With Rian now recovering under the watchful eyes of the hospital staff a few blocks away, the rest of the group had returned to the inn. Nerissa herself had narrowly dodged being subjected to an examination as well. That would have been awkward, to say the least. It had been avoided only by her repeated insistence that the blood on her clothing was the result of carrying Rian and not personal injury. Worried that admission of even the slightest wound would result in a full exam, she had waited until they were back at the inn to mention the cut on her knee. Raysel had practically coated her in antiseptic and bandages, barely giving her the opportunity to sponge off the grime and change clothes before bundling her into bed. Although he dressed her knee with the utmost care, he had bombarded her all the while with a storm of questions about what happened inside the cave. Answering him had been nearly as exhausting as the experience itself.
Nerissa paused in front of the standing mirror and lifted the bottom of her tunic and undershirt. Hanging at the base of her sternum, as always, was the fire-fire crystal pendant. Behind it—in the exact size and shape of the crystal—was a blackened scorch mark where the gauze had been reduced to a sooty char. She had first noticed the burn while changing, but based on Raysel’s reaction to the small cut on her knee, she had decided to wait until she got a better look at it before mentioning it. Studying the reflected mark now, all doubts about its origin were driven from her mind.
The pendant swung innocuously against her chest as she pulled her shirts back down and proceeded to the table where the newest book lay. Her fingers brushed the leather cover, which was mottled with brown and black patches from the fire long ago. The intricate filigree decorating the front was still visible, though little more than a trace of the original gold leaf remained. It surrounded a central design that consisted of four triangles arranged along the edges of a square to form the shape of a diamond. The more Nerissa studied it, the more familiar the design seemed, but she couldn’t quite place why.
Despite everything that happened in the cave, the crystal shard had miraculously remained tucked into the book’s spine. As Nerissa pried it out, the soft glow it emitted highlighted the network of fractures riddling the stone. Having already seen its other half, she was not surprised to see the extent of the heat damage. In fact, considering the sheer number of cracks present, it was amazing the stone hadn’t shattered entirely.
Nerissa’s hand trembled as the thought of shattering crystals reminded her of those that had broken in the days leading up to the masquerade. There was a superstition that said shattering crystals were supposed to be an omen of significant change, and yet she had been too preoccupied to pay much attention to the occurrence. If she had taken heed of the warning, would the outcome of Casimer’s attack have been different?
In a deliberate effort to distract herself from that unproductive line of thought, she placed the shard on the table and opened the book. She reached for the upper corner of the inner cover, no longer caring that she had promised to wait until Raysel returned to read the next section of the prophecy.
As she did so, the knob to the hall door clicked, and Nerissa swatted the book closed. With a guilty flush staining her cheeks, she whirled around in time to see Raysel step inside while balancing a tray of food in one hand. He glanced suspiciously between her face and the book on the table, but he looked amused rather than annoyed.
“Don’t tell me you thought I actually believed you would stay in bed once I left the room,” Raysel teased.
A fleeting smile crossed Nerissa’s lips in response. As much as she wanted to eat right away, there wouldn’t be much time to talk before Desta and the others came back from the dining room. “I need to tell you something while we’re alone.”
“What is it?” Raysel asked. His amused suspicion turned genuine upon hearing her odd tone of voice. He set the tray on the table beside the book, and tendrils of steam curled appetizingly above the two bowls of beef with barley.
“I know I said earlier that my only injury was the cut on my knee—” Nerissa began.
“Where else were you hurt?” Raysel interrupted.
Nerissa shook her head and rushed on. “I wasn’t hurt. It’ll be easier to explain if I show you,” she said, and then she pulled up her shirts for the second time. Upon seeing the bare skin of her stomach, Raysel quickly averted his gaze.
“You can look—I have my wraps on,” Nerissa said. “That’s what you need to see. I haven’t taken off the ones I wore in the cave yet. I was waiting until I showed you this to change them.”
