THIRTY-THREE
Brinkley’s cottage was quiet.
It was the kind of tense silence that hummed in the walls and pressed in at your ribs, making it difficult to breathe.
He found Amelia by the window near the front door, arms wrapped around herself and watching the first pale fingers of dawn grasping at the horizon.
Her face looked sombre to Silas, etched with an aching tiredness.
They had only slept a few hours, the overwhelming details of what was coming for them too much for each to find true rest.
There was a heaviness on his chest as he watched the early morning glow sit against the skin of her cheek, lighting up the edges of her brown curls.
She looked so soft and beautiful, and he had the overwhelming urge to walk up behind her and wrap himself around her, pulling her close so that together they could ward off the cool air of morning.
But it was selfish, to want such things, when he didn’t know what the future held.
Tomorrow night the full moon would rise, so that evening would be their final midnight.
Midnights.
Such a meaningless thing turned paramount through their bonding. They had both started out looking at the time of day as something to be afraid of, something to dread. Now, he would give anything to have thousands of them ahead of him to share with Amelia.
It had turned from something painful, frightening, into something meaningful and beautiful. For weeks, they had negated the effects of the pull by being close to one another. And now he couldn’t imagine not holding her, touching, for every number of midnights that he might have left in his life.
Even if that was only one.
As if sensing him, Amelia turned her head. Silas saw how she tried to mask the fear on her face by sending him a half-smile. But it was in her eyes, so painstakingly stark and unmistakable.
He stepped up behind her, eyes looking out the window.
Silas didn’t touch her, though the overwhelming need vibrated beneath his skin.
Her presence alone was grounding, solid and real.
She followed his gaze, neither needing to say anything as they stood there in silence, watching as the world prepared to rise again, as though their entire world wasn’t about to collapse.
The sitting room was in a state of chaos. The number of books and papers littering every surface, drawings and equations etched into walls and on floorboards, half-empty cups and plates scattered with crumbs, was immense.
Brinkley had produced a chalkboard halfway through the morning, and it now outlined scribbles of frantic genius of the new ritual sequence, ancient runes, and hastily corrected lines of passage that Amelia and Silas would need to recite.
Fabian paced like a caged animal, jaw set tight and wild eyes alight as he read over the same lines of translated scripts.
Halpert sat at a desk pushed into the corner, elbows on his knees and hands woven together in a prayer-like pose. Though he wasn’t praying, Amelia knew, he was calculating. Weighing the risks and searching for anything that they might have missed.
Brinkley, ever the calm in the storm, had just poured Amelia a cup of tea. It sat forgotten on a side table, steaming in the tense quiet as the preparations were made.
A door creaked open, and Silas stepped inside with Aurora closely following before shutting the door once more. Their arms were full of supplies from the market to prepare for their journey. New arcane lamps and crystals, Waystone chips, food, small tents, and fire crystals.
They would need to leave soon.
“The markets are so empty,” Aurora remarked as she set down an armload of supplies.
“Mm-hm,” Brinkley hummed, looking up from a scroll he had been unfurling and re-rolling. “East Town has been emptying for weeks. The Rift is getting too close for most peoples’ comfort levels.”
They all looked around at each other uneasily. Amelia felt the weight of it all drop heavily into her stomach, and it roiled, threatening to bring up the sandwich she had forced herself to eat earlier.
A hand touched her lightly on the back, and she turned her eyes to Silas. He looked as pale as she felt, as worried as her stomach told her she was.
“Is it time, then?” Halpert said in his low, calm tone. He had stood from his chair and walked over to check through their supplies.
Silas nodded once. “There’s nothing more we can do.
We need to be in the middle of the Rift before midnight tomorrow night and we can’t take any risks of not getting there in time.
Of failing like the others.” He looked at Amelia, his hand falling away from her back.
“We leave in no more than thirty minutes. Make sure you have everything, yeah?”
Amelia swallowed the lump in her throat but nodded.
A small noise had them all looking over to Aurora, who placed her hand across her mouth to stifle the sob she had let out. They all stood, the room rippling with restrained panic.
Silas walked over to pull his sister into a tight hug. “Hey, we’re ready. This is going to work.”
