30
The suite at the Claritas was empty when Felix arrived. Damn, he thought, adrenaline meeting dread in his pulse. Where would they go?
He didn’t know them well enough to guess, and he didn’t have time for guesses, in any event. Perhaps he could try to lift an arcanic trace from the room . . . but no, that was no good. That blasted mercurial still had his gauntlets.
The gauntlets.
The answer speared him through the head. Diana had put a tracker on them. He could follow the trail to Cassia.
Thank the elements, you little thief! he thought, diving into his pocket. There it was, still in his uniform—the tracking token.
He pressed his thumb to the silver circle. A glimmer of arcana shot from it like a sparrow. It hovered in the air for a moment, as though casting about for a scent. Then it hissed through the door, leaving a copper trail burning in its wake. Felix followed at a run.
For once, the wild energy proved his ally.
He dashed by the gridlocked roads faster than the phaetons, cutting through alleys and vaulting over walls after his guide.
It led him swiftly southward, where the glory of the inner ring faded street by street.
Another mile, and he was into the industrial district.
The air turned thick with smog. Sparks poured from the chimneys, and furnaces threw molten amber squares across the streets. Still, his guide skimmed on, past the prowlers lurking in the alcoves, through the crowds of night workers trudging to their shifts.
The spark turned up the back stairs of a crumbling tenement, and he followed it with reckless speed. He reached a door at the top and kicked it open.
A wire-thin arrow of arcana shot above his head. He dropped by instinct to the ground.
“It’s me!” he exclaimed, recognizing the turquoise streak. “Lysander?”
An angry scoff sounded in the dark. Then, light flared above him, and two figures blazed into view.
“You might’ve knocked, you splitwit,” said Cassia. “How the devil did you find us?”
“It doesn’t matter. Myria’s in—”
He stopped dead as an amber scar split the air, and something thudded down into the shadows. A low moan split the quiet.
Cassia swore and raised the light, and Felix’s stomach plunged. Leo was on his knees beside Myria’s limp body. He looked up, eyes wild, face white—hands red.
“Help her,” the thief panted. “It went wrong.”
He gestured wordlessly at Myria. Felix looked down, and his heart crashed hard against his bones. Myria lay there, dead still, a crimson stain creeping wide across her gown.
No. Mercy, please, not that. It’s your fault.
Lysander scrambled to his knees at Myria’s side. His hands moved over her in fits and starts, like a man trying to defuse an explosive he’d never seen before.
“Help her!” Leo panted, his voice cracking, and snatched Lysander’s wrist. Felix knew that whiplash of frightened anger. He’d seen it in the comrades of a hundred men about to die.
“I . . . I can only heal arcanic wounds,” Lysander said unsteadily. “Leo, I don’t know how.”
But I do, thought Felix. A cool, unnatural calm locked down across his mind.
“Burned his feather,” Myria said with a faint titter. “Silly boy. Thought he needed it to silverwalk!” Her glazed eyes turned to Felix. “You did, too. Do you remember that? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . .”
His heart seized. She’d left her wits behind, and no surprise. Half her bodice was soaked red now, and her breaths came sharp and short. She didn’t have long.
“For the Pantheon’s sake, you’ve got to do something!” cried Leo.
“I can’t. We have to get her to a surgeon—”
“There’s no time,” said Felix. “She’s lost too much blood. The three of you, run.”
Lysander’s gaze snapped up, sharp with fear. Cassia and Leo stared at him in mute incomprehension.
“The corps used to heal the wounded on the battlefield,” he said. “I know what to do, but my faculties are broken. You don’t want to be here if I lose control.”
Lysander’s jaw set, and he nodded.
“Cassia, for my sake, run,” he said, voice suddenly calm. “Leo, go with her. Aurelias, I’ll steady you.”
They might not have listened to him, but they listened to their friend. Leo took Cassia’s arm and pulled her through the door. The moment they were gone, Lysander fixed him with a look of the direst urgency.
“Aurelias, before you act, you have to understand,” he said. “Using your powers—”
“Might kill us all. I know.”
“More than that. Even if you survive, it’ll blast the fragments of your faculties out of place. There’ll be no repairing them.”
You’d lose your powers forever.
The thought thrust a knife into his stomach. He was so close. So close to regaining what he’d lost that Hjelvak night. So close to fixing everything.
You’re not broken, Gloriana said in his memory; but he had been, and he’d let the pieces lie there for six months, too miserable to even try and pick them up.
Only, in those last chaotic weeks, he realized that he’d started—started dusting off the fragments of that old Felix and piecing them together in a new shape.
Pantheon knew how it would warp if he failed to act.
Let Myria die out of selfish fear, and he’d lose something no arcanic injury could take.
