Shield of Sparrows

Luella whirled for the door, but before she could flee, Ransom stopped her with a single word.noveldrama

“Mother.”

She turned slowly, hands clutching the jar of cave ginger. It took her a moment to meet his stare. When she did, the tears were already flowing. “It was never meant to go this far.”

“What have you done?” he asked, hand tightening over mine.

I needed her answer more than my next breath.

And it was the last thing in the realm I wanted to hear.

“Lu,” Cathlin whispered. “It’s over.”

Luella shook her head, dark hair swishing over her shoulders. “I need more time. I will find a way to undo this.”

Cathlin sank into her chair like she’d heard that a hundred times before. Argued the opposite a thousand times before. “Come inside. Tell them the truth.”

The color leached from Luella’s face, but she closed the door and crossed the room, taking the seat beside Cathlin.

Ransom stood rigid, unmoving, until I pulled on his hand, urging him to the table.

The scrape of chairs on the floor was booming in the silence. The wood creaked beneath our weight.

Luella had a satchel strapped across her body. She set the cave ginger on the table and hauled the pouch into her lap, hugging it close. “We stand no chance against the crux. We will die trying to fight them. And I will not lose my children to the shades in some underground shelter where they’re left to rot for weeks and weeks.”

The way her family had died. This had all started from a good place, hadn’t it? From a mother’s love.

Luella dabbed the corners of her eyes, clearing her throat as she sat straighter. “We must be stronger to survive a migration.”

“Mother.” Ransom’s fists landed on the table, slamming so hard the jar of cave ginger nearly toppled over. “What have you done?”

She met his eyes, defiant and bold. “I can’t lose you. I can’t lose Evie. I won’t. I did what I thought was best to keep you safe and alive.”

“Alive? You created Lyssa. And now it’s killing me.” Ransom shot out of his chair, the backs of his knees sending it skidding across the floor. His arms opened wide before he pounded a hand over his heart. Over the place where dark veins snaked across his chest.

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.”