Chapter 355: Golden Butterfly
"Let me show you what we do for fun," Maggie said, enjoying the new neighbor she had while also feeling awful that he had ended up here. There were not many young pups who found themselves in the lotus section of containment. That meant he was incredibly powerful for his age.
Sage perked up. There was something they did here for fun?
"Come here," she said, standing next to the glass wall that both united and separated them.
He got up from where he had been sitting on his bed staring at the atrium and the crow who had been his constant companion now, always looking in on him. He wondered if the crow was concerned or was waiting patiently for something to happen.
Maggie was standing at the far back of her room where the side and back walls met. "There are cameras watching us, but they have blind spots in the corners."
"Can they hear us?" Sage asked, confused as to why she would be speaking this aloud if they were being watched.
"No, thankfully we have that small measure of privacy. They can’t hear us," she answered.
"How do you know?" he whispered.
Maggie smiled kindly. There was something about just her smile that instantly calmed the pup. "I have been here a very long time, young one. There are some things I have learned in that time. Now do you see down below and up above where the glass walls meet the floor and ceiling?"
Sage looked down, studying the area that she was referring to before looking back up at the ceiling. He nodded.
"They are not perfect seals. There is the smallest amount of space between the glass and the stone. The woman who made this facility is named Nedra. She is the most powerful alyko we know of who lives, and unfortunately the vampire has trapped her here just like he has trapped all of us," she explained, not realizing how Sage’s expression appeared slightly pained at hearing this particular name.
"She was meant to reside on the very top level of the lotus," Maggie told him, pointing upward, "the very center of the most powerful alyko where there is a grand garden and beautiful sparkling lotus-shaped building made of gold and glass that opens to the sky. But Nedra refused, and so the lotus remains empty until he finds the next most powerful alyko, should she or he ever exist."
Sage listened patiently. He had heard parts of this story already from Selah who told him stories about their mother, but he had never met her. Selah and Nedra both wanted to protect him from this place and from the vampire it was created for, so this was Sage’s first time being on the island out of his mother’s womb. It was exactly how he imagined, but being here and seeing it in his mind were very different.
He wondered what his mother would do should she find out that he was here, captured and contained under the lotus like the other powerful alyko that Zagan had managed to collect over the years. A small, nagging part of him suspected that it was unlikely that she would do anything. She had been manipulated into doing so many questionable things for the vampire for so long because she loved the male who was Selah and Sage’s father, and Zagan knew it. He used that leverage to keep her here, doing the big tasks that he required and was unable to do himself. It was possible that not even Sage’s presence would change her self-containment and censure for fear that Zagan would kill the male she loved.
But he didn’t tell Maggie any of this. It wouldn’t matter anyway. He listened to her story that sounded like a bedtime tale told to children about fictional beasts and fair maidens meant to stir their imaginations and entertain them before they slipped into dreams where the fictional beings could carry on and live forever.
"We met Nedra once," Maggie continued. "She came to the lotus to check on something. Most of the lycans leave her alone, because they trust her and the vampire has told them not to upset her. She has earned that trust and respect over many years, and they wish to keep her happy. And I think most of them figure, why would she build this place only to destroy it and set all of us free?"
Sage’s patient smile wilted on his face. If only she would. She would be a hero, but who knows how many people would be slaughtered by the vampire in retaliation.
"When she was here, she told us this secret about the walls that do not seal against the ceiling and ground. I didn’t understand why that would matter at first, and she didn’t explain it. But we figured out later that even this smallest amount of space allows some of the Veiled to pass through unhindered to our eyes by the containment. Let me show you," she said.
Maggie backed up slightly and winked at him before performing a flourishing gesture with her hands aimed at the ground where the wall met the floor. A golden butterfly appeared in his room that looked as if it were made of stardust, the sparkling bits falling from its wings that fluttered so happily and freely around him that he giggled. It continued to flutter in this corner where the cameras couldn’t reach before it gradually dissipated back into the air and Maggie’s arms fell back to her sides.
"Do you like it?" she asked, walking back to the wall next to him.
"Yes," he nodded emphatically. "Can everyone do that?" he asked, looking around at the room on the other side of him and across the atrium.
"Those who try all do something a little different. I will let cranky pants over there show you what she does sometime," Maggie chuckled, gesturing with a tilt of her head toward the room on the other side of him whose inhabitant had gone back to bed. "The question is, what will you do?" She winked.
