Chapter 54 Devora
Devora
Rose and Leo led us out of the drawing room and down the lavish corridor until we came upon a set of stairs. Nox and I followed at a distance, and I watched as Leo rested a hand on the small of Rose’s back. A furry tail came out and swiped against her calf, almost like a caress.
I leaned closer to Nox and whispered, “Are all of them always so disgustingly sweet?”
He snorted. “You get used to it.”
“Did you and Rose ever…” I licked my lips, my stomach suddenly tight.
His eyebrow rose. “Jealous, darling?”
“No, I—just curious, that’s all.” My cheeks burned when he gave me that smirk. The one that sent fire to my core and made my shadows a jumbled mess.
His low chuckle embraced me. “Nothing ever happened between us. We’re just friends.”
I remembered his words from our sparring match in Tenebra. “Right, I forgot. You don’t fall in love.”
We reached a door at the bottom of the staircase. Rose and Leo walked through it, and as Nox held the door open for me, he murmured, “Things change.”
I swallowed hard, but didn’t have time to dwell on his words.
We entered a huge, dark chamber with stone walls and a wooden floor covered in a myriad of rugs.
They were all different patterns of bold, deep jewel tones—amethyst and ruby, emerald and sapphire, with gold accents that matched the standing candelabras around the room.
Ahead of us, Rose whispered a word, and the candles blazed to life.
“Welcome to my lair,” she said with a grin. “Leo hates it when I call it that.”
“You sound like a villain in a fairy tale,” he muttered.
She blew him a kiss. “Rissa let me commandeer this section of the basement to set up a work room. I travel back and forth between here and my own apothecary in Feywood, making healing drafts and anything the hospital wing needs, plus whatever other charms may be useful.”
“She likes to come down here and play with her leaves,” Leo added. I couldn’t help but laugh.
She smacked his arm. “I like to experiment.” Her eyes widened. “Not like Scarven, of course. But Alchemy is always growing and changing. I like finding new ways to use what we already have, come up with new charms and spells, that sort of thing.”
I could see why Nox thought she would be perfect to help.
I took in the work room, the tall bookshelves with haphazardly stacked tomes and pieces of parchment, the glass vials of all shapes and sizes, the dried bouquets of herbs and flowers hanging from the ceiling.
It smelled like a greenhouse and apothecary all in one.
In the center of the room stood a large desk with a black velvet chair behind it. Three leather-bound books were perched on the edge of the desk, and one was open right next to them with a quill lying on top.
The whole place was teeming with magic. A vibrant energy that spoke of someone who loved what they did and put time into perfecting their craft.
“I love it,” I said, drinking in every inch of the space.
Rose blushed. “Thank you.” She dropped into the desk chair. “But enough about me. What exactly are we looking for?”
“A way to counteract whatever compulsion Scarven has over Vera,” Nox said immediately. “And potentially others.”
“Do you think this fatesprig stuff you talked about is connected?” Rose asked.
“I’m not sure. It seems to only affect magic itself. From what we saw of our tests, it didn’t have anything to do with controlling people or wiping their minds.”
Rose crossed her arms over her chest. “And what type of tests did you run?”
“What, you don’t trust me?” he asked. Rose continued to stare at him, unamused. Nox sighed. “Fine. I had our Alchemist inject me with it.”
I jerked back. “You what?” He had said he was considering it in one of our magical message threads, but I never knew he actually went through with it. I couldn’t stop myself from scanning him, as if there would be some remnant of the test still riddling his body.
Rose threw her hands in the air. “Seriously? The first rule of Alchemy is ‘Don’t put unknown substances into your body!’”
Nox raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know, sounds like a good time to me.”
“Nox,” she said, a warning in her tone. Nox shifted slightly on his feet—almost imperceptible, if you weren’t watching.
But I was always watching. And he was anxious. He often covered his unease with humor—I supposed that was something we had in common.
“It was our last sample, and trying it on a human subject was the only thing we hadn’t done yet,” Nox finally answered, eyes sliding briefly to me. “It wasn’t the wisest decision, but I wasn’t in the best headspace at the moment.”
I moved closer to him on instinct, reaching out a hand to his elbow before hastily pulling away. Was it because of me? Did he take the fatesprig because he was distracted and worried about me?
The thought made my chest both soften and ache at the same time.
“You’re an idiot,” Rose said. “What did it do?”
He clenched a hand at his side. “It was pain unlike anything I’ve ever felt. There was this…this fire burning every inch of me.” A silence fell over the chamber as he paused. “It stripped away my magic for about two days. It was like my dragon half was dead. Mutilated.”
I licked my lips. “That’s what it felt like for me too. When he—when I was in the cell. The knife he used. And the cuffs. I think it was fatesprig.”
Nox’s eyes met mine, and the silver slits of his dragon appeared before vanishing just as quickly. My hands twitched with the urge to reach out and touch him. I didn’t know when he’d become my anchor, but it was harder and harder to stop myself from needing him.
Rose’s voice was quiet as she looked at me and said, “I’m sorry for everything you went through. It sounds horrible.”
I adjusted my glasses, trying to brush off the memories. “Yeah, well, I was lucky to get out when I did. Others have gone through much worse.” I couldn’t help but look at Nox again.
Rose’s emerald eyes swept over me. “You care about him. About all of them.”
It wasn’t a question. I simply nodded, more heat rising up my chest. Yes, I cared about him.
More than I’d let myself admit. I worried when he was gone too long.
I felt the emptiness of his absence, sharp and cold, and I craved him when the rest of the world felt too far.
I wanted to be close to him. To be wrapped forever in his fire and safety and steadfastness.
