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TRADING IN BLOOD
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JASPER PULLED THE GLASSES from his face and pinched the bridge of his nose. The migraine was getting worse. He’d spent the past few weeks translating the books for Griffin with annoyingly little progress. It had taken him an entire week to realise the pages had been coded with cyphers, and two more to crack the first one. Between this and training with Storm, Jasper had little time for anything else, which proved convenient, as Sav had been avoiding him ever since the attack. He knew better than to confront her, she would come to him of her own will in her own time. Right now, she needed to heal, he only wished he could be the one to help her.
Jasper stood up, stretched his back, and walked over to one of the improvised tables for a drink. He knew the ins and outs of Griffin’s tent almost better than Griffin himself and could navigate the stacks of books that lined the floor automatically. Above him, the holographic stars of the roof twinkled.
The challenge was proving difficult even for him. The mountains of books surrounded him like soldiers readying an attack. Each one held pages of warped symbols and jumbled words that would haunt him in his sleep, but he pressed on regardless.
There must be something I’m missing...
Jasper rested the glass down on another pile of books, about to return to his makeshift desk when a voice startled him from behind.
“How is it looking?” asked Griffin.
Jasper was so surprised to hear his voice that he knocked over the glass. It hit the floor with a shatter that sounded like crystal rain. “Not much better,” he admitted. “I can’t seem to find the full key, and without it, we won’t be able to crack the cyphers.”
Griffin frowned. He’d been gone for a few days, off on another one of his secretive excursions, but he looked as though he’d hoped Jasper would’ve at least made more progress. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“No,” Jasper said with a sigh. “Not unless you have a magical magnifying glass that can translate text automatically.”
“If I did, do you think I’d have you holed up in here?” Griffin smirked, trying to make light of the situation.
Possibly, Jasper thought with his own little smile. Or at least the Griffin from before their kidnap would have for sure. That Griffin probably would’ve locked him in a barn somewhere and threw away the key.
“Do you want my answer?” Jasper laughed, enjoying the excuse to diffuse the tension. Somewhere in the mountains of paper and ink lay the secret of Savara’s nature, and finding it was of the utmost importance.
“How is she doing?” Griffin asked, plucking the thought from the top of Jasper’s mind.
“I haven’t seen her since,” Jasper said guiltily. “I figured she needed the space.” He stooped down to collect the shards of broken glass. “Sebastian tells me she seems okay though. He’s been training her to take her mind off everything.”
“I’m surprised at how okay you are with them spending time together,” Griffin remarked.
Jasper hid his frown under his mess of brown curls. He didn’t love the idea of them spending so much time together. Sebastian was one of those people Jasper used to resent with every fibre of his being—devilishly handsome, unapologetically flirtatious, with charm that flowed like a waterfall—but he cared more about Savara than his own damaged ego. He couldn’t understand what she was going through, he wasn’t from this world, but maybe Sebastian could.
“She needs him more than me right now. I remind her of... that. Besides, this research will help her more than anything else.”
Griffin stooped down beside him and rested a tentative hand on his shoulder. “Believe me, you have nothing to worry about.”
“Ouch!” Jasper yelped, raising a bloodied thumb in front of his face. He plucked the shard from the wedge it had created in his skin, letting sticky red droplets slide down his wrist and fall where they may.
“Are you okay?” Griffin pulled a cloth from one of the random tables and handed it to him. “I’ll clear the rest of this up.”
“Wait!” Jasper shot a hand out and dragged Griffin back down to the floor. “Look...” he said, pointing to where the blood had fallen onto an exposed sheet of paper. It curled around the indents of the handwritten pages and glided across the page, soaking into the old sheets of parchment. “...the letters are changing,” he added. The sweeping black scripture began fusing with the red of the blood, reorganising itself into words Jasper was intimately familiar with. “This is incredible!”
“This is dangerous,” Griffin said, an acute hint of worry tingeing his voice. “I don’t understand how such a thing was created. It defies all the natural laws.”
“Welcome to the club. Your world defies all my laws too, and yet here we are,” Jasper mocked. He was about to press his bloodied thumb onto another page when Griffin grabbed hold of his wrist.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Griffin hissed. His angry brows bunched into one straight line.
“Did you not just see what happened?” Jasper asked as he pulled his bleeding hand back. “We’ve cracked it!”
“You just traded blood for information,” Griffin growled. “Don’t you see a problem with that?”
“I see a way to save the woman I love,” Jasper retorted, turning back to the newly legible page. “I’ll bleed myself dry if it’ll give us the information we need.” Both men stared down at the page with varying degrees of intrigue and dread. The sprawling script at the title had formed various e’s and a series of r’s before settling on the phrase: The Legends of Iturri.
Griffin’s face paled, but as he spoke, his voice rang soberingly clear through the tent. “Nothing good is traded in blood.”
