Chapter 2
A few painfully short hours later, Viri was pulled from sleep by someone shaking her roughly, followed by a too-chirpy voice asking, “Did it work? Did it?”
Viri groaned and swatted at her best friend, Wynter Starling, before moving her pillow over her head. “ ’S too early, Wyn. Go ’way.”
“It’s not early, and you’re a little traitor.” Wynter yanked the pillow away. “You promised to wake me when you got home.”
“It was late.” Viri opened her eyes into a squint-glare. “And unlike some people, I value my friends’ sleep.”
“I don’t need sleep—I need answers. So spill.”
When Viri tried to reclaim her pillow, Wynter tossed it across the room and returned Viri’s glare with her own, causing Viri to grumble resignedly and sit up in bed.
Wynter was right about the hour; a quick look out the sealed window of Viri’s bedroom halfway up the side of Mount Tembris—the middle of three peaks in the Tridus Mountains—showed enough sunlight to indicate it was midmorning, at least.
“Meera’s going to kill me,” Viri muttered, having slept through her dawn training. Not even the calming view of Lake Mirtis glimmering in the sunshine could ease her dread at the thought of having to apologize to her mentor—who also happened to be the head of the Hunters’ Guild.
Wynter tossed her glossy black hair over her shoulder, her sapphire eyes narrowing as she threatened, “She’ll have to get in line if you don’t hurry up and tell me what happened last night.”
Viri knew her friend wasn’t asking for an overview of the hunt, nor did Wynter care about the reaper who was now rotting in an Underlock cell deep beneath the mountain. There was only one thing Wynter wanted to know about Viri’s night.
“Come on, V. I’m begging you. Did it work?”
Viri made her friend wait a beat longer—punishment for the rude awakening—but with a slow smile, she finally said, “It worked. You’re a genius. But you already know that.”
Wynter threw her hands up and let out a whoop of triumph. But then, just as quickly, she hushed herself, her eyes jumping anxiously toward the closed bedroom door.
“I take it your mom is home?” Viri guessed dryly.
Wynter chewed her lip and nodded, causing Viri to bite back a grin.
Sarielle Starling—Wynter’s mother and Viri’s legal guardian—would not be pleased if she learned what her beloved daughter was doing in her free time.
As it was, Sarielle claimed she had a heart attack every night Viri went out hunting, so if she knew her daughter was experimenting with the highly illegal practice of alchemy, she would be horrified.
Not just because Sarielle was the Magistratus—the political leader of Elverdine Isle—but because alchemy was dangerous, in too many ways to count. And yet…
“You saved my life last night,” Viri admitted, recalling the reaper’s dagger just a breath away from impaling her. “Your impedidust kept me from being sliced in two.”
Wynter’s strikingly blue eyes widened. “Really?” she breathed. But then she tilted her head to the side, her gaze homing in on Viri’s cheek. “Was that before or after you were sucker punched in the face?”
Viri touched her swollen, scabbed flesh, wincing as it throbbed beneath her fingers. “Does it look that bad?” When Wynter didn’t answer, Viri pressed, “On a scale of one to ten, how much is your mom going to panic?”
“If she walked in here right now? Eleven, for sure.” Wynter pulled a small glass jar from inside her gray trainee-physician robes and winked conspiratorially. “But if you put this on and wait a few minutes, that’ll bring it down to a three. Maybe a two.”
Viri took the familiar—and forbidden—healing salve from her friend and slathered it over her tender cheek. “Have I told you today how much I love you?”
“Not yet,” Wynter said, reclaiming the jar and hiding it in her robes again, “but in your defense, you only just woke up.” She settled more comfortably on Viri’s bed. “Now tell me what happened with the impedidust. Don’t leave anything out.”
Viri did as ordered, sharing how she’d used the silver powder on the reaper and answering Wynter’s numerous questions, all while ignoring the tingle in her cheek as the salve reknit her damaged skin.
“I forgot to factor in how strong they are after siphoning,” Wynter murmured, her eyes glazed in thought. “I’ll play around with the formula and see if I can make it last longer next time.”
Viri shrugged. “It did what I needed. A few seconds is all it takes for me to get my fillium around them.”
Wynter’s glazed look vanished, her features turning stern. “You rely too much on that weapon of yours. It may be one of a kind, but if it ever stops working—”
“Then I’ll have all your alchemy tricks up my sleeve,” Viri interrupted, having heard this lecture before, “as well as my own hunter skills. Don’t worry about me, Wyn. Fillium or not, I can take care of myself.”
