Shield of Sparrows, page 54
The veins I slept on each night. The veins I prayed would disappear each morning. He planted both hands on the table, leaning forward until he was inches from her face. “I can feel it sucking the life from this body with every swing of my sword, every beat of my heart.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen. If I’d known…” Her chin quivered. “I can undo this. I’ll find a cure.”
Ransom sneered. “There is no cure.”
“But what if there was?” I put my hand on his arm. “Please. Sit down. Let’s hear her out.”
There was more to this story. Maybe if Luella filled in some of the gaps, the missing pieces, we’d see a path to the cure. I wasn’t giving up hope we could stop Lyssa from killing Ransom. I refused to lose him to this infection.
Ransom’s body vibrated with rage, with hurt, his eyes silver. The monster was trying to break free from its leash.
“Please,” I pleaded, my heart in my throat.
He gritted his teeth but backed away. Not for his chair, but to stand on the other side of the room against a wall, arms crossed as he listened.
“Did you create Lyssa?” I asked Luella.
She swallowed hard. “Lyssa is magical. And I am not. But Calandra has magic. Just look at the different eyes in this room.”
What if magic went beyond the soil? Beyond eye color and Voster magic?
“I believe that the monsters of Calandra are a part of that magic,” Luella said. “And I’ve spent years learning how to extract it from them.”
Extracting a monster’s power? “How?”
Luella reached for the jar, tracing the rim with a finger. “Science is a magic of its own.”
“Speak plainly,” Ransom demanded.
She drew in a deep breath. “A monster’s very being has magic. They are extraordinary. Stronger. Faster. Better in all ways. I think they leave traces of that magic in this realm.” Her voice was a whisper, as if she was afraid to even speak it aloud. “So we strove to harness those traces to make everyone’s bodies less susceptible to illness. To give us all strength to heal.”
“‘We’? You mean you worked with the Voster.” I knew it. I fucking knew it. They were behind this from the beginning.
“No.” She shook her head. “My alchemists.”
“Oh.” Well, damn. “But the Voster are the only creatures who have magic.”
“Are they?” she mused. “What are the Voster but other beings? Some might look at them as monsters in their own right.”
Me. I’d considered them monstrous myself.
“The Voster simply know how to use their powers. Monsters do not. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t flow through their veins. Through their skin and bone and blood and saliva.”
“Mother,” Ransom barked, his patience hanging on by a thread. “I want to hear how you created Lyssa. Why do this?”
“Lu.” Cathlin stretched an arm across the table, close but not quite touching her beloved. “Start at the beginning.”
Luella nodded, straightening, hands flat on the table. “I spent my youth traveling Calandra. One of my favorite places to visit was Laine. I got ill on a trip and was taken to their healers. My father had business matters to attend to in Genesis, so he left me behind to heal for a month. My time spent there sparked a curiosity about alchemy. It became a hobby.”
And likely the start of a journal cataloging various plants.
“I tinkered for years,” she said. “I built a small workshop where I could make teas from different herbs and spices to see how they made me feel. Then I met your father, and my hobby was put on hold for a time.”
When she moved to Allesaria. When she took on the role of queen. When the crux flew and her family died what must have been agonizing deaths.
“I started getting to know the healers in Allesaria while I was pregnant,” she said. “After you were born, after you were no longer a baby, I had more time on my hands. The healers introduced me to the city’s best alchemist. He owned a small apothecary and invited me to visit whenever I wanted.”
“So you rekindled your hobby,” I said.
“Yes.” Luella’s fingers resumed their ministrations on the jar. “In those days, I spent most of my time in the library. Collecting books. Reading stories and myths about monsters. I started that library as a way to escape. Alchemy was another escape.”
“From Father?” Ransom asked.
“From my life,” she corrected. “In those books, I found the adventures I’d been denied. And then I stumbled upon one book that changed everything. It was full of stories that sparked an idea. I don’t know where the book came from, but I found it hidden away at the apothecary’s shop and took it for my own.”
Luella opened the flap of her satchel and took out a book. It was bound in black leather with a clasp keeping it shut.
“It’s written in the old language,” Cathlin said. “They’re stories, almost like a person’s dreams. Like Sonnets Ninety.”
Luella stroked the book’s spine. “There is one story that tells the tale of a monster’s claw given to a man as a gift for saving the beast’s life. When the claw was worn around his neck, the man never again felt pain or sickness. The day he took it off and gave it to his son was the day he died.”
That did sound like a dream. Like a child’s bedtime tale.
“It made me start to wonder,” she said. “What if we could be stronger? What if we could fight infections? What if we could hide away for months at a time and emerge no different than the day we went underground?”
“So, you were looking for a way to stop an infection but created one instead.” Ransom sneered. “Brilliant.”
“No.” She shook her head. “We did not create Lyssa. Not how you think. We made an elixir that would enhance a human’s natural abilities. We created potions and tonics from ingredients linked to monsters.”
“Like korakin?” A kaverine’s dung.
