47. Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Seven
I had black veins.
Much like the ones I saw in Verin’s soldiers when they attacked during the ball.
But what was interesting, was said darkness in my bloodstream moved as I dragged a blueberry sized sapphire over my skin like a magnet attracting metal.
Verin’s poison was spreading throughout me like dye in a cup of water. Wisps of evil slowly creeping around until it takes over.
I was looking at the vein on the underside of my arm in the vanity mirror when I noticed it moved near my jewelry box.
The poison responded to my sapphire, and none of the other gems.
After vomiting and a bout of the shakes last night, Tor asked if I wanted a healer, and I refused. Nyx came in shortly after he left to check on me, but I promised I’d call if I needed her.
I had to push them away. My time was running out.
Their voices would creep into my head while I read Gregory’s ideas about core magic.
His words started off as an interesting concept turned into an obsession.
Grief clogged my throat a few times when I thought about Magrithia.
She loved him, and here was the evidence of his descent. That must have been so hard to watch.
I made a few notes on the side here and there. Things to think about when I worked up the nerve to actually try this insane experiment. The old seer wasn’t lying when she told me it worked. I believed her. But based on the findings, I’d go through unimaginable pain.
“You look like you’re ready to bury someone in the queen’s gardens,” Tor said from behind me.
“I feel it, but I’m kinda busy right now. Catch up later?” I said and spun around to give him a hopeful smile.
Fooled again.
My room was empty, the door locked, and the curtains drawn shut.
“Stupid voices.”
I know hearing voices was bad. Proof Verin’s poison was indeed real and continuing its assault on my mind and body.
There may be something a healer could give me to dull them if I asked, but the pages before me, the need to beat Verin consumed my actions.
I didn’t sleep that night.
A growl rumbled through the room, but it wasn’t real.
“Not now, mind Rune.”
His voice was the worst form of distraction.
“I need to claim my mate.” He pressed a hot kiss against my skin, and I shivered.
“I’m already yours,” I said to the figment of my imagination. Hallucination Rune was just as ruthless as the real one. Touching me, being sweet, his groans had my fingers digging into the bed to keep from racing out the door.
But then the real Rune would see me. He’d see the twitch forming in my eyelid, the dark circles under my eyes, the black veins spreading from my armpit.
It was easier to hide in my room until I finished fate’s task. Once freed from the grasp of death, we’d handle the rest together.
“Observed the dagger placed into the skin of patient 22. Their instinct to draw on their core power overrode the pain.” That seemed promising.
“Oh, they died.”
Not so promising after all.
Some had side effects like lethargy, amnesia, erratic emotions, and frequent chills. If Magrithia saw me surviving this, I wanted to assume that meant surviving without lasting side effects.
Gregory’s theory was that a Fae’s core could be removed as he’d done it with Hawk Fae. The key was the patient had to be the one to do it. Drag the dagger through their skin from sternum, across the left shoulder, down their arm, and finally keep the blade rooted in their palm.
I’d been confused over his finding for a few hours. Why the left over the right? Did it matter which side was dominant?
I jotted the notes down alongside his, and eventually he asked the same questions, and worked tirelessly to solve them.
The left side was magically more open. The receiver, the chaos of magic. Core magic wasn’t a physical contained thing in the body like a floating gem inside my chest, radiating sapphire energy.
It was me. I was it. Like an atom, or a spirit.
Wielding only worked because I was an extension of it.
Everything worked in balances and the right side of magic was a tad more rigid. The left, not so much. In order to break the balance, and change a core’s natural design, you took advantage of the less orderly left side. Using magic law against itself.
Breath tickled my neck despite knowing my head made it up, as it did Rune’s soft voice against my ear. “I missed hearing my name on your tongue.”
I groaned and the stupid twitch in my eye increased.
“Time to give this a try.” I was over the sickness, the voices. I wanted it done, this poison out of me.
I gripped the hilt of the ornate moonstone dagger, inhaled deeply, counted to three, pressed it against my bare chest, and counted again.
I kept counting.
And breathed.
“Come on, Sapphira. There’s a light at the end of this tunnel.”
One.
Two.
I grit my teeth, pricked my skin, and then stopped.
“You’re not trying hard enough,” Rune growled in my head and I dropped the dagger. My hands covered my ears.
“Stop. Get out. Get out.”
Nausea rolled around the base of my throat and a wave of heat rose beneath my skin.
“No. I’m done. I’m over this.”
“I’m not letting him win.”
“I’m not dying this way.”
I grabbed the dagger and didn’t think. I pressed the tip into my chest and started dragging it through the flesh of my left shoulder.