“I know you can.” Wynter’s expression softened. “But of course I worry. Just as you do about me.”
“That’s because you’re sneaking around and breaking the law.” Viri touched her cheek again, finding the swelling and pain mostly gone. “Though I have to admit, I’m certainly benefitting from it.”
“Well, it’s not like I can share my experiments with anyone else, is it?” Wynter said, pouting slightly. “They’d throw me in the Underlock with all those nasty reapers you capture.”
“Maybe there’s a valid reason why they’d throw you in there,” Viri returned. “Like, oh, I don’t know—to save your life? And everyone else’s?”
Wynter waved a dismissive hand. “Alchemy’s not dangerous if you know what you’re doing.”
“Which you don’t. You’re making things up as you go.”
“That’s what all the best alchemists do.”
Viri huffed out a breath, half amused, half annoyed. “You have no way of knowing that, since you’ve never met one. Everything you know, you’ve taught yourself, thanks to some musty old books and that unnaturally big brain of yours.”
“And now we circle back to how you’re benefitting from it, and leave it there,” Wynter said in her firmest end-of-discussion voice.
Sighing loudly, Viri gave in, but only because it was a conversation they’d had over and over, and no matter how hard she’d tried to sway her friend, Wynter was just too curious for her own good.
From the moment they’d heard whispers about the ancient magical practice of creating and transforming matter into Elders-knew-what, Wynter had become obsessed with learning everything she could about it.
Fortunately, that was little, since the alchemist mages who had once inhabited Elverdine Isle had vanished long ago with all the other magical beings, taking most of their books and knowledge and leaving only traces of their power behind—the wayportals, the obelisks, the everbeacons, and a few rare, enchanted artifacts, all fiercely coveted.
Viri’s fillium was one such item, inherited from her hunter parents and carefully locked away until she’d earned her mark.
What Wynter was doing, though…The ancient mages had studied for years before they were allowed to practice alchemy unsupervised.
In untrained hands, their experiments weren’t just dangerous—they were deadly.
And while no one on Elverdine Isle could perform magical acts like the mages of old, there was still the potions and powders side of the craft, where the wrong combination of ingredients could supposedly destroy an entire city.
The risk was such that alchemy was the only truly forbidden form of magic on the island.
But that didn’t stop Wynter, her obsession too strong to relinquish.
Sighing again, Viri shoved her friend none too gently off the bed, lacking the energy to argue.
“I need to do some groveling with Meera, and you should be off studying how to heal people in legal, nonmagical ways.” Arching a brow, she added, “Don’t think I haven’t noticed how many classes you’ve been skipping lately. ”
Wynter straightened her gray robes, frowning at the physician’s emblem on her sleeve. “I hate it there.”
“I know you do,” Viri said, heading to her wardrobe for a fresh set of hunting leathers. “But I also know you love your mom too much to tell her that the sight of blood makes you queasy, lest you ruin her dreams of you becoming Aravell’s top physician.”
“Not just blood.” Wynter shuddered comically. “People are disgusting.”
Viri hid her smile by rifling through her hangers for a clean scarlet cloak. “You’re a credit to the Healers’ Guild, Wynter Starling. Let no one ever tell you otherwise.”
“You said yourself that I helped save your life last night,” Wynter shot back. “I’d be perfectly happy learning how to treat patients with magical means. But using mundane medicine? Witnessing illness, pain, death?” She shuddered again. “No, thank you.”
“At the risk of repeating myself, your preferred method is illegal.”
“It’s only illegal if you get caught.”
Viri snorted. “Try that line on your mom and see what she says.”
Wynter blanched, then scowled, before pointedly changing the topic. “I’m surprised you’re not in more of a rush.”
Viri draped her outfit over her arm and reached for her boots as she replied, “Meera will be annoyed about this morning, but she’ll see from the arrest logs that I didn’t get in until late, so she’ll understand.
” She would still kick Viri’s ass during their next training session, but that would be the case regardless.
“I don’t mean Meera,” Wynter said. “I figured you’d run straight to Nox HQ the moment you woke up. I’m actually impressed by your willpower right now.”
That made Viri pause. “What are you talking about?”
Hearing the bewilderment in her tone, Wynter’s expression turned confused, then alarmed. “Wait—you don’t know?”
“Know what?”
Wynter’s alarm seemed to grow. “I overheard Mom talking with Captain Farrow this morning. Someone was captured last night. Someone important.”