Chapter 52
“May I watch?”
Eric’s question had sounded so innocent, accompanied by kisses along Will’s throat as they lay among soft pillows. Will had thought nothing of it when he said yes, still lulled by the lingering high of what had happened between them.
But now, as he pushed open the double doors to the ballroom, he regretted it.
The vast construction site opened before him, moonlight alternating with deep shadow, painting the mountains of materials in silver and black.
Frost flowers from the Rough Nights spread across the windows where the rain had frozen.
Silent as though he were still the monster, Eric moved through the hall, picking up a mosaic tile here and there, letting sand run through his fingers, brushing his hand across the slabs of marble.
“It reminds me of my workshop,” he said, half to himself. Will had to strain to hear him. “This is how my chimeras begin. A pile of flesh and bones.”
Will had wondered about Eric and his creatures and decided he would rather not hear the gruesome details.
But there was something fascinating about watching Eric wander through his construction site, dressed in one of Will’s shirts and trousers, and the last of Will’s doubts about bringing him here fell away.
Was this what it felt like to grow up in a city where magic was allowed?
Where people could speak so casually about the similarities between their crafts?
Will went to the place where he had prepared everything, positioned so that the entire ballroom lay before him. He spread his sketches and plans across the unfinished floor beside bowls and glasses filled with magical ingredients.
A curse escaped him when he tried to kneel. The freshly bandaged wounds protested at every movement.
From across the room, he heard Eric laugh, and he rolled his eyes. Eric had tended to his injuries with soft touches and warm care, but at times Will had suspected he had been admiring his handiwork more than treating it.
For now, he would ignore that.
He let his gaze travel over the ingredients. The siren scales shimmered even in the weak light, and pain tightened through Will’s chest. Saint would have been proud of how Will used his materials.
His memory ripped something open in him, and the nervousness returned like a tidal wave. He had to brace himself against the dusty boards, his arms trembling as he fought for breath, as though the water were dragging him under.
Magic was a cruel lover. It demanded sacrifice after sacrifice, greedier than any monster.
The taste of salt on Will’s tongue felt like a mockery, the presence of the Albatross a bitter reminder of what Will had to give up. He picked up the kitchen cleaver lying beside the ingredients the god had whispered to him about in his dreams, and his lips curled with contempt.
Why not simply chop off his entire leg while he was at it, or tear the ribs from his chest?
When he had dreamed among the vampires of turning his bones into a palace, it had still felt like freedom. But now that he knew the price of his magic, it was cruel. Magic did not merely want his life. It wanted his body as well, piece by piece.
“What are you planning to do with the cleaver?” Eric asked suddenly from behind him.
Unable to make himself say it aloud, Will slipped out of one slipper and revealed his right foot, where a poorly healed red scar marked the place his little toe had once been.
“I sacrifice.”
Eric crouched behind him and leaned closer. “There are mages who can regrow bone. I will look into it.”
Will glanced over his shoulder, irritated. “Why?”
“Eventually, you will run out of bones to sacrifice.”
He met Will’s gaze calmly, then reached into his trouser pocket and let a train ticket flutter down onto Will’s workspace.
“Take it.” Eric’s expression turned serious. “Finish this, if helping Elodie matters to you so much, and then go to the station. The train will leave as soon as you present the ticket.”
Will picked it up carefully. “I cannot. You know that. Elodie has a plan.”
He felt Eric shift his weight, wrap his arms around him, and rest his face against Will’s back.
“Please,” he whispered against the bandages. “Please go.”
“Why does it matter so much to you? I am leaving tomorrow anyway.”
“She has everything she needs. She will get her sacrifice. Please go. I will find you in the Capitol.”
Pain pierced Will’s heart, and his thoughts split in two, one half caught on that final sentence, on a promise he had never expected, had never even dared to dream of.
To love Eric outside Bloodgrove.
But his mind returned to something else.
“What do you mean, she has a sacrifice?”
“The angel told me that to become the Red Hand, you have to sacrifice the person you love most. If you stay and Elodie succeeds… the King will demand your life.”
Will almost laughed aloud.
He turned as best he could toward Eric. “Are you really that blind? Do you still not see it? The only person in danger here is you.”
Eric shook his head. “Do not worry about me. I am asking you. I am begging you. Go—for me.”
He kissed Will with such longing that it already felt like goodbye.
Will could barely keep up with his own emotions. Eric was speaking words meant for lovers. Even the madness of the night before felt simple compared with this.
“Eric,” he said carefully, searching his eyes. “I cannot. I want to finish this. I promised Elodie. What if she succeeds and becomes the Red Hand? Perhaps my blood can help her remain herself instead of becoming his puppet. I have to try.”
