Page 54 of Bright Soul

CRESS

For the next few hours, I toured the hospital, quietly showing Braza around. She was fascinated by the modernity of the facility, even though much of the beauty of the place was stripped. File cabinets and couches cluttered the first floor, turning it into a maze and blocking most of the windows.

I introduced her in a one-sided way to the people I knew, speaking with her in my mind so I didn’t startle anyone with a two-layered voice. I was happy to catch Mom, who was pushing a cart in the hall on floor four.

“Have they given you any time off?” It felt like she was running around whenever I had time to visit the hospital.

She shrugged. “You know what they say. Time waits for no one. I’m choosing to invest it making what difference I can.”

“Have I told you lately that you’re my hero, Mom?” I asked earnestly.

She ruffled my hair and moved toward the nurse’s station. “I’m not that impressive, baby. The doctors around here…I’d give my left arm for the kind of healing magic they wield.”

“Now you’re starting to sound like…” I coughed, choking on the name. “…like Carly.”

Mom’s eyes flicked my way over her mask, concern creasing her brow. She’d always been able to read the shifts in my mood like her own kind of magic. I’d as good as told her there was something wrong.

“Well, you had best confide in her,”Braza commented.

“Can I tell you something?” I asked more quietly.

Mom took a fifteen-minute break and drew me into an unoccupied room, where I spilled everything I knew. Phaeron’s admission was enough to scare her, and Braza’s supplemental knowledge seemed to make it worse. “Torchbearers were ghostly servants during the height of Myuna’s power. It sounds like she’s not strong enough to enslave souls like that anymore, so if we can capture Carly, Phaeron can try to remove her from Myuna’s control.”

“What are the chances of us catching her alive?” With her mask set aside, her face looked aged a decade, deep lines marking her nose and cheeks. Tears sheened her eyes, but she kept them contained by pure force of will. “I shouldn’t think that way…but I know the men and women protecting the hospital are treating anyone touched by Myuna as a lost cause. We have the morgue filling up with these so-called torchbearers.”

I felt my skin go cold all over. “Like, how many people?”

“It’s grim business. I’m not sure you really want those details,” she answered.

“An estimate, maybe?”

She considered me hard, and I saw when her will caved to what she saw in my face. “Dozens. The wounded guardians talk about how the corrupted animals and supernaturals all throw themselves heedlessly into fights. There are a lot of bodies left behind,” she told me in a hush.

“We’re lucky the hospital has a good relationship with the closest funeral home. At the moment, any body we can salvage is being stored…just in case we come out of this situation. There will be loved ones who will want a say in what happens to those remains.” It was clear that was all she wanted to say on the matter. That was fine, as I was reeling.

“If dozens of torchbearers have already died in this area, Myuna must be corrupting them left and right. It sounds like she’s using them as if they’re disposable,”I said to Braza.

“She will be pressing each new servant to bring her more and more people to consume or turn,”Braza replied.

“We have to do something about this.”

“Mom, I have to go,” I said aloud, rising to give her a hug farewell. “Thanks for telling me all of this. I will find Carly personally if I have to.”

A thread of eagerness spun from Braza, crackling with the restless energy of lifetimes stuck in one spot.“Well, we are unstoppable together. Shall we go find her?”

I liked the sound of that quite a bit.“Shouldn’t we tell someone that we’re leaving? And Phaeron…”The only reason we’d felt safe to let him leave the aura of her powercore side was because I was carrying half of her with me.

She tugged on my powers, guiding me through the process of turning into shadowy mist. I may have startled Mom, passing her as a sudden breeze, but hopefully I didn’t leave behind an impression of my exhilarated laughter. We reached the first floor conference room in record time and reformed in a seat. I felt the weight of eyes on me during the dizzy spell that followed.

I looked around and blanched. Phaeron and Auric had pulled the maps off the conference room wall and were conferring over them, while Madigan and Hana had obviously paused mid-explanation to stare at my sudden entrance.

Hana broke the silence first. “Hello, Cress and Braza. We were about to talk about the ocean gate.”

“Braza?” Auric echoed in disbelief.

She greeted him in Soiluirian through my lips, further baffling the old Vrassorm man.

“I didn’t mean to barge in,” I added sheepishly. “I just wanted to find my sister.”

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