Page 87 of Wraithwound

Leonid shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Riley walked over to the table and took the seat next to Taya. Lena was already sweating, her cloak and gloves making the heat feel oppressive. The eleuth, now sprawled on the table before her, chittered softly and nudged its head into her hands. The gesture gave her the courage to voice her terms.

“No. You get to ask me a question. One you think will be helpful in aiding your research. For every question I answer, Taya casts a crystal,” Lena said.

Leonid looked to Taya, who seemed to be considering her offer. She knew Taya was curious about Henry and how he’d come to have a medallion. This way, they’d be required to ask her only the information they deemed necessary instead of demanding she tell them her whole story, which frankly, was none of their business. She figured she could always volunteer more information later.

“Think of what we could learn,” Dauen said to Taya. “Not only did she survive the initial attack, but she’s managed to remain human for longer than anyone else we’ve seen.”

“Human?” Taya scoffed. “All right, fine.”

Leonid nodded, and Dauen raised his ink pen.

“How did you get infected?” Leonid asked.

“I’m not sure,” Lena said, thinking back to the moment she woke up in the funeral field.

“That is not an acceptable answer,” Taya interjected before Lena could consider her response further. “She didn’t answer the question.”

Riley put her hand on Taya’s shoulder and whispered something in her ear. Taya huffed in response but remained quiet.

Lena resisted the overwhelming urge to roll her eyes. She hadn’t exactly had time to contemplate what had happened. She still didn’t remember anything about the initial attack.

“It was not my intention to avoid answering the question,” Lena said, directing her response to Leonid and Dauen. “The truth is I don’t know how it happened. I was in the field outside of Virdeen for a funeral that was meant to occur at sunset for one of the village elders. The last thing I remember was standing around the funeral pyre with everyone else. When I awoke the next morning in the field, I had a wraithwound, and everyone else was dead.”

She looked to the others to see if they found that answer acceptable.

“What did the wound look like? How did it feel?” Dauen asked eagerly, still taking notes about her previous disclosure.

“I will answer your question, Dauen, but after that I hope to see the contents of a crystal,” she said.

“Taya?” Leonid asked after the silence stretched out uncomfortably.

“Fine,” Taya said.

“Gashes in the skin, four of them, that started at my shoulder and ended just above my heart. The exposed flesh inside was discolored and oozing. It didn’t bleed, but the affected area was inflamed. Black veins were visible just underneath the skin, small at first but they eventually grew, marking two separate paths, one towards my brain and the other toward my heart,” she said.

Dauen wrote furiously in his notebook, and it was only when he was finished that Lena looked to Taya. She stood reluctantly, eyeing her warily. Lena pulled the trinket out of her pack and held it out to her. Taya walked over and reached for the twist of metal, avoiding the eleuth as best she could. She inspected it carefully, the crystals clinking gently in her hand.

“How do you release the crystals?” she asked Lena.

Lena stood, hoping to get a better look at the object.

“I’m not sure. Do they have to come free to be cast?” Lena asked, genuinely curious.

“Yes. These are dream crystals, designed specifically to respond to a Seer’s magic. If the crystal you want me to cast is attached to anything else, those elements will interfere with the memory it projects,” she said.

They examined the object together, their conflict forgotten for the moment.

“What about this here?” Taya asked, pointing to two smaller holes on the outside of the wider part of the loops. Lena took the diary from Taya’s hands, inspecting the holes in the metal. And her heart sank.

She knew exactly what would fit in those empty slots.

“There is a key. Two of them. And I no longer have them,” she said, letting Taya take the diary out of her hands for further inspection. Lena turned towards the table, bracing her hands on it. “My mother always wore a broach; two thin crystals hung from it, and I would bet those were the keys.”

Lena couldn’t fathom having to ride back to Lythara to see if she could buy the broach back from the innkeeper, not to mention that she had no money nor anything else to offer him for it. A sense of futility began to build in her chest when Cross’s voice cut through her mounting despair.

“Lena.”

In his palm, he held her mother’s broach. The small crystals clinked lightly as he placed it in her gloved hand. Lena didn’t have the words to ask how, or why, but Cross merely gave her a curt nod before taking up his previous position. Lena swallowed the emotion that built in her throat before turning back to Taya, who still held the diary. Lena unclipped the key crystals from the broach and stuck one into the lock.