After learning the book classification from the frustrated Senna, Lys found the right volume within minutes and handed it to her mother.
Senna smoothed her hair, which she'd mussed in irritation, and glanced uncertainly at Lys's eyes. "Your eyes..."
Lys offered a reassuring smile. "It's a minor issue. It'll be fine in a while."
But Senna didn't believe her. If it were truly minor, Lys wouldn't have stayed away from home for nearly a month, only to return and immediately down an entire bottle of high-dose soul stabilizer—injured and blind.
She frowned at Lys, her amber eyes suspiciously scanning Lys's left arm, but said nothing more.
Before taking Noah home for the full moon period, Senna restocked Lys's medicine box and instructed her to watch her dosage. "You always take too much potion." It was bad for her health, but she couldn't bring herself to voice the rest of her concern.
Most of the silver light had faded from Lys's vision. She smiled and nodded at Senna.
After her parents left, she locked the study door and pulled out every book related to souls from their collection.
Her eyes were strained, but Lys didn't waste a moment—even when resting with her eyes closed, she was recalling what she'd read in the Restricted Section books at school.
She seemed to remember something... Some content from Advanced Dark Arts was beginning to align with the forbidden knowledge described in her family's collection.
Lys tried to heal her left arm, but the bone beneath the Dark Mark always twisted again after repair. Unable to find a solution, she could only keep her arm in the brace to minimize the recurring injury's impact.
She was certain the pain from the night she received the Mark had come from her soul.
Following Lucius's warning, Lys didn't dare touch the Mark carelessly.
So Lys desperately searched for books about souls. She could handle her own soul injuries, but now... what was this supposed to be?
She'd visited the Malfoy library, but Lucius said even the sections not open to Lys didn't contain what she described. Such books were more likely found in families with deeper heritage, like the Blacks.
She couldn't find what she needed...
Distracted, Lys instinctively reached to pet Gagbon, then remembered he was sulking and no longer perched on her shoulders or neck.
Thinking about Gagbon's problem gave Lys a headache. He seemed to have a different understanding of why she hadn't let him fight the Dark Lord.
She remembered Gagbon had always been docile in their previous life together—she'd never seen him bare his fangs, and he'd usually hang quietly around her neck during fights.
But Lys completely overlooked why, during all those years at school when she'd collapse unconscious, no one ever changed her clothes.
Gagbon wasn't just angry with her—there was something else, an emotion she couldn't quite identify.
If Gagbon tried to explain, he probably couldn't—after all, he was just a snake with a brain smaller than a walnut.
As for the book Lys wanted, she'd have to find another way.
As a Death Eater, regardless of the Dark Lord's dissatisfaction after bestowing the Mark, it meant Lys's status had shifted from relative freedom to that of a subordinate who must obey orders.
When the Dark Lord issued commands, vague pronouns could allow certain people to push Lys forward to do things she didn't want to do.
Like now: old Thomas had failed to hide his son, and when the Dark Lord sent him out on business, his comment—"Our newly joined young people should also receive proper training"—meant Lucius had to notify Lys:
Your opportunity to serve the Dark Lord might be coming.
After receiving the news, Lys sat in the corner flipping through books, running her hands through her hair and sighing with increasing frequency.
When Lys's agitated magical fluctuations swept over the cauldron for the second time, Senna finally couldn't hold back.
"What exactly is wrong with you?"
Lys hesitated, then decided to tell Senna and Noah everything—if something really happened to her later, she couldn't hide it anyway.
After waving her wand to block all the shop's windows, she pulled her left arm from its brace, rolled up her sleeve, and unfastened the dragon-hide wrist guard.
Her forearm was visibly twisted, the red, swollen, ugly skin bearing a black serpent emerging from a skull's mouth, covering two crimson scars.
Noah still looked confused and guilty, but Senna narrowed her eyes and glanced at Lys. "You joined them?"
Lys started shaking her head, then nodded. She didn't explain her reasons—talking about it wouldn't solve anything, only add to their worries.
Noah tried to touch the skin on Lys's arm, but she stopped him, explaining to the distressed Noah: "You can't touch it. To a certain extent, this is that lord's other means of perception and control. Any magical trigger on it might disturb him."
After all, that lord used this Mark to summon and control everyone.
After rearranging her clothing and tucking her arm back into the brace, Lys explained part of her troubles to them both.
"From when I first worked on my own soul until I was granted the Mark, this wound reflected in both my soul and body showed no signs of healing—it only stabilized."
Lys adjusted the brace's angle and continued: "But that lord's Mark isn't just on the flesh—it penetrates to the soul level. This causes my injury to be incurable once it flares up again. It means the wound in my soul is always open."
Noah widened his eyes and gripped his wheelchair's armrests. He didn't understand, but that didn't stop him from knowing the problem was serious.
"The stabilizer doesn't work either?" Senna frowned. If potions—the final, strongest treatment method—couldn't suppress it, then ordinary spells would be meaningless.
"No, and there's another problem. From their hints, those who join must be unable to turn back, but..." Lys raised the book in her hand, pointing to a handwritten line—
Any act of taking another's life is an attempt to shatter one's own soul.
Senna and Noah immediately understood Lys's meaning.
Objects with cracks are always more easily damaged and broken than whole ones.
"I hid and dodged but still joined, and my joining itself is a joke," Lys put down the book and took a breath, looking somewhat dejected.
