CHAPTER FORTY-ONE #2
“I don’t want your broth. I want to know what that look was.
” The words came out louder than I’d intended, as evidenced by Catrin’s flinch.
I studied them both in turn—Catrin’s smile disappearing as her full lips downturned, and Vayen’s hard features settling into that familiar stony countenance—and waited for an explanation.
When none was offered, I carefully placed the clay jar on my bedside table before righting the bed linen over my legs and elongating my posture.
My eyes fluttered shut as I steeled my resolve, summoning every last bit of patience I had at my disposal.
When I forced my gaze open, I focused my attention on Vayen.
I knew that Catrin would not speak without her approval, so she was the first I needed to topple.
“I have been drugged, bound, kidnapped, and now, brutally attacked. All in the name of Naeno, your goddess, and the Vessel you believe me to be. Yet you keep me in the dark and feed me half-truths.” My attention did not falter, even as Vayen’s dropped to the hands clasped in her lap.
“If you are going to continue putting my life in danger, and I think we both know that is your intention, then the very least you can do is answer my damn questions when I ask them.”
I shifted my focus then, pinning Catrin with a cold stare, no longer allowing my affection for her to soften me. “I know you have something you want to tell me. So why won’t you say it?”
“Lyssa, I—”
I could sense her hesitation, so I silenced her with a raised palm.
I measured my tone, hoping to disallow my mounting annoyance to clip my syllables.
“Stories of Sor, Volume I, chapter twelve. The chapter on Moonkin, Grenythwood’s mythical man-eating wolves.
You left your note for me in that specific location.
What exactly is the likelihood that I then, within only a few days’ time, come face to face with that very creature? ”
When Vayen spoke, her voice was dangerously low, but she did not raise her head. “How could you do such a thing?”
Catrin practically stumbled over herself to get the words out. “Vayen, please! I—I’ve seen the signs. We all have. It was only a matter of time before you phased, and I wanted her to be prepared.”
“By providing her with a storybook?”
“There is truth in those pages. You know it as well as I!” Catrin crossed her arms defensively, shifting her weight to the opposite foot.
I took no pleasure in seeing her squirm under Vayen’s accusation, but I would not attempt to save her from it, either; I needed both of them to submit if I was to get the answers I sought.
“Perhaps it’s not all lies,” Vayen said, chin lifting slightly so that only slivers of her widened pupils were visible to the two of us. “But you had no right.”
“You were in denial,” Catrin argued. She rounded the bed to kneel beside Vayen, desperation evident in her soft features.
“Berig didn’t want to admit it, and neither did Winnie.
But I saw it in your eyes the moment you carried Lyssa into my shop.
You’ve been on the verge of phasing ever since her arrival. ”
“Phasing?” I echoed, gaze volleying between the two of them as my memory sought the reason for the word’s familiarity. “What does that mean?”
The silence between the three of us thickened alongside my growing annoyance. They could speak to one another as if I weren’t there, but the moment I intervened, their tongues tangled into constellations. I was just about ready to throttle the both of them when a realization struck me.
“When we saw Scholar Whick, and I asked why you believed your connection to Naeno had been severed, you refused to answer me,” I began, drawing both of their eyes.
“You said it was a truth not meant for me. But if you truly believe I’m Naeno’s Vessel, by what logic does that stand?
If your lineage and imbuements are directly connected to Naeno, and I am connected to her, then that knowledge is just as much mine as it is yours.
So either you believe I’m the Vessel, or you don’t. Which is it?”
I tried my best to sound reasonable, and not at all desperate.
It was nonsense, of course—I couldn’t see myself being anything more than fodder for the Moonlight Trials, a cautionary tale to dissuade others who sought a Goddess’ power.
But, if my life was forfeit, I at least wanted to understand why, and to be treated as an equal in this journey; if I had to use Vayen’s superstition to get what I wanted, then I would do exactly that.
Vayen’s body sagged, her hurt, disappointed expression melting away as her focus shifted from Catrin to me. She looked nothing short of exhausted. Our conversation seemed not to be helping in that regard, but I couldn’t afford to care. I wanted answers. I needed answers. I deserved answers.
So when Vayen stood from the chair and turned her back on us, I had no ability to control the rage that bubbled to the surface.
