Page 14 of Exquisite Monster
If the recipe were correct, a few drops could fix almost anything. I’d never seen a recipe like it. But none of the ones she’d shown me had been anywhere close to the knowledge humans had.
That any humans believed we could stand against them at all was nearly absurd. Which made me think… either Andaros and those who followed him were all crazy, or they had something hidden the world didn’t know about.
My intuition had settled on the latter. Because those whose minds had gone made decisions based on a whim, and as much as I wished Andaros were simply mad, I knew he wasn’t.
“How so?”
“You have hardened. Your determination shines through more than before.”
She wasn’t wrong. Because I’d decided. I was careful not to lift my eyes to hers as I measured a handful of black salt into the potion. “I hope you decide to help me,” I said. “This is your home and your domain, and things will be easier if you help me. But whether you choose to or not, I will find my mates.”
Silence stretched through the room, and still, I did not look at her. “Varí,” I said quietly. “Bring me the dried root of moss.”
A scuffling sound reached me before he hopped up on the table next to me with a glass vial in his mouth. I smiled as I took it. “Thank you.”
His wings puffed up with pride, and I scratched the back of his head. He’d started assisting me, and was good at it. When he didn’t know the name of something or seemed confused, Gleym would say something in the growled dragon tongue, and he’d get it immediately.
“It is not your fault, girl.”
I looked up at her then. “What isn’t?”
“That the dragon Heirs are where they are.”
All the breath rushed out of me. “How is it not? I was their target. The only reason Andaros knows of their existence is because of me. I’m the reason he needed revenge. I’m the reason the Elders were soangry at them that they chose to allow their own offspring to be taken and be?—”
Thinking the wordtorturedand saying it out loud were two very different things. I hoped they weren’t being tortured. But I also knew Andaros too well.
“Are you?” Her staff clicked against the floor as she approached. “You did nothing but be born, Princess of Gleira. The Elders have been trying to destroy humans for generations. Are you at fault? Or have the decisions of everyone who came before you merely put you in this place?”
Gritting my teeth, I glared at her. “What does it matter? I am still here, they are still there, and whatever decisions were made before my life, I’m still responsible for my choices in this one.”
Gleym leaned on her staff, watching me. I sprinkled the powderVaríhad brought me into the cauldron and stirred it slowly. This was almost complete.
“Can you light the top on fire?” I askedVarí.
He looked at me as if asking that I was sure, but when I nodded, he puffed fire into the pot and stared as the top of the liquid burned, revealing a potion of a true, deep green.
“Shall we test it?” Gleym moved her staff, breaking it over her knee in one movement.
I gaped at her. That staff wasn’t a mere twig. It was thick, and I’d thought it was stone and not wood. “I—” Shaking my head, I reached in and coated my fingers with the green mixture. This was safe to touch. She held the ends of the staff out, and I covered them before guiding them back together.
Itwasstone.
My first assessment had been right. Gleym was old, but she was not infirm. I suspected she hid far more power than I knew about.
A low sizzling sound came from the crack in the staff, and it healed over before my eyes. She lifted it with a smirk and leaned on it once more. “Well done.”
“How much can it heal? How far?”
“Are you asking if it can bring someone back from the dead?”
I swallowed, but nodded.
“No. It cannot. But for living things, as long as there is life still beating and enough time, it can heal most things. Use it sparingly.”
“What about asheyten?”
“No.” With a single word she shattered the idea as thoroughly as the stones themselves. “It would help heal them.”