Something broke with pain in Eric’s eyes. “We are all going to die.”
“Then at least no one will be left behind alone.”
Eric laughed wearily. “So na?ve.”
This time, Will kissed him gently. “So willing to sacrifice yourself.”
“Forgive me.”
“As though I ever could not.”
Eric drew away again, and it felt the same as it had an hour earlier when they had separated their bodies. Wrong.
And a small, uncertain voice inside Will wondered whether Eric only whispered to him like a lover because he knew how compliant it made him. If this was still part of their game.
“Now show me what you can do, great mage.” Eric slid backward across the dusty floor, but even in the dim light Will could read the restless thoughts behind his mask.
“I do not know,” Will whispered and forced his attention back to the plans before him.
He slipped off his other slipper, bit down on a tightly rolled napkin, and picked up the cleaver for the second time.
Holding the blade aloft, he stared at the siren scales.
Perhaps the Capitol was right. Perhaps it was right and good to forbid magic if magic always demanded something in return.
Elodie had to sacrifice blood and love for power, and Will had to sacrifice years of his life and pieces of his own bones.
Who knew what Eric had given up to become such a monster?
Perhaps magic truly was corrupt. How could anything good demand a price like this? His hand trembled. Had his father understood what Will had surrendered when he first saw the silver in his hair?
“You never asked me why I turn into a monster,” Eric said suddenly.
He had risen again and was pacing through the ballroom. Will frowned and made an unintelligible sound around the napkin between his teeth. What was going through Eric’s mind that made him think this was the right moment for this conversation?
“Your thoughts are so loud I can hear them from here.” Eric tossed a shard of mother-of-pearl into the air and caught it again. “After all these months with us, you still do not understand why we love magic.”
Will lowered the cleaver and sighed. At least irritation had replaced despair. He spat the napkin onto the floor.
“Please. Enlighten me.”
Eric smiled. “I can see you trembling. You are afraid. This is what—your third time? Fourth?” He stopped in front of Will, took hold of his chin, and forced him to look up.
Mockingly, he bent closer. “As I said. A pup.”
“There are not exactly many magical architects to learn from.”
“But that is not the problem. You know what you have to do.” Eric took the cleaver from him and lifted the blade to Will’s cheek.
“You simply do not understand why yet. But everything in life has a price. Especially power. Even love.”
Will drew his lower lip between his teeth. “But he already has my life.”
“Then renegotiate.” Eric’s voice softened. “You do not understand the gods yet, any more than you understand magic. When you are back in the Capitol, take your life back. And now ask me.” A gentle smile touched his lips.
Uncertainly, Will leaned his cheek into Eric’s hand and against the cool steel of the cleaver. “Why are you telling me this secret?”
“Because you don’t understand yet that you were a mage long before the god ever offered you a bargain.”
“How do you know?”
“Because this is how it was for me. You know this part of the story—my family lived in the mountains you traveled through by train. We were simple farmers, and we were in danger of not surviving the next winter. My grandmother had died the summer before, but I remembered the fairy tales she used to tell me. About gods who wandered through the mountains, about monsters that were both curse and blessing, and about the mages who hunted them.”
Eric stepped away from Will, leaving him seated on the floor, and looked out across the vast ballroom, the cleaver still in his hand.
“So one night, I slipped out of the house and went hunting for a god. I didn’t even question if I had magic, or if I was strong enough; I just knew I had to save my family.
I set a trap, the way they did in the stories.
After three days, I caught the god of the Hungry Pack and the Eternal Hunt, and he was amused by the child who had outwitted him, so he listened to my bargain: his power for his freedom. ”
Will’s eyes widened. “Then why are you still yourself?”
“Because he did not want more than that. He did not want to be bound to the fragile human body of a half-starved nine-year-old. He only made me more like him by giving me a splinter of himself. But he never made me a mage.
“But with his added magic, I could buy my family passage into Bloodgrove. It nearly killed me—that was the truly difficult part—and you know the rest. Old Duke Ormonde took us in. He recognized my potential and gave me to the King as a gift.” For a moment, Eric’s shadow lengthened, and his fingers twitched as though claws might grow from them at any second.
He glanced back at Will. “Gods are as varied as humans are. And they can fall just as we do.” He held the cleaver out to Will. “But your god never made you who you are; he is just using you to survive. So enjoy the power and remind your god that he is bound to a very fragile, but stubborn vessel.”
Will laughed uncertainly and took the knife back from him. If Eric had managed to save his family, surely Will could make one lousy ballroom for Elodie.
“Should I hold your hair?” Eric asked, entirely his sarcastic self again.
He received no answer. Will already wedged the napkin between his teeth once more and raised the cleaver over his uninjured foot.