Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
There is a full-length mirror in the spare room. I haven’t stood in front of one in years.
I take my time.
The sigils do not stop at my arms. Faint pink lines spread across my shoulders, over my ribs and down my torso in patterns that interconnect and double back on themselves, a language written on me before I could read anything at all.
I had no idea there were so many.
The mirror shows me the rest of it too, whether I want it or not. I am thinner than I should be. Nobody down there is thin by design, and I have grown so used to it that I stopped noticing, but standing in somebody else’s warm bedroom, I can see it plainly enough.
I would be stronger with more weight on me.
Something to fix, if I live long enough to bother.
The angora top hangs loosely. I fidget with it the whole way down the stairs, the new coat folded over my arm.
Nobody is in the kitchen. Laughter drifts from the back garden, so I slip on the wool coat and button it at the waist. I transfer two knives and the remaining prepared charms from my own coat.
The wool one has no protective ward, which leaves me feeling unpleasantly exposed.
The new shoes pinch my toes too. Not badly, but enough to warn me that walking in them for long will hurt.
I step into the cold.
Cáel is playing with Mina.
He has a football. He draws back and kicks—the crack sounds almost like a gunshot—and Mina streaks after it, seizes it and runs. Cáel chases her; when he closes in, she drops the ball, and he begins to dribble, light on his feet, the ball moving as though tethered to him.
Mina darts between his legs to intercept, but he dances around her. At one point, he back-heels the ball, flips it over his own head and catches it on the other foot, bouncing it from knee to turf in one fluid movement.
Showing off.
“Show-off,” I mutter.
He turns at my voice, and the lapse in concentration is all Mina needs. She pounces, claims the ball and sprints in the opposite direction.
He laughs. “That was a rainbow flick. You’ve no idea how many hours I practised it as a child.”
Mina flops onto the grass, growling with delight as she worries the leather. Cáel jogs over, steals the ball with another neat trick, and the game resumes.
I watch them.
I have never seen her play with anyone else. Cáel is a stranger, yet she is utterly relaxed—tail wagging, body loose, eyes bright.
My time with her is usually spent keeping her fit, sharp and tired enough to sleep. I had forgotten there could be more.
Play for its own sake.
Joy without purpose.
It is lovely.
When the game winds down and the ball is put away, Thea calls from inside that she is making hot drinks, and I follow them into the kitchen.
Cáel is the muddy one now—combat trousers spattered, colour high in his cheeks. At the sink, he rolls up his sleeves, and I notice a raised rash across his forearm.
He catches my glance and scratches at the rash, half sheepish. “Seems I’m allergic to your dog,” he says with a wry smile. “No bother. It’s only a little itch.” Entirely unfazed, he bends to stroke Mina as she pads past.
“He’ll be fine,” Vivian says, appearing at my shoulder. “We have some cream in the bathroom.” She smiles. “Your dog is amazing.”
“Thank you.” I glance at Mina.
“She really is,” Thea adds from beside the worktop as she waits for the kettle. “If you have a dog like that”—a smile tugs at her mouth—“you can’t be such a terrible person.”
I manage a cautious smile of my own. She is not wrong.
Dogs judge by energy and intent rather than by reputation. It is the only assessment I have ever entirely trusted.
This time, I finish the whole cup of tea.
Mina drinks some water while we wait for Cáel to change. Then we leave the house—Cáel, Mina and I in one car, Vivian and Thea in the other.
Relief washes through me, followed at once by guilt.
Spending time with them is difficult in ways I cannot yet articulate. I do not know what to say or how to behave around people who are simply glad to see me. I am used to hands meaning restraint, blows, searches, cuffs. Kindness has its own kind of shock.
Clipped into the back seat, Mina watches the streets blur past.
The Aegis Spire is exactly as I half remember it from a childhood school trip. Two hundred metres, a viewing deck at the summit and—more importantly—the anchor that holds the Immortal Zone to Elyrion and governs the platform’s slow east–west drift after the light.
What I had not recalled, or what has changed, is the ostentation. Gold detailing, floor-to-ceiling glass, acres of marble.
It is the sort of beauty money achieves when money is no object.
Security meets us in the lobby. Cáel speaks to the guards in low tones, and moments later, we are inside the lift.
The ascent feels endless.
Then the doors open.
The viewing deck is a vast glass room with floor-to-ceiling windows on every side.
A dark-wood bar curves along one wall, its bottles backlit beneath rows of neatly hung glasses.
Opposite, a shuttered coffee shop counter sits behind glass, the chalkboard menu still visible.
Between the two, low tables and chairs cluster before the windows—the coveted seats people reserve months in advance so they can sip a drink with the city spread out beneath them.
Right now, the viewing deck is deserted.
“They cleared the floor,” Cáel says offhandedly. “They’re expecting a proposal.” He grins at my sister.
Vivian laughs beneath her breath and threads her fingers through Thea’s. “They’ll be waiting a long time.”
“That they will,” he replies cheerfully.
“And the surveillance?” I ask.
“Suspended under diplomatic privacy rules until we leave.”
Which means somebody signed a form. Somebody knows exactly who is standing on the top floor of the Aegis Spire, and for how long, and that no record of it will exist afterwards.
I file that where I file everything else and follow them to the glass.
