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"Every glamour has some kind of chink in its armor, something that's not quite right. Once you locate it your mind can see through the glamour."
Sounds simple enough. However, looking at our surroundings I see nothing that's out of place. I just see jungle, fog, and the bases of the huge sandstone towers that we've had to walk around. Beckham starts holding his hands out in front of him, like he's trying to feel something. Lexi frowns at him.
"What are you doing, you idiot?"
"Seeing if I could feel something that wasn't supposed to be there," says Beckham, looking embarrassed. He lowers his arms and begins to look around.
"If a glamour is any good, and this one is very old, and very good, everything will feel as it's supposed to. It will literally be just one tiny thing, almost impossible to find, that will undo it," says Lexi, continuing to look around.
We spend hours looking for this supposed "chink" and can't come up with anything.
"What happens if you can't undo the glamour?" asks Beckham with a frustrated sigh, throwing up his arms, and sitting on a decaying log.
"That's not an option," says Lexi, continuing to look around the forest.
"What kind of witch can't undo a glamour?" I ask, feeling very annoyed.
"This isn't a normal glamour!" she snaps at me, removing for a moment the shield she had placed on us to protect us from the rain, thereby dowsing me. "The magic that was used to create this glamour doesn't feel right. It feels…" she trails off, a nervous look appearing on her face.
"What does it feel like?" asks Beckham, rising from his seat.
"It feels likeHismagic," she whispers. "Like the curseHeinflicted on the land.Hewas never normal.Hismagic wasn't like Fairy magic, it was darker, something I had never seen before. I did everything I could to stop it…" she continues to ramble, her mind no longer in the present.
I kick a rock in frustration, my body and clothes now sopping wet from her little tantrum. Nothing like being saddled with a witch who's half crazy. The rock skids along the ground, flipping over several times until it comes to a halt. I look away and something on the ground flashes out of the corner of my eye. I walk over to it and bend down to examine it. Underneath where the rock was laying, the ground is made up of a shiny black rock that looks like it's been buffed to a high polish. Definitely not what you would expect in the middle of a sandstone jungle. I look up and leap to my feet. Where once was only the Zhangjiaji landscape, there's now a towering, decaying fortress made entirely of this same polished black rock, built against several of the sandstone towers.
Beckham sees me gaping and walks towards me, turning so he's looking in the same direction that I am.
"What do you see?" he asks.
I blink once and the landscape flickers, going back to the jungle terrain for an instant before returning back to the menacing dark, stone structure.
"I've found it," I breath out, pointing in front of me.
"It looks the same," says Beckham, running an exasperated hand through his hair.
I gesture to the ground, somewhat dazed that we've been walking around this for days and it's managed to stay hidden. I had never seen a glamour that covered such a large area before.
"Look at that black stone on the ground, it's what makes up the fortress. It must be the chink because I can see everything now."
Lexi must have recovered from her meltdown because she jogs over to us, and begins to search the ground for the stone. I can tell when they find it because they too are both frozen, staring in awe at the towering structure.
It's everything that horror movies are made of. The few windows it has are covered with dark black bars. The centuries of misery its inflicted on its occupants is heavy in the air. The magic that I could feel earlier is much stronger now, but Lexi's right, I've never felt this type of magic before. It's something dark, something suffocating.
"Eva's been trapped in this place for months," I whisper, the full scope of what she's experienced hitting me all at once.
"She's in there," Lexi confirms, a statement that fills me with both hope and rage.
"Let's hope Mason is as well," says Beckham darkly.
"Let's go," I say, taking my first step towards the fortress.
Chapter 15
Eva
Gwenny is bustling around my bedroom the next morning and despite the fact that I like the woman, I can't help but think that it would be nice to wake up alone in my room one of these days.
"Oooh you're up," she says excitedly, setting down a few plates on the table that are piled as usual with enough food to feed a million people rather than just myself.
