Once training was over, everyone either took a break to let their keets play, or went into the Aerie. Leslyn was one of those who went in, quickly returning Valiant to his cage so that he could leave at a moment’s notice if he managed to negotiate successfully with Kaleit.

He went back out to watch for a moment when an approach and private conversation could be had, but he hadn’t gotten far when red Romo abruptly touched down so close that Leslyn almost could have spit on him.

Prince Koben dismounted with all of his usual energy, waving to the youth. “Right, we’re off to town for a few errands. I’ll need you to carry some things on the way back.”

Leslyn remained where he was.

Blissfully ignorant, Koben knelt by Romo, putting his hands together in preparation to give his small squire a boost up to the saddle. When said squire failed to step up, he looked up and raised his brows quizzically.

Leslyn held his gaze with a long, sober look. "I saw Kaleit feeding Phoebe this morning."

"Ah.” Koben straightened, dusting flecks of grass off of his knees as he went. “You'd like to know why, I presume?"

"Yes, I'd like to know why. Where is Erin?"

"She's safe."

Those two words, spoken in a gentle tone meant to comfort, had the opposite effect. Leslyn’s chest went tight with dread. "Koben—Sire—please, don't sidestep my question."

The prince’s hazel eyes turned aside to focus on Romo as he silently considered the youth’s request. There was a stomach-sinking moment as he took hold of the saddle to hoist himself up, turning his back to Leslyn. His arms were just beginning the lift when Koben paused, leaving his feet on the ground. "I've given her to the merling." With that, he climbed up.

Leslyn had been preparing himself to accept it, had Erin solely gone of her own volition—even if it was under the merling’s bewitching spell. But this… it was so much worse.

When the youth didn’t respond, the prince added, "It was done because, as far as I could discern, it was necessary."

"Can you guarantee her safe return?”

"Leslyn—"

"You can't, can you?” Leslyn’s ears had grown as hot as his temper. “Why couldn't you have chosen someone else, then? Why was it necessary to sacrifice my flesh and blood?"

Koben extended a finger at him, screwing up his eyebrows and pulling his mouth to one side in a way that indicated he wasn’t sure if he had heard correctly.

Leslyn belatedly realized what he’d accidentally said, but didn't care just then, struggling to remain calm. "Sire, as respectfully as I am able at the moment—I request the rest of the day off."

Still pointing, Koben continued his attempts to comprehend. "Granted," he finally said.

Leslyn took off without another word.

A glance toward the open field showed him that, sometime during their conversation, Kaleit had gone inside. Ineffectually dabbing at his angry red ears, Leslyn went back into the Aerie to look for him. He'd normally have waited until he wasn't so fired up before risking such a confrontation, but after facing down the absolute futility of trying to deal with what Koben had done, he was almost hoping for a fight.

He wandered the halls of the Aerie for so long, checking with others on sightings of the tall youth with no success, that he nearly gave up. Just as he was about to leave and start asking around town, he walked around a bend and came face to chest with Kaleit. Both stopped instantly and glared when they saw each other.

"We need to talk," they said in unison.

After a moment of expectant, frowning silence, Kaleit gestured for Leslyn to speak first.

"It's about Erin," he began. "I need you to get me into your father’s house to check her belongings."

"What for?"

Leslyn considered being cautiously vague, but he quickly realized that would do no good. Kaleit could just go home and go through Erin's things himself. There was no choice, really, but to tell him. "She has an artifact that might help me get her back from the merling."

"We both know she wouldn't have left the necklace behind."

"You're right about that. It's something else. And I would prefer that Koben, Tannoran, and the other officials didn't hear about it, at least until we know what we're dealing with."

As he said that last, there was a spark in Kaleit's eyes that Leslyn did not like. He suspected he was facing down a fair likelihood that he'd be standing before those same mistrusted leaders in the near future. Kaleit did so like to tell tales about Leslyn, as often as he could find the fodder for it.

"Fine, then," Kaleit said, putting a hand on one hip. "I'd like to know what's going on, myself. I'm sick of them keeping secrets from us."

Kaleit began to head out, passing by Leslyn. Leslyn turned and quickly caught up to walk with him. “I thought you had something to say as well?”

“I decided there was no need.”

“No need… why? Do we have the same goal?”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

It didn’t seem likely, but Kaleit declined to answer, increasing his pace and drawing ahead of Leslyn.

The shorter youth matched his speed again. “That’s it. You wanted to help Erin, too. Why?”

“I don’t need an excuse, other than that you asked for my help, and I’m kindly giving it.”

Leslyn knew better than to believe that at face value, but he let it be for the moment.

When they reached Tannoran’s manor, they checked the private Aerie for the captain’s griffin and found it empty. Kaleit then led the way up the steps to the front entrance of the house. "So, what is this artifact we're looking for?"

“A thin metal slab with a glass face, about the size of a book.” Leslyn followed him through the foyer, then a short hallway and up a flight of stairs. “She’s been using it since right after the keets hatched, if not longer. It’s an unnatural thing, certainly involving some form of mystic devilry, but I didn’t think to connect it to the merling’s influence until I caught her with it just recently.”

“Stupid girl,” Kaleit muttered. Upstairs, he brought Leslyn to a guest room, and the two began searching for Erin’s bag.

Leslyn briefly checked inside the wardrobe, found the empty bag hanging from a hook, and then moved on to the numerous dresser drawers to probe for the slab. The taller youth immediately began looking in several less-visible places such as underneath the mattress and then went to testing the floor for creaks and loose boards. Somehow, Leslyn didn’t think Erin was that sly.

