Legacies || Lorenzo Berkshire

Stolen Secrets

I remember learning this by myself once when I was younger out of curiosity for the words engraved on the family altar. I'm rusty now but I could make out the message.

It took me a while, but it had read: "Your Power surges. It's as strong as the Dalma's."

I found a snapped up tree branch nearby and responded to the selkie in the same runic language. "Who's the Dalma?"

The sands were pushed into the same familiar runic alphabet that imprinted our family's altar. "The White Wizards, Emrys."

I inhaled sharply, carving out the symbols on the sand, "Merlin Emrys?"

The selkie nodded furiously, dragging her scaled arm along the sand to smoothen it out before writing once more. "The Lady of the Lake feels your power. You must go before she appears. She is unpredictable."

"The Lady of the Lake?" I wrote back and watched her flatten the sand again to write on it.

"The Lady of the Lake. The Dalma's lover that caused his doom."  She waved her waved hands at me, urging me to leave.

I reluctantly pulled myself out of the ground, walking back to the castle.

Just when you think you have your family figured out, you learn about an ancestral lover.

I raced down the halls to the library, searching through the bookshelves. I found many titles that could have been enough to dig up the story of the Lady of the Lake. But I needed the one book I knew had every piece of juice. 

My eyes roamed finding numerous titles, but not quite what I needed. 

Tales of Canterlot

The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights

Knights of the Round Table and the Wizard

The Emrys Guide

Dragona: Arthurian Legends

Emrys: The White Bloodline

Canterlot Wanders through the Decade's Eyes

It wasn't here. 

My eyes glimmered catching sight of the forbidden section. If my ancestor, Maudraia Emrys was a student back at Hogwarts when she wrote this, it would definitely be kept by the school. That's how the selfish wizards worked anyway. Stolen Secrets everywhere.

Maudraia Emrys, from the daughter, the second child to another, pass me the family secrets.

I walked to the forbidden section, my shoes clicking along the floor, but I didn't care. Madam Pince was nowhere to be found and Filch wouldn't come here until later, it's too much a long walk, it would take him plentiful time.

There it was. White Infitrated: Secrets of Emrys.

I froze. Do I wanna know? The dirty secrets, everything there was that had been hidden buried. All those that you couldn't find in plain sight. Knowledge that could twist my entire family down. Revelations that could possibly eat up my mind.

I flipped over the book pages, running my hands directly, desperately searching for anything about 'The Lady of the Lake.'

I had somehow landed in a page where ashes had been thrown over, and the book thudded the ashes scattered in the air.

I coughed, waving it away when the ashes formed a figure of a woman. She smiled at me.

"You have found me, child." She reached a hand out, "you sear with his power. It has grown dormant for years but resurfaced in you, surprisingly." She laughed, but her laugh wasn't humorous or funny, it was laced it sarcasm, with venom.

Like a woman who had been scorned.

"I wonder how father takes it once he sees that it's a girl who was gifted the power he coveted,"  she paused, "tell me, darling, what is your name?"

"Evangeline Wysteria Emrys."

She laughed harder, "and not even a descendant with the customary M initial." She looked up, "see this dad? A woman, a weakly woman as you say has the power you were so god forbid, hungry for." It felt like a shrill echo sending chills down my spine.

She looked back at me, "darling, how'd you find this? Or better yet..." she dragged out, "what was your motive to find this?"

"The Lady of the Lake. I need to know who she is." I met her gray eyes as she raised a brow.

"The Lady of the Lake?" The book's pages flipped and there it was. "Vivien... The Lady of the Lake who Merlin had so hopelessly fallen in love with. The reason this hell of a family doesn't believe in love."