Nada's Escape

73- Library.

The feyfly light glimmers against the polished edges of the shelves, reminding me to release them when we finish up here. At least that's a consistent ritual to focus on in the rolling sea of this new revelation.

"Two of the original seven Huntsmen, Baden and Elvira, found that they had a mystical connection. It enhanced many of their Huntsmen abilities; healing, fighting and their very own talents. It was similar to enthralment in that when sharing powers with the other they would go into a kind of daze. They could communicate across distances with a glance. And the connection grew stronger with skin contact, even the touch of a hand."

Darcell hadn't asked if these things were happening between Finley and I, though I sensed the question sitting behind his eyes as he described the consanguineal connection. We had stopped him then, and sat for a couple of minutes, just processing all the things we couldn't say in Darcell's presence.

Amy gives me the eyes at this point, asking if she can go ahead. I nod, confused and hopeful.

"The key question is: were they lovers?" She asks, so bluntly that even I'm caught off guard. I flush, heat rising again to my face. How could she? I flash a betrayed look to her.

Amy rolls her eyes. I sigh. I guess it's a useful question. Just not the one I wanted asked.

"That's the implication, yes." Darcell hedges, pushing a finger along the spine of the book he'd been occupying himself with. Lucy-Anne's diary.

Amy turns antagonistic for my sake, "If you're not going to give us good news, Darcell, better give us nothing at all..."

But the conversation seems to drift far away from me. I barely hear the rest of Amy's admonishment. Instead something begins to flow into my head. A spool of thought coiling, not connected to anything substantial yet, just a feeling. I let it gather, not questioning or prodding, just waiting for the abstract thought to materialise. I feel as though the memory permeates the rest of my body before it finally fills up to my conscious mind. A memory.

It was something Marigold, the schoolteacher, had said. A little slip in her story, something I could tell she hadn't meant to say. The smile fell from her pixie face and she leafed through the book in her hands, a nervous gesture. The book was a prop in her storyteller costume, nothing more. She didn't need it to tell endless tales about the Seven.

Amy hadn't been brought in yet so I pounced on the slip myself, "Why was marriage different here in the old days?"

Marigold's brown ringlets pooled against one shoulder as she tilted her head, "Well, they hadn't quite worked it out yet."

"So they weren't married?" I pressed. It was Marigold's weakness. She had to keep an optimistic façade to keep up and so she was forced to answer every question.

"Technically not," she qualified. "They had a closer sort of connection." You could tell by the way she closed the book so quietly that she was begging me to leave it at that. She looked up at me and was just a teacher explaining things to a child. I can answer questions all day. That look said. Because I know more than you.

I narrowed my eyes. "Like love?" I air quoted sarcastically.

"No. Like Blood." She said it softly, intensely. Then she glanced around at the other students, an apologetic twist to her lips.

"Eww. Like incest?" I exclaimed. This was before the vampire craze hit Seven and the only response could have been vampires. Her head snapped back to me, brown ringlets swinging.