The letter sat on the table between us like a coiled snake.
I couldn't stop staring at it. The handwriting was so perfect, so elegant. Each letter curved exactly right. The seal—that dragon and crown pierced by a sword—looked like it had been pressed yesterday, not five hundred years ago.
But that was impossible.
"Let me see it again," Lyra said, pulling the parchment closer with careful fingers. She'd been examining it for the past hour, muttering to herself and occasionally making small magical lights dance over the paper.
I sat across from her in the library, exhausted. My body still ached from the vision the young dragon had shown me—Veridia burning, the hooded figure watching. My marked hand throbbed with a dull, constant pain.
Kael stood by the window, his arms crossed. He hadn't said much since we'd arrived back at the citadel. But I could feel his anger radiating off him like heat from a fire.
"Well?" he finally asked. "Is it real?"