“We’ve mitigated as many risks as we can,” Halpert offered, holding their journal with all the final changes written within. “It should work.”
Aurora pulled away from her brother to scowl slightly at the older man. “Should?”
Halpert looked up, as though a bit startled. “There are just so many variables, but I do believe we’ve looked at all possible outcomes.”
“Oh, how very comforting,” Aurora snapped, voice thick with sarcasm and barely contained emotion.
Silas patted her on the shoulder before shifting away. Amelia could see it on his face, the uncertainty.
She felt it, too.
“Let’s get our things and go,” Amelia said before more could be said.
Silence settled through the room again, only broken by the ticking of the clock on the mantel, that slowly pulled away more time from them.
Amelia packed her bag, checking and rechecking that she had everything, ignoring the movements of the others behind her. It was a subdued environment, knowing that goodbyes would be taking place in a handful of minutes.
“I hate this,” Amelia heard Aurora murmur softly from somewhere behind her. “I hate how brave you have to be.”
Silas sighed softly. “I’m not trying to be brave,” he said. “I want to do what’s right, and I want to live. But the two aren’t exactly matching up at the moment.”
The words struck something in her. In all of them, it seemed. When Amelia turned around, she saw that everyone was looking at Silas with wary expressions. There was a collective breath, drawn and held, within the room.
It was Brinkley who spoke first. “You’ve both come farther than any of us believed possible.
You’ve rewritten magic and broken every law of reason and theory.
What you’re about to attempt is unprecedented, but so are all discoveries in history, magical or not.
” Brinkley paused, then added, “if anyone can pull this off, it’s the two of you. ”
She tried to smile at him, one of her oldest friends, but wasn’t sure if she managed it.
A distant tolling of a bell had her heart leaping. Another hour had struck, and the sun would begin its descent behind the mountains too soon. It was time to go.
She pulled on her pack, Silas moving to do the same.
The next few minutes were a breathless whirlwind of hugs and farewells.
Silas had even given Brinkley a one-armed hug with a, “thanks Brinkles.”
“It’s Brinkley,” he had replied with a sigh, but his eyes sparkled. “Anytime.”
Halpert was the last to give her a hug, pulling her into him with a fierceness that she was surprised, yet gratified by. He pulled away and gave her a watery smile. “Be careful, be wise,” he said, and then set his gaze to Silas. “Both of you.”
Silas nodded, reaching to shake his hand, and then they were stepping out the door.
Amelia turned back to glance one more time at the gathering of people who had become an unlikely group of friends, people they had trusted with the direst of secrets, before she turned away and stepped towards fate, with Silas at her side.
They travelled south together, moving through East Town and beyond quickly until the sun was casting an orange glow across the land.
She could feel the Rift before seeing it, a presence ahead that settled over her skin, slithering into her veins. The magic within her rose its head, looking around with interest, as though the Rift called to it.
They reached it quicker than she had anticipated, both pausing when it came into view while cresting a small grassy hill.
The sandy, desolate stretch of land was there, like a pale scar.
“It’s so close to East Town,” Silas remarked, hooking his thumbs around his backpack straps.
Amelia nodded, before pointing. “The markers.”
A fresh wooden marker was pushed into the soil at the edge of the Rift, but when looking beyond, into the blighted land, there were several. Jutting from the earth in regular intervals and disappearing into the Rift.
“We been trackin’ ‘em daily,” came a voice to her left and she jumped in surprise, head whipping to an older man who came to stand beside them wearing a bright yellow vest. Silas’ hand came around her arm as he, too, was startled.
They looked upon the casual stance of the man and the weathered, but kind face, his arms laden down by wooden stakes.
The man turned his head, grey brows furrowing as he looked them over, spying their backpacks.
“You ain’t going in there, are ya?” he asked. “It’s all gettin’ worse. Hardly nobody comes back out any longer. Sandstorms almost every night, and don’t even get me started on them Crawlers.”
Her heart turned over uncomfortably at the reminder of those things . That night in the Rift, hunted and haunted, was nothing but nightmare fuel. And now they were purposefully going back.
“We’re scientists,” Silas said with confidence. “We’ve been sent by the Spire to conduct important research on the Rift’s growth.”