“The kaverine can see almost perfectly at night,” Luella said.
Like Ransom.
“And the cave ginger?” I pointed to the jar.
“The bogs where it’s grown are home to the alligasks. When they shed their skin, the particles are absorbed by the ginger peels. An alligask has incredible healing abilities. They’re almost impossible to mortally wound. To kill them, you must cut off their heads.”
“So you used pieces of different monsters for this elixir. But the elixir isn’t Lyssa?” My head was beginning to spin. What was I missing?
“Correct.” Luella nodded. “We created potions and tonics, testing them on ourselves. Most made us sick. Some did nothing. And others seemed to make us less prone to illness. It took years to formulate something we were confident in using outside of the small team I had amassed. When we got to that point, we asked a healer to try it on a dying patient. It was a man who’d had his leg taken by a grizzur, and the flesh around the wound had begun to rot. He shouldn’t have survived with the advanced state of the wound. But he lives to this day.”
So Luella and her alchemists created a concoction of the ordinary. Biproducts of monsters to strengthen normal bodies, to help fight infections and sickness. The reason the Voster had never felt Lyssa’s magical signature in Allesaria was because the magical signature didn’t exist. At least not yet. All she’d done was create a medicine.
“So how the hell does this elixir tie into Lyssa?” There had to be some connection, right?
Luella’s gaze shifted to Ransom. “Your father knew I was spending time with the alchemists, but it was not a hobby he particularly cared for. He never denied me my interests, but he didn’t fully support them, either. I knew if I asked to give you the elixir, he’d tell me no. And I needed you stronger before the migration.”
“So, you did it anyway.” Ransom’s voice sent a chill down my spine. “When?”
Luella had the sense to look ashamed. “Not long before your father found me with Mikhail. It was that day you were training and got sliced along the leg. It was a terrible gash. I was worried you’d lost too much blood. You were unconscious, so when my healers sewed the gash…”
“You had them give me the elixir, this nightmare that you created, without my knowledge.” Ransom’s body vibrated, his eyes a brighter silver than I’d ever seen before. “Why did it work on me and no one else?”
“It didn’t work on you.”
He tugged down the collar of his tunic, revealing those dark veins. “I beg to differ. You did this. And instead of telling me the truth, you let me believe for four years that I got Lyssa from that bariwolf bite.”
“You did.” Luella rose from her chair. “I think.”
“You think?” His voice bounced off the walls.
“I’m still trying to figure it out. I can’t explain it. Yet. But that bite transformed you. There are ten of us who took the elixir, and not a single one has gotten Lyssa. I think the elixir we gave you was the fundamental magic for Lyssa and the bariwolf’s saliva was the missing piece. When it bit you, a bond formed. A bond between man and monster and magic. That day, you both created Lyssa, and it has since morphed in your bodies. The bariwolf continued to spread it as it bit other monsters. Then as they bit others, and so on and so on. In you, it has given you powers beyond that of a normal man.”
“Gods.” I stood, unable to stay seated. Then I slapped a hand over my mouth as the realization hit so hard I nearly got sick.
Even from across the room, I felt Ransom’s heart break.
Lyssa was born from two beings.
A bariwolf. A one-eyed monster.
And Ransom.
“That bariwolf was never the beginning.” His voice cracked. “It was me. I started Lyssa.”
Fifty-Seven
“What have you done?” Ransom’s throat bobbed.
It was the third time he’d asked her that question.
It was the only time it sounded like an accusation.
“I will find a way to cure it.” Her chin quivered. “I swear to you. I will undo this magic.”
He shook his head, eyes dazed. “All the people who have died. The lives we could not save.”
Sariah. Witt.
Ransom kept a list of his own, didn’t he? And now he would bear the weight of every soul lost because of this infection. He would carry this blame.
I’d seen so many versions of Ransom since we met. The warrior. The prince. The lover.
But this version? He was lost. Unrecognizable. I hated the ruin on his face. The pain he couldn’t hide.
“It’s not your fault.” Tears spilled down Luella’s cheeks. “I’m sorry, Ransom. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
He dropped to a crouch, hands diving into his hair as our world seemed to tip on its axis, up swapping with down.
“What is Father’s involvement?” he asked.
Luella closed her eyes, but not before guilt flitted across her features. Another secret.
Was this woman’s body fueled by lies?
“One of my alchemists betrayed my trust. He went to your father.”
Ransom’s eyes lifted. Narrowed. He stood. “When?”
Luella’s hand drifted to her throat. “The day he tried to kill me.”
Ransom went so still that even the dust motes stopped floating, afraid of what was coming next. “Did he try to kill you because of your affair? Or because he found out you gave me this elixir?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “He came to my bedroom in a rage. It escalated when he saw Mikhail.”
My hands came to my face, pressing against my cheeks to keep my jaw from dropping. Again.
Had Ramsey found out that Luella had injected her creation into Ransom? Was that why he’d been furious? Because she could have killed his son?
Well, something must have changed. Because now he was trying to replicate it with his militia.
