Chapter 577: The Name That Follows

Silence settled over the shrine like a second skin.

No one moved.

The weight of what had just been said lingered in the air.

Sophia stood very still, her gaze lowered to the parchments spread across the table, though she wasn’t truly seeing them anymore.

Her mind had already drifted far from the room.

The West...the Blood Moon Pack.

Her fingers curled slightly at her sides.

Could it be...?

Her chest tightened, a slow, creeping pressure that made it harder to breathe properly.

Could it be she was from the west? If the corpse plant was something that was grown in the west and was really a part of what had been in the vial...there was every probability she was from the west.

"This corpse plant, can it be used to make a green tonic?" Lysander asked.

"I’m going to be honest, I don’t know much about the plant, so I can’t say for sure," Annabeth told him.

Madam Tyler spoke then, her voice firm.

"It doesn’t," she said.

Everyone turned to her.

She shook her head slightly.

"At least not from what I remember," she continued. "When we experimented with it briefly, it never produced anything green. No tonic, no residue of that color. The scent alone was overwhelming, but its properties..." she trailed off, then shook her head again. "No. They were not green; it was more brown...like dirt, I think."

Lysander exhaled slowly.

"Then there must be something else," he said, more to himself than anyone else. "Another component mixed into whatever Sophia was given."

Sophia swallowed. Yet something else they did not have full answers to.

"Is there any way I can get this plant? Maybe to experiment with it?" Lysander asked. "I know it’s only grown in the west, but perhaps there could be a way to get it to grow?"

"We’ll first need to get the seeds," Ronan said with a frown. "And honestly, where exactly do you think we should get them from?"

"I’d have suggested the black market, but then it’s been destroyed," Eldric muttered.

Orion’s eyes widened then. "And we have people who normally frequented the black market. They may have some knowledge about this, don’t you think?"

"Brother, I hate to break it to you, but Tobias is still unconscious," Ronan said.

"I’m not talking about Tobias," Orion told him. "Jarek worked closely with Tobias. I’d bet the goddess herself that even Tarin and his sister could have something for us. Information flows in the black market, and for a plant like this, there must have been information about it."

Ronan’s eyes widened then, and he nodded. Orion was right. The corpse plant sounded like something that would sell in the black market. Surely there must be something that Jarek and the others knew that could help them with information regarding it.

"And also," Ronan said with a smile on his face, "we have someone from the Enclave. We can get more information about this plant from him, and perhaps even more."

Orion nodded. "I don’t feel like he knows much, but perhaps he could tell us more about the plant."

"And preferably how to cultivate it here in the North so we could get more information about it," Lysander added.

Madam Tyler exhaled. With the way things were going, she was going to have even more grey hairs than that old man Caspian.

And there was this feeling in her gut. She prayed she was wrong, though. She prayed it was different. She had no idea if the others had the same suspicions as she did, but the fact that this plant was cultivated by Victoria herself—could it be that Sophia had a connection to Victoria? Could Sophia have been from the west? Maybe the child of someone very close to Victoria?

She refused to believe that Sophia would be directly related or connected to Victoria. There had to be someone who bridged the connection between them. Sophia was too kind a child to be directly linked to Victoria, after all.

---

While Orion and the others were in the shrine, Caspian was in Daniel’s home.

The drawing that the fake Eldric...Oculum had done—the woman standing behind Sophia...he couldn’t place it.

And he had no idea why he was so bothered by it. He had gone back to look at the drawing, scrutinizing every part of it, and he still couldn’t place why the woman looked familiar.

Perhaps it was because he was getting older. He had met numerous people in his lifetime, after all.

He shook his head and took a sip of his beer.

No, that wasn’t it.

This wasn’t because he had met numerous people.

Most faces he could no longer recall, but the fact that this drawing still stuck with him even days after meant there had to be something about it.

Daniel gave him a look.

"Are you going to say what’s bothering you, or do I need to guess how long you’ll last drinking alcohol like that first?"

Caspian released a deep sigh.

"You really don’t think the woman in the drawing is familiar?" he asked Daniel.

"Um...we all know it was Sophia. What are you talking about?"

"The other woman," Caspian said. "The one that was drawn watching Sophia. She’s very familiar. I’m sure I’ve met her before, and perhaps she left a lasting impression on me, but I can’t quite place her."

Daniel frowned at that.

"Really?"

Caspian nodded.

"I’m having difficulty sleeping over a woman in a drawing I don’t even recognize."

"Perhaps I need to take a look at the drawing again too," Daniel said. "If you recognize her even though it’s not clear, then perhaps it’s someone I know too. We could also ask Madam Tyler if she recognizes the woman."

Caspian nodded.

"That’s a great idea. Let’s get to the library then. The drawings were handed over to Eldric."

Daniel downed his beer in one go and then stood up. He and Caspian left the house and headed for the library.