Chapter 5
Aeliana’s breakfast threatened to surface as the stench coming from behind the dungeon’s gate hit her nose.
A whimper sounded from behind her, but she wasn’t sure if it was Felk or Lilik.
With the full moon approaching, they were both fully grown, but they huddled together, whether subconsciously remembering this place as dangerous or simply imagining the horrors that had occurred here.
“No one thought to clean up this place.” Lukai pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to Aeliana before pulling his shirt up over his upturned nose. His lamp’s light brought a shine to the golden hair curving around his ears and curling up just above his collar.
“I don’t think anyone intends to use it unless Mayvus shows up alive,” Aeliana said.
Lukai tensed beside her, a reaction she was getting used to whenever she backed up her mother’s claims.
She was grateful he didn’t argue, even though it was because he was trying to make up for past wrongs.
It was the same reason he’d agreed to sneak down here with her while Emeris sent Sylmar and the others on a goose chase.
Supposedly she’d suddenly remembered Mayvus utilizing a certain part of the Myndren Mountains for Durriken’s dragon nest and felt certain that must be where they’d find the onyx stone.
“What do you hope to find here besides winex feces and urine?” Lukai asked as they peered through the bars and took in the dismal state of the first room. Deep scratches marred the overturned tables and chairs, and the few blankets were torn to shreds.
“She was studying their blood. I want to find her research. I want to know what she hoped to learn or gain. How it might relate to the connection between her and my mother.”
One of the winex whimpered again. “Blood.” This time Felk latched on to Aeliana’s elbow, pulling her back toward him and away from Lukai. He pointed toward a second chamber. “Do you smell it?”
Aeliana shook her head. “I don’t need to. I trust you.” She wasn’t about to stop breathing through her mouth even if she felt paranoid that she could taste the winex waste.
“It’s all over that room. Winex blood.” Felk cowered as he said the words, and Lilik shivered beside him.
“Do you want to go back up to the fortress?” Aeliana asked.
Felk hesitated but shook his head. “I want to know what she did.”
Lukai swung open the gate for the room Felk had indicated, letting its hinges squeak. In his lantern’s light, various chains and tables came into view, dried pools of grey dotting every stone and wood surface.
This was the reason they’d gotten the winex to help them fight against Mayvus.
She’d been taking them and breeding them for her own purposes.
Hundreds if not thousands of them had been hatched and grown in the vicinity of the fortress so she could conduct her research without having to hunt them down.
But what exactly had she been researching?
A quick study of the room revealed a crude lab set up in the corner, with ampules of silver blood and piles of papers with notes.
Despite Aeliana’s efforts to hold off the stench, the metallic bite of that much blood made its way through as she approached the table.
Several broken glasses had spread the sticky substance across the papers, fusing them together in illegible stacks.
She pulled them apart, looking for some semblance of order.
“Are these—?” Lukai cut off his question, but Aeliana turned, catching sight of several lumps all bundled together.
Lilik let out a cry, placing hands over winex eggs. “You said we got them all.” Her voice rose in panic.
“You did,” Aeliana said. “You were held in this exact dungeon, so you would have come back for these eggs if they—if you thought they were viable.” She swallowed hard. That truth wasn’t necessarily any more reassuring.
The winex’s cries grew louder, and Felk pulled her from the eggs, huddling around her smaller form as if to block out their surroundings. He glanced around warily. “The winex way is better. These are memories I would never want back.”
Aeliana winced. “Hard memories can still teach us good things.” She ran a finger along the scars left by Arvid and Vera, evidence of all the times her captors had drawn her blood and used it for evil. The scars were reminders that she would never go down that path.
But maybe that wasn’t true for everyone.
Marnok’s face swam before her eyes. He’d had no memories, just like the winex.
He’d taught her to heal and had been a good friend.
When her mother had recognized Marnok and had given him the memories he’d lost, he’d left.
Whatever she’d shown him had made it impossible for him to face his friends.
Or maybe it had required him to face something else.
Aeliana hoped they’d see him soon, especially since he’d always been a gentler teacher than Sylmar. She’d hardly progressed in learning to heal since Marnok had left.
Felk and Lilik sniffed at the eggs, placing their ears against the shells and turning them over. Perhaps they held hope that some could be hatched, or maybe this was their way of grieving the loss.
She gave them their space and turned back to the papers, skimming through the summaries while studying the tables and lists. “The Zealot soldiers were right,” she murmured.
“About what?” Lukai’s voice startled her when it came from over her left shoulder.
“She was testing the blood on wounds,” she said, handing him the papers she’d just studied. She grabbed several more. “Sort of like the blood magic Arvid did to heal over my cuts, but winex don’t have starblood. There’s some other property in their blood she was trying to define or maybe extract.”
“Why would she want to do that?” Lukai asked. “If she can use brands or blood magic to heal, why would she need something else?”
Aeliana flipped through more pages. “Maybe so her supply of magic wouldn’t dwindle so quickly?
” She rounded the table, putting Lilik and Felk back in her line of sight.
Lilik tucked an egg under each arm and slinked out of the room, followed by Felk holding three more.
Aeliana nearly called after them but decided to let it go.
She pulled at a fresh set of papers in front of her, these ones unmarred by the spilled blood.
This time the subjects had side effects, some growing sick and others hemorrhaging to death.
“She tried mixing their blood with half-lights’ blood.
” Aeliana’s stomach churned as she took in their symptoms, the ways they’d died slow painful deaths.
“To what end?” Disgust leaked from Lukai’s words, but he kept perusing the research with her.
“The winex blood healed the subjects quickly,” Aeliana said. “Winex’s bodies function at an accelerated rate compared to ours. It’s why they age so much faster. But it also makes them heal faster.”
“Which is why they’re so dangerous.”
