Chapter 73 #2
I nod. “Something doesn’t sit right …”
“I agree,” he murmurs, folding it into a tidy square he tucks into his pocket, cutting a look both ways down the tunnel as he blows warm air into his hands.
“Let’s get this over with.” He turns to Ahvi, now sitting cross-legged on the ground with his cloak puddled around him, rooting through my satchel, surrounded by bottled tinctures, an empty mug, a wooden bowl, and the Book of Voyd—unbound, split open at a seemingly random page.
“Ahvi, is there something we can do to help?”
It takes me too long to realize he’s set himself up exactly where I dripped my fucking blood into that vial.
“Not really. It’s mostly me things.” He pulls his hood back just enough I’m able to glimpse his eyes from behind unruly silver locks, reminding me of the aurora ribbons in this low light. “But I need Raeve over here so I can begin mapping out the binding loops.”
Right.
I do as he said, planting myself exactly where it happened. Perfectly placed to watch Ahvi tip things into his bowl, seeming to measure by sense alone. Something that has me contemplating every decision that led me to this very moment.
The mixture begins to puff smoke over the sides, though a sprinkle of dirt scooped off the ground immediately snuffs that.
I fold one arm across my abdomen, using my other fist as a chin rest. “This seems wildly unprecise …”
“Precision is a cage we put ourselves in.” Ahvi shrugs, picking a strand of hair from his head. “Not everything needs a recipe. Sometimes all that’s needed is a bit of heart.” He drops the silver strand. The moment it strikes the surface, the mixture explodes with millions of shimmery particles.
Like a burst star.
I stare, unblinking. Unable to scratch the sense that I’m witnessing something … magical. Something both Fallon and Essi would’ve appreciated. Certainly more than me.
Ahvi leans forward, wedges his fingers into my boot, and pulls out a blade. My brows lift, then crush together when he uses said blade to poke the tip of his finger.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I say as Kaan pinches the offending object, frowning deeply. In the same instance, Ahvi drips his blood into the shimmery mixture. “You said nothing about using your blood.”
“Just a drop.” He passes me a fleeting glance, wipes his bleeding finger on his floppy shirt, and begins stirring the mixture with a stick of coal I’ve never seen before. “I won’t miss it.”
I’ve seen enough shit to assume otherwise.
I glare at Kaan, mouthing, “I DON’T LIKE THIS.”
“No need to yell,” Ahvi says, using a brown feather I’ve also never seen to paint the thin liquid in a circle around the Book of Voyd. He branches off in a line that draws in my direction, then circles me. “I’ll need some blood. A lot, actually.”
“Out of the question.”
“Yours,” he clarifies with a roll of his eyes, holding up the mug. “Not mine.”
Oh.
I whip out a blade and slice through my palm. Kaan hisses a curse, like I somehow offended him.
I crouch, dribbling the red puddle into the mug. “How much is a lot?”
Ahvi glances up from where he’s using the feather to paint shimmery runes around the book, just within the circle surrounding it. “Half a mug?”
Creators. He’s obviously got a fucking mural planned.
Kaan’s skein thumps to the ground beside my foot, and I arch a brow, glancing up at him as I bite the cork free.
I sip until it’s empty, all the while bleeding into the mug.
Once it’s half brimming with my viscous offering, I pass it over, allowing Kaan to bind my hand with a strip torn from his shirt.
As he works to stem my bleeding, Ahvi uses my blood to fingerpaint a noose of jagged runes within the shimmery circle surrounding me.
“So,” Kaan murmurs, knotting my bind, simultaneously watching the runes take shape like they’re an encroaching army, “what’s actually happening here?”
An important question I’d purposely not asked. Ignorance is bliss and all that.
Ahvi peeks at me, the swiftest glance that somehow feels like the slash of a silver blade.
I raise a hand. “Maybe we just … leave it to the unknown—”
“I’m unthreading the bind, but it’s like pulling a spine from a body. Everything crumbles without it.”
My gaze snaps to Kaan’s, his face losing all its color.
Questions, it seems, are underrated.
“You know what, Ahvi …” I shift my stare to him, “I’m quite attached to my spine.”
