Page 54 of Dragon Tempted

John crossed his arms. “What did you say? And what did she say?”

“I sent her a quote like she used to do as a professor for her classes.” Megan read the message she had sent to Mia. “And she sent back a quote from Picasso, ‘Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.’”

“What does that mean?” Adam asked.

“It can mean a whole host of things.” Megan put her phone back in her pocket. “Art isn’t real, but it’s a representative of something real. It can reveal truths to us that we don’t normally see.”

Sienna frowned. “But how does this fit in the context of what’s happening with the curse? Is she talking about the Death of Magic painting?”

“Possibly. That would twist the quote in another way, wouldn’t it? The painting was thought of as a mythical event, when we know that it’s a recount of something that actually happened.” Megan hesitated for a moment. “Wait... I think there’s a second part to that quote.” Megan pulled out her phone and typed for a moment. “Yes, the whole quote is ‘Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand.’”

“Do you think she purposefully left the second part out?” Eric asked.

“It’s a famous quote and it’s often only quoted as the first line, but I absolutely think that Mia the professor would have left that off for me to look for. Which makes me think that the second part of the quote is even more significant.”

“Meaning?” John asked, his head starting to hurt.

“Truth is elusive. Some would argue that there is no such thing as truth, but variations of it,” Megan said. “We could all see something at the same time and walk away with different memories or impressions of what happened. The same could be said of using art to depict an event. Death of Magic was painted by your grandmother.”

“And she depicted it as she remembered or twisted it to be,” John added, his stomach rolling.

“Yes. The painting shows the dragons as the aggressors. Is that the way you remember it?”

John closed his eyes for a moment before taking a deep breath and thinking back to that time. “The dragons came to talk to the witches when they found out that they had cast a spell on the crops, killing them all in the hopes of driving the dragon clan away before the winter. The confrontation escalated.”

“So the witches weren’t innocent victims,” Adam said.

“No.” John blew out a hard breath. “But neither were the dragons. The animosity had grown over the centuries until no one could see reason. My grandmother had kept me and my mother in the village before the attack.”

Sienna took a step toward him. “What do you mean by ‘kept’? Did she lock you up?”

“We couldn’t leave, which is why my father and the other dragons came as well. At that point there could be no peace between the clans.” And he had been caught in the middle.

Sienna scowled. “Your grandmother saw to that by using you and your mother, didn’t she?”

John’s chest warmed at the indignation in Sienna’s voice for him. He couldn’t remember if he’d ever had someone stand up for him before.

Tessa stepped forward. “There’s something else we should be considering. What if Mia’s quote isn’t about the Death of Magic painting? What if she’s talking about herself? We don’t know what the truth is regarding Mia. She reached out to Adam and told him about the curse and hid Lily away with Evelyn when Lily’s parents were killed in the accident. But Mia has a Templar cross tattoo and seems to be working with them now.”

Megan nodded. “Before I even attempt to answer her back, I think we need to talk more about Mia and what we’ve been able to dig up on her.”

Sienna pulled her phone out and made a call. “Ryan, can you go grab Jonas from his IT cave and meet us in the office in fifteen minutes. Oh, and tell him to bring anything he’s found so far on Mia and the Templars. Thanks.”

John’s head spun as he sat in the back of the UTV with Sienna. Were they finally close to the end? Could Mia White be the answer to his lifelong prison?

Minutes later they descended on the office. Ryan, Jonas, and Marcus joined them shortly thereafter. They quickly brought them up to speed on what had happened, and Sienna turned to Jonas. “What did you find?”

“So I started running programs with world events that might correspond with the timeline that Megan has documented from John’s journals. But I got to thinking that I should also look more specifically into Templar lore to see if there were any ties and also more specifically into Mia’s life as well to see if there were any relationships that could be found.”

“And?” Sienna prompted.

“And, we know that the Knights Templars ceased to exist around the 1100s. But from Megan’s research and what I found, there would have been remnants of the Knights until the early 1300s. There is even speculation that they used to be linked to the Freemasons.

“But I think that they still continued under other umbrellas and organizations. Many of these ancient organizations would have been carried down through generations of families.”

“Except we know that Mia was a foster child,” Tessa said.

“Yes.” Jonas continued. “But I found something interesting when I was looking at her college background. Mia was able to pay for much of her college tuition through a grant. I think that the organization that gave it to her might have been a front for the Templars.”