinking Scotch. I smiled at him; he didn’t smile back.

“So, then it goes on, and this is the bit that always had me confused.” He showed the base of the original scroll. “This mark here is like a number from a filing system—it’s something you find on ancient Vampirian legal documents.”

“What does that mean?”

“I suspect—” He looked at Arthur. “That this isn’t actually a prophecy at all, but a contract.”

I frowned. Arthur sat taller.

“What do you mean, like, someone signed my child over to Drake?”

“Could even be that someone signed you over to him—promised you’d be born.”

“So, the pure blood—the noble—could that be…me?”

“Well, it clearly talks about a child that will have pure blood, but, like I said, I think this symbol means it wasn’t a foretold child, but a promised one.”

“Do you think Drake made a deal with someone?” My eyes widened. “Maybe even Peter?”

“All right. That’s enough.” Arthur stood, dumping his pages on the lamp table. “Stop filling the girl’s head with your stories, son.”

“But, Uncle Arthur—”

“I said that’s enough.” Arthur grabbed the lantern and took me by the hand. “If you have even half a brain, my dear, you will stop worrying about what these scrolls say and start worrying about an heir.”

“But—”

“No buts.” He led me to the stairs, leaving Jason behind. “Your head has been filled with enough misinterpretations of that damn scroll, and I’ve had it. This all needs to stop.”

We reached the library again and Arthur blew the lantern out.

“Why don’t you just tell me what your interpretation is, then?” I stopped and spun to face him. “If you seem to know so much.”

“Because my notes on the prophecy are at Elysium.”

“Bull shi—that’s a lie, Arthur!” I challenged. “There’s no way you’d come here and not bring those notes—or at least have them committed to memory. So, what are you hiding?”

“I have nothing to hide.”

As Jason came up the stairs, he unrolled a page and held it up to the light. “Uncle Arthur, she needs to see the truth.”

Arthur gazed at it, then at me, and stepped back. “Go on then. Read that last line to her, and you will see why I asked you to stay out of it.”

Jase frowned at his uncle, clearly trying to read his motive. “It says, If the child is conceived, all shall be restored to what it once was. And that’s where the scroll ends,” Jason said, rolling it back up. “That’s the part that’s been torn off.”

“All will be restored?” I said it over in my head, too, thinking about it all. “Is that what Morg interprets to mean my child can free the Immortal Damned—restore them, make them human again?”

Arthur kept his eyes on Jason as he said, “Yes.”

“But…that’s…”

“Ridiculous,” Jason said.

“So—” My eyes watered as they brushed over Arthur’s frown. “Is there even any hope of freeing the Damned?”

He sniffed and glared at Jason. “She needed that hope. This is exactly why I didn’t want you meddling in this!”

My teary gaze followed Arthur out of the room then landed on Jason. “What does he mean?”

“He doesn’t know what he means, Ara. Look, I just wanted you to see that these scrolls can be interpreted any way you want them to be.” He walked over and closed the hatch in the floor. “I actually believe in the hope for the Immortal Damned, but I think it’s in you—not your child.”

I swiped a few fat, lukewarm tears from my cheeks. “Really?”

“Yeah. That power of yours is said to start hearts, right?”

I nodded.

“I think it might be the key.”

“Really? It could be that simple?”

“The trickiest problems usually have the most basic solution.” He grinned, pressing the translated pages into my palm. “I think we need to get a move on examining your powers from a scientific point of view.”

“Scientific?”

“Yeah, you’re all energy and light. It should be studied, not forced. Maybe we should reopen the laboratory in the west wing. Could even give Arthur a place to make his herbal potions again and—”

“Hang on. We have a lab?”

“It’s been shut down for two hundred years, so I’m not sure we can call it a lab, really, and the space is a bit dusty—”

“Why don’t we fix it up then—renovate, make it like Drake’s New York labs?”

“Really?” Jason’s smile spread like the first light of day. “You’d really let us set up a new lab—here? At Loslilian? A real lab?”

“Yeah.” I shrugged. “Maybe you could even research more ways to kill vampires.”

“Ara.” He grabbed my shoulder, looking at the ground. “That would be a dream come true. I—” He shook his head. “I tried so hard to get on the scientific team in New York, but when it came to the interviews, it was between myself and a man who’d studied under Einstein, so I got stuck with the Blood Army instead.”