House of Royale (Secret Keepers #4)(60)
He eyeballed both of his people, sending them a silent message. The woman looked furious, but she backed up without another word, lowering her hands.
“So,” Emma said wryly, breaking the last of the tension. “Anyone bring a shovel?”
Lexen, still looking all muscled up and pissed off, shook his head before sending a half smile toward his mate. “Always underestimating me,” he grumbled, his voice very deep.
The white lights in his eyes were there again. They spread out across his body and down his arms. He grew larger but didn’t do the full shift. His hands started to change first, scales almost completely covering them, which hadn’t happened last time. His fingers curved into long, razor-sharp-looking talons.
“That’s a little more dragon than usual,” Emma said breathlessly, her eyes very wide.
He winked at her but didn’t speak. I wondered if the more dragon he went, the fewer human abilities he had. His phone slipped out of the clawed hand and would have hit the ground if Chase’s branch arm didn’t shoot out and capture it.
It really said a lot about my life recently that my friends were dragons and trees and I barely even blinked when it happened.
“A little closer to the river,” Chase told Lexen, examining the screen.
Lexen took two steps forward, his longer legs crossing the distance to the river in no time.
Chase nodded. “Start there.”
The moonlight didn’t show us a lot of details, but I could certainly hear Lexen tearing up the ground with ease. “What’s the time?” I whispered to Xander. “Is it nearing dawn?”
“Maybe forty minutes until, judging by the feel in air,” he replied, his voice a whisper across my neck.
That low tone immediately brought me back to our afternoon together. He’d whispered words across my skin the entire time we were together. Xander was very open and free with compliments, and at no time had any of them felt fake or cheesy. I had felt beautiful with him, sexy and desirable in a way I never had with any other man. Xander brought out a side in me I didn’t even know was there. Wanton. Needy. Sex-addicted, apparently.
Lexen looked to be about three feet deep now, digging very fast. “I’m not sure this is the right spot,” Callie said, leaning over the hole. “Shouldn’t the stone like … give off a lot of energy if it’s as powerful as rumor says?”
We all leaned in closer, and just like Callie, I didn’t notice a change in energy at all.
“Maybe the wardings block that?” Maya offered.
Lexen continued on for some time—at about ten feet down he gave up, jumping back onto the land in a single powerful leap.
“So, what do we do now?” Emma asked. “Should we just keep digging around here? Maybe the coordinates are a little off because the area has shifted in the years since the Draygo buried the stone?”
No one disagreed with her theory. Lexen moved to another section. For the next twenty minutes, Lexen dug one hole after another, but there was no sign of the stone.
Laous was also growing frustrated. “Do not make me go to war over this,” he said finally, after huffing around for five minutes, staring at the symbols on the wall. “I’m very close to the completion of my plan. I will not let anyone stand in my way.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Maya snapped, and I wasn’t the only one blinking at her. Maya was not really the swearing type. She seemed to be much calmer in general than the rest of us. Her and Chase both. “We’re all here because of you and your bullshit. You’re a selfish asshole, and while I am sympathetic to your childhood, that gives you no excuse for your actions.”
Flames licked up and down Laous’s arms, but he didn’t even seem to notice, his gaze locked on Maya. “I never should have told you that story,” he admitted roughly. “I never expected you to escape and be able to relay that to anyone else.”
Daniel opened his mouth but Laous cut him off before he could speak. “No, nephew, I do not have any interest in your thoughts on it. No one cared when I was locked in hell, and I will never be in that position again. There is only one way to assure that, only one power strong enough to mean I’ll never be truly powerless again. And you have five minutes to find it or I’m going to start killing humans.”
No one immediately piped up and said that he no longer controlled Astoria, which made me wonder if maybe we weren’t 100 percent sure that he didn’t still have hostages there. Or somewhere else we didn’t know about.
Lexen moved to another section of land and started to dig again. His chest was heaving a little, and that was no surprise, considering he’d dug halfway to Australia by now. Needing to move, because I was starting to get sleepy again, I walked back toward the Daelighter symbols on the wall, making sure not to fall into any holes half-hidden in the darkness.
A shadow moved when I was close and I jumped. It was Rao, facing the wall, staring very intently at it, both hands pressed to the rock. I took a step closer, wondering what he was doing.
It looked like he was … tracing the symbols—this guy, who apparently saw the future, was very focused on those symbols. Should we have looked closer at what was written on the wall? Was there a clue there that we had missed?
I stopped about ten feet further along the cliff than Rao.
He didn’t lift his head or acknowledge me in any way, and I made sure to do the same, because drawing Laous’s attention felt like a bad move. I didn’t want this poor guy to suffer any more than he already had.