Transmutation #2
“It could be. She set herself apart, expecting more of herself than anyone else could have demanded. But there was another side to her, too. A warmth that she kept hidden from most people. You are very like her.” Morena smiled.
“She had the most unexpected sense of humor. Dry, sharp, the kind that would catch you off guard and make you laugh before you realized what had happened. She saved it for the people she trusted, which weren’t many, but when she let you in …
” She trailed off, her smile bittersweet.
"When she let you in, she was wonderful. "
Lark tried to reconcile this picture with her fragmentary memories. A woman with silver hair bending over her bed. A voice singing softly in the darkness. Those feelings of being safe, of being loved, that she had spent twenty-five years trying to forget because remembering hurt too much.
“She let me in,” Morena continued. “I was her little sister, her shadow, trailing after her everywhere she went. She could have found me annoying. Most older sisters would have. But she was patient with me. Protected me. When I first showed signs of having the gift, our gift, she was the one who taught me to control it. To hide it.”
“Why hide it?”
“Because it frightened people. Even other witches, even our own family, looked at us differently once they knew what we could do. Creating matter from nothing, shaping aetheria into solid form, it’s not natural.
It’s not how magic is supposed to work.” Morena’s voice carried old pain.
“Alisse learned that lesson young. She passed it on to me.”
A realization came to Lark. That wild surge of aetheria in the forest, that first creation in her hands, she hadn't known what she was capable of because her mother had never taught her how to use her magic.
But now she finally understood. Alisse had done that to protect her, the same as she had done for Morena. To keep her from being discovered.
“What happened with Duskwood?” she asked. “How did she end up married to him?”
Morena’s expression darkened. “He was charming. That’s what everyone said about him.
Brilliant and charming and utterly devoted to her.
He pursued her for years, and she resisted until, one day, she finally agreed.
I never knew why. She just came home and told us she was getting married, and there was something in her eyes that I didn’t understand until much later. ”
“What was it?”
“Fear. She was afraid of him even then, I think, but she believed she could manage him. Control him. Keep him close enough to watch.” Morena shook her head. “She was wrong. You can’t manage someone like Theron Duskwood. You can only escape him or be destroyed by him.”
The fire crackled. Outside, the sounds of Springhope drifted through the window, distant and muffled.
“She wore a necklace,” Lark said slowly. “A vial on a chain. I remember it from when I was very young. And there was something inside it.”
Morena went still.
“Dark aetheria,” Lark continued. “I didn’t know what it was then. But I’ve seen it since, and I recognized it when I thought back. The way it seemed to absorb the light. The way it felt alive and hungry.”
“Where did you see this necklace?” Morena’s voice was carefully controlled.
“She always wore it. Even in my earliest memories.” Lark met her aunt’s eyes. “Do you know where it came from?”
“He gave it to her. A wedding gift.”
The words hung in the air, heavy with implication.
“She told me once that she hated it,” Morena continued.
“That wearing it felt like carrying a piece of him against her heart. But she couldn’t destroy it.
If the vial broke, the corruption inside would be released.
She thought keeping it on her person was safer than leaving it somewhere it might fall into the wrong hands. ”
Lark absorbed this. Her mother had worn a piece of her enemy’s darkness every day, not out of sentiment but out of necessity. Another burden she had carried, another sacrifice she had made to protect the people around her.
“She was still wearing it,” Lark said quietly. “When she died.”
Morena closed her eyes. A long breath escaped her. “So it’s gone. Lost in Wintersorrow with everything else. Why are you asking about this? After all these years?”
Lark hesitated. The truth was complicated, tangled up with everything she had learned since leaving Wintersorrow.
“I’ve seen what dark aetheria does,” she said finally. “The creatures it creates. The way it corrupts everything it touches. If there’s any way to contain it, to neutralize it …” She shook her head. “We need to know. Before it spreads any further.”
Morena thought about it and then shook her head. “I don’t have that knowledge. The healing arts I practice deal with living things, with bodies and minds and the natural flow of aetheria. Dark aetheria is different, twisted.”
“Is there anyone who might know? Any records, any histories?”
“You could try looking in the archive.” Morena spoke slowly, as though the idea was forming as she said it.
“Springhope has maintained records for centuries. Journals from the founding families, treatises on aetheric theory, histories of the old wars. If there’s information about containing or transmuting dark aetheria, it may be there. ”
Transmuting. The word caught in her mind and held
“Where is this archive?”
“Near the council hall, on the seventh terrace. It’s open to residents, though visitors would need permission.” Morena studied her. “I could arrange access for you, if you’d like.”
“Yes, please.”
Lark finished her tea and set the cup aside. The afternoon light had changed while they talked, growing long and golden as evening approached. She should return to the guesthouse. To Noctis. To another night of lying awake and wondering how to reach a man who did not want to be reached.
But she felt lighter. She had come here looking for advice about Rion and had found instead a connection. Purpose. A thread she could follow that might lead somewhere useful.
As she walked back through the winding streets of Springhope, her aunt’s words echoing in her mind, another thought formed.
Rion had been a scholar before the Ashen Enclave tore him apart.
He had loved research, loved libraries, loved the patient work of uncovering forgotten knowledge.
Whatever else Duskwood’s torturers had taken from him, that part of who he was might still exist somewhere beneath the silence.
If she could give him a reason to engage with the world again, a puzzle to solve, a mystery to unravel, perhaps it would help. Perhaps the scholar could lead the way back for the rest of him.
Keep showing up, Morena had said.
Lark intended to. But maybe she could bring hope with her when she did.