“He can’t reproduce it,” I said. “Can he? The Lyssa or elixir, whatever you want to call it?”
“No,” Luella said. “But he’s trying. And in the process, killing them.”
Those soldiers were burning alive from whatever he was putting in their veins.
“They don’t have the missing piece.” Luella sank into her chair. “Ramsey hasn’t made the connection that Ransom was given the elixir and then bitten. That the combination is what I believe created the infection. But Ramsey’s team has been experimenting. If I had to wager a guess, they’re taking blood from an infected monster and injecting it into his men.”
“Except it doesn’t work that way, does it?” I guessed. “The bite was the missing piece. The magic.”
“Yes,” Luella whispered.
The irony was stifling.
Ramsey had set out to create an army strong enough to fight the crux. Instead, he’d stolen able-bodied men from their villages and towns. Men who could have fought the monsters already in Calandra. And by the time the migration came, they’d likely all be dead.
“There must be something to undo the magic. I just need time.” Luella’s eyes were pleading. “I can fix this.”
Ransom scoffed. “Let’s pretend for a moment you manage that feat. What if Father isn’t interested in a cure? What if he realizes that all he needs to do is inject your elixir in his men and have them bitten? Then what? He won’t care that those men will die, not if it saves the kingdom from the crux.”
Ramsey would be unstoppable with an army of men who could move and fight and heal like Ransom.
Maybe he did want to defend against the crux.
Or maybe, like my father, he was tired of the ancient treaties. The borders. The kingdoms.
Maybe he wanted to take Calandra for his own.
Well, he’d have to stop his soldiers from dying first.
“He must not find out. No one can know,” Luella said. “We cannot sacrifice our sons.”
The pain etched in that last statement, the way Luella’s eyes pleaded with Ransom for forgiveness, made my chest squeeze tight. And I still had more questions. “Why is he burning books?”
Cathlin’s lip curled. “Because he’s a menace.”
Luella pulled her books closer. “When we were formulating the elixir, we spent a lot of time in the library. Some chose to leave their notes in books and journals there. It’s where I kept mine.”
Notes and knowledge that other kings might want for their own. To give to their own alchemists and healers in an attempt to create their own versions of a Guardian.
Was that what my father wanted in Allesaria? Was that how he thought he’d stop the crux? By creating Lyssa for himself and making an army of Guardians?
Father could have just gone after the other alchemists rather than send me to find the city. Though if the alchemists feared Ramsey might consign them into his service—injecting healthy men with a potion of death—those people would likely be in hiding, like Luella.
No, Father was running short on time before the next migration. His most viable option was to pluck Ramsey’s secret from the capital. To steal Lyssa for himself.
All he needed was a key to unlock the Turans’ castle door.
Mae. She’d been trained to be that key.
And now it was me.
Ransom thought the other kingdoms didn’t realize he had the infection, but my father must have suspected as much. The Guardian and Lyssa. It was all connected.
Father’s desire to get into Allesaria had to be tied to his need to understand the Guardian’s powers.
Before I could voice my suspicions, Ransom strode to the table and ripped the book away from his mother. “Maybe we should burn this.”
Luella shot to her feet, trying to snatch it back, but he kept it out of her reach. “Don’t. That book, like all the others I’ve collected, is part of my research to find a cure.”
“There is no cure,” he seethed. “You’ve had years. It’s too late. If the Voster cannot stop it, no one can.”
“Ransom—”
“Damn you, Mother.” He threw the book on the table, sending it sliding across the surface. “Damn you.”
Without another word, he marched from the house. The door flung open too hard and slammed shut with enough force to rattle the walls.
Luella slumped in her seat, burying her face in her hands as she cried. Cathlin put an arm around her shoulders, murmuring reassurances in her ear.
I needed to go after Ransom. To chase him down and make sure he was all right.
Except I was frozen in place, eyes glued to that book on the table.
It had flipped over when Ransom had tossed it, showing the other side.
There was an intricate etching on the cover. A winged emblem.
The same emblem on the pendant I wore around my neck.
Fifty-Eight
“Have you seen Ran—the Guardian?” I asked a soldier stationed at the front gates.
He bowed as he spoke, bending at the waist. “No, Princess Odessa Wolfe.”
I pushed the curls out of my face, turning to scan the courtyard. Shit. “Did he leave?”
“Not through these gates, Highness.”
I kicked a rock with my boot. “Then where the hell did he go?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know. I can help you find him if you’d like.”
“No. Thank you.” I walked away, following the wall along the outer edge of the fortress.
This was my third lap around Ellder.
In the hours since I left Luella and Cathlin, I’d gone up and down every street. I’d peered through windows and stopped in shops. I’d gone to the dungeon twice, venturing to the false wall that opened to the migration tunnel—when I’d called for him, only my echo had answered. I’d even searched the barracks, startling more than one soldier as I’d peeked through open doorways.
Wherever Ransom was hiding, he didn’t want anyone to know.
