Chapter 80: A Shell With No Will Left

Evalia startled at being pulled so directly into the argument. But Varka wasn’t wrong to single her out. Something had clearly been turning over in her mind for a while now, some detail that didn’t quite sit right.

"You’re correct, Your Majesty. I’ve been thinking that there’s a small possibility this creature isn’t actually under the control of the figure we all fear it might be."

Varka’s eyes lit with interest at once.

"Now that’s a thought worth hearing. Go on, tell us what you know."

"Before I do, Your Majesty, I’d like to confirm something first. May I approach the Dusk Feather directly?"

A murmur of disapproval ran through the hall at the suggestion. Even Evalia’s own Elder, Lia, looked uneasy at the idea, however still and harmless the creature had looked so far, the risk was real enough to give anyone pause.

But Evalia held her ground, working to reassure her Elder, until Varka, after a long moment’s consideration, finally nodded his approval.

Evalia rose and began walking back toward the cage.

A few steps in, she felt it, a sharp, pointed stare settling on her from somewhere off to the side.

She turned to find it, and the moment she did, she understood at once that whoever it belonged to was looking at her with open suspicion.

She still hadn’t worked out whose stare had settled on her with such open hostility. Finding no obvious answer in the crowd, she let it go and turned her attention back to the Dark Beast now standing directly in front of her.

Evalia studied the creature carefully. The monster that had put half the hall on edge all night stood perfectly still before her, offering nothing. She bent forward, closing the last of the distance between them.

A chorus of warnings rose around her, people urging her not to touch it. Evalia ignored all of it. She reached out and ran her fingers through the Dusk Feather’s black plumage, stroking it the way one might calm any ordinary beast.

"Just as I thought. This Dusk Feather isn’t behaving the way it should. It’s far too tame. A creature like this shouldn’t tolerate being handled like this at all."

Her brother Evandra’s old lessons were proving useful tonight. He’d told her once that Dusk Feathers shared a basic trait with their closest ordinary counterparts: neither kind cared for crowds, and both grew agitated around strangers. Even his own Griffin, tame as it was with him, still bristled and occasionally lashed out at unfamiliar faces, even standing right at his side.

So this, Evalia thought, was wrong on every count, controlled or not. If her first guess had been right, that this creature answered to Crimson blood the way the Direwolf had, it should have grown fiercer under that control, not calmer, not weaker.

"Why does this part feel so cold?"

Her hand had drifted, without quite meaning to, to the side of the Dusk Feather’s neck. What she felt there unsettled her more than the stillness had. No warmth. No pulse of hot blood moving beneath the skin at all.

Her fingers crept further in, toward the center of its chest, and what she found there made her eyes go wide.

"It isn’t beating... is this creature already dead?"

Something clicked into place for her all at once, an answer to every strange thing she’d felt since she first touched the creature.

The Direwolf she’d faced earlier had clearly been alive while something controlled it. This Dusk Feather was something else entirely. It was dead already, and had been for some time.

That alone explained everything. The stillness. The tameness. The absence of heat in its body. It wasn’t a controlled creature at all, not in the way she’d assumed. It was closer to an empty shell, something with no will left inside it to resist being handled.

And as far as she knew, Crimson blood had never been recorded controlling a Dark Beast already dead. There would be nothing left to strengthen, no fury to sharpen, nothing like the surge of power the living Direwolf had carried.

If I draw blood from this thing, there won’t be any left to find, and it won’t vanish into ash the way the Direwolf I fought did.

To prove it, Evalia channeled a thread of mana into the flower pinned to her clothing, and in an instant its stem lengthened and sharpened into a long, slender thorn, honed to an edge no less deadly than a blade.

Her eyes narrowed as she aimed for a precise spot along the Dusk Feather’s body. If no blood came from the wound, her theory would hold.

Her hand was an inch from striking when it stopped cold.

"What exactly do you intend to do, Lady Evalia?"

She looked up to find a hand closed firmly around her wrist. Rhaiven stood before her, dressed entirely in black, his mask giving nothing away.

The whole hall watched, tense, afraid that whatever Evalia was attempting might be the very thing that finally set the creature off.

