Elaria Silverstan's Arc

Chapter 35 of 39

Lia was awake now, but she was empty. Each time Elaria asked who had cursed her, the girl shook her head. She remembered snow, and cold, and a candle. Nothing more. Whoever had bound the curse still hunted the paired stone, and Lia held the only clue. Elaria needed that memory. Without it, she was walking blind toward the road's end. She found shelter at dusk. A weathered tower rose from the ice, its stone cracked, its narrow windows glowing with faint painted runes. The door hung open. Elaria pulled the sled inside and set the cooler where the cold air pooled. This place had once belonged to someone who read visions. Perhaps it could hold one more. A white owl watched from a broken beam above. It did not startle when Elaria entered. Its yellow eyes tracked her, calm and knowing. When she opened her pack, the bird glided down and landed near the cooler, wings spread wide, then folded. It fixed its gaze on Lia as if it had waited for her. Elaria drew out the crystal she had cut two nights past. Its facets held a drifting gray, like smoke sealed in glass. She had shaped it to hold memory. Beside it she set the small stone shard, split clean into two matching halves. The shard was part of the thing the hunter wanted. If any object could stir Lia's mind, it was this. She placed the shard in Lia's small hands and held the crystal close. "Look at it," she said. "Tell me what you see." The owl leaned in. Its breath fogged the cold air. The crystal's gray swirl began to turn, and Lia's eyes went wide and distant. "A hand," Lia whispered. "Gloved. Fur at the cuff." Her fingers tightened on the shard. "He held the other half. He set the candle in your pack while you slept in the glacier. He wore a red coat with gold at the throat." Elaria's breath caught. She knew that coat. The fur merchant. The man who had chased her across the ridge, who had waited at the inn with four guards. He had not sought the stone by chance. He had cursed Lia himself to track it. "Do you see his face?" Elaria pressed. Lia's brow furrowed. The crystal dimmed. "No. Only the coat. The gold clasps. Then dark." She slumped, spent, her wings drooping. The memory was gone again. It was enough. Elaria closed her hand around the shard. She was no longer blind. The hunter was the merchant, and he had marked her from the beginning. He wanted the paired stone, and he would follow it straight to her. The owl lifted from the floor and returned to its beam. Elaria looked at the locket at her chest, still pulling downhill. The road home led toward the man who had cursed the girl she carried. Now she knew his face before he found hers.