Aeliana shot Lukai an irritated glance, but Lilik and Felk hadn’t returned, and he remained invested in his set of papers.
“I don’t think she actually wanted their healing properties.” Lukai frowned, then held his papers out for Aeliana. “Look. Whoever was conducting this research for her was trying to divide the healing properties out—not to use them—but to remove them.”
Aeliana scanned the messy script, following Lukai’s line of thought. “The side effects—she thought her subjects were aging too quickly because of the same property that healed them.”
“It makes sense.” Lukai picked up another stack. “But that means there was something else she wanted from their blood.”
Aeliana watched as Lilik and Felk came back in, silently retrieving another half-dozen eggs.
Tears glinted on Lilik’s cheeks in the lantern light.
Had those been her eggs? What had kept them from hatching?
And what had kept Lilik from coming back for them after the battle?
She had to have known they were there. Why hadn’t she removed them then?
Aeliana turned back to the papers, only able to handle one mystery at a time.
What could Mayvus have wanted from the winex’s blood if not their faster than average healing properties?
Winex held no magic. Most people felt they had below average intelligence.
Their only gift was their ability to be reborn.
As long as they never died, they were practically immortal creatures.
“Immortality,” Aeliana breathed out. The room spun as it all came together in her mind, and she gripped the edge of the table.
“Hmm?” Lukai asked, more focused on his set of papers than her revelation.
It wasn’t difficult to imagine Mayvus wanting immortality, testing winex after winex on the slim chance she might discover what exactly allowed them to be reborn. But she wouldn’t want to also age so quickly. So that element would have to be extracted.
Aeliana moved closer to the eggs, placing a hand over one’s smooth surface. It was cold and lifeless, something Felk and Lilik had likely sensed from the start. A shell that entombed the creature that could have been. Except…there.
She let her finger wiggle in through a tiny crack in the shell, more like a hole that had once held some sort of apparatus. Maybe it was something Mayvus had inserted into the eggs. Had she poisoned them?
“Does any of her research talk about the eggs?” Aeliana asked.
“Not yet,” Lukai said.
A hiss erupted from Aeliana’s left, and she stepped back as Lilik returned, pulling the egg from Aeliana’s grasp. Lilik bared her teeth at Aeliana, reminding Aeliana what Lilik had been like before Felk had found her, before Aeliana had raised the winex to be allies instead of enemies.
“I’m sorry,” Aeliana whispered. “I’m just trying to understand.”
Lilik turned her back on Aeliana and grabbed a second egg, scampering out of the dungeon with a growl.
Felk frowned, glancing between Aeliana and the door. “She’s hurting.”
Aeliana nodded.
“The unborn winex are all dead. Mayvus murdered them.” His normally bright eyes clouded over with pain.
“How can you tell?”
“Winex eggs always hatch. I just know that. Like I know my name. Instinct.”
Aeliana hesitated, not wanting to further his grief. “Could something have been inserted in the egg to kill it?”
He gave her a sharp look, then loped over to study one of the eggs, letting his long fingers slide over the same gaps she’d found. His lips curled with a snarl. “She drained them.”
Aeliana stilled. “Drained them?”
“They’re lighter.” He picked up the egg as if weighing it. “I thought it was because they decayed. But it’s the fluid. It’s all gone.”
“Aeliana?” Lukai called, his voice strained. “I think this is what you’re looking for.”
She turned back to the lab table. Lukai’s face looked pale in the lantern light.
“Felk’s right,” he said. “She drained the fluid, then bottled it up, testing it for its regeneration properties.”
A memory clicked in her mind. When they’d met up with Felk to join forces against Mayvus, he’d said there were rumors among the soldiers of the blood holding regenerative properties.
It had sounded unbelievable at the time, but now it seemed eerily possible.
When the blood hadn’t worked, she must have tested the fluid from the eggs. Had that worked?
Aeliana took the papers Lukai offered, skimming through the various trials Mayvus had done. “She revived animals with it?”
Lukai nodded, then shuddered. “It didn’t work on people, but not because she didn’t try. It did, however, bring some of them back from the brink of death.”
Aeliana’s mouth grew dry. “We need to tell Sylmar.”
“You’re bleeding.” Lukai took the papers from her hand, turning her palm over to reveal a cut dripping blood.
“Oh, I guess the glass must have gotten me.” She took the handkerchief he’d given her for the stench and used it to staunch the flow.
Lukai grimaced. “I hope you didn’t get any of that winex blood in there. Let me heal you.” His hands were gentle as he ran his fingers over her palm. He closed his pale blue eyes and leaned closer, his breath hitting her cheek. His proximity heightened Aeliana’s awareness of how alone they were.
They still hadn’t talked much about the bond that connected them.
Aeliana’s parents had bonded her to Lukai as an infant, an old tradition now only held by royalty as a precursor to betrothals and marriages.
Supposedly it had been for her protection, but now it left them connected in ways Aeliana wasn’t sure she wanted, even though they’d agreed to just focus on building a friendship for now.
With the bond, they could each sense if the other was in danger, and at times, it made them put the other’s needs before their own.
But Lukai had used that connection to justify taking Aeliana’s blood without her permission.
For her protection. They hadn’t talked about that much either.
She scowled and pulled her hand away before he finished.
“That’s good enough. Thank you.”
His eyebrows rose at her sharp tone, but he let his hands drop and stepped away, the nervous shuffle of his feet making her think he too had suddenly become aware of just how alone they were.
Except his gaze kept dropping to her lips, and she suspected his discomfort was for far different reasons than hers.
“Aeliana, maybe we should—”
“Yes. Let’s go see if Sylmar’s back.” She grabbed the papers from the table and spun around, eager to leave both Lukai and the stench of death and torture behind.