A Shield of Faith (BOOK 4)

Chapter 18

MARIA

Warmth spread from the candlewick on the top of her research desk inside her private quarters back on Euros, full of her notes, anatomical drawings along with notes taped to the sides with her own adjustments and comparisons between a healthy body and a body corrupted by a Husk. Her feathered pencil scratched out the margins of her mistakes to form new corrections full of observations. We have a long way to go... and it's coming soon, how long can his dose of stardust stave it off before we have to face it? Maria opened up the tome on the tiny lectern beside her, flipping through pages to find the section on mortality rates and timeframes for corrupted individuals. Adults barely lived any longer than mid-twenties if corrupted in adulthood.

Children rarely made it past the aftershock, in that regard, Yuven was an anomaly. But Yuo gave him until early twenties, and he's always told me my need to beat the odds is a double-edged sword. Maria licked her thumb to turn the next page. Harbor bells tolled, a reminder of her home in Sivaport, with Mother tending to her garden and Father working long days at the forge, hammering away until the very heart of Aztryxer heard his strength. I'll have to double his dosage and prepare the ward... Maria leaned around the corner of her small workspace at a rippling tug. "You know that won't work." Back straight against her seat, she smirked when Yuven slipped through the door with a quiet scoff, throwing off his loose fitting jacket for the mountain climes onto the coat stand. "How'd the meeting go?"

"Fine." He rolled out his shoulders and swiped one of her books from the small shelf on the wall before slouching into her bed, flipping it open. "I'd say I'm surprised you didn't attend, but—" He set the book against his legs and eyed her from across the room. "I'm sure you have matters to settle." He returned his nose into the spine of the book, his feathers perked up in the lie of his inattentiveness of her actions. "Besides, some of the younger Wardens wanted to celebrate the first successful operation in what... decades? Quite frankly, I'm not in the mood for these long celebrations. It's pointless and the work of the Storm Wardens will never truly finish."

"I think it's necessary." Maria sent an ember of her magick into the runes of the brass holder, and the candle blazed into the lamp above her head. "Sometimes the little victories can make all the difference." She swished a loose, mutinous strand of golden hair off her cheek, tucking it behind her ear before checking on Yuven once more, who leaned deeper into the pillows without another word. "Does that really bother you that they are?"

"No one celebrated when I was cleansed. I suppose it's more depressing to them — a child who got lucky instead of a powerful wyvern, an Ancient—" the name of the Traveller left through his lips with a fanged hiss. "One can be painted as a testament of the strength of the Storm Wardens, the other is simply the way of the world."

Maria frowned at his firm, empty statement. Yuven leaned his head into his own shoulder and whisked wind to turn his own pages. Her fingers trailed along her own handwritten notes of everything Yuven described to her when she was younger, inexperienced as she put all her focus on researching the Corruption for a way to save him — and others who suffered as he had. Yuven's gaze peeked from over the rim of the book, and she sighed. "I'll be sure to give you celebration and fanfare when I rip that core out of your soul for good."

His violet eyes swept over her frame, and he murmured, "If that day ever comes, I'll settle for you burning it to ashes in front of me."

"I'm flattered that you think my flames can be hot enough to turn a Derelict core to ash," Maria said. "One of the first things I tried with a released core was burning it, melting it, even empowered with blood magick it didn't crack from the pressure." Her thumb brushed over her palm, where a faint white scar had once occupied, a testament to her fiery frustration bled onto the core of a Corruptor's death, and it drained it into itself. "But, I'll give it another attempt when I get it out of you."