Page 49 of The Shattered Rite
At the hearth, a small table waited. Ceramic jars. Glass vials. She didn’t need to open them to know what they were.
Healing balms.
She sat, automatically uncorking the nearest jar. The scent hit her first: mint, pine, jasmine. She dipped two fingers in without thinking and pressed the balm gently to the skin just above her wrist.
Her body remembered what her mind couldn’t yet process.
Pressure. Slow circles. Even breath.
A healer’s instinct. Still hers, apparently.
The marks pulsed faintly beneath her skin, humming under her fingers. She worked methodically: over her shoulders, along her collarbones, down the lattice of lines etched into her arms. Like armor waiting beneath the surface.
They are your first shell,Vaeronth murmured, warm and steady in her thoughts.You are no longer just flesh.
She didn’t answer. She wasn’t sure what to say to that.
Instead, she traced the largest sigil over her ribs, feeling the pulse there. Not pain. Not anymore. Just… something else.
“I’m losing what’s left of my sight.”
It wasn’t a question.
Sight is only one way of knowing,came Vaeronth’s reply.
“I suppose I won't develop the same gift that my mother had…”
A long pause. He let her sit with her bitterness.
What rises in you is not her gift. It will be your own.
“I don't want any more changes.”
No answer.
She pressed both hands to her face and breathed slowly, willing herself to stop shaking.
“Will the changes… change who I am?”
Another pause, as if the great ancient dragon was searching for the right words.
Power does not leave a soul untouched,Vaeronth said softly.But you are not alone in carrying it.
She let that be enough for now. Let it smooth the ragged edge of her thoughts, though she wasn’t sure she’d earned even a breath of peace.
The pulse beneath her skin slowed, syncing to her breathing.
Eventually, she opened her eyes. “The room changed again.”
Old magic,Vaeronth replied.It shapes itself to you. Your needs. Your fears.
“Explains the lavender.”
You needed softness.
She huffed something between a laugh and a sob. “I don’t even remember what softness feels like.”
As she grew, there had simply been… less. They learned to fold their wants small. If she and her mother didn’t grow it, brew it, stitch it, or carve it, they went without. Winters of thin brothstretched with water; summers of the same dress re-hemmed and turned inside out so the seams could pretend to be new. Boots patched until the leather remembered every old stitch, like the ones she had kicked off her feet after the trial. Eliryn remembered how they counted roots daily and saved the good salve for other people’s pain. They traded tinctures for flour, poultices for lamp oil, and when there was nothing left to barter, they went to bed early and called it prudence.
