The next night, Serana woke and, while stretching, looked to the corner where Elayn usually was and saw that the wolf was gone, replaced by the crouching woman.

Who was still asleep. She felt a sense of victory in that,but habit kept her from smiling.

Serana got up from the bed and went to ring the bell. When a human man came to her door she told him to fetch food for breakfast and a goblet of blood. He didn’t remark on either thing, and when he came back his wrist was freshly bound in clean rags. When Serana turned back around, Elayn was awake, and watching her. She was frowning, as if conflicted.

“Come, eat,” she said, setting the platter of porridge, fresh bread, and an apple. She took the goblet and took a drink from it herself.

When the orders didn’t make her furious, Serana was curious; what was the werewolf thinking so hard about? She supposed she could make her speak, but seemed wrong. How to ask? She thought furiously as she took another drink.

Finally, all she could really think to try was honesty. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to tell me,” she said slowly. “But you seem like you have something on your mind.”

Elayn, who had been focused on the food, now focused on her with that same curious frown. She finished what she’d been chewing, then said, “I don’t have to tell you?”

“No.”

She considered that as she took another bite of porridge. “Okay.”

Well that was that. Serana had given her the option and she had chosen not to share. Alright, that was… fine. Curiosity had always been a vice of hers, but she could control herself.

The goblet in her hand was almost empty when--

“Your father is kind of horrible,” Elayn said, breaking the silence.

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Serana, shocked, blinked at her before a small, grim smile curled her lips. “Oh, you noticed. He wasn’t always like that, you know. Even as a vampire. Something… happened between him and my mother, they started fighting. He got reclusive and temperamental.”

Her cheeks heating, she looked down at her twisting hands and stopped them with effort. “I don’t mean to--”

“It’s fine,” Elayn said, cutting her off almost gently. “I said something, didn’t I?”

She shrugged, still looking at her hands. “I understand very well why my mother left,” she said in a horribly small voice. “If I could leave too, I would.”

----------------------------------------

Elayn was rather glad Serana wasn’t looking at her. If the vampire was, she wasn’t sure what her face would look like, so it was better that way. Now she was forcing herself to reconsider some facts. First, Serana hadn’t hurt her, had gone out of her way to take care of her when she was hurt. Second, that neither of them had any desire to stay in this castle longer than absolutely necessary.

Third… She could never bring herself to be cold when someone was so obviously vulnerable. It put her in a strange position, and she thumbed at the collar that had been replaced that morning.

But really, what did she have to lose?

She reached forward to clasp one of Serana’s hands, offering the closest thing she could to a smile when golden eyes darted up to meet hers. “Believe me,” she said. “I get it.”

Her mistress smiled watery-eyed. “I’m sure you do.”

The moment was broken when Serana looked to the door and said, “Let’s go to the lab, I don’t like staying cooped up in here.”

In the laboratory, Elayn did her usual job of fetching ingredients and books as Serana needed them. With some of the tension between them dissipated, she felt more comfortable asking questions about the process of alchemy, and her mistress did her best to explain what she could in simple terms.

“Fire rises, right?” she said, gesturing to a glass jar with a long, winding neck. “Heat does too, they’re really the same thing. If you heat up a liquid, it becomes a gas, and the gas goes through the neck of the bottle until it gets to here--” she pointed at another bottle where the vapor was collecting back into fluid. “What I’ve got separating is aconite, I’m trying to distill it to a pure essence.”

It was a lot more complicated than Elayn’s herbal knowledge, but not so much that it didn’t make sense with a little explanation. Time flew by and when Serana was distracted by a complicated step, she poked around the laboratory, flipping through books here and there. She found one with a thin spine, and a faded name written in an incomprehensible flourish on the inside of the binding.

“My mother’s,” her mistress said when she had a moment. “She kept a record of all her research and experiments.”

Elayn flipped to the last page and squinted at the writing that was squiggly enough to be difficult to read. What she saw there shocked her. “Your mother was working on a way to get into Hell?” she demanded.

Serana must not have known, because she looked surprised too. She crossed the room to take the book from Elayn, and skimmed the contents of the last few pages. “It appears so,” she murmured, chewing at her lip. Elayn tried not to notice. “It says she and my father were working on it together, but the notes just-- Aha!”

She held the book open and offered it to Elayn. “See there? There’s pages missing.”

A thought struck her. “Did your mother say anything to you about where she was going?” she asked.

The other woman thought about it for a moment. “Not anything in particular I can recall, although she did say…”

“What?”

Serana looked pensive. “She said that we-- she and I-- should try to fix the moondial in the garden.

“What’s a moon dial?”