Varka demanded to know what she thought she was doing.

"It isn’t what it looks like, Your Majesty. I only mean to confirm a theory of mine, and for that, I need a sample of this creature’s blood."

She laid out her reasoning for the entire hall, patiently, from the beginning.

"So you can guarantee this creature won’t turn violent?" Pentaron’s voice cut in, grave and measured.

"If my theory holds, then no, it won’t."

Evalia pressed her case with as much conviction as she could manage, though the man still holding her wrist looked anything but convinced.

"That’s still only a theory, Lady Evalia. What happens if you’re wrong, and His Majesty pays the price for it? This thing could turn savage in an instant and put someone’s life in real danger."

"Lord Rhaiven. Are you suggesting my family’s knowledge of beasts counts for nothing? My own father was once called the finest Beast tamer this continent has ever produced."

"That isn’t what I meant, Lady Evalia. I don’t doubt your family’s knowledge of ordinary beasts for a moment. But what stands in front of you isn’t a beast. It’s a Dark Beast."

"I’m well aware they’re different creatures entirely. That hasn’t stopped what little my family does know from becoming part of the Academy’s own foundation for studying them."

The argument stretched on, longer than it had any right to, Rhaiven refusing to budge no matter what Evalia said. A portion of the gathered nobility had begun to side with him now, inclined toward whatever path looked safest.

"Your Majesty, if I may," Rhaiven said, turning toward Varka.

"I believe our effort would be better spent preparing to enter the Calamity Forest directly. I’m certain that once we’re inside, we’ll find clear traces of whoever is truly behind this, or at least confirm it ourselves."

Helia spoke up from just behind him.

"And I’d suggest we leave this Dusk Feather be, for now, Your Majesty. Capturing it properly, in its current state, would be difficult at best, and it may well serve us better later, as a piece of evidence."

An answer came at once, from the farthest seat at the table.

"If this Dusk Feather really is a clue to finding whoever controls it, then isn’t what Lady Evalia is doing exactly the right approach?"

It was Irvine. In his view, Evalia’s method made the most sense of anything proposed so far. He trusted House Melampus, a house bound closely to nature and to beasts of every kind, to sense when something was genuinely wrong faster than anyone else at this table could.

If Evalia’s test succeeded, they’d have their answer in minutes: whether this thing truly answered to some descendant of the Crimson clan, or not.

"If the creature does turn on us, I’ll take full responsibility myself."

House Augusta had made its position clear, and House Winter backed it without hesitation a heartbeat later.

The rest of the Pillar families weighed it in silence for a moment, turning the matter over, before settling, one by one, on the conclusion that Irvine’s reasoning held up better than the alternative.

Rhaiven’s brow drew tight with open displeasure, but the decision had already been made around him. Helia found herself with nothing left to say, not with Varka himself giving his approval to Irvine’s proposal to examine the creature’s body directly.

"My thanks for the chance, Your Majesty."

Evalia turned back toward the cage, passing close by Rhaiven and Helia as she went. In that same instant, she felt it again, that same unpleasant weight of a stare settling on her from somewhere nearby.

She let it go a second time, choosing instead to finish what she’d started.

Her eyes fixed once more on a spot just above the Dusk Feather’s shoulder, and before anyone could stop her again, she drove the thorn deep into the flesh there, lifting it free a moment later.

She rose slowly, holding the thorn up where the chandelier light could reach it. Nothing. Not a single drop of blood clung to its edge.

"This creature really is dead!"

"Watch out!"

The warning tore through the hall from somewhere ahead of her, a half second before she could turn. A vast shadow fell across her back, followed by the sudden, heavy beat of wings.

Evalia spun just as it closed the distance, and found the Dusk Feather rising, impossibly, to its full height before her, its eyes blazing a furious red, its horns crackling with threads of lightning.

The creature had come back to life.

"Damn it! Why is it getting up, wasn’t it already dead?!"

At this range, there was no way she could dodge what was coming.

A short distance away, hidden behind the mask he never removed, Rhaiven watched Evalia standing directly in the path of the creature’s attack, and said nothing at all.