Page 101 of Queen of the Crimson Throne

“And my father found them,” I continued. “And—” I closed my eyes, the image of the blood staining my father’s study burned into the back of my eyelids. The smell of the burning flesh invaded my senses like I was back in that room again. I grasped the edge of the desk to steady myself as my legs trembled.

Luka’s hand on the small of my back brought me back to reality. The gentle arc of this thumb reminded me I wasn’t back there.

“Do you think—is your grandfather working with the Vanir?” I whispered. Before meeting Arlo, I might have been more likely to believe it, but after meeting the Vampire King I wasn’t so sure. Was he capable of that? I didn’t know him well enough to make assumptions, but Luka did.

“I don’t know.”

Luka slammed the papers on the desk and ran his hands through his hair, pulling at ends as he paced across the small office. “This doesn’t make sense—I don’t think it’s something he would do but how else would he get those documents? Either he got them himself?—”

“Or he sent someone to get them for him,” I finished for him.

My mind whirled as I tried to comprehend how that was possible. How had Arlo known my father was looking for the journals? Or maybe my father told him and Arlo wanted the information to himself, without the entanglement of a marriage. But that wouldn’t make sense, if he didn’t want a marriage why was he pushing for one now? My head pulsed behind my eyes.

“What if it wasn’t the Vanir that night that killed your family? What if it was vampires sent by my grandfather to get this information and it all went terribly wrong?”

“But how does that explain the other Vanir attacks?” I asked. How many enemies were we facing here?

“What if the Vanir are a separate entity from the people searching for the book—from my grandfather and whoever he’s working with?”

“Luka, what if your grandfather is working with the Vanir? He’s been hiding their presence in the city since you arrived back—it’s not out of the realm of possibility.”

He stilled, fisting his hand at his side as his mouth set into a firm line. “Luka—” I reached for him but stopped at the sensation of warmth radiating across the bare skin of my chest. The pendant on my neck heated, sending a jolt of magic through me.

“Luce and Lorenzo are done with lunch.” I met Luka’s gaze, we’d have to finish this conversation later. “We need to get out of here.”

Luka gathered the papers scattered across the desk stacking them together before reaching for the bottom drawer.

“Wait.” I halted him with a hand on his wrist, reaching for the stack of papers in his hand.

“What are you doing? We need to get out of here.” I pulled the papers out of his reach.

“Lennox.” There was a warning edge to his voice this time.

I scanned the desk. “We need these papers. I want to see if I can duplicate them with a spell.”

He halted before retreating a step. “What do you need?” He asked.

“I need blank papers.”

Luka moved to the drawers on the opposite side of the desk, pulling out a stack of blank parchment from the second drawer and handing them to me.

I laid my father’s documents out on the desk, keeping an eye on the door as I placed the blank parchment on top of each sheet. I didn’t have everything I needed, but I hoped I could still make the spell work.

I reached for the crystal ashtray on the desk, emptying the ashes into the garbage at my feet. I used my dagger to pierce the tip of my finger, dripping a steady stream of blood into the bowl. I balled up the blank parchment and dipped them into the ashtray, roughly covering the parchment in my blood before laying them back over the original papers.

“If this doesn’t work my grandfather will kill me,” Luka muttered.

“Well, we better hope this works.” When all the documents were covered with the blood-soaked parchment, I brought fire to my fingertips, making a ball of flames and directing to the corner of the first sheet of blood-soaked parchment. The corner caught, and the parchment sizzled as the fire spread across the paper until it dissolved into smoldering ashes. I repeated the process with the remaining documents until all of the pages were covered in smoking ashes.

I leaned over the surface of the desk, with a light blow of my breath the ashes scattered, dissolving into the air, revealing perfect duplicates of the documents.

“Way to go, Sweetheart.” Luka squeezed my arm lightly, there was a slight air of wonder in his voice as he assessed what I had done.

“Thanks.” I couldn’t believe that worked. “That was the first time I did that spell, I’d only ever read about it.”

Luka snaked around me, grabbing the documents I stared at. “Appears you’re pretty talented.” He placed a kiss on my temple, catching me off guard.

He carefully placed the original documents back in the bottom drawer, while I gathered the duplicates before we both headed towards the door.

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