Chapter 46 46. You will find old age doesn't take everything from the body

Chapter 46: You'll find old age doesn't take everything from a body

Elara's cane stopped tapping the second Mikaela finished talking, the old woman sitting perfectly still in her chair, eyes fixed hard on her face.

"Say that again," Elara said. "Slower this time."

"They found it. The creature. It's in the old church, the burnt one in the center of the old quarter, there's crypts underneath and it's down there right now, and Eto and Freya went in after it." Mikaela's breath still hadn't fully come back from the run, words tumbling out faster than she could properly space them. "Freya found records. Real ones, from the City Lord's own library. Everything you told us about the Feyra was true, all of it, but there's more to it than what you knew. It doesn't just wear a disguise. It becomes it. Lives it. Finn isn't a mask the creature's wearing, Elara, he's real. He's really real, he's got his own thoughts and his own life inside whatever that thing is, and if they kill it down there, they kill him too."

Elara's hand had gone to her mouth, the color draining slow out of her face. "Dear gods."

"I don't have time to explain everything, I need Nora." Mikaela was already moving toward the girl's cot. "I think there might be a way to save him. I don't know for certain, I haven't got the whole thing worked out, but I need her, and I need her now, before it's too late."

"What's the plan."

"I can't, there isn't time to explain it properly and I'm not even sure it'll work." Mikaela knelt down beside Nora's cot, and something in her face must have carried enough weight on its own, because Elara didn't push further, just watched with her hands pressed tight together in her lap, waiting.

"You trust me," Mikaela said. It wasn't quite a question.

"I trust the girl who gave this home ten gold the first day she ever walked through that gate," Elara said. "I trust the girl who's spent a week fighting for children that aren't even hers to fight for. Yes. I trust you. Go. Do what you need to do."

Mikaela turned to Nora.

The girl sat propped against her pillow exactly the way she'd sat every time Mikaela had visited, blanket loose around her shoulders, eyes open and fixed on nothing, hands folded still in her lap like they'd forgotten what movement was for. Mikaela took both of those hands in her own, gentle, and leaned in close enough that there was nowhere else for Nora's empty gaze to land except her face.

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"Nora. I need you to hear me, okay? I know you're in there somewhere, I know whatever that thing took from you, it didn't take all of you, not completely, and I need you right now more than I've ever needed anyone." Her voice cracked but she pushed through it. "We need you to save Finn. He's in trouble. Real trouble, the kind he might not come back from, and I think, I think you might be the only one who can stop that from happening. Please. Please, if you can hear me at all, give me something. Anything."

Nothing happened for a long moment. The candle beside the cot guttered low, throwing shadows across a face that stayed exactly as still and empty as it had been every day since the rubble.

Then something flickered.

It was barely anything at all, a fraction of a second where the flat nothing behind Nora's eyes caught some spark of light that hadn't been there a breath before, gone again almost before Mikaela was sure she'd seen it. But she had seen it. She was certain of that much, certain enough that something in her chest unclenched for the first time since she'd left the church.

It would work. She didn't know exactly how yet, didn't have the whole shape of it worked out even in her own head, but that flicker told her enough. There was still a girl in there. And a girl still in there meant there was still something worth fighting to bring back.

"That's it," Mikaela breathed. "That's enough. Come on."

She scooped Nora up without waiting for permission, the girl's weight settling slack and unresisting across her back, arms looping loose around Mikaela's shoulders on their own reflex even with nothing behind the eyes to direct them.

"I'm coming too," Elara said, already hauling herself up out of the chair, cane finding the floor with a solid crack.

"Elara, you can't, it's too far, too dangerous, there's a monster down there tearing apart a monster like Eto probably."

"I raised dozens of children in that home at the peak of it, girl, and not one of them ever once slowed down long enough to make my life easy." Elara was moving for the door already, faster than Mikaela had ever seen her manage, cane striking the floor in a rhythm that matched her stride instead of hindering it. "You'll find old age doesn't take everything from a body. Keeps some things sharp, if you use them right. Now come on, we're wasting the only time we might have left."

They ran.

Mikaela led, Nora's weight settled against her back, the girl's chin bumping loose against her shoulder with every stride, and behind her Elara kept pace with a speed that shouldn't have been possible for a woman her age, cane striking cobblestone in a steady rhythm that somehow never once faltered.

"You're keeping up," Mikaela gasped out between breaths, half in disbelief.

"Told you," Elara called back, not even winded. "Chasing children through that home for sixty years does something to a body the physicians never quite manage to explain. You'd be amazed what legs learn to do when there's a child running toward danger and somebody's got to catch up to them before they get there."

The streets blurred past, dark and empty at this hour, every corner familiar now after a week of walking this city end to end searching for exactly the place they were racing toward, and Mikaela's lungs burned, her legs screamed, Nora's weight grew heavier with every block, and none of it mattered, none of it slowed her down even a fraction.

She just prayed, with everything left in her, that they weren't already too late.