38 A scattered soul and a secret

I suppose the irony of that is that my hunts were always in vain- I never did find the Devil. In fact, he found me.

Not that my efforts were of any use to begin with.

With a dim and hazy expression, I resume my gaze back to the paintings that cover the walls, letting myself slip into the dark beauty of them, imagining each scene in turn. For a moment I get so lost in imagining that I almost don't hear Valerian speak.

"I will teach you," Valerian says quietly beside my ear, his voice lowered to a husky, pleasant hum, lilac eyes reaching mine as he gives an inquisitive glance downwards. Furrowing my brows, I attempt to decipher the meaning of those words, but shortly come up empty handed. So instead I am reduced to exclaiming:

"What?" I say, raising my head, not expecting such an exclamation. Valerian doesn't answer immediately, instead he takes us over to the centrepiece of the room, placing me down on the sheets of his grand four poster bed gently. The amount of care he takes in placing me there is anything if not endearing, and perhaps if I hadn't been so mentally out of it I might have thanked him, too. As I shuffle to get myself comfy, a few dilopuffs scuttle from out of the covers, bouncing balls of fluff shooting around the room.

Valerian however, pays them little attention.

Wiping his hands momentarily on his trousers, he pulls back one of the bed curtains, and perches himself on the edge of the bed, a glittering smile on the edges of his features.

"To paint. You are going to be here a while, I might as well teach you at some point."

A faint flush raises on my cheeks- most probably because I'm delirious, or maybe because the unexpected breach of privacy when reads my thoughts is not yet something I am used to. Or maybe, just maybe, such a heartfelt gesture is so foreign to me that I am unsure how to react to it at all.

"Yeah, I would like that," I murmur, settling myself down on the bed, letting my fingers run across the silken sheets, consumed with the thoughts of how lovely it would be to slide down into them and sleep for eternity.

Except I suppose I have a job to do now. A prophecy to fulfil. Somehow.

"Hey Valerian?" I murmur, letting my eyes flicker shut for a moment, a blissful darkness overcoming my senses. A soft hum tells me he has heard my question.

"What happened to the girl?"

A small silence, then:

"What?"

Burrowing myself deeper against the covers, I open my eyes slightly, watching him through half closed vision. Strangely enough at the posed question, he appears almost uncomfortable. The same sort of 'uncomfortable' he had experienced when I had touched his wings: on edge, wary. Despite asking me to repeat myself, from the fidgeting gestures of his hands and the darting of his eyes, I would hazard a guess that he knows exactly what I am talking about.

He just doesn't want to answer.

"The girl you tried to save. Lyla. The one you... Well, anyway. She isn't here, is she? What happened to her?"

Twisting his fingers on themselves, Valerian ponders over his words with a meticulous care, his lips moving in silent speech as he attempts to voice the words he does not wish to say. There is too much hesitation in his stance to be natural, too rigid, too refined. It is as though he is carefully knit picking through each sentence to alter it in just enough way not to be alarming to me.

The notion, however, makes me uneasy. As if what he is about to tell me next isn't quite the whole truth, but a part.

"The angels took her," he says at last, placing a hand on his forehead to steady himself, a pained expression crossing his features. He winces at a thought that I can neither think nor know, his eyes refusing to meet mine for a brief second as he wallows in a blackened melancholy. Then he leans back against the bed, glancing me up and down with a sorrowful expression, a watery light swimming behind his eyes.

"I do not wish to scare you, Elowyn, but there are things, people in this world, which are more terrifying than you can imagine. The angels most of all. They have mastery over all the realms, they see everything, and do not show mercy for anyone. Myself, included. Then there are Folk like myself who strive to guard and control the realms from the angels, and we are no better. We are not normal people, our powers are not…" he pauses momentarily, throat working. "Our powers are not human. They are dangerous, and you will learn this one way or another."

He takes a short break to give me a small smile, but there is no warmth behind it, only fear. But not for himself. For me.

"What I am about to tell you I have refrained from telling all else, and I would rather you forget about it as soon as you can. I promise I will not let the same fate happen to you,"

My insides grow cold.

Beginning to sit up, I raise myself on my elbow, only to find the room around me is spinning in a dizzying array of colours and lights. With a frown, Valerian places his fingers against my chest, pushing me back down gently.

"What happened to her?" I ask again, but gone is the curious inquisitiveness, replaced with a cold, hard fear that boils in my gut, threatening to spill out of my stomach in waves of rolling nausea.

Valerian sucks in his breath, his fingers running in absent, worried circles over his knee.

"The angels extracted her soul," he whispers, his breath catching in his throat as he leans back, eyes screwing shut, as though disdaining to linger on the memory. In that moment, my heart stops. Before I can even get a whisper of a word out, Valerian continues, his expression taught as he wraps his arms around himself.

"It was to be my ultimate punishment. Back then, my powers were new, uncontrollable. I could not stop them then. They took her from me, they made me watch as they took out her soul and scattered it into the heavens. They-" he stops, pausing for a moment, a sudden stillness overcoming his limbs, a blank, dead expression on his face, before shaking his head.

"Never mind. I cannot afford to tell you more, hearing such things would damage you. Your mind simply wouldn't be able to handle it," he says sadly, rising from the bed. I do not miss the tear that trickles down his cheek. "Have a good night, Elowyn. I will be here in the morning."

"No, no, wait!" I cry, holding out my hand to him desperately, willing him to tell me more. Extracting souls? Scattering them? All of this sounds like one horrible, messed up nightmare. Yet there is something more to it, something deeper under the skin of this horror tale that he is obviously refraining from telling me- the reasons why he is I have yet to decipher.

"Please Valerian, I know there is something else. You have to tell me. Please!"