I would rather Scarven string me up in his cells again than betray Nox’s trust.
Care was too small a word.
Leo cleared his throat, and the heavy moment passed. “So, he’s weaponizing the fatesprig by imbuing objects with it,” he said. “If he mass-produces something like this, if he gives his guards or armies—”
“He already is,” Nox said grimly. “When we invaded his mansion to get Devora back, his guards had weapons covered in it.”
Leo let out a breath. “If he ever decided to go up against the empire, we would be defenseless.”
“Which is why we need to find a way to stop him,” Nox said. “And anyone under his control. Like Vera. You got anything that can help in that handy Grimoire of yours?”
“If I don’t, we’ll make one.” She grabbed the top leather-bound book off the stack and glanced at me. “This is called a Grimoire. Think of it as an Alchemist’s recipe book. This one was my mother’s.” She placed it on the desk and began flipping through pages.
“Maybe we can make something ingestible,” Leo suggested, leaning over her shoulder to read the pages. “Make his sister take it, and it’ll fight off his compulsion.”
“I love when you talk Alchemy to me.” Rose quickly pecked his cheek.
“Okay, okay. Compulsion…let me think. I know minor spells that can briefly compel people, but it’s not very strong, and they’re still cognizant of what’s going on.
It sounds like what’s happening to Vera is in a class of its own.
” She shut the Grimoire and reached for another one on her desk.
These pages were more weathered, the binding fraying at the edges.
“This was my father’s,” she commented. “He was a little more…innovative than my mother.”
Leo snorted. “That’s one way to put it.”
“He did some testing with blood magic,” Rose admitted. “Nothing harmful. He was just curious. Tried to see if it could help with problems the empire was facing—diseases, food shortage, that sort of thing.”
“What’s so bad about blood magic, anyway?” I asked, watching as Rose pored over the old pages, taking in the faintly scribbled words and undecipherable drawings.
“It’s unnatural,” Leo said. “Alchemy uses what we’re naturally given—herbs, flowers, stones, the like.
While, yes, our bodies are natural, using blood magic requires force.
Forcing blood from a victim, taking their bones, cutting their flesh…
it’s savage. Magic shouldn’t be forced or taken.
It shouldn’t be harmful. But people do it because it makes their power stronger by a hundredfold, and they don’t care about the consequences. ”
“Even if it could mean saving lives?” I asked.
Leo sighed. “Once upon a time, I would’ve said no, that we should never use it under any circumstance.
I used to see the world in black and white.
Everything was either right or wrong, and there was no in between.
I hate it, but I’ve learned that sometimes there’s no other way.
You just have to trust the person putting that kind of power in their hands.
” He laid his hand on Rose’s back and softly kissed her temple.
“Just be careful, little wolf. You know it will have a price.”
I tilted my head in curiosity. “What does that mean?”
“All dark magic has a price. Think of it as a way to balance things out,” Rose said, looking up from the Grimoire.
“There was this man in my home province who used it to raise his wife from the dead. And it worked, sort of. Her body came back to life, but she was basically a soulless shell. She killed her husband in front of their child, then went on a rampage and killed even more people before she was stopped. There are stories like that up and down our history books, cautionary tales for people trying to conquer forbidden magic.”
She looked down at her father’s Grimoire, her knuckles white with how tightly she gripped it.
“But the thing is, it’s unpredictable and not always what you think.
It doesn’t have to be the person who casts it who pays the price.
Like the man who raised his wife. Sure, he died, but none of her other victims had anything to do with it.
They didn’t deserve to die. I can only imagine the suffering Scarven and his Alchemist have caused with how long they’ve been practicing. ”
“If it means getting my sister back, I’ll pay it,” Nox said.
Leo looked at him with a grim expression. “It may not be you who pays it, Nox. Are you willing to risk it? Risk anyone?”
For the first time, Nox faltered. He looked down at me, and I could see the indecision warring inside him. He was always the first to jump into danger, but the idea of someone else being in that danger, something he couldn’t control, gave him pause.
I swallowed hard and nodded at him, trying to imbue my eyes with encouragement to give him that final push. I knew how desperately he wanted his sister back. “Whatever happens, we’ll face it together,” I whispered.
His jaw twitched. “Together,” he said slowly. When he faced Rose again, his voice was laced with more trepidation than before. “Can you do it, Rose?”
“I don’t know. I need some time to study the texts. It’s not a no, Nox,” she said quickly when his face fell. “We have a couple of days. But…there is something you could do to help.”
“Anything.”
Rose reached for a jeweled dagger resting next to the Grimoire, her fingers lingering on the hilt. “I need your blood. It’s the closest we have to your sister’s, and it might make her antidote stronger.”
The air felt heavier, as if the magic wavering in the room knew what Rose was requesting. I swallowed a lump in my throat. A shiver went down my spine, but Nox showed no fear. He strode to the desk and held his arm out.
“Are you sure?” Rose asked, her green eyes cutting to his.
He nodded once, jaw tight. “For Vera.”
She took a deep breath, then drew the blade across his palm in a smooth arc.
I flinched at the motion, my own hand twitching as if it were my skin being split.
Nox’s blood welled to the surface immediately, a deep, gleaming crimson.
It dripped into a glass vial with soft plinks, each one echoing in the lair.
The cut was already healing itself when Rose took the dagger away. She corked the vial and set it on her desk. The tension in the room was still taut when she said, “You two better get some rest. We’ve got a busy couple of days ahead of us.”
Nox nodded. “Thank you. You have no idea what this means to me.”
She gave him a tight-lipped smile as the candles around us flickered. “Don’t thank me yet, Nox.”