Stellina

Crimson Cobblestone

Lina crouched down beside her. "You mean it's Luka's locket?"

Helain's eyes met hers. "Well, who else's locket would it be?" she chuckled. "I'm assuming the Fuhrmann boy was the one who sent you over here. He must finally want to take on the responsibility, after all these years."

"You do know Luka, then?" Lina furrowed her eyebrows, a thought suddenly entering her mind. Could it be, after all this time, that they really were both searching for the exact same locket? That Luka's mother...

She rose from the footsteps, her dress sweeping across the moss-covered stone. She looked like she couldn't have been more than thirty years old, with a sort of innocent beauty radiating from her. Lina knew she had to be older, however, otherwise she would have been awfully young when she knew Birdie. Her fingers brushing against the door, she practically floated back inside, but not before spinning around to face Lina again. "Well, his mother," she said. "She was a dear friend of mine and also of Birdie's hus---"

Lina's heart stopped. So Luka's mother did know Birdie. She was the one who hid Stella's address in the locket. Lina cocked her head slightly. It seemed strange that Luka hadn't ever figured out that his mother's locket was connected to Stella. And he'd just been blindly searching for it all these years, not knowing its significance, risking his job just because his mother begged him to protect it...

Helain stopped abruptly, narrowing her eyes and interrupting Lina from her thoughts. "Not that you need to know any of this." Her voice came out much sharper this time. "Now I am terribly sorry, but you cannot have this locket. I was instructed to under no circumstances hand it over."

Just as she was about to slam the door shut, Lina's hand flew to the handle, wedging her hand between the frame and the door. Helain let out a shriek, stopping it before Lina's hand was slammed with it. "What are you doing?" she cried.

Lina puffed out her chest ever so slightly, throwing on a mask of defiance. She was not giving up now, not when she was so close. "Did Luka's mother tell you that?" she wrote, her eyes piercing through Helain's.

"Not directly to me." She shuffled her feet like a toddler being questioned. "I visited her a few days before she died. I found the poor woman all by herself, as apparently her son had to go a ways for some medicine. She kept going on and on about the locket and how Birdie entrusted her with it. She was so delirious, you see, she didn't even know who she was talking to. Well, as soon as she fell back to sleep I began searching the entire house for it; if what she said was true, I couldn't just let this information slip by. How could I trust a teenage boy who never even knew Birdie or Byron to take care of this? So I took it and kept it safe, just as she asked."

At this she inhaled deeply, her gaze penetrating through Lina's. "I knew Luka's mother, and I know she would have trusted me to protect it. Now, I know he's her son, but he could be a murderer for all I know, considering he didn't even bother to show up here today."

Lina nodded sullenly, trying to suppress the smile that threatened to emerge, heart beaming at the new revelation she had just realized. She was so close; she could feel it. "Well, did you know that it was her dying wish that Luka keep the locket?"

Helain's hand fell to her side as the note haphazardly fluttered to the ground. Finally, slicing through the silence, she murmured, "Bring him here. And then we'll see."

Lina's head spun as her feet danced across the cobblestone, taking every ounce of strength not to allow her burning legs to break out into a run. She'd found the locket. Now all she had to do was get it. Her heart flickered, a new flame flourishing from the ash. The sunlight warmed her skin, producing an itch for her to simply lie down and bask in it.