"I don't know what I need to do to avoid attention and maintain current stability. I don't know what consequences those actions will have. Facing the unknown with my wand, I have no choice at all. I feel... I feel..." Lys tilted her head, trying to find an appropriate word to describe her feelings.
But she couldn't say it.
Senna picked up the thread: "Wronged, afraid, confused?"
"You should feel wronged. Without Noah and me, you'd have run abroad long ago, wouldn't you? You are indeed afraid—honestly speaking, you've only seen this world for seven years, and that kind of organization..."
Senna walked to the liquor cabinet, pulled out a bottle, looked at it, then switched to a bottle of aged Firewhisky. With practiced movements, she broke the wax seal and took a large gulp.
"Can't fight, can't run." Senna pulled out another bottle and tossed it to Lys, but Noah intercepted it mid-air.
Noah shrank his neck and opened the seal, taking a small sip himself.
What Senna was describing wasn't little Lys at all—she was talking about herself.
Young married couples, each carrying their families' shameful pasts, illuminating each other's worlds only to be drenched by life's undeserved disasters.
Facing her husband, she wouldn't let go, yet under heavy pressure she couldn't hold on, only stumbling forward.
Now her daughter was trapped in a similar predicament, yet... yet she herself...
Noah had once thought that disappearing from Senna's world might make things easier for her, but he'd been too weak until Lys started school and somehow obtained precious potion ingredients, finally giving him strength to leave his bed.
He could do nothing, achieve nothing.
Noah also tried Senna's approach and gulped down some alcohol, but the harsh liquor made him cough uncontrollably.
Lys caught the bottle Senna threw over, placed it on the table, and tapped the bottle with her wand. The wax seal and cork twisted open by themselves.
Taking up the strong liquor, Lys took a large gulp.
Senna leaned against the liquor cabinet door. "So what now? Is there anything Noah and I can help with?"
Lys shook her head. Even though she'd forgotten what that person signed M.K. had come for, she still remembered the cold killing intent circling her family's necks.
Her parents' reactions... they couldn't even sense it...
Senna glanced at Lys, snorted coldly, walked over and pinched Lys's cheek—no easy task, given Lys's thinness left little flesh on her face.
"Little madwoman, you'd better think carefully. Noah and I each have our specialties, unlike your brain full of muscle."
Lys looked up with a crooked face, no longer focused on the previous problem. She looked into Senna's glaring amber pupils, gave an awkward smile, and took another large gulp of alcohol.
Noah, following his wife and daughter's pace, drank a few sips and was already flushed, his gray eyes moist. Senna quickly pushed him back to sleep—otherwise tomorrow Noah would keep explaining he hadn't been crying.
Lys sat there thinking about what Senna had just said, finishing half the bottle in a few gulps. What could she do even if she was afraid?
With a dry laugh, she put away all those books that only increased worry and fear while emphasizing problems without offering solutions.
Carrying the bottle, she glanced at her mother's cauldron. Following the nearby notes, Lys stirred it a few times with the stirring rod, though who knew what she was thinking about while stirring.
That day, after feeding the sulking Gagbon, Lys was carving an array copied from some altar onto a thin amber plate. She completed several tricky patterns perfectly, but suddenly threw her tool away at the final strokes.
Her right hand gripped her wand, covering her left arm bound in its brace. This burning, searing sensation... Lys glanced at Noah, who was cutting fabric, suppressed her trembling, and pulled out her robe, brace, and the mask Lucius had helped prepare before leaving the study.
Noticing Noah watching her through the window, Lys simply nodded and Disapparated.
She first went to an abandoned shop in Knockturn Alley, changed into a black shirt, then donned the wide black cloak to conceal her feminine curves—there were too few female Death Eaters, making distinctive features undesirable.
After donning the mask—Lys mentally complained about how ugly it was—she adjusted her left arm's brace to make it less obvious, calculated the time, and Disapparated to the summons' source: a manor's courtyard.
Lys briefly surveyed the area and stood at a moderate distance.
About ten people were present. From their dragon-hide shoes and restless atmosphere, most appeared to be young people.
Lys stood there with slightly lowered head, making no movements or conversation, until Bellatrix appeared in a black dress. Only then did Lys understand this gathering's purpose.
Those who defied the Dark Lord's will must die.
At tonight's Ministry of Magic vote on aristocratic legislation, the Bones family—staunch opponents of the aristocratic bill—must meet Merlin.
This was both intimidation of other opponents and the Dark Lord's attitude toward dissenters.
Bellatrix, holding her curved wand with terrifying anger and madness in her expression, declared: "Then let the Lord see our devotion, see our loyalty to his cause!"
She made a few simple wand movements, dividing the crowd into three groups.
The Bones family was numerous, but according to intelligence, their opposition to this bill had created internal divisions. Tonight's target was the home of Lavinia Bones, the most vocal opponent.
"Intelligence shows all four adults will be home tonight, possibly with two children. I want to see their corpses clearly."
Bellatrix stared at the group containing Lys, her lip curve suggesting regret at not participating personally.
"As for you, I hope none of you will disappoint me." Bellatrix raised her wand, its tip glowing green. "After all, those unable to serve the Lord have no right to stand among us Death Eaters."
Lys unconsciously pressed her left arm deeper into its brace.
Even with the most powerful fighter Bellatrix merely observing, the Death Eaters outnumbered the Bones family's fighting force by nearly three to one.
So Lys and her three companions could be said to be brought along merely to broaden their horizons and gain experience.
~~~~❃❃~~~~~~~~❃❃~~~~
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