Seals by Kim Richardson Page A

think it’s stopped yet?”
    Mr. Patterson looked at Kara sadly. “We’ll
never know for sure. Not until we know precisely what these
markings mean.”
    “Fantastic,” growled David.
    “But will Kara be okay?” Jenny’s voice
sounded from the back of the bookstore.
    Jenny’s face was drawn, and she gave Kara a
tight smile that Kara found hard to return. Peter and Ashley were
watching her, too. They looked worried that she might suddenly blow
up or something.
    Kara looked back at Mr. Patterson.
    “I will speak to the oracle mothers about
this,” said the oracle with some urgency.
    He let go of Kara’s hand. “They are the
wisest of our kind. They might have better answers for you. I
wish…I wish we had more time. I could run some tests, maybe find a
temporary remedy to slow the mutation…maybe even find a cure.”
    A cure.
    “There’s something I have to tell you. All
of you.” Kara waited until she had everyone’s undivided attention.
She had hoped that the oracle would have made the connection
between her and the knights. But he hadn’t. Now, she had no choice
but to tell them what had happened.
    Kara braced herself. “I think I have theory
about a cure.”
    “You never told me this?” said David with
surprise.
    “That’s because I didn’t know, well not for
sure until I fought with the knight.”
    Mr. Patterson snatched his crystal back from
David. “Go on.”
    They all gathered closer around her. “It’s a
working theory. I could be wrong—”
    “But you think you’re right.” David’s face
was unreadable.
    Kara’s throat tightened. “When I injured the
knight with my blade, I cut a deep wound into its left bicep. Well,
it left a mark on me, too.”
    “What kind of a mark?” asked David
quietly.
    Kara kept her eyes on the oracle as she
answered.
    “A wound. Exactly like the one I left on the
knight.”
    She watched as the oracle’s eyes widened.
She could see that his mind was working overtime. She could
practically hear him think.
    David raked his hair with his fingers. “What
are you saying?”
    “I’m saying that when I hurt the knight, I felt the pain, too. The cut. As soon as my blade
perforated its skin—a gash opened up on my arm.”
    Mr. Patterson’s face paled. “From what you
are telling us, I fear you share a connection with these creatures.
A physical connection.”
    Kara had suspected that she shared a
connection with the knight, but hearing it confirmed by the oracle
made it more likely to be true. She had been right. There was a connection.
    Kara nodded. “I know. Well, at least that’s
what I thought. I’m linked to them somehow. The knight saw the
wound on my arm, and it was just as surprised as I was. It wasn’t
expecting it either. So, for whatever reasons, I appear to be
linked to the knights. But the fact that the knight didn’t seem to
know that I was linked to it in some way is even more
confusing.”
    “So if you are linked to them,”
Ashley began, “couldn’t you have warned us before it appeared?
Didn’t you sense it?”
    “No. It doesn’t work like that.”
    Kara didn’t really know how it worked. It
just did. She wasn’t thrilled about it either. However, she hoped
that her bond with the knights might provide her with a clue as to
how she might rid herself of her mutation.
    A shadow passed in the oracle’s eyes.
    “Kara, listen to me. I don’t know what you
are planning, but this…this dark supernatural energy is the worse
there is. There is nothing more foul in all the worlds. The knights
were forged from the archfiends’ darkness and wickedness.
Everything about them is evil. If you truly do share this
connection, it could be very bad for you, and for the legion.”
    Kara was silent. She hadn’t thought about
that.
    “I wish I could say that I’m not linked to
them, but that would be a lie because I felt it. So how
would this be bad for the legion exactly? I’m the one who’s going
through this, not them.”
    The more she