Page 63 of Dragon Charmed

They all left the kitchen, and Tessa headed to the office. She knocked and walked inside. Eric, Marcus, and Ben were bent over the desk, studying something. “What are you three doing?”

“I told Ben about the scroll and how the wearer of the necklace can cause the words to change to something we can read,” Eric said. “We’re going to see what happens when Ben touches it.”

“Okay.” Why did she keep saying okay when she felt the opposite? “Have you remembered anything?”

Ben frowned. “Not yet.”

Eric removed the scroll from the protective sleeve and laid it on the desk. The two paragraphs were still on the paper and weren’t in any language they had been able to decipher. Ben hesitated for a moment before resting his fingers on the edge of the paper.

They all seemed to hold their breath for a moment before the letters in the first paragraph changed into words that made sense.

A call to nature

Free us from the flying demons

Fire, air, water, earth

Take their wings

Take their fire

Take their powers

Free the sky

Ben took a moment to read it before removing his fingers and having the wording change again. “You would think after the last twenty-four hours I wouldn’t be shocked anymore.”

The door opened and Sienna and Megan walked inside. Before they could ask what was going on, Eric let them know about the scroll changing for Ben as well.

“But not the second paragraph?” Sienna said.

“No.”

Eric picked up a piece of paper that had both paragraphs transcribed and handed it to Ben to read, which he did out loud.

An oracle born

Templars united

Blood will be shed

Forgiveness and Sacrifice

Magic restored

“And we think this is what has to happen before it can be broken?” Ben said as they all sat to continue the conversation.

Eric nodded. “Yes. John Baker agrees.”

“The guy whose grandmother cast the spell using his blood and he’s been alive for over four hundred years?” Ben asked with eyes the size of saucers.

“That’s him. We thought Bella being born might have started the process to save our magic, but now Lily is here and she has to be five by now, right?” Megan said.

Tessa nodded. “Or possibly six. About that. I think that Lily’s birth might have jump-started all of this again. In the past few years, what used to be considered a myth has now been proven as real, and we’ve had to fight against those who want to stop us from breaking the curse. We don’t know when Lily’s parents died or when Lily’s powers started. They might not have known she was an oracle and what that meant. But someone figured it out, and if we can believe what Mia told Evelyn, maybe they were trying to force her to use her powers.”

“And I must have found something that made me believe the curse was real,” Ben said. “What about the next line, ‘Templars unite’?”

Megan brought him up to speed about the Templars.