Chapter 4 The Storm #2
“No,” he said, opening his eyes. “You’re right.
The chimaeras still look fully intact. I don’t feel anyone in the Mansion at all, apart from who you’d expect.
A few staff in the kitchens, Forsooth, of course, a number of drakai and goblins, and a lone post-graduate student studying in Frumpy’s.
I guess even old Blackstone had somewhere else to be tonight. ”
Alaric hesitated, and his eyes grew bright enough that my throat clenched. He reached over and clasped my hand. “And thank you, Leda. For whatever you did to my magic just now. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.”
The centaur walked back around the room one last time, its hooves sinking into the thick green rug as it passed over the area by the door.
Once it began to approach the couch, Alaric made a graceful hand gesture, and I felt the chimaera around the room abruptly tilt then strengthen.
Alaric’s particular flavor of amber and purple magic glittered briefly as a new layer settled into Caelum’s shields.
I used my magic to help reinforce that, too.
Even with my help, when Alaric finished locking in the spell, his face looked flushed. He was breathing harder again. His aura looked depleted again, too. It wasn’t that warm, even by the fire, but his face glistened with sweat.
I frowned. “Alaric, what––”
He cut me off before I could finish.
“Leda, I know I’m…” He hesitated, still breathing a little too hard. “Well, jumpy right now. I probably seem paranoid. Or alarmist. I don’t want you afraid, I really don’t.”
I started to shake my head, but he wasn’t finished.
“I know I’m… overreacting. Probably.” His eyes seemed overly large, and worried.
“I’m not trying to be condescending, or overbearing.
But I love you, and you’ve got to be more careful.
” He took my hands, and gazed directly into my eyes.
“When you saw the light in here, you should have notified Forsooth. At once. There are Dark Cathedral sympathizers among the Praecuri, Leda. And here at school, including among the faculty. Forsooth probably doesn’t even know them all. Or even half of them.”
Alaric gazed around at the high-ceilinged room.
“That said, Cal really is an artist with chimaeras,” he mused. “With Malefic locked up, this might be one of the safest places on campus. Honestly, it’s one of the safest I can think of outside the historic homes.”
I nodded, and felt my shoulders relax slightly.
“His chimaeras really are all still in place, then?” I asked.
Alaric nodded, glancing around at the walls.
“All I did was add another layer that would tell you and me if anyone unfriendly entered the area. Cal already had it tied to his magical aura, of course.” He hesitated, then clasped my hand.
“Malefic was an anomaly, you know. Cal could never keep him out, but he’s an unusual case. They’re connected… somehow.”
“I know,” I said, exhaling. “I can feel it.”
At Alaric’s bewildered stare, I fought to explain.
“I’ve been a little… off. Since that day. The last time I was in here, I mean. I can tell it’s something to do with Bones, and his magic. I think that connection with his father might be affecting him, even with Malefic locked up.”
Thinking about that, I shrugged.
“That, or I’m just feeling him recover from what that evil prick did to him.” Rubbing my forehead lightly with my fingers, elbow propped on my thigh, I fought to ignore the concerned, even-more-alarmed look on Alaric’s face.
“You and Cal. Your magic is that connected?” he began, baffled.
“I don’t know. Maybe.” It hit me that it might’ve been a mistake mentioning that.
“It’s probably something to do with what happened with his father.
” At Alaric’s skeptical look, I prodded, “Before you derail me again, can you tell me anything about what happened to you? So far we’ve only talked about me. ”
A window rattled loudly behind us from a particularly sharp gust of wind, and we both turned to look.
White sheets of snow were coming down hard on the other side of the glass.
The snow was coming down faster, too, with more and more wind behind it, and the visibility looked even worse than it had when I’d looked out the windows of the east wing.
Unless it let up in the next few hours, neither of us would likely be going back to the dorm that night.
Alaric seemed to be thinking the same.
“Why don’t I order us tea?” he asked cheerfully, turning from the window back to me.
“We might as well settle in.” He smiled at my quirked eyebrow as I glanced around Caelum’s room.
“Don’t give me that look. I am his oldest friend…
and it sounds like you saved his life, or at least kept him from being dragged to the ends of Magique to die for his father’s disgusting obsessions.
” He raised my hand to his lips and kissed the back of it.
“He can lend us his couch. And his bed. He added us both to his wards, so it’s his own fault, really. ”
Alaric glanced out at the dark, snow-blinded windows, his gaze shrewd.
“Anyway, we’re liable to get lost and die in that without excessive amounts of magic being expended. As I’m still rather poorly on that front, I intend to stay here.” He lifted his glass in a half-toast. “And if you want to hear my story, darling Leda, you’re staying, too.”
Following his eyes back to the storm outside, I only nodded.
I set down my fork on a plate that still had the remnants of roast chicken, potatoes, and gravy on it.
I wiped my mouth with a napkin, watching Alaric pick through his own plate with his own silver fork.
He’d already eaten through one plate of food, and was now on his second.
