Chapter 108 Butterfly in a Shadowbox
Leela couldn't stop shaking. The tremors started in her hands and radiated out to her very core, vibrating through her bones.
Every time she blinked, the image overlaid reality: the diagrams of those poor babies. The words written in that neat, sociopathic script. Extraction. Preservation. Viability. They looked like specimens in a formaldehyde jar, or beautiful, iridescent butterflies pinned dead in a shadow box, trapped behind glass for someone else's amusement.
"I've gotta go for a walk," Leela said abruptly. Her voice was brittle, like dry leaves.
She didn't wait for permission or agreement. She hoisted Caspian onto one hip and Briar onto the other, the physical strain of their combined weight grounding her, reminding her that they were heavy, solid, and alive.
Fennigan started to stand, his instinct to follow and protect flaring instantly.
"No," Leela said, stopping him with a sharp look. "I just need time to think. Please."
Ginny took a half-step forward, her face etched with concern. "Do you want me to come? I can help carry the babies? You shouldn't be—"
"No," Leela repeated, softer this time but just as firm. "I just need to think. Alone."
She turned and walked away from the porch, carrying the twins like shields against the world. She walked past the main house, her boots crunching on the gravel, the rhythm of her steps trying to outpace the horror in her mind.
She bypassed the gardens and went straight to the training grounds.
She paused for a moment by the fence, watching the younger warriors running drills. They were new recruits—teenagers, mostly. They were clumsy, tripping over their own paws in wolf form, laughing when they fell, eager to learn but so painfully young.
Vane would have put them in cages too, she thought, a chill running down her spine. He would have seen them as batteries, not people.
She turned away, unable to watch their innocence without seeing the targets on their backs. She walked further, down the winding path that led to the Class Valley.
This was her domain. It was where she had set up the different soil plots to teach the visiting packs. There were sections of sandy loam, clay, and silt, each planted with specific herbs and indicators to teach wolves how to identify what the land needed to heal.
It was a place of growth. A place of life.
Leela walked into the center of the valley, the smell of rich, damp earth filling her nose, finally scrubbing the scent of old paper and death from her senses.
She lowered the twins to the ground near a patch of river stones.
"Okay," she whispered to them. "Play."
Caspian and Briar didn't need to be told twice. They immediately sat down in the dirt, their little hands grabbing the smooth stones, delighted by the texture.
Leela walked through the plots, trailing her hand over the leaves of the medicinal plants. She felt the vibration of the earth beneath her feet—a slow, steady thrum of life that had existed long before Vane and would exist long after him.
As she stood there, she felt it again—that soft, fluttering butterfly feeling in her belly. The baby. Her third child. A life that hadn't even taken its first breath yet.
I cannot bring you into a world where he exists, she realized. I cannot let you be a butterfly in his shadow box.
She walked back to the twins and sat down heavily in the dirt beside them. She didn't care about the stains on her jeans. She picked up a flat stone and placed it on top of another. Caspian giggled and added a third. Briar knocked them down.
They built. They destroyed. They laughed.
Leela sat there for an hour, just stacking rocks, listening to the wind in the trees and the babbling of her children, letting the earth seep into her skin and stabilize her shaking hands.
She didn't hear Fennigan approach, but she felt him. The air shifted, becoming warmer, safer.
He walked up to the edge of the stone circle, his hands in his pockets, his expression guarded. He didn't speak. He just watched her sitting in the dust, building a tiny, fragile tower with their son.
Leela placed one last stone on the top. She didn't look up immediately. She watched Caspian clap his hands at their creation.
"We have to do it, Fenn," Leela said quietly.
She looked up then, her eyes clear. The tears were gone. The shaking was gone. In their place was a cold, hard resolve—the kind of resolve that mothers get when they realize the only way out is through.
"We have to do the ritual," she stated, her voice steady. "I will let the Stone speak. I will let the land scream through me."
Fennigan took a step closer, his brow furrowing. "Leela, are you sure? The pain..."
"I can handle the pain," she interrupted, reaching out to brush a smudge of dirt from Briar’s nose. "What I can't handle... is the thought of him being out there. Wearing those rings. Hunting for more."
She looked at Fennigan, her green eyes blazing.
"We have to do what we have to do to get rid of that monster. Burn him down, Fenn. Whatever it takes."