Raysel slowly raised his eyes from the floor, still hesitant to look regardless of her reassurances.
“How did that happen?” Raysel asked, perplexed. “There was no burn mark on the outside of your clothes. I would have seen it.”
“So you’re shy now, but you weren’t afraid to look closely before?” Nerissa pointed out with a smirk.
Raysel’s lips twisted as he realized she was teasing him. “That was the outside of your clothes,” he said, the tips of his ears turning red.
“You were looking out for my well-being then, and the situation is no different now,” Nerissa said. The wraps she wore around her chest and torso were more than sufficient to alleviate any concerns about compromising her modesty. “I think the gauze must have gotten burned in the process of lighting the torch after the attack. I was so nervous that I couldn’t get it to catch.” She explained her desperation and difficulties with the flint and steel, the heat she felt flare up just before the torch lit, and how the flames seemed to spring up on their own.
Raysel grasped her wrist. “Wait. Are you telling me that you were trying to use the flint and steel without a char cloth?”
“Char cloth?”
Raysel’s brows rose. “You’re supposed to use the sparks from the flint to light the char cloth first and then use that to start the fire.”
Nerissa’s eyes widened. Now that Raysel mentioned it, she did remember seeing him holding something else whenever he used the flint and steel. “So that’s what the cloth was for!”
“You really didn’t use the char cloth?”
“No. It was in the container with the flint and steel, but I didn’t know what it was for.”
Raysel rubbed his chin in consideration. “No wonder you had such a hard time starting the fire. It’s extremely difficult to do without the char cloth. I suppose one of those sparks could have landed on the torch head and smoldered, but I doubt it.”
He reached out and lifted the leather cord from around her neck, cupping the pendant in his hand to examine it more closely. The stone itself was unmarked, but the delicate goldwork surrounding it was laced with soot. “It feels warm to the touch but no more so than any other object would be after being in close contact with someone’s body.” Turning his attention to the blackened mark on the gauze, he asked, “Did it burn your skin too?”
“No, there’s not even a red mark,” Nerissa assured him. “It certainly felt hot enough to burn me at the time, but despite that, it didn’t harm me in the slightest. It’s too far-fetched to think the mark wasn’t caused by the pendant. The timing between when I felt the heat and when the flames appeared is too coincidental. It’s almost as if thinking about fire made it produce the flames.”
“I don’t know,” Raysel said incredulously. “I’ve read dozens of books on the uses of crystals, and none of them ever mentioned being able to make one do something. We know crystals have many uses—your voice-changing necklace and Ildiko’s healing stones are merely two examples. But they always function passively. You wear the necklace, and the stones alter the sound of your voice whether you are aware of it or not.”
“I’ve never heard of it happening either,” she said. Her eyes locked with his, and she added, “Still, as strange as it was, I can’t deny what I experienced.”
Raysel held her gaze for a moment before nodding in agreement. “Can you make it happen again?”
Nerissa took the necklace from him and stared into
the crimson stone while trying to summon up the same urgency she felt before. Her eyes narrowed to slits as she concentrated, but it was of no use. Nothing happened—not a glint, not a glimmer, and definitely not any heat. Sighing, she handed the pendant back to Raysel.
“Let me try,” he said. He closed his eyes, and his brow furrowed in concentration. “I’m focusing on fire as hard as I can, but I don’t feel the stone getting any warmer.”
“I don’t see anything happening either,” Nerissa said.
Raysel opened his eyes and frowned. “I don’t think you should wear this until we figure out exactly how it burned the gauze.”
Nerissa snatched the pendant from his hand and clutched it tightly in her fist. “I’ve worn this every day for months, and nothing has happened until now. Maybe there was something in the cave that caused it to behave oddly,” she suggested.
“No. You noticed something strange about the crystal before,” Raysel countered. “I remember you thought it glowed the day I gave it back to you. We assumed it was a trick of the light at the time, but maybe it wasn’t.”
