Squinting, I held the parchment closer and at an angle in the moonlight. The wax was a midnight blue, speckled with gold. Montrose colors.
“Okay. So?” I asked.
"Look there." Ehuna pointed, her fingertip hovering over the insignia. "The edges on the wax are too rough, the crest slightly askew. It's shoddy work, not befitting a real message from the Montroses."
I traced the imperfect lines of the emblem. An imitation, maybe, but why? And by whom?
"I believe Tim was sent to see if you were alive, and if you were, he was to deliver that awful message directly to you.” She took a step back, her face a mask of contemplation in the shadows. "Sending a dead Montrose to be buried next to a Caputo is unheard of."
"Why?" I asked again, rolling the scroll between my anxious fingers.
A fake messenger, a botched seal… And Legacy… If there was even the faintest chance…
“To destroy you,” Ehuna said gently. “To shatter your spirit, to leave you fragmented when we need you whole. To drop you out of the war effort because you know too much. Make you easy prey. Honestly, I’m not sure.”
"And yet I haven’t given up," I replied numbly.
Ehuna's lips twitched, a ghost of a smile fleeting across her stern features. "And yet you haven’t. There’s too much hope in you."
"Hope is for the well-rested and the foolish," I tossed back, handing the parchment back to her. "I'm neither. But I am stubborn."
She smiled, a genuine one with warmth and a touch of sadness. “So you are.”
“Is Legacy…” My voice betrayed the tremble of possibility tangled with despair. I could hardly dare to imagine it, let alone voice it. “Alive?”
Ehuna's brown eyes, pools of resolve under normal circumstances, now flickered with something that resembled doubt. It was disconcerting to see her so hesitant, her posture rigid as if bracing against my emotions.
"Collie," she said slowly, her voice threaded with caution. She rolled her lips together. “How do you feel about seeking the truth ourselves?”
“With your magic?” The answer was obvious, but I didn’t care.
She nodded. Then, with a resolute exhale, she stepped back and raised her arms. Sigils flared to life along her skin, and her gauntlets glowed.
The air thickened as she chanted, words old as time weaving through the clearing. Magic crackled over her gauntlets, a dance of light and power that only served to remind me how much hinged upon her spell's success—or its failure.
The light surged even more, then sputtered like a dying star. Ehuna's shoulders slumped, and the sigils and her gauntlets dimmed to a faint glow before winking out completely.
My heart spasmed, and I stumbled back a few steps as the truth hit me all over again.
"Nothing," she said, her voice tight. "The tracking spell found no trace of her. I’m sorry, Collie."
“Why would you do this?” I shouted. “Why would you get my hopes up like that only to—”
I cut short with a sob, nearly doubling over with the pain of loss.
“I… I didn’t mean…”
“You can’t just use me or play with me like this,” I screamed. “I have feelings. I’m a real person.”
“Collie, I would never…” Ehuna heaved a battle-weary sigh. “I’m sorry. I realize now I could’ve handled that a lot better. Done the tracking spell beforehand just to be sure. I’m terribly sorry.”
The forest around us seemed to hold its breath, the ancient trees standing sentinel as grief settled on my shoulders like a cloak woven from lead. I balled my hands into fists, trying to contain my forceful emotions.
I’d been thinking those words for quite some time, how I was expected to be obedient for the sake of someone else, how my own needs always came second, how I was treated as a lesser Battle Mage, not by Ehuna but by everyone else. I never meant to lash out like that, but my emotions had churned themselves into chaos.
But there was something else there, too, swirling around the abyss of despair—a fierce, unyielding determination.
I wiped away my tears and stood up straight again. "Fine. I accept your apology," I said, my voice surprisingly steady. "I’m ready to finish this."
