Chapter 37: Another Spark?
"Vesha?" Adyr called out, his voice tight, lips twitching slightly.
"Huh?" Vesha flinched, snapping out of her distant thoughts. She looked at him with surprise, then smiled warmly. "You're awake?"
It genuinely caught her off guard to see him up at this hour. Until now, he had only stirred briefly at night and slept through all day.
"Yeah," Adyr replied, his eyes shifting to the pot, where something strange bubbled and fumed. "What are you cooking?"
The question seemed to pull her back to reality. "Ah, this..." She glanced at the concoction, her voice dipping into guilt. "The raven looked weak and hungry, so I wanted to make it something to eat."
She hesitated, then added, "I think I overestimated my cooking skills. It turned into... something like poison, didn't it?" She looked genuinely troubled.
As a noble girl, she had never cooked before. She had only watched Adyr do it a few times and occasionally helped, which gave her the false confidence that she could manage it on her own. The result, however, was an absolute disaster.
Girl, it's not something like poison. It is poison, Adyr thought, faintly amused.
''I don't think it can eat a cooked meal. It only feeds on the life force of fresh meat. '' Adyr explained.
"Is that so?" Vesha replied with a pout, though she looked somewhat relieved. But then, as the thought of what the creature might actually need to eat crossed her mind, her expression shifted. The color drained from her face.
"Can it feed on wild animals, by any chance?"