Kiss of Midnight_ A Midnight Breed Novel - Lara Adrian [399]
“I think it must be,” Elise whispered. She looked back down at the folded design. “‘To the borderlands east turn your eye…’ Maybe if we turn the tapestry to the left?”
She pivoted the weaving ninety degrees, so that the top border was facing east. The folded center was running vertical now. And within the design emerged another—one that hadn’t been obviously visible until held at this new angle. The faint outline of a cross was stitched into the tapestry, and in the center of it was a single word spelled out in the threads.
“‘Praha,’” Elise read aloud, astonished that a voice from so long ago was suddenly speaking through the silk and canvas of her work. “The secret, whatever it is, is in Prague.”
“That’s incredible,” Savannah gasped.
She reached out and ran her fingertips over the hidden text. No sooner had they skimmed the stitches when the female drew her hand back as if she’d been burned.
“Oh, my God.” Her dark brown eyes were stricken and wide. She pressed her hand down onto the fabric again, holding it there in grave silence.
“Savannah, what do you feel?”
When she finally spoke, her voice was airless with dread. “This tapestry has a few more secrets to tell.”
CHAPTER
Thirty
The warriors were gearing up for patrol when the glass doors to the tech lab whisked open and four beautiful women rushed inside. Elise and Gabrielle were carrying the tapestry from Lucan’s library; Tess and Savannah walked behind them with serious looks on their faces. Savannah seemed especially grim, her mouth drawn into a flat line, her hands flexing and fisting at her sides as she walked.
Tegan met Elise’s anxious gaze. “What’s going on?”
“The tapestry,” she said as she and Gabrielle spread it out on the meeting table. “I think we’ve figured out what the Odolf riddle refers to.”
“You serious?”
“Yeah.” Her sober expression told him that it wasn’t going to be good news.
Tegan and the other warriors gathered around the women. “Okay. Let’s see what you have.”
He watched, astonished and proud, as she recited each puzzling verse and folded the design accordingly. It was incredible, and so obvious now that Elise was putting it together for them. The tapestry correlated exactly to each seemingly nonsensical phrase. When Elise was finished, she stepped back and revealed an entirely new design—one that Kassia had hidden in the threads as she sewed the piece all those years ago.
Elise met Tegan’s curious look. “When I was at Irina’s place, she showed me some needlework that was incredibly detailed. It also had a secret design woven into it. When I saw this tapestry on the wall just now, I knew it had to have been made by the same hand. The more I looked at it, I wondered if there might be something more to it.”
Tegan smiled. He didn’t care one bit that everyone saw him bring her under his arm and lovingly kiss her brow. “Good work.”
“I know that mountain range,” Lucan said as he inspected the weaving.
Tegan nodded, also recognizing the distinctive formation that lay northeast of Prague. “It’s not far from the region where most of the Breed was living at the time.”
“So, this is meant to be some kind of map?” Rio asked. “If so, what are we looking for?”
“It’s not what, but who.” Savannah’s soft voice drew everyone’s attention. “The tapestry points to a location where Dragos helped hide someone. The vampire who fathered him.”
“Jesus Christ.”
Tegan didn’t know which of the warriors muttered the curse, but each one of them had to understand the weight of what Savannah had just said.
“Dragos’s Breedmate wove this piece specifically for me,” Lucan put in with a dark scowl. “Are you saying Kassia deliberately hid this message in here? Why? And why the hell wouldn’t she come to me and tell me about this?”
“Because she was afraid,” Savannah said. “She’d been entrusted with a terrible secret, and she feared what might happen if she let it out.”
Gideon glanced over at his mate. “You felt all that in the cloth, babe?”
Savannah nodded. “There’s more too. And it’s not good.”
“Tell us,” Lucan said