The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 39

Chapter 39: The Floor Did WHAT

"Hyran," Serena said quietly, "I can go hunt this down myself, but if you happen to know the answer, you would save me about five minutes."

He glanced at her sideways. "Ask."

"Magic applied to floor surfaces that can withstand time unless activated by a specific mechanism," she said. "Most commonly found in quicksand traps."

"Dormant Plating," Hyran replied immediately.

"Yes. That is it," she said. "Has it ever been applied in other settings. If someone needed to hide something, for example."

"Not documented," Hyran said, lips curling faintly. "But entirely logical. So yes. What are you trying to uncover?"

"There is something beneath this spot," she said, gesturing to the floor. "Something this acts as a key for." She lifted the talisman slightly. "Any ideas on how I would reveal it?"

Hyran regarded the floor, then the talisman, then her. His eyes sharpened.

"Triggers that are not physical are usually magical," he said. "And they are spoken in the same tongue as the one who cast them."

He paused, then added casually, "What does your talisman say?"

Of course.

"Good thinking," she said, annoyed at herself for not starting with that.

She looked down at the talisman, her eyes still green, and began to read aloud in Draken-Vorah.

Hyran’s lips twitched. Just barely.

Two weeks. That was all it had taken. Two weeks of exposure, and she was reading Draken-Vorah fluently. Draken-Vorah was not an easy language by any means.

She’d only read it while in a trance until now.

He made a deliberate effort not to look impressed.

Everyone talked about her appearance. The gold. The light. The spectacle of her.

Very few seemed to notice how terrifyingly brilliant she was.

The stone beneath her feet shifted.

An indent appeared in the floor, its size matching the talisman perfectly.

A dragon pattern was carved into the recess, with Draken-Vorah script circling it. It was identical to the markings on her talisman.

Serena set the talisman into place.

It vibrated once.

Then, in a single sharp motion, the edges snapped outward. Hidden blades flicked free simultaneously, flaring into a star shaped formation with a clean metallic snap.

The gold locked into its new shape at once, humming low and steady as it seated perfectly into the indent.

She brushed her fingers over it and felt the hum resonate back into her palm. When she tried to move it, the energy beneath shifted, subtle and precise, like a knob turning a frequency higher or lower.

She paused, fascinated.

This was a lock. A magical padlock of sorts.

She twisted it again, this time aligning the energy to match her own.

Nothing happened.

"Are you sensing different energies as you turn it?" Hyran asked, far too thrilled to hide it now.

She nodded faintly.

The mage librarians who had been so committed to ignoring her were watching outright now. When she glanced up, they all snapped their gazes away with varying degrees of guilt.

"Yes. My gold magic is not the answer," she said, twisting it again.

Serena looked up at Hyran, oops written clearly across her face.

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