And then, just like that, the light was gone.
Lucan lifted his head to find Jenna calmly placing the crystal back inside its box. Brock flew to her, pulling her into a frantic, protective embrace. “What the fuck?” he rasped thickly. “What just happened?”
She was breathless, her glyphs still churning and alive on her skin.
Brock ran his hands over her. “You’re not in pain.”
It wasn’t a question. The Breed male had the unique ability to absorb human suffering into himself with a touch. His talent would tell him if Jenna felt any kind of distress.
He glanced at Lucan and the others, then shook his head. “She’s unharmed.”
“I saw it again,” she murmured. She drew out of Brock’s arms her big hazel eyes wide. “I saw the night of the attack on the Atlantean realm again.”
Jenna had seen many glimpses of history through her biotech link to the Ancient’s memories. Twenty years ago, she’d first seen the destruction of Atlantis, which had been the first the Order had learned of the violent war between their otherworlder fathers and the second alien race that had inhabited Earth in secret for an even longer period of time.
“They used Selene’s crystals against her,” Jenna said now. “The night of the attack on her realm, the Ancients used the power of two Atlantean crystals like this one to destroy them. They weakened the realm’s defenses, then they unleashed the explosion that washed away everything in its path.”
“The Ancients had crystals like this too?” Gideon’s mate, Savannah, asked.
Gabrielle turned to Lucan. “Jordana told us that two of the five had been stolen a long time ago. Did the Ancients take them, Jenna?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “My memories haven’t told me that yet, but it seems likely now.”
Gideon’s blond brows lifted over the rims of his pale shades. “If the Ancients were able to defeat Selene and her legion using two crystals like the one we have now . . .”
Brock picked up the thought, his arms still wrapped around his mate. “And we know there’s another one with the colony—”
“Hell, yeah,” Darion interjected, his mouth spreading in a broad grin. “And we happen to know someone with ties to that colony now.”
Lucan nodded. The pursuit and elimination of Opus Nostrum was paramount, but if what Jenna just reported was accurate, they had gotten a crucial—possibly game-changing—bit of information on an even more insidious adversary.
But first, they needed to determine if they would be alone in their fight against Selene when that day came.
“I have to talk to Jordana,” Lucan said. “I want a face-to-face introduction with Cassian Gray’s Atlantean friend, and I want it yesterday.”
CHAPTER 9
Carys scribbled her name on the museum worker’s tablet, noting her approval of the exhibit’s rotation and the time the pieces were removed under her supervision. It was hours past closing at the Museum of Fine Arts, but she had hardly noticed the time. This exhibit had been the last of her day’s duties—a job that normally would have fallen to Jordana, had she not been on temporary leave following her ordeal the week before and her more recent mating.
Carys had trained under her friend for months since Jordana had gotten her the job at the MFA, and although she had never expected to be called upon to fill in, Carys had made it her mission to study every facet of Jordana’s position. She never wanted to be a disappointment to her friend, and felt the need to prove her worth.
It didn’t hurt to have been born with not only her father’s Breed ability, but her mother’s unerring photographic memory as well. If she had to, Carys could complete any task or recall any bit of information she’d ever seen or heard.
As the last of the paintings were crated and wheeled away to other secure locations in the building, she took a moment to stroll the now vacant floor.
Something had been prickling her senses since her return to her family’s Darkhaven last night. All the talk about Reginald Crowe, and the Order’s inability to penetrate the man’s secrets and shadowy connections hadn’t left her.
It nagged at her now too, as she walked toward the gallery containing many impressive masterworks on loan to the museum from Crowe for the past several years. More than a dozen priceless paintings in this exhibit belonged to him, Carys recalled as she glanced at the collection. Some dated back many hundreds of years. Others were more contemporary, yet still important, valuable works of art.
She exhaled a short breath, shaking her head as she looked at the pieces now, with the knowledge that Reginald Crowe had been no mere human with a taste for fine things and the deep pockets to go along with it. As an Atlantean—an ageless otherworlder—he would have been amassing his wealth and treasure for centuries. If not longer.
He must have thought he was invincible. For a while, he had been. But the Order had thwarted him before he’d had the chance to unleash his worst.
Now, the Order needed to stop the rest of his Opus Nostrum associates.
Carys’s curiosity was piqued as she studied Crowe’s private collection of art more closely. Something was different here. The inventory codes on the placards of each painting had been modified since she had seen them a couple of months ago. That was . . . odd.
Carys opened her tablet and brought up the museum’s donor database. Her security access level to that kind of data was limited, but she’d once been in a meeting with Jordana and the MFA’s chief curator as they’d reviewed another private collection. It took only a moment’s focus to recall the tap pattern of the curator’s access ID and password.