Silas turned his head toward me as if surprised, though I doubted much surprised him. "You found that in the book."
"Yes," I said. "The white one. The passage in red ink."
He nodded slowly. "Then you understand what it means. If someone holds that stone and knows how to use it, they can pull at the thread of your will the way a hand pulls at a loose seam. You would not even feel it happening. You would simply begin to do what they wanted and believe it was your own choice."
A cold feeling moved through me. "Then we have to find it first."
"That is why I came tonight," Silas said. "The temple is real. The stone was kept there for safekeeping long before the court fell." He stopped, and something shifted in his expression. A tightness came into his mouth. "But it was not there when the l
