Page 73 of A Grave Not Made For Mourning
I don’t answer. Instead, I stare at Lucian, waiting for his response. He cares about many things, he’s full of ambition, but not for this Weapon. Not yet.
Perhaps I should have taken a different approach.
“There’s something more,” I whisper. “Isa, the woman who was taken, I remember her.”
Lucian sits up straighter. His heart beats a little harder. His blood tingles in my veins.
Finally, he’s interested, asking, “You knew her?”
I pull my bottom lip between my teeth before I say, “Not well, but we used to visit her…”
This is harder to share than I believed it would be. I remember Isa vividly—more vividly than I imagined. I suppose seeing her photograph pinned the image of her to my mind. The sunspots on her skin. Her hair that seemed to have a million different shades of brown.
And the little girl I used to play with. For the life of me, I can’t remember her name. Just her smile.
“I was trying to figure out why Ma would be involved in something like this,” I say, entirely forthcoming. So much so that it’s hard to look Lucian in the eye. It’s easier to look away. “She kept journals. Over and over, she wrote the names ‘Isa, Freyr, andWeapon.’”
Lucian stares at me, clearly understanding the implications I’m suggesting. “You think they built the Weapon?”
I’ve got him like a fish on a hook, now. The only problem is that I’m becoming the sea, and not the rod.
It shouldn’t bother me how little he seems to care about anything other than the Weapon—that’s what I wanted. But he is the first person I’ve told any of this to, and he couldn’t care less.
“Originally, yes,” I say. My next words are what I hope to be the truth—what Ihaveto believe. “They thought they were doing something good. In her journals, Ma said the Arcanes returned and killed two little girls—Marbella and Annabetha. She wanted to make a weapon to stop them.”
I pull my bag closer to me, thinking about Ma’s journals inside. They’re proof that she wasn’t a regular,goodEunoia.
They’re proof that maybe she didn’t want to make the Weapon for something good.
As Lucian thinks over what I’ve said, I listen to the silent spikes of his emotion. The rising adrenaline and the up and down capriciousness of humanity. He’s trying to decide what to feel, and I want to help him along. But I fear I already did too much to his emotional state in a short period.
He picks up the blueprint once more. That feeling of selfishness—the part of him that would step over anything and anyone to get to the end—intensifies.
But this time, it’s regarding the Weapon.
Excitement warms me.
“It’s missing something,” he mutters. “There isn’t a power source.”
I narrow my eyes. “What do you mean?”
His gaze stays glued to the blueprint. “Weapons like these don’t function on their own. They need magic to fuel them.”
He looks up, waiting for my response. But I don’t have one. A chill runs through me.
“Ourmagic?” I ask, frowning.
“Yes,” he replies, looking back at the blueprint. “It would need a generator to amplify the power. That much magic would likely kill someone.”
Quick to respond, I shake my head. “My mom wouldn’t do something like that.”
But I don’t know if that’s true anymore—not after what I read in her journals.
The room falls silent, eerily so as I ponder what Ma would and wouldn’t do. Would she kill a person to power a Weapon against the Arcanes? To become the warrior she longed for the world to see her as?
I fear the answer isn’t what I thought it would be.
I fear I will only learn who Ma was after death.