Nerissa bit her bottom lip. She couldn’t argue with that. The crystal had felt oddly warm while she watched the others help put out the fire in Darci’s workshop. She hadn’t given it any further consideration since then, but perhaps it actually had been significant.
“This crystal is the first thing that belonged to me since Casimer’s attack, and it’s also a precious gift from you. Even if I’m just being overly sentimental, I’m not going to part with it easily,” Nerissa said. “Besides, we have a better chance of learning more about it if I keep it close.”
Raysel gave her a reluctant smile. He didn’t like it, but she did have a point. “If you feel that strongly about it, I won’t press the issue. Promise me that you will be careful with it, and you’ll let me know right away if you notice anything out of the ordinary.”
“I promise,” Nerissa swore. She extended her pinky finger to him, and he hooked it with his to shake on their agreement.
“Should we eat now or check the book?” Raysel asked.
“That’s a silly question,” Nerissa said. Her hands were already stroking the book’s cover. “Books always come before food—unless you can eat and read at the same time, of course. This one is far too old to do that with, however.”
Raysel cast one longing look at the steaming bowls. “The soup can wait.”
The binding crackled, and bits of leather flaked off onto the table as Nerissa opened the cover. She peeled away the fabric to reveal the next section of the prophecy and another diagram.
The fourth section of the prophecy is as follows:
Deep in the caves, the inborn talent of the Reflection will draw a spark from the Heart of Fire that will ultimately return an ancient power to the world.
They will journey through the ruins in the mountains to the place where time stands still. Here, the lost suspension technique is still remembered. The Reflection will confront the Destroyer using this technique in order to retake the throne without staining their own hands with blood.
Nerissa and Raysel finished reading at almost the exact same time.
“It couldn’t be describing…,” Raysel began.
“It has to be! There’s no other logical explanation. This must be the Heart of Fire!” Nerissa exclaimed as she fumbled to pull the pendant out from under her shirt again.
Raysel grabbed her hand. “Let’s not be hasty.”
Nerissa’s jaw dropped. “Hasty?” she squeaked. “It says I have an inborn talent that will draw a spark from the Heart of Fire. We were just debating how I could have used the crystal to light the torch. This ‘ancient power’ has to be the explanation.”
“I’ll admit that I’m intrigued, but the prophecy doesn’t tell us much. Is this ancient power a good thing?”
Nerissa’s mouth opened and closed as she tried to formulate a counter argument. “You’re right, it doesn’t tell us much,” she relented. “How could it be a bad thing if it can be used to stop Casimer?”
“It doesn’t say the power can be used to stop Casimer. It says Casimer’s actions can be suspended. Suspending an action isn’t the same as stopping it.”
“Aren’t you getting hung up on one little word?” Nerissa pointed to the second paragraph. “It says right here that the lost technique can be used to remove Casimer from power without bloodshed.”
“I realize taking back Chiyo without bloodshed is the outcome you want most. Yet something about the prophecy’s wording makes me doubt the solution is as straightforward as it seems.”
Nerissa thrummed her fingers on the page. Raysel did have a point, though she hated to admit it. She had only seen what she wanted to see in the prophecy’s words, but that wasn’t necessarily the correct interpretation.
A knock came from the hallway door, and Desta popped her head in before either of them could answer. She looked past the pair, eyeing the untouched tray of food on the table.
“I came up to take the tray back to the kitchen for you, but you haven’t even eaten yet!” she proclaimed after stepping inside.
Nerissa pressed the fabric lining back into place and closed the book’s cover. “We can talk more about this later,” she said. She took one of the bowls and sat down at the table with Raysel.
Desta studied the book’s cover, tracing her index finger around each of the four triangles in the center of the design. “Is this the book you brought back from the cave?”
“Yes,” Nerissa said between bites.
Desta’s head tilted to the side thoughtfully, but she didn’t say anything more.
