Running Red: Lost Moon

Chapter 56: Rosso

Should he say hi or should he stay quiet? Would it help or not? These last few days, trying to find the energy to have any emotion was exhausting. During these mental lows, he normally hid in his room until someone pulled him out of it to be sociable. That someone being Echo most of the time. His mom usually gave him the space to figure things out but even that was exhausting.

Levi moved his legs to let Echo squeeze by so he could climb up onto the couch to rest his large head on Levi's thigh. One of his hands soon found Echo's head to scratch along his ears, and a low purr rumbled out of him. With Echo there, Levi let out a small, "Hi."

"You know who I am, yes?" There was a light accent there, that seemed to come and go around certain words.

"Yeah."

Celest reached into her bag to pull out something wrapped in a cloth. She sat it on the coffee table. "I was going to give this to you when we were supposed to meet on your sixteenth birthday." She quickly added when she saw the frown on his face. "It's a family gift, everyone gets one at certain points in their life. Mostly when they're twelve. I got mine when I was sixteen."

Before Levi could say anything, Rhea set a glass of water down before Celest. Celest quickly thanked her before taking a drink and setting the cup down. Rhea turned to Levi. "The hot chocolate is starting to cook. I'll bring it when it's done."

"Okay."

Levi turned back to Celest who was now holding her cup, her other hand tracing a finger around the edge. When Rhea was back in the kitchen, she looked at Levi. "It's a gift mostly from the family guardian." She gave a small smile, there was amusement there around the edges. "When the family noticed an extra, they were absolutely miffed. As soon as I heard about it, I knew it was supposed to go to you."

Curious, Levi set his cane to the side to reach out to take the cloth wrapped item. He slowly opened the fabric, not noticing how Celest was watching him, worried. Levi almost fumbled the thing when he saw the creature. A wooden relic of a one eyed raven. "I..." He ran his fingers over the white wood. "The raven. It was watching me."

Celest let out a sigh of relief. "So he found you. Xander is one of..." She cleared her throat, "Sorry. Is the family guardian."

"One of?"

She shook her head. "There were two, but he's been missing for five generations. When he left, anyone with his relic found it broken the day he went missing. Since then, Xander has refused to show himself to anyone. Sometimes you'll see a raven but that's as far as it goes."

Levi set the wooden raven down and looked back at Celest. "Why... why did you give me up?"

Celest leaned forward, "I..." before sitting back and gripping at her bag. "After the fire. We couldn't find any clues as to who attacked you. Andrew had an idea, but we don't know if they started the fire or someone else."

"I want to know."

With a look toward Levi, she could see he was serious. So she sighed, resigned, "Okay. What do you want to know?"

"Everything. I don't want to be caught off guard like this again."

"Okay. We don't know how the fire started, just the where. It started at the back of the house and was of a magic origin. At first, Tate thought maybe the fire was a coincidence that the attacker took advantage of. Michael's affinity is fire, but that wasn't the case as the fire burned Michael."

"The scar?"

"Yes. It was worse then, but we got lucky that most of the damage wasn't as bad as it looked. Michael was in the hospital for a year and some months. Tate worked hard to find healers to help Michael, but the damage had been done, and healing magic is fickle at best."