“I suppose not,” Elise said, her expression bittersweet. “To be honest, a part of me didn’t want to taint you with the path I chose to walk. You and Raider were everything beautiful. I needed the illusion of something to come back to when this was over—even if that point never arrives.”
A silence fell as the two stared at each other, the gulf between them seemingly so wide where once they’d been perfectly in step with the other.
“Were you behind Rothchild?” Kira couldn’t stop the impulsive question. One she had no business asking with everything else going on. “Are you responsible for the Curs’ deaths?”
Maybe there was a reason she and Jin had never been able to find the traitor. They’d been looking in the wrong place.
A stricken expression filled Elise’s face. As if Kira just walked up to her and slapped her.
“How can you ask me that? They were my family too!” For the first time, there was something of the old Elise in her voice. A hurt and pain that sounded so real. “I would have died for them. I was prepared to do exactly that.”
Kira wanted to believe Elise. Wanted it like nothing she ever had before.
“And yet somehow you’ve survived,” Kira forced herself to say, knowing how the words would flay the Elise she once knew. The one who had loved the Curs as much as she had.
“Because—“ Elise cut herself off, her eyes closing as she reached for composure. When she opened them again, a different person looked back at Kira. Her emotions locked down and her features resolute. “The how and why of what happened is no longer important. You’ll have to look elsewhere if you’re looking for a traitor. That’s not why I’m here.”
Elise finished crossing the bridge, stepping onto the platform as she tilted her head back to survey the sphere.
At some point during their conversation, its glow had dimmed. The intensity of the light no longer as piercing. Enough for Kira to just barely make out the fact there was a creature inside. Its details indistinct. Like something emerging from a cocoon.
Kira caught the impressions of wings and a tail before Elise set a hand against the sphere. She drew it back with a small yelp.
“You are not worthy of the lenacht,“ the wanderer informed her.
Elise shot him an irritated look as she shook out her hand. “Good thing I came prepared then.”
She withdrew a device in the shape of a small cylinder from her pocket.
From the way the wanderer stiffened, something like concern flashing across his face, Kira guessed whatever the device was, it wasn’t good for them.
“It took the masters a long time to figure out how the Tuann escaped their control. They’d thought their slaves much too afraid to challenge their authority.” Elise busied herself twisting the rings on either end of the cylinder. “Those who remained suffered for that oversight. The masters punished them by trapping them in the forms of monsters, the generals you now know, and to make sure a rebellion would never happen again, they took their young as hostages.”
Kira’s flinch made Elise’s lips twist.
“That’s right, Nixxy. Children are taken from their parents the moment they’re born and placed in camps exactly like the one we grew up in.”
A seam appeared on the cylinder, the line running lengthwise as lights lit up on either end.
“Every so often they make an example of one of those children as a warning against what will happen if the generals are anything but absolutely obedient.” Elise paused to look at Kira. “Imagine it—your children stolen from you. Tortured. Sometimes killed. What wouldn’t you do to stop that?”
Kira was quiet in the face of Elise’s pain. Her former friend’s gaze distant as her mind turned inward.
Kira shifted forward, stopping when Elise’s attention snapped to her. Any evidence of distraction gone as Elise gave her a knowing look.
“The same things you’ve already done,” Elise said. “I know you’re the one behind the theft of the master’s new test subjects. How many camps have you destroyed? Three? Four?”
Kira ignored those words to nod at the cylinder. “What is that?”
In the back of her mind, she could sense the thread she associated with Graydon. There was an impression of him maneuvering into position.
“It’s a stasis field. She’s planning to steal the Mea’Ave’s lenacht,“ the wanderer answered for Elise.
From that, Kira was going to guess the lenacht was an offshoot of the Mea’Ave in some way. She didn’t need for anyone to tell her how bad it would be for the Tsavitee or their masters to get their hands on something as powerful as that.
“The Mea’Ave won’t let you take it,“ the wanderer said. “You’re neither a beloved nor a person of their choosing.”
“I’m aware of Tuann superstition, but that won’t stop me from finishing this mission,” Elise informed him.
