Chapter 261
Ellie’s POV
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The Lycan Heritage Museum was not what I expected at all. I’d assumed it would be more institutional, perhaps the type of place with fluorescent lights humming overhead and the smell of fresh paper in the air.
Instead, I found myself driving up the long, gravel driveway of an old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere.
The curator, who introduced himself as Edmund when I arrived, met me at the door. He was older, somewhere in his sixties, with reading glasses pushed up on his forehead and kind eyes beneath bushy eyebrows.
“I can’t quite say how long it’s been since we had a visitor,” he said, shaking my hand with both of his larger, more weathered ones. “Especially a Luna!”
I smiled. “This is a lovely place, Edmund.”
He grinned. “Thank you. It’s been in my family for generations.”
As he led me inside, he told me that the property was historic, built a few hundred years ago. Edmund and his wife, Priscilla, lived in the apartment upstairs and graciously offered to let me stay with them. I accepted.
Once I had settled in, Edmund began showing me around the museum. The first floor of the house had been repurposed for the storage and display of various Lycan artifacts; everything from art to pottery to a basement archive filled with documents.
Apparently, Lycans were simply a special interest of Edmund’s. He held no personal ties to the ancient packs than mere curiosity and joy derived from their stories and art.
I liked him immediately, of course.
The first floor of the farmhouse had been gutted and reorganized into a series of connected rooms, each one dedicated to a different aspect of Lycan history. Display cases lined the walls. Edmund led me through the first two rooms, which outlined Lycan pack structure, hierarchy, and a small gift shop with trinkets and keychains, then led me into a smaller room at the back that felt different from the others.
“And this is the Ashmoore collection,” Edmund said, gesturing around the room. “Most of it came from a private estate sale about twenty years ago. The family had been holding onto it for generations and finally decided they didn’t want the responsibility anymore.” He shook his head slightly. “Their loss.”
The cases in this room were smaller and more densely packed. I moved slowly along the first one, taking it all in. There were pieces of jewelry that were made of heavy, dark metal set with stones I didn’t recognize. A ceremonial knife with a handle carved from something that looked like bone. Several documents under glass, handwritten and well-preserved for their age.
I spotted what looked like a journal entry from the princess. It was dated to several hundred years ago, and outlined a typical day for her.
“Woke up,” she wrote. “Broke fast-bread and fish. Not my favorite.”
I snorted softly. Edmund came to stand beside me.
“I see you’ve found Aylin’s journal,” he said. “She was the first daughter of the Ashmoore bloodline. There’s some debate about the exact dates, but the scholarly consensus puts her first life in the fourth century.”
He pointed to a portrait on the wall, which depicted a young woman with pale eyes and dark hair pulled back from her face.
I leaned in, studying the portrait. My hand came up to touch my own face, just below my eye. She had the distinctive opal eyes of the Lycans.
Edmund glanced at me. “You bear a striking resemblance, you know.”
“So I’ve heard.” I leaned back. “She claimed she came back to life after death?”
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The man sighed. “Well, that’s the account, yes. According to her, she woke up in her childhood bedroom at fifteen years of age, claiming to have lived an entire three years and died already.”
“Do you believe her?” I asked, looking at him.
“I try to look at everything from all angles,” Edmund said.
Fair enough. “How did she die in the end?”
Gesturing for me to follow, Edmund led me to the far end of the room, where a separate case sat slightly apart from the others Inside was a small collection of items: a ring with a space where a gem should have been but wasn’t anymore, and beside it, an official-looking court document.”
“These were hers,” he said. “The document is a sworn testimony she gave to the council of elders, alleging that her original death was deliberate.” He paused. “The ring was on her finger when she died. The stone was never found, although a strange residue was found in the teacup sitting next to her. Lycan healers identified the poison as arsenic.”
“Arsenic,” I murmured. A bit different from my wolfsbane poisoning, but just as deadly. “Was a culprit ever found?”
Edmund shook his head. “Many believed that she killed herself. Likely due to her mental illness caused by her stroke.”
“But her sister…”
“Was never formally charged,” he said. “There wasn’t enough to act on, politically speaking. The sister was already married with great wealth and titles. She had little to gain by killing her only sister.”
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