Page 11 of Salt in the Seas
“She was testing the blood on wounds,” she said, handing him the papers she’d just studied. She grabbed several more. “Sort of like the blood magic Arvid did to heal over my cuts, but winex don’t have starblood. There’s some other property in their blood she was trying to define or maybe extract.”
“Why would she want to do that?” Lukai asked. “If she can use brands or blood magic to heal, why would she need something else?”
Aeliana flipped through more pages. “Maybe so her supply of magic wouldn’t dwindle so quickly?” She rounded the table, putting Lilik and Felk back in her line of sight. Lilik tucked an egg under each arm and slinked out of the room, followed by Felk holding three more. Aeliana nearly called after them but decided to let it go.
She pulled at a fresh set of papers in front of her, these ones unmarred by the spilled blood. This time the subjects had side effects, some growing sick and others hemorrhaging to death. “She tried mixing their blood with half-lights’ blood.” Aeliana’s stomach churned as she took in their symptoms, the ways they’d died slow painful deaths.
“To what end?” Disgust leaked from Lukai’s words, but he kept perusing the research with her.
“The winex blood healed the subjects quickly,” Aeliana said. “Winex’s bodies function at an accelerated rate compared to ours. It’s why they age so much faster. But it also makes them heal faster.”
“Which is why they’re so dangerous.”
Aeliana shot Lukai an irritated glance, but Lilik and Felk hadn’t returned, and he remained invested in his set of papers.
“I don’t think she actually wanted their healing properties.” Lukai frowned, then held his papers out for Aeliana. “Look. Whoever was conducting this research for her was trying to divide the healing properties out—not to use them—but to remove them.”
Aeliana scanned the messy script, following Lukai’s line of thought. “The side effects—she thought her subjects were aging too quickly because of the same property that healed them.”
“It makes sense.” Lukai picked up another stack. “But that means there was something else she wanted from their blood.”
Aeliana watched as Lilik and Felk came back in, silently retrieving another half-dozen eggs. Tears glinted on Lilik’s cheeks in the lantern light. Had those been her eggs? What had kept them from hatching? And what had kept Lilik from coming back for them after the battle? She had to have known they were there. Why hadn’t she removed them then?
Aeliana turned back to the papers, only able to handle one mystery at a time. What could Mayvus have wanted from the winex’s blood if not their faster than average healing properties? Winex held no magic. Most people felt they had below average intelligence. Their only gift was their ability to be reborn. As long as they never died, they were practically immortal creatures.
“Immortality,” Aeliana breathed out. The room spun as it all came together in her mind, and she gripped the edge of the table.
“Hmm?” Lukai asked, more focused on his set of papers than her revelation.
It wasn’t difficult to imagine Mayvus wanting immortality, testing winex after winex on the slim chance she might discover what exactly allowed them to be reborn. But she wouldn’t want to also age so quickly. So that element would have to be extracted.
Aeliana moved closer to the eggs, placing a hand over one’s smooth surface. It was cold and lifeless, something Felk and Lilik had likelysensed from the start. A shell that entombed the creature that could have been. Except…there.
She let her finger wiggle in through a tiny crack in the shell, more like a hole that had once held some sort of apparatus. Maybe it was something Mayvus had inserted into the eggs. Had she poisoned them?
“Does any of her research talk about the eggs?” Aeliana asked.
“Not yet,” Lukai said.
A hiss erupted from Aeliana’s left, and she stepped back as Lilik returned, pulling the egg from Aeliana’s grasp. Lilik bared her teeth at Aeliana, reminding Aeliana what Lilik had been like before Felk had found her, before Aeliana had raised the winex to be allies instead of enemies.
“I’m sorry,” Aeliana whispered. “I’m just trying to understand.”
Lilik turned her back on Aeliana and grabbed a second egg, scampering out of the dungeon with a growl.
Felk frowned, glancing between Aeliana and the door. “She’s hurting.”
Aeliana nodded.
“The unborn winex are all dead. Mayvus murdered them.” His normally bright eyes clouded over with pain.
“How can you tell?”
“Winex eggs always hatch. I just know that. Like I know my name. Instinct.”
Aeliana hesitated, not wanting to further his grief. “Could something have been inserted in the egg to kill it?”
He gave her a sharp look, then loped over to study one of the eggs, letting his long fingers slide over the same gaps she’d found. His lips curled with a snarl. “She drained them.”
