Both Zhiyi and Aroha froze at the prince's words. They had expected something dangerous, but nothing as alarming as Lycan venom. Lycan venom was infamous for its cruelty. It tore through the body in waves of pain so intense that some victims begged to be put out of their misery before the venom did it for them. If not treated at once, the poison settled deep into the body and became almost impossible to cleanse.
Aroha had only caught a faint trace of it earlier when she stood close to the prince. She had assumed he had touched someone who was infected. The scent was too light to assume it clung to him. But she was wrong. Ara was poisoned. And somehow, impossibly, his body had subdued the venom.
Ridiculous. Completely absurd. That should not have been possible for anyone.
Only the pure blood Renoffs possessed the gift of complete self-healing. The prince was anything but a Renoff. The Croft family carried the bloodline of the ancient Beasts, the other divine creatures who once ruled Maori beside the Druids. That ancient connection made them powerful fighters and unmatched warriors. But if a pure blood Croft existed in the present day, it would be Ara. And the fact that he had resisted Lycan venom as if it were nothing more than an irritation was a feat that even the Renoffs would struggle to match.
Another question surfaced in their minds. How had the kingdom even captured a Lycan? Lycans rarely left their own territory, especially during the day. They lived in regions untouched by human settlement. There were a few tribes scattered along the borders of the Croft kingdom. Zhiyi remembered that when she and Aroha first moved to Juza with their parents, there had been trouble with the Lycans. But over time, a compromise had been reached. Juza village had been shifted closer to a safer region, and the Lycans had retreated.
Lycans were one of the last surviving ancient races. Most of the old mythical species had died out centuries ago, yet Lycans had endured with stubborn resilience. They were dangerously strong as well as fiercely aggressive. Killing one was already difficult. Capturing one alive was almost impossible. They never stayed down long enough for shackles to hold.
But Croft was a powerful kingdom. And the Chimaera project had begun one year after the armistice. The king's advisor and closest counsellor, Jerome Leroya, had been the one to propose it. Jerome was a sorcerer obsessed with unlocking the dormant powers of the divine beings that slept within the humans of the present age. There was an old myth that Maori would one day turn against itself in a cataclysm of destruction. The only force capable of standing against that calamity would be a being equal to the original divine rulers: the Druids and the Beasts.
When they asked how the Lycans had been captured, Ara wore a grin so proud that it almost glowed.
"Why of course, it was I, the great Ara Croft," he announced dramatically.
He swung his arms in the exaggerated gestures that Zhiyi herself liked to make whenever she was feeling especially theatrical. Aroha watched with a deep sigh. Now she understood where Zhiyi got that habit from.
Zhiyi, meanwhile, was starstruck. She had learned those gestures from girls who had joined the Healers' Nest years after she and Aroha had left the capital. The gestures of Prince Ara himself. Seeing the source with her own eyes felt like witnessing a legend come to life. And he looked better performing them than she ever had.
Aroha thought otherwise.
"I will say it plainly. Zhiyi does it better," she remarked.
She said it because she believed it, but also because provoking Ara was oddly satisfying. Perhaps she had finally found someone she enjoyed tormenting more than Zhiyi. Zhiyi had always done most of the tormenting anyway.
The vice grand healer watched the exchange with a smile that brightened her tired face. The past few days had been unbearably stressful. Seeing people bicker so lightly felt like the first breath of fresh air she had tasted in a long time. The capital had become stiff and suffocating, weighed down by fear, pride and unspoken politics.
Aroha turned to the vice with a blunt stare.
"You look awfully young to be a vice grand healer."
"Well, maybe," the woman replied with careless honesty. "But I am good enough."
The conviction in her voice left no space for doubt. She was not boasting, and she was not pretending. She spoke as a person who knew her worth. She was not a Renoff. Neither was the current grand healer, assuming she had not changed. Back when Zhiyi and Aroha lived in the capital, their own parents had served as the vice grand healers and had been regarded as the most talented healers in the kingdom, surpassing even the grand healer in certain aspects. Their skill had made many Renoffs overly confident, even though most of them were only average healers in truth.
Not because they lacked talent, but because they lacked discipline and real training. They relied too much on their family name and not on effort. That was why Gero and Miya had agreed to move their daughters to the capital. If the girls were ever to reach their full potential, they needed proper guidance. And the grand healer had provided that. They learned more in a year under her than they had in many years living among the Renoffs.
Most Renoffs now choose to pursue politics instead of healing. Their family name carried tremendous influence in the Croft kingdom. It promised a life of comfort and authority. But Gero Renoff had despised the idea of becoming an aristocrat. If he were not working in the healing field, he preferred peace and quiet, surrounded by the serenity of nature. Miya felt the same way, and the Renoffs who followed them shared that sentiment.
The king had pleaded with them to stay, but once they had made their choice, even he could not sway them.
"Well," Aroha said with a smug tilt of her chin, "if you are already a vice grand healer, then I suppose I could become one in no time."
Although Zhiyi was rumoured to be the more gifted of the two sisters, Aroha held unshakable confidence in her own abilities.
The vice grand healer, Vela, raised a playful brow.
"Oh, is that what this is? You are looking down on me because I am not a Renoff?" she teased.
She had heard such remarks for years. She had been judged for her youth, for her background, for not belonging to the Renoff lineage. As if talent existed only in one bloodline.
Aroha smirked.
"Of course not. I would look down on you even if you were a Renoff. My judgment does not discriminate. It is all the same to me."
Vela placed a hand on her chest in exaggerated delight.
"I see. Then is that a challenge? If so, I gladly accept it, Aroha Renoff."