There was no more time to think, and no point, either. It was the right and decent course, and that meant there was no choice. Somehow, he was never afraid when there was no choice. He turned inside, plunging into the empty wellspring. His arcana quickened, hearing its master’s call.
Come to me.
It burned through the stoppers in a second and came flashing out into his body.
It struck him like a jolt of lightning, pure and brilliant.
Euphoria crashed over him. The taste of his old power was like water to a killing thirst—but it was no gentle trickle.
The torrent thundered out into his broken channels.
Somewhere through the bliss, the pain began.
His inner sight flashed down the wreck of his arcanic faculties.
The golden power glanced wildly off the mirror shards, burning brighter by the second.
In the past, it had always felt like the moment he gave an eager horse its head and the two of them went flying out across the field.
This time, the horse was bolting. The reins had snapped, and he was hanging on by a thread.
Hold the line.
He seized the fragments of his faculties and forced them back into a semblance of their proper shape.
He was half aware of turquoise power spinning in around them, hauling the shards back up and together.
Tendrils still came burning out through the cracks, but it was enough—just enough.
The power began to build into an arc. Then, it flashed from his right hand to his left, and back again. He was ready.
Felix opened his eyes. Myria lay there, drenched in blood, her breaths shallow and gasping. He came to one knee beside her, set his hand to the wound and plunged his mind inside it.
The power flooded into her, right to where the blade had cut the lung.
The sight that met him was unlike anything he’d ever seen.
Dying soldiers glittered with the tangled wires of arcana, enemy and native, but Myria was empty blackness.
There was a scarred hollow where there should have been a sun-bright arc.
Still, old instinct guided him. His power raced to work, weaving torn flesh and sinew back together.
He wicked the blood from her gown and purified it, sending what he could salvage back into her body.
His arcana snapped to her brain and heart, seeking damage, soothing it by instinct where he found it.
In moments, it was finished. He called the power home.
It roared back into him, racing into ever-faster circles. His heart began to speed. Let the mirrors down now, and his arcana would blast straight out and burn him through. The bolting horse ran harder, fighting all control. His hands began to shake.
Not now! Unreasoning anger snapped through him at the thought. You’re not going to die. Not here. Not like this.
He wrenched the arcana back from his hands into his core. With all his might, he hauled it toward the wellspring. As he did, that turquoise power pressed in, steadying and guiding. The gold began to flood back to its source.
The more he drained, the easier it became. In moments, the last of his arcana was back in place. The floodgates closed.
His arcanic vision blanked out. He fell, and his hands struck the splintered floor.
A nameless pain echoed through him. It felt as if someone had dragged barbed wire down his soul.
Far worse, though, was the grief that swelled inside him as the power died—as though he’d seen the face of a long-dead love and run to her, only for her to vanish like a mirage.
But then, a hand fell on his arm. Felix forced himself back to the world and found Myria before him. Her dark eyes sought his, overwhelming her ashen face. Nonetheless, the radiance of hope, relief and fear in her gaze arrested the tide of grief.
“Evening,” she said with half a smile. Breathless giddiness engulfed him. He’d done it. She was alive, and so was he. He scarcely knew which relieved him more.
“Evening,” Felix said, his voice hoarse. “Lost an argument with Vixius?”
Her smile evaporated. His elation faded as quickly as it had come.
She knows what you did.
“I’m sorry,” he said, drawing back. “I saw them trying to hide the box, and the centurion—”
“The centurion.” Her countenance went blank. “Still following orders, little soldier boy?”
He knew better than to answer. He ached to explain it, to clear his name, to make her understand that no decent soldier could have acted any other way. By now, though, he knew her well enough to realize it wouldn’t wash.
Then, Myria let out a hard breath and closed her eyes.
“No matter,” she said. “The damage is done. I trust you’re not here by her command?”
“She doesn’t know.”
“Good.”
She came to her feet in stiff, experimental movements. Lysander stepped up to steady her, but she found her feet alone. Felix edged back, nerves winding tight. She didn’t even look at him.
“Myria, take your time,” the thericist murmured. “You’re barely half alive.”
“I know, old boy, I know. Find the others, will you? We’re in trouble.”
Lysander’s eyes flicked between her and Felix in a silent question. She smiled—cold and proper, this time—and answered it aloud.
“Don’t worry. If he threatened me, I’d only need to turn and run,” she said. “Besides . . . I think he’s decided he’s on our side. For now.”
“I want you alive and Vixius defeated,” Felix answered, fancying it safer than a yes or no. Judging by her flint-hard look, the evasion didn’t escape her. When she spoke, her voice was steel-edged and deliberate.
“Good,” she said. “Then brace yourself. The crew’s going to be out for blood.”