Chapter 173: I Promise
"Didn’t the Midnight Queen also participate in the creation of wards back then?" Annalise asked curiously as she recalled reading about the current Midnight Queen being one of the only few people who watched the downfall of the Seelie Realm in front of their very eyes.
"My..." Valerius started speaking but suddenly stopped causing Annalise to turn her face around to look at him in confusion as his abrupt stop had taken her by surprise.
"I mean... the Queen was barely a child back then, it was actually the Previous Queen of the Midnight Realm who participated in the creation of wards. According to the queen, she knows very little about the secrets of the cores or the book written by the previous queen and others involved in the creation of the wards." Valerius finally explained and it did make sense.
Annalise returned her attention to the front as she once again settled down in his arms while speaking with a small sigh, "To put it simply, no one knows about the secrets of the cores or the book, or at least, no one you know of."
Valerius nodded his head in agreement and the two settled into a peaceful silence for the next couple of minutes while they both got lost in their own thoughts. It was already half past four o’clock in the morning and they should be heading to sleep considering the hectic day that was waiting for them ahead but sleep was currently the last thing on their minds.
"What did you find about the cores then? Because it seems like you ultimately found the way to fix the cracks in the wards." Annalise asked when she recalled their recent visit to Lakeshire. The sole reason behind their visit to such a faraway place was to get the Spirit Mer Coral from the Mer Queen as it was able to fix the second core of the wards.
Her eyes once again shifted to the portal and the twin trees with different magics as she tried to see if the core seemed fixed or if there were traces of darkness but no matter how hard she concentrated, there didn’t seem any trace of darkness present at that place. However, it did little help to make her understand the situation because if the core was indeed healed then why was the castle in such a bad condition?
Then another thought struck her. The castle started changing for the better recently, did it mean that the dark lords recently fixed the core, and it took away all the dark energy present inside or around tge castle, helping it to finally return to a better shape with time?
She was pulled out of her thoughts when Valerius started answering her question. "Though it took time, we eventually succeeded in finding out the answers that we were seeking with the help of the Royal Seer and the history of the castle."
"This one is the main core of the protection wards and to fix the second core, we needed to fix this one first. However, while we found out very early that the essence of the second core was made of water, we couldn’t find the same about this one no matter how hard we tried. And because we weren’t able to find the answer, we were unable to fix this core, leading to the delay in the restoration of the second core too."