6. Chapter Six
~Evalina~
The items I took from Tarron’s box seemed to burn a hole through my dress, their weight pressing against my skin as if they carried the prince’s wrath with them. I did my best to ignore it as I returned to the kitchen to clean up following the evening’s meal. Tarron and his ‘guest’ must have slipped away during dinner because the servers were just taking dessert up when I returned.
“Did you get anything?” Keerla whispered, keeping her voice low enough that it couldn’t be heard by anyone else over the hum of activity in the room.
“Maybe,” I whispered back, subconsciously clutching at my dress where the hidden items lay. They might be nothing or they might be exactly what I needed. “I’ll check my father’s library when I get home to find out for sure.”
It took another hour to finish my work for the evening, every second dragging with the heavy weight of the stolen items brushing against my skin. Every unexpected noise sent a jolt through my chest, my heart pounding so hard I feared it might give me away. What if Tarron discovered something missing? If I were found to have stolen from the high prince, justice would be swift and brutal.
It always was in Etta.
At last, the kitchen was tidy with everything ready to start on the next day’s breakfast first thing in the morning. Pavla lingered outside the kitchen like a shadow, straightening to attention when we appeared.
“May I escort you ladies home tonight?”
“Do you think we’ll get lost?” Keerla demanded, and a deep red stain crept up the young man’s cheeks.
I hid my smile, understanding the situation clearly even if Keerla didn’t yet see it. He hadn’t been waiting there for my benefit. “That would be nice, Pavla. Thank you.”
Outside the servant’s entrance, blue stars dotted the inky sky above us. Mindful of nighttime dangers, we walked briskly down the well-trodden path through the trees that led to the servant’s quarters. A semi-circle of small huts with grass roofs appeared before us, the first of which belonged to me. I waved Pavla and Keerla goodbye before opening the door of the small house I shared with my mother.
“Mama? I’m home,” I called out softly as I entered, not knowing whether or not she’d be awake. Lately, she slept more and more.
“Lina?” A quiet croak of my name answered me. “Help.”The one word sent a chill down my spine, and I bolted into her room, my heart pounding as I found her crumpled at the foot of her bed. A pale light from the window cast shadows over her frail form, making her look even smaller than usual.
“What happened?” I gasped as I bent down to help her up.
“I tried to… go… fell.”
Even speaking sounded too difficult for her, and I checked her body for injuries after lying her back in the soft bed, thankfully coming up blank. “You know you shouldn’t get up on your own. How long were you down there?”
She shrugged, which I knew meant it had been longer than she wanted to admit. While I’d been lying beneath Tarron’s bed, my mother had probably also been on the floor in an unintentional parallel.
“I’m going to make you a drink and some food. Stay here.”
“No. You work… all day. Rest.”
“ You need to rest,” I argued, resisting the tears that threatened to overtake me every time I took in the sight of my strong, capable mother reduced to this helpless shell of a woman. My chest tightened with helpless frustration but my voice remained steady. “I’ll be right back.”
In the kitchen, I prepared a broth and put it over the fire to warm up before slipping into the small nook that contained my father’s books. A teacher with a fascination for other realms and creatures, he had the biggest collection of books I’d ever seen outside of the library at the royal residence. When he died, my mother left them in place. The nook still smelled faintly of aged parchment and ink, as if he’d only stepped away a moment ago.
Luckily, I knew exactly which one to look for: A guide to terrestrial materials. One of my father’s favourites. With the thick volume in hand, I flipped through the pages of elements, listed in alphabetical order, until I came to the page titled Silver. The word leapt out at me like a beacon, and I skimmed the rest of the text eagerly, my index finger underlining the words as I went so I didn’t miss anything.
Silver is a light-grey element found in the terrestrial realm’s crust. Often impure, it can be refined by a simple dismelding process. Humans use it for currency and decoration. It is harmful to several other species, including genies, gorgons and various shifters, including werewolves.
Old memories stirred at the sight of the word ‘werewolves’. Though years had passed, I could still vividly remember the drawing I found in Tarron’s box as a child and the strange fascination I felt towards it.
At the moment, though, my focus needed to be on my mother, so I pulled out the small container and page I’d spirited out of Tarron’s box that evening. With more time to peruse it, I read through the information about the condition that bore significant similarities to my mother’s illness, and how silver might reverse it.
Boil twenty plins of pure silver and add to a standard healing potion. Upon drinking it, the patient will make a full recovery.
My heart leapt at the possibility. With trembling hands, I opened the container holding the small, grey cylinder. If it were pure, it should give me about twenty plins when melted, plins being a standard unit of measurement that I used in my cooking, but I remembered that my father’s book said the material was more than often not pure.
It also said I could refine it by dismelding, which could easily be done over the fire. Returning to the kitchen, I added a second pot next to the broth that had almost begun to bubble and set the pot’s control to ‘dismeld’. While that began to work, I filled a bowl of broth for my mother, along with a glass of fresh Etta berry juice. By the time I returned from taking them to her, the dismelding had finished.
In dismay, I looked down into the pot at the results. The cylinder had melted and separated into small puddles of liquid, but the light-grey one, which I assumed to be the silver, was only a tiny fragment of it, perhaps two plin’s worth at best.
I would need a lot more silver.
Pouring the precious material into a vial, I went back to my father’s book. Perhaps it had some further information on where to find it that didn’t involve breaking into Tarron’s room again. Eagerly, I flipped the page, but the next page went on to a new material. In frustration, I turned another page, and another, hoping that somehow, more would appear, but that one page seemed to be all there was.
With a sigh, I closed the book, but as I did, a folded page sticking out of the front of the book caught my eye. The heavy creases suggested it had been folded and unfolded many times before. When I unfolded it, a small, hand-drawn map appeared with notes in my father’s handwriting. My heart panged at the familiar sight and the weight of his loss bore down on me again, heavy and solid compared to the fragility of the worn paper in my hands.
Pushing that pain down, I focused on the map. The royal residence, clearly recognizable, sat near the middle and our own house had also been drawn onto it. Down a path, away from the residence, my father had marked a small circle.
Terrestrial portal , it said. Danger: werewolves.
My pulse quickened once again. Did the map really show a portal to the terrestrial realm? What danger did the werewolves pose? Would there be silver there too?
It might be a long shot, but at that point, my options appeared to be dwindling. Tarron might have more silver but I couldn’t ask him for help, not if I wanted to keep the small amount of freedom that I had.
If I wanted to cure my mother on my own, I would have to take another risk. That night, once my mother had gone to sleep, I would see what lay on the other side of that portal, no matter the danger.