House of Darken (Secret Keepers #1)(61)

“A hundred or so humans were hand-selected to be told about the treaty. Ones who were educated enough to understand the complexity of this agreement between our two worlds. From those hundred, four who were pregnant at the time, were given an additional task. Their soon-to-be-born offspring would become the secret keepers of the stone’s location. They birthed their children in our world, one in each of the houses – all had to be born in the same year – so they would be bonded to each other and to our lands. Together these four can lead someone to the location of the stone.”

“How?” I asked. “That sounds next to impossible.”

Lexen shrugged. “I don’t understand everything, the treaty was before my time and information is scarce because it’s supposed to all be secret. But from what Father told me, the first family held a clue which would lead to the second family.”

“Who would lead to the third…” I guessed.

He nodded. “Yes, and the fourth had a map to the location of the stone. This map is connected directly to the Draygo, so if they moved the stone, the map would change. It meant that there was no way for the stone to ever disappear without humans knowing.”

“My parents were killed because someone wants to find the stone?” It was all starting to make perfect, horrifying sense now.

“This is what the council believes.”

“Which of my parents was birthed in Overworld?”

Lexen’s broad shoulders lifted in a half-shrug. “No way for us to know now, but it seems that whichever it was, they might have revealed the location of the second family. Which means we could very well be facing a serious problem.”

A memory flickered on the edge of my mind then, something I had not thought about in years, and I fought to recall even more. “My mom used to tell me this bedtime story,” I said, my voice catching again as the memories grew stronger. “Every night for years. She stopped when I was about six or seven, which is why my recollections are so vague, but I’m sure she told me about a boy who would ride on the back of dragons. She called him ‘the one.’ No … ‘the chosen one.’ I can’t really remember, but he was best friends with a merboy. The three of them, dragon included, would swim in the lake.”

When I focused on Lexen again, he was still wearing a solemn expression. “It sounds like she was quite well acquainted with our world,” he said.

“It was you, wasn’t it? The chosen one, the boy who rode dragons?”

He reached out and brushed his hand against my cheek, pulling away with droplets of moisture on his fingers. The last of my tears.

“When I was younger,” he said, “before my metamorphosis, Qenita and I would travel across the sectors. Xander Royale is one of my oldest friends. He’s the caramina she spoke of, the merboy.”

“So you’re how old?”

“Sixty-five,” he said quickly.

Whoa. “You are old as shit,” I said with a snort of laughter. “But … you were still a boy when my parents were here.” How was that possible? My parents had been in their early forties when they died. Again, the math was not adding up here.

Lexen crossed his arms, leaning back against a nearby garden pillar. I noticed then that I’d actually run into a maze of sorts, large hedges surrounding us. An area which could have kept me lost for hours.

“In Overworld we age … differently,” he said, hesitating minutely over the last word. “We’re children for a long time. Much longer than Earthlings. We mature slowly, and then, when our bodies decide that we are ready to grow, we do, in a large ‘metamorphosis’ burst. We don’t age year by year.”

“Have you stopped now?” I was impressed by how well I was handling these obvious differences between us.

He shrugged. “More or less. My father is hundreds of years old and no longer has growth spurts, as my mother so eloquently puts it. Not physical ones, at least, but mentally we never stop advancing. Unlike humans, our minds do not deteriorate.”

Lexen held out a hand for me. “Come on, let’s go get some rest. Father said the meeting is to take place early in the morning. This is where we’ll put pressure on the council to give us more information on your parents and your guardians.”

I took his hand without hesitation, craving the safe way he made me feel. I expected him to let go as I followed his steps. But he didn’t. If anything, his grip tightened and he pulled me even closer, his huge bulk towering over me. We were silent, traversing the twists and turns in and out of hedges. How far had I run in my grief? I didn’t even remember coming this way.

“Thanks for finding me,” I whispered when we neared the front door. “I would never have gotten out of that maze on my own.”

He didn’t say anything, but it felt like he gave my hand a gentle squeeze. When we reached the third landing we walked down a long hallway until we finally reached a wing of bedrooms.

“Mother will have had a room made up for you,” Lexen said, stopping before a door. He let my hand go and I tried not to feel bereft about it. Stockholm syndrome or not, Lexen was fast becoming my comfort in this crazy world.

When he swung the door open, he stepped aside so I could enter first. Peering inside, I was taken aback by the beauty. The flooring was white, carpet style, but somehow fluffier. There were billowy curtains, a lilac-colored bed, and off-white walls. Just enough purple accents to give the room a pretty tint. It appeared that a lot of their décor was styled off the colors of the stones and crystals of this mountain.