Page 76 of Full Moon
Chapter 35
Khal
Feray has living family members.And somehow my people are involved in her wolf's containment.
The guilt still lingers from when my scale made her deathly ill. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise, though—the black mass she puked up was a clue. Now, the amulets seem irrelevant. The more sinister component was the basilisk blood.
How did her family get a hold of it?
Why dose a baby of all beings?
Or was it Fi's family that dosed Feray?
My phone chimes, and the answer makes me sick to my stomach. The magic school the girls attended keeps a supply of basilisk blood on hand. They use it to root out non-witch beings from the school. I stumble back, staring at the message. They poisoned children. Systematically. To maintain their precious "purity."
I move over to Diaval and Easton. "Guys... We have an answer."
"Oh?" Diaval leans forward, taking my phone when I offer it to him. His eyes dart over the screen quickly, and his hand shakes. I take back my phone before he breaks it.
"I'm going to burn that school and their council to the ground." He shoves his chair away from the table and stands by the window, seething.
"What happened?" Easton asks.
I hand him my phone next. His face contorts several times before he looks up at me with burning orbs. "Diaval, I'll help you."
"If it wasn't for the amulet, she would have been outed years ago. Instead, her wolf was weakened, its magic bound painfully." I glance toward the bathroom door, hearing Feray moaning with Torben in the shower. Shaking my head, I look back down at the messages. "It explains why she was so timid in the beginning. She was living a half-life." I shove my phone back in my pocket and sigh.
"Half-life or not, we don't know what kind of permanent damage having basilisk blood in her system did," Diaval says, moving closer to us. His normally stoic demeanor shifts. Something vulnerable flickers across his face.
"She wants a family. What if they took that from her?" He whispers, his eyes darting between us. The words hit me like a physical blow.
What if they took that from her?
Easton's eyes lower, staring at the ground. "Hopefully, my feather and blood reversed whatever damage was done." Heraises his eyes, now back to being human. "I'm afraid to tell her. I can't bear to see her cry over things we can't fix."
"To hide it does her a big disservice. Lying by omission is still lying," I say as I message the scientist about side effects related to long-term exposure.
Diaval stares out the window, the soft light casting shadows across his face. "Let's agree to give her today to enjoy finding her family. Tomorrow we can tackle the newest revelation."
"Agreed," Easton replies. "Hopefully, we can get into her mother's old room here, and she can get to know her through her aunt. Then we'll tell her what we found out." He glances toward the bathroom, where I hear Feray giggling behind the closed door.
"Why is Torben the one always on distraction duty?" I laugh.
Diaval shakes his head, the corners of his mouth twitching. "That's easy. He doesn't have the connections the three of us do." He coughs lightly. "I call dibs next time. Torben can be the grumpy, dashing dragon, and I'll be the bear." The thought of Diaval pretending to be Torben makes us all laugh.
"We really should put in some sort of rotation cycle for who gets to distract Feray," I say playfully. "I swear Torben gets out of a lot of work."
My phone buzzes incessantly, each notification piercing the silence like a pinprick. We were just enjoying a rare moment of light-heartedness. That's gone now. As I read the list of side effects, my heart hammers in my chest. The side effects are nothing short of catastrophic:
Immediate death of the injected.
Death of their shift.
