Chapter 370 - 104: The Blood of Silvercrest

"Destiny, the priestess is ready to see you."

The servant’s voice cut into her conversation with Dane. She turned from the window.

"Is Aurora with her?"

"Yes. Alpha Vance and Alpha Ramon are there too."

Dane was already halfway to the door. "Let’s go."

They crossed the courtyard to the temple. Two guards stood at the entrance, and before Destiny reached the inner chamber she heard a harsh, guttural noise, then the priestess snapping out a command.

She stopped just inside the doorway.

Aurora was on the floor by the altar with a warrior gripping each arm. Her body jerked against them. Black veins ran down her forearms and crawled up the side of her neck. Her fingers had lengthened into claws, and her jaw kept shifting as she tried to force a growl out of it. Her eyes were yellow. Very little of Aurora was left in them.

Vance stood close by, his face drawn tight. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days.

The priestess knelt in front of Aurora with one hand flat against her forehead. A faint silver light spread under her palm. Aurora’s thrashing slowed, but the claws stayed out.

"Hold her still," the priestess said.

One of the warriors was losing his hold on Aurora’s arm. She snapped at him and her teeth closed a finger’s width from his wrist. He jerked back, and the other man clamped down harder.

"Stay behind me," Dane told Destiny, stepping between her and the floor.

The priestess had gone pale. Sweat stood on her upper lip. Several seconds passed, and then Aurora’s jaw slackened. Her eyes flickered, the yellow thinning enough for her to look around the room.

"Father?"

Vance dropped to his knees beside her.

"I’m here."

Aurora reached for him, and her hand curled back into a claw halfway there. Her face twisted. A growl started low in her throat, and the priestess pushed her palm down harder.

"Don’t let her touch you," she told Vance. "I can hold the change back for a short while. I can’t undo it. Whatever is left of her human mind is fighting the curse, and that fight is wearing thin."

"How long can you keep it up?" Ramon asked.

"I don’t know. Each time costs me more than the last. If I lose my grip on it, she may never come back to this shape."

Nobody spoke. Somewhere behind Destiny a guard shifted his weight, and the floorboards creaked.

Two days ago Aurora had been walking the halls, arguing with everyone who crossed her path. Now it took two men to keep her from tearing into them. The curse was outrunning them all.

The Heart Stone lay on a table a few paces off. Its silver lines caught the candlelight and did nothing else.

"Have you found anything?" Destiny asked.

"Only that what happened in the clearing wasn’t ordinary. I examined the stone alone and it stayed dead in my hands. I need to know what you felt when it reacted to your blood."

Destiny went to the table slowly.

"The closer I get, the more my palm pulls. In the clearing it hurt once the stone was uncovered. Wrapping it in cloth helped, but I could still feel it through the wool."

"And when the cursed wolf took his human face back?"

"It got stronger then. It felt like something was being dragged out of me. I couldn’t say what."

The priestess studied Destiny’s hand, turning it over in her own.

"I can’t tell you whether it was drawing something from you or answering something already in your blood. I won’t pretend to know more than that."

"Can it save Aurora?"

"I don’t know. But we can’t sit on this. If we try anything, I need to understand what happened out there and what it could do to you."

Vance got up from beside his daughter. She had started fighting again, and the priestess’s shoulders were shaking as she pinned her.

"There’s something you should know," he said.

He was looking at the Heart Stone.

"I expected Aurora to be the one who woke it. The oldest records in Silvercrest describe the stone as tied to the royal bloodline. It vanished generations ago. Some accounts say it was stolen, others that it was carried out of the kingdom during a bad time of unrest. Nobody has ever known which."

Ramon’s head came round. "And you assumed Aurora could use it because she’s the princess."

"I believed it would know her blood. I thought it might hold the answer to Hollow Death."

"Instead it reacted to Destiny," Dane said.

Vance’s mouth went flat. "Yes."

Destiny looked at the stone, then at Vance.

"So this belonged to Silvercrest’s royal line, went missing, and ended up with me as a newborn?"

"That’s what I’m telling you. I don’t know how it happened."

"Marcus and Kalessie found me alone in the forest. The stone was the only thing lying next to me. They never knew what it was or where I’d come from."

For the first time since she’d met him, Vance looked truly rattled.

"No other belongings? No note?"

"Nothing."

He kept staring at her. Destiny couldn’t tell if he was digging through old memories or picking apart something he’d believed for years.

Ramon stepped up to the table. "The stone’s history might explain why it reacts to certain blood. It doesn’t prove who Destiny is, and it doesn’t tell us who took it out of Silvercrest."

"I know that," Vance said.

"Then we need evidence, and assumptions won’t do."

A cry tore across the room.

Aurora had thrown her head back. The priestess’s light stuttered, and Aurora’s whole body seized. One warrior lost his hold as she wrenched towards him, and her jaws slammed shut inches from his face.

"Everyone back!" the priestess shouted.

Dane hauled Destiny away from the table. Ramon and the second warrior threw themselves at Aurora, but she fought with a strength she shouldn’t have had left.

The priestess pressed both hands to Aurora’s skull. Her arms trembled.

"Vance, if you want your daughter alive, I need more time. I can’t hold her like this much longer."

Vance’s eyes went from Aurora to the Heart Stone.

"Then tell us what you need."

"I need to know whether the stone can break the curse without passing it to someone else. We watched a cursed wolf get his human features back for a moment, but we don’t know why, or whether it lasts. I won’t set that stone against Aurora’s chest until I understand the danger."

Destiny’s stomach clenched. The stone had helped Dane, but the priestess was right. Nobody knew if it had destroyed the rot, pressed it down, or shoved it into someone else.

"And my blood?" Destiny asked.

"I can’t say what part it played. You may be how we learn to read the stone. That doesn’t make your blood a cure."

Destiny looked at Aurora. The princess was hardly recognisable, and the priestess was starting to sag under the effort of holding her.

She wanted to help. She also wasn’t going to let anyone dress up a guess as a promise.

"Examine the stone," she said. "I’ll answer whatever you ask about the clearing. But you tell me what you plan to do before anyone touches my blood."

The priestess nodded. "Agreed."

Vance met her eyes. "I won’t force you."

"You said that before."

He didn’t argue.

The priestess called for the warriors to carry Aurora to the chamber that had been made ready. The suppression had eased the change without stopping the curse. Vance walked close behind as they took his daughter out.

Destiny watched the doorway until it was empty.

Then she turned back to the Heart Stone.

The stone’s past had handed her a new question and no answer. If it had once belonged to Silvercrest’s royal family, how had it ended up beside a newborn in the forest? And why had it answered her blood when Vance had been so sure it would answer Aurora’s?

She thought of Marcus’s old account book. He had written down every settlement he and Kalessie visited after they found her. One entry mentioned a travelling wagon.

The priestess might learn something about the stone, but she couldn’t tell Destiny who had carried it into those trees. That would have to come from someone who had been there, or someone who remembered the wagon.

"I’m going to the eastern-road settlement tomorrow," she told Dane. "Marcus is coming with me."

Dane nodded. "I’ll arrange an escort."

"I don’t want my search for where I come from shelved while everyone studies the stone."

"It won’t be."

She glanced at the artifact one last time. Aurora’s condition made every answer urgent, but urgency wouldn’t tell her who she was, and Vance’s belief about the royal bloodline was still only a belief.