“Why don’t you have a seat?” Raysel invited.
“Oh, no. I’ll leave the two of you alone. I was planning to do some writing,” Desta said, turning away so quickly it made Nerissa wonder what the girl was hiding.
She broke off a piece of bread and dunked it into her soup, watching as Desta pulled a notebook and pen out from under her pillow. In recent days, it had become apparent to both Nerissa and Raysel that Desta’s behavior had changed. Instead of spending her free time socializing with the twins, she had been withdrawn and pensive. Nerissa had assumed Desta was still angry with the twins for peeping on her, but she’d been smiling and laughing with them at breakfast the last two mornings. Since it seemed they had been forgiven, there had to be another cause. She strongly suspected it had something to do with whatever Desta was writing in her notebook. The first thing Desta had done after checking into the inn was seek out a stationary store, and she had subsequently spent at least an hour each day scribbling onto the journal’s pages.
Nerissa glanced across the table at Raysel to find that he was also eyeing Desta curiously. He cleared his throat casually. “I don’t want to pry, Desta, but are you feeling homesick?”
Desta looked up from the notebook with a guarded expression on her face. “Homesick? Not at all,” she said, her eyes shifting side to side as she spoke.
Nerissa’s eyes narrowed. The girl was as bad at lying as Charis.
“Are you still angry with the twins?” Raysel persisted.
Desta squirmed uncomfortably. “No,” she said quickly.
If she was anything like Charis, pressing her was unlikely to yield a straight answer, so Nerissa tried another angle. A little piece of her groaned inwardly, but if her instincts were right, this tactic would draw out the truth. “I think you are starting to pry, Raysel,” she chided, and Desta gave her a grateful look. Nerissa smiled back gently and added, “Just know that you can talk to your ‘older brother’ about anything.”
The grateful look slipped off Desta’s face, and she pressed her lips together in a tight line. Got you, Nerissa thought. She had learned long ago that when the direct approach didn’t work, guilt trips usually would. Wheedling probably wasn’t the most honest method, but it was effective. Nerissa turned her attention back to the soup and watched out of the corner of her eye as Desta thumbed through the pages, flipping through them so quick
ly it was obvious she wasn’t really reading.
A moment later, Desta came back to the table, notebook in hand. “I’m not homesick, but I really would like to send a message to my mother,” she said.
“We should avoid contacting her unless it’s absolutely necessary—in case Casimer’s men are watching your village,” Raysel said.
Desta’s face fell. “I-I understand.”
“Why do you want to contact her?” Nerissa asked. She shot an annoyed glance across the table at Raysel. They weren’t going to find out what was going on by upsetting her, even if his answer was truthful. “The reason must have something to do with your notebook, right?”
“It does,” Desta said slowly. “It started on the night those men attacked our camp at the hot springs.”
“That was a frightening experience for you, I’m sure,” Nerissa said soothingly. “Is it causing you to have nightmares?”
“No, not nightmares,” Desta said, placing special emphasis on the last word.
“If not nightmares, then what?” Nerissa asked.
Desta took a deep breath, summoning up her courage. “This is going to sound strange because I don’t have any of my mother’s talent, but I had a prophetic dream right before the attack.” The words tumbled from her lips in a rush as she recounted the dream she had right before the camp was attacked.
“I think you’re mistaken on one thing for certain,” Nerissa said when the explanation was finished. She patted Desta’s hand comfortingly. “Apparently, you do have some of your mother’s talent.”
Desta gave her a wan smile. “Maybe I do. That’s why I wanted to send her a message asking for advice. I know that my mother keeps a journal to record her dreams so that’s why I bought a notebook as soon as I could. I’ve even made notes of older dreams when I can remember them. But I don’t know how to tell the difference between normal dreams and meaningful ones. I would feel terrible if I got another warning and missed it. I’m sure my mother would be able to give me some guidance.”
Reflection- Thorn of the White Rose Page 5