Page 122 of Keldori By Daybreak

“I don’t care if it’s not proper. You have my permission, so do it,” I growled.

Ciarán growled back, but dust gathered at my feet. I stepped back, watching the dirt glow orange and take the shape of a short, slight woman in her favorite robe and slippers. Iseult and Orla backpedaled away from the growing Nightmare.

Her eyes snapped open, and she twisted around the display room. She saw Iseult and Orla first where they stood in front of Lyria’s armor.

“Oh,” Mom sighed. “Hello. Sorry, I think the Grimguard summoned me, but I don’t see—”

She cut off as she turned and saw me. Her eyes softened but her nostrils flared.

“Mom, wait—”

“Where’s Sorcha?” she demanded. “Wren, you were supposed to stay with Sorcha!”

“I know! And then I decided not to! But we need your help!” I gestured at the journal, but Mom ignored it.

“You were supposed to stay somewhere safe!” she seethed. “I told you not to involve yourself!”

“Too late. I involved myself, and now an army is on their way down here to capture us, but we need you to translate Lady Lyria’s journal before they try!”

“Translate—?”

Orla pressed the journal into Mom’s hands, and Mom froze at the sight of it.

“Please,” I said. “It’s supposed to have information on where the secret door into Keldori is, but it’s in Old English. We can’t read it.”

“This is at least two hundred pages long, Wren!”

“Just skim it for the important parts!”

Mom growled something incoherent, but Ciarán’s orange magick flared in her fist before settling into the corporeal forms of a paper notebook and a pen.

“Fine,” she hissed, “but you and I are going to have a talk later.”

“Thank you, Mom.” I wrapped my arms around her, and she relaxed into the embrace.

I lined up with Iseult and Orla so that we stood between Mom and the door. Iseult flipped the visor of Lyria’s helm down over her face as she ignited a silver longsword in her hands. Orla’s dual amethyst blades blazed to life in her grip.

“How long do you think it takes to summon guards?” Orla whispered.

“Not long enough.” A blue flail lit in my hands, not because it was the only thing I could make but rather because it was what I was most comfortable with at this point.

Minutes ticked by, painfully slow and silent, as Mom worked behind us. Dried pages rustled, and the longer we stood there, waiting, the more I worried that maybe Lady Lyria hadn’t recorded anything about the secret door in her journal after all. Maybe she had let the information die with her.

But then Mom broke the silence.

“I’ve found something.”

Pen scratched against paper, and I looked back to watch her head rock back and forth between the journal and her procured notebook as she scribbled furiously with the pen.

“Just in time,” Iseult said in a low voice and brandished her longsword at the marble door.

Footsteps echoed on the other side, still distant but loud enough to hint at more than just a few soldiers.

“Iseult,” I turned back towards the door and readied myself, “some of them might be Nightmares. Skalbreak as many as you can.”

“And the ones who are real people?” Orla asked.

I hesitated, but Mom answered.