“DAMNIT, WOMAN! WHY WON’T YOU—?”
I faltered as the very air within our tavern room shifted. My gaze flitted all around, searching for the source of the familiar sensation, that unique prickling beneath my skin and the faint hum of my body as the world around me unsettled.
“Lyssa?” Catrin asked, worry pinching her features.
“I feel something,” I whispered, drawing my legs beneath me to kneel.
Vayen paid neither of us any mind. She rested a palm on the opposite wall, her fingers digging into the trunk the tavern had been built up against.
“Where does it hurt?” Catrin rose from the ground to sit on my bed, seizing my hand.
“It’s not pain,” I said, swallowing through the trepidation tightening my throat. “It feels… it feels like I’m about to unveil again.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.” Catrin’s gaze was faraway. “Unless…”
Vayen’s heavy breathing grew audible, a labored, ragged sound stealing both mine and Catrin’s attention. Catrin stood to her full height, palm pressing to her heart as she watched Vayen stand there, unmoving, facing the wall. “Vayen?”
But Vayen did not respond. Her shoulders rose and fell, those unsteady breaths increasing, until something reminiscent of a snarl escaped her mouth.
“Vayen, think about what you’re doing,” Catrin urged, but I doubted very much that Vayen could hear her at all.
Vayen’s only reply was the rounding of her shoulders and a strangled sound barely surviving through clenched teeth.
I couldn’t see her face, but I could feel her in the air; that odd warmth, the kind that emanated from Vayen, filled the room around us.
It continued to intensify, her light brown skin shimmering beneath the surface, as if the energy in her body was rearranging itself.
An intensive experience, I was certain, for Vayen had become a hearth.
How could she possibly be producing that much heat all on her own?
“Catrin,” I whispered, pressing myself against the wall. “What is happening?”
Catrin did not remove those wide, awestruck eyes from Vayen as the words slipped from her mouth.
“She’s phasing.”
Perhaps it was the way Catrin spoke the word, or the final remnants of slumber relinquishing my senses, but her utterance summoned a knowing within me.
My heart beat at a gallop, sounding a drum in my ears as the riddle solved itself.
Vayen had phases, it would seem. And so too did Naeno.
They had shared a connection, and her entire quest’s purpose was to reforge that severance.
That must mean her imbuement—her phase—was at the smaller moon’s mercy.
But what if the connection ran even deeper? What if… they were kin?
“Chapter twelve. Moonkin,” I muttered to myself. I repeated the inscription beneath the chapter header that began the epic, harrowing tales of the man-eating wolves of Grenythwood. “Do not become their prey, for the agony of ill-fitted skin is burdensome.”
Ill-fitted skin.
In that moment, I knew what was happening.
I should have been afraid. I should have been running from the room, for I still maintained that sorcery and Lunamorians were not meant to coexist, but I couldn’t look away.
All I could do was observe Vayen. I wanted to see her transform, with my own two eyes, into the very wolf I now believed her to be.
By then, sweat was pouring down Vayen’s body.
Her neck angled this way, then that, each shoulder rising and falling independently of the other, her back twisting with the unseen effort of the transformation I anticipated.
When she finally fell to the ground on all fours and slammed her fist, a crack preceding a fissure in the wood, her body slackened.
To me, it appeared to be a submission of sorts.
A deep groan bubbled up from her chest, something primal and real that touched an unknown part of me, before she threw her head back and forced both eyes open.
Except her eyes—that perfect silver with the starburst of green around the center—had transformed into the platinum orbs I’d seen in my dreams. Pure light flooded from them, spilling out into the room with such a blinding flash that both Catrin and I had to shield ourselves with our hands.
I couldn’t look at Vayen’s face directly, but I watched as the luminescence cascaded downward, over her skin, drenching her in the most astounding glow.
Before I could grasp what I was seeing, the light consumed her, summoning yet another blinding flash, before a new form emerged—the enormous black wolf.
With near magnetic attraction, the light surged into the wolf’s fur, seemingly absorbed by the darkness, until all heat and energy and glow collapsed in on itself as though it had never been there at all.
Catrin clasped her hands over her mouth, eyes doubled in size, her body visibly shaking.