Though his cheeks swell with a smile, he doesn’t look up, still focused on his bloody task. “I’m not taking your actual spine. A time spine. Like tugging a thread between this moment and the one where you gave Sereme your blood.”
I blink at him, then meet Kaan’s perplexed stare. “I’ve never felt more stupid.”
Ahvi giggles, like a chime. “You’re not. It’s really complicated. I only understand it because of the song inside me. It helps the runes make sense in my head.”
Kaan and I pass each other another look.
“Okaaaay,” I say, watching Ahvi slash and slick my blood across the ground like he’s charming a language into submission. “So you tug this time thread, then what?”
He paints three more runes, then slows with only enough space for one more, getting halfway through the angry-looking shape before he peeks at me, chewing his bottom lip.
Something that looks too much like a nervous twitch.
My heart is already trying to bust free by the time he seems to find the courage to speak. “These runes create a cage that momentarily manipulates time. Because you’re standing in the cage, you’ll— Well …”
“I’ll what, Ahvi?”
His cheeks burst red. “You’ll revert to how you were the moment before you made the bind.”
I gape, certain I’m misunderstanding. “You don’t mean—”
“Physically. Yeah …”
My blood runs cold, panic rising so hard and fast saliva gathers beneath my tongue. “Nope.” I’ve dropped a knee before my next blink, gripping Ahvi’s wrist, holding his offending hand at bay so he can’t finish the final rune. “Not happening.”
“But it’s the only way!” he blasts. “I didn’t warn you because I knew you’d say no. But you have to do this, Raeve. You have to.”
He doesn’t get it.
I was almost dead when I dripped my blood into that vial—something that gave Sereme a tether to save my life and shackled me to her whim in the same ugly beat.
Without the bind, I would’ve been a skeleton garnishing this tunnel for eternity.
If my body breaks down to the state it was in before the drip, I’m gone. With no blood-binding tether to stop me from slipping over the brink while I’m mended, this cavern will be my final resting place.
Ahvi’s brows pinch together. “I do too!”
I frown. “Do too what?”
“Get it!” He uses his free hand to point at the Book of Voyd, and realization stabs me so hard I drop my other knee to the ground.
He’s binding me to the Book of Voyd. To the mythical object that’s apparently mauled folk to death over the phases.
Creators, I really need to start asking more questions.
“Okay, let’s take a moment”—or a lifetime—“to think this through.”
“It’s going to work out,” Ahvi says with too much enthusiasm. Like he’s trying to convince a youngling to take their tonic despite knowing full well it tastes like spangle shit. “I promise.”
“Can somebody do me the honor of explaining what’s happening?” Kaan grinds out, a tremble in his tone. Like he’s one loosening pebble away from falling into a rockslide.
Same, honestly.
Trepidation packs my chest full. A feeling that only intensifies when I look up and realize Kaan’s arms are shaking. Probably the reason he’s got them crossed. To try and hide it.
“It’s … a little hard to explain.”
“Try.”
Tell him I’m about to be blood bound to a vicious, fae-eating book? But that first, he’s going to see me torn down to the weakest, most vulnerable version of myself?
I’ve never wanted to do anything less.
“Raeve’s afraid of you seeing her in such a vulnerable sta—”
I clap my spare hand over Ahvi’s mouth. “You little traitor.”
A slit of pain hacks through my chest. Like Sereme just took a blade, stuffed it between my ribs, and dragged it sideways—straight into my Creators-damn heart.
The bitch.
My body becomes one big plucked nerve, squirming into an agonized knot like a stabbed serpent.
My pulse is a drum pounding in my ears. So hard and fast I barely hear a sound beyond the violent THUD-UMP–THUD-UMP–THUD-UMP.
But I see Kaan’s mouth move as my shoulder strikes the ground.
Read the words that bludgeon past his lips as he crouches behind Ahvi, helping to unlatch my spasming hand from around the poor kid’s wrist.
“DO IT! NOW!”
I’m still coiled in agony as Ahvi looks at me through wide eyes, mouths the words “I’m so sorry,” then dips his finger in my blood and slashes a ruddy line on the stone.
Completing the final rune.