He’d ordered both from the same goblin he summoned via a spell I’d never seen before.
The perks of being a royal, I guessed.
That, or I was just ignorant about how things worked at Malcroix still, and hadn’t realized I could summon room service with a snap of my fingers whenever I wanted, too.
Alaric seemed to pick up on my thoughts.
“It’s only for the holidays,” he explained, after the goblin thudded out of the room on thick, bare feet, the color of blue ice. “They can’t keep the kitchens running at full capacity, so they offer a menu and delivery instead. Didn’t Forsooth tell you?”
I shook my head, brow furrowed. “No.”
“You didn’t stay here for Yule last year?”
I shook my head again. “I went with Jolie to visit her family in Bath.”
“Ah.” He leaned back on the couch cushion, smiling. “I had forgotten that not all of us are royals, where our friends’ family estates are even less inviting than our own.”
I gave him a cynical smile. “You didn’t fancy spending time with Malefic and Mrs. Malefic over the winter break?
” Thinking about that, I shivered. “What’s the Black Tower like, anyway?
I imagine dungeons, haunted suits of armor, black-painted halls, wandering hellhounds, and vases filled with dead flowers.
Not to mention a moat stocked with murderous fish with long teeth. ”
Alaric snorted, folding his hands on his abdomen.
“You’re not entirely off,” he conceded.
“Your magic,” I said, realizing he’d managed to derail me again. I was starting to worry. He generally didn’t side-step things unless it was bad. “You said there’s something wrong with it? It’s not permanent?”
He shook his head, adjusting his spine in the leather couch.
“No,” he said somberly. “The medi-physicians told me it just needed time to recover. They warned me not to expect much use of my magic until it does.”
“But you created that chimaeric layer,” I pointed out. “I felt it.”
He gave me a wan smile. “You created that chimaeric layer with me, dearest. And even with your help, that’s it for my party tricks for the evening, I’m afraid.”
He held up his hand, palm flat, and I frowned.
I plucked the plate up off my lap and set it on the low table in front of Bones’s sofa, then moved closer to where Alaric sat.
In the firelight, I could see his hand vibrating.
The movement was subtle; I hadn’t noticed until he drew my eyes there, and even now, it looked more like the shimmering blur of a hummingbird’s wings than a normal hand tremor, even the tremors I’d seen on him earlier that night.
I reached over and caught hold of his fingers.
He started to extract his hand, but I gripped him tighter.
“Wait a minute,” I murmured.
My magic swam over his, seeking out the strange vibrations I felt…
…and suddenly, a network of elaborate lines sparked into life around his body.
They looked like veins, and arteries, but they skated along the surface of his skin.
I remembered the magicked wall-hangings Miranda got for Jolie to decorate her room at the beginning of the year.
Those, which Jolie protested must have been expensive, showed the same channels over a variety of different Magical beings, including mages and witches of different castes, and even a few other species, including humans.
The colors depicted in those diagrams had always fascinated me, but now I wished I’d studied them more closely. Even without a single class in magical medicine, I could tell something was deeply wrong in what I could see of Alaric’s aura.
Some of his “veins” were blackened, or looked dried out and blocked, nearly white from lack of circulation.
An area around his chest looked the worst, and I saw something like a heart struggling to beat in the center of his chest, inches away from his physical heart.
His arms looked grey, and the hand I held jerked with half-collapsed veins that seemed to be struggling to circulate magic to the ends of his fingers and back to his wrist and arm.
“What did this to you?” I asked in a whisper.
Alaric succeeded in extracting his hand, and when I looked up, I got the impression he very much wished he’d kept his mouth shut.
“Alaric.” I sharpened my voice. “What did they do to you? I thought you said they mostly just questioned you and locked you up? This wouldn’t do that… even if they starved you.”
When he shrugged, motioning gracefully with the same hand, I glimpsed something, and that time, caught hold of the open collar of his shirt.
I yanked the fabric to one side, and stared at his upper chest. A tattoo flashed with glowing metal in the middle of it, just below the spot between his collarbones.
Three symbols made up the vertical line of his tattoo: a gold skull, a gold Anubis head and a gold pyramid. Around the pyramid at the bottom, two gold snakes reared up.
My voice shook. “What is that?”
It hadn’t been there during the summer. I could think of at least five separate occasions I’d seen Alaric shirtless, or nearly shirtless, or at least with his shirt open at the top of his chest, including when we’d gone out dancing.
There’d been nothing there before. I was positive he hadn’t had a tattoo of any kind.
I certainly would have noticed a gold tattoo a few inches below his throat.
It was impossible not to connect it to the gold tattoos on Bones’s chest.
Bones’s were a lot more elaborate, and there were many more symbols and lines, but the gold on Alaric was shocking if only because I’d never seen anything like it on anyone but Bones until now. On both of them, it looked like someone had poured molten metal on their chests.
I gazed up at my friend’s familiar face, a face that suddenly looked a lot more gaunt and haggard now that I was seeing it up close.
“Who did this to you, Alaric?” I asked coldly.