Though he felt a deep shame for invading the girl’s already limited privacy, and doubly so for bringing Kaleit into it, Leslyn was convinced this was the best and likely only thing he could do for Erin just then. Ears flushed pink with guilt as he rummaged through drawer after drawer of folded clothes and linens and tried not to muss them too badly, he was considering giving up on the search when he suddenly felt the cool, smooth surface of the slab between two pairs of slacks.

He lifted it out and stared at its blank face as he turned to Kaleit, absently sliding the drawer shut with his hip. It was much lighter than it looked like it should be, certainly not a solid piece of metal. Kaleit ceased his hunt and came over to examine the artifact with skeptical curiosity.

“I think it's called a 'slabbet.' She showed it to me once,” Leslyn said, rotating the rectangular slab in his hands to try and ascertain the correct way to hold it. “I don’t know the full extent of what it can do, but it seems to have some kind of fortune-telling capabilities.” Curled around the bottom corner of the artifact’s edge, his thumb pressed against a faint projection in the metal.

After a moment, the face of the slabbet lit up, causing both young men to instinctively jerk away from it.

Once he’d recovered, Leslyn examined it further. "She held it up like this, and..." As he tilted it on end, the lit side toward himself, he gasped as Kaleit's face and form appeared on the slabbet. “I can see you!"

"You can? Let me see."

Leslyn laid it flat so Kaleit could look when he came over, but all that was displayed on the slab by then was a smaller image of the floor underneath. He stepped back and Leslyn lifted it up a second time. Just as before, Kaleit reappeared on the face of the slabbet.

"Now you're on the slabbet again. There was something she did to make it work..." He began to fiddle with it some more.

"Wait. If the thing is cursed, maybe you shouldn't aim it at peop—"

Kaleit was cut off by an all-too-familiar flash of blinding light.

Startled by the success he wasn’t prepared for, Leslyn dropped the slabbet. He stooped to pick it up, but Kaleit snatched it up first, glaring blades at the shorter youth as he flipped it over to look at the artifact’s glowing face.

“I see my feet,” he said, completely unimpressed. “And a white curtain dropping down.”

Leaning over to look for himself, Leslyn saw a white strip with odd black symbols descending from the top of the lit area of the slabbet. Erin had appeared to manipulate the thing by touch, so he experimentally poked at the white strip with a fingertip. The strip did indeed move like a curtain, withdrawing in the opposite direction it had come from and disappearing completely. A moment later, Kaleit’s wide-eyed face appeared on the slabbet, frozen in an unnatural stare.

“Five knights and a feathered Queen,” Kaleit spat, shoving the cursed thing into Leslyn’s chest. He backed away, warily holding out a palm toward it as if prepared to ward it off from attacking him.

Only slightly more calmly, Leslyn held the artifact in his hands and tried to understand what had just happened. He raised a finger to hover uncertainly over the slabbet’s glow, steeled himself, and touched it, pressing against the glass. His fingertip slipped slightly upward, and the image on the slabbit seemed to follow the movement, sliding upward in a manner similar to the white strip from before.

Continuously sliding the image of Kaleit’s face revealed his shoulders, then a small portion of his upper body, then it ended and rows of those same black symbols filled the slabbet for as far as Leslyn was able to move the image. The writing was similar to the common letters, but somewhat off. He could only recognize two or three symbols immediately, while the rest would take some time to figure out.

“This must be what happened with the keets,” Leslyn said as he studied the slabbet. “Erin flashed that same light at them, and then somehow learned things about them that you couldn’t tell just by looking.”

“What do you mean?” Kaleit asked, craning his head to see what Leslyn was doing.

“Phoebe hadn’t started feathering out yet, but the slabbet told her that she wasn’t gray, or even standard blue like Wrath. It said she would be royal blue—and it was right. As well as foretelling the future, it also knew the past—lineages, sire and dam for any griffin its light touched.” He looked up at the other youth. “I think it’s created a history and predictions about you, too.”

Leslyn blinked as Kaleit grabbed the slabbet from him, staring at it with an intense emotion that he couldn’t quite interpret. Whatever it began as, a clear rage took over as he manipulated the image, scanning the offending letters.

“It’s clearly hexed, and dangerous. We have to destroy it. It couldn’t survive a stone thrust through its center, could it?”

“If it’s hexed, what will happen if we try? If there’s a chance it could be trapped, or somehow vitally linked to Erin.” A part of him wanted to make it a joke to lighten the situation, but Leslyn found himself sobering completely as he added, “She’ll never forgive either of us if we go through with it.”

“As if I care about that,” Kaleit retorted. He was still touching the slabbet and trying to decipher its contents when he spoke a few moments later. “I suppose the risks merit our caution, for now.”

“Thank you,” Leslyn replied, letting sarcasm color the phrase well.

The taller youth shot him a sharp look, then went back to the slabbet. He brushed his finger over it a few more times, then stopped to read. “Wait… this is Erin’s name, here in these blue letters.” He turned the slab toward Leslyn and pointed at the word. “If this is about me, why is her name here, and why does she get a different color?”

“Maybe it’s describing what she’s going to do to you—and me—when she finds out what we’ve done.” He leaned in, steadying the offered slabbet with one hand. The word Kaleit had pointed to was indeed formed of blue letters, as opposed the black of those around it. He could make out Kaleit’s name as well, in black. “That is strange, the way her name is—“ As he spoke, Leslyn absently touched his finger to the word on the glowing glass, and the image changed.

Two faces appeared on the slabbet. At first, they both were instantly familiar. After a few moments of looking at them, however, Leslyn felt sick inside.

“It’s Erin… but what happened to her face?” Kaleit muttered in a distant tone. He glanced at Leslyn. “Well? What happened? That’s you there, right next to her.”

“That’s not me.”

“It’s not?”

“No… it’s her uncle.” He stared at the image, unable to believe what he was seeing. “It’s Desmond.”