We move towards the windows overlooking the Immortal Zone and, beyond it, the Districts.
I think about how many Immortals have stood here, gazed across all that and seen nothing.
Just a view.
Something picturesque, perhaps, from this height. Cars like ants. The dirty-brown river winding through the city.
You do not have to look hard to spot the damaged roofs, the things that can’t be repaired, or the grey-brown haze breathed in by too many people crowded into too little space for too long.
You have to want to see it.
“Apart from looking like a bit of a shithole,” Vivian says, squinting, “I can’t see any difference. Where are these runes?”
My home. The tower block with its eleven flights. The neighbours who have kept my address to themselves for years and never once asked me for anything.
She does not hear herself say it, and she would be mortified if she did, so I let it go past me.
I study her instead of the city.
We share the same parents. The same Ink blood.
If anyone else can see the runes, it should be Vivian.
“You really can’t?”
She presses her fingertips to the glass and concentrates. Faint lines darken beneath the skin of her wrist, our family Ink magic answering her call.
“Nothing,” she says at last. “And that’s wrong. I can read any open rune.”
A chill slides through me.
Same parents. Same Ink. Same everything, and she cannot see a single line of it.
So it is not the blood.
Which leaves me, and I do not care for where that thought is heading, so I stop it where it stands.
“Perhaps these aren’t open to you.” I describe the magic. I point out how the shapes follow the river, how they are embedded in the street plan, how their lines continue through the angles of buildings altered over the years.
They stare, then shake their heads.
Frustration surges through me. They have to see it. They have to believe me.
Mina’s wet nose nudges my hand as she leans against my leg, and my fingers dig into her fur.
“Have you got a camera?”
Cáel puts a slim device into my hand. I stare at it, so he takes it back, taps a few buttons and returns it. “Middle button to take a picture. It’s encrypted.”
I photograph everything I can see.
On the screen, the runes are absent. What is clear to my eyes does not register digitally. The device records the physical city, not the layer of magic spread across it.
“It doesn’t show,” I say, handing the encrypted device back. “I need a pad and a pencil.”
Cáel nods, passes the device to Vivian and slips away.
For ten minutes, Vivian and Thea speak softly while I stand against the glass and stare.
When Cáel returns, he carries an artist’s pad of thick, smooth paper, a pencil ideal for shading, and a slim black document case tucked beneath one arm.
I take the pad and pencil, thank him, then focus on the stretch of road between my government apartment and my real home.
I wait until the shape settles in my mind.
I shrug off the coat, let it fall across the nearest chair and, determined to prove myself right, begin to draw.
The pencil moves before I decide it should.
Magic rises not from effort but from something older that recognises my intent. It does not care that the tool holds graphite rather than ink.
A line is a line.
Meaning is what matters.
Ink is in my blood. Perhaps I was always meant to do this and never had enough power to try.
A sigil on my forearm glows—a feather lit from within, silver-pale against my skin.
“When did those reappear?” Vivian whispers. “I thought she was stripped of her magic.”
Cáel answers her, but I tune them out and continue drawing.
The riverside section of the Ink District emerges—streets, houses, every building rendered with a precision I could never consciously manage. Runes surface through the lead as though they have always been there, waiting to be seen.
Magic flows in a steady current.
I follow it.
When it ebbs, my fingers throb, stiff and aching.
I lower the pad.
Dizziness strikes without warning.
“It’s the magic. You’re not used to using it,” Cáel says.
Someone lifts the paper and pencil from my hands. Cáel steers me into a chair, and a glass of water is pressed into my grasp.
I drink until the room steadies.
“That’s all right. Deep breaths, in and out.” Thea’s voice is calm and measured. A doctor’s voice. She reaches for my wrist.
I flinch before I can stop myself.
She freezes at once. “May I?”
Heat creeps up my throat. “Yes. Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” she says, and waits until I place my hand in hers.
Fine, luminous violet filaments unfurl from her fingertips and slip beneath my skin without piercing it. They trace tendons, nerves and scar tissue, briefly illuminating the connections through my hand and forearm.
Thread magic. Though common enough in medicine, that degree of control is not.
“Nothing torn,” she says. “You’ve exhausted the muscles and irritated the nerves, but there’s no lasting damage.” The filaments withdraw.
I follow her breathing instructions, and the dizziness begins to lift.
“Is this what you see?” Vivian holds the pad towards me, her expression unreadable.
“Yes. Exactly.”
Cáel leans closer. Thea does too.
They can see them.
Not out there. Not through the glass. But here, on the paper, the runes sit plain as roads.
My throat tightens. I did it.
Vivian’s gaze drifts across the graphite lines, and the faint family sigils on her wrist deepen. “Because you’ve brought them into the open,” she says softly. “Whatever hides the rune network out there can’t veil the runes once you’ve set them down.”
“So anyone can see this?” I ask.
“The drawing, yes.” Her eyes remain fixed on the page. “But not everyone would know what they were looking at.”
She looks up at me. “Elmo, this isn’t ordinary rune-work. It’s old bloodline magic.”
The understanding settles coldly inside me.
Anyone can see the map once I draw it, but only I can see the living network beneath the city.
“And this”—she points to the drawing—“where is it?”
“My government apartment.”
She studies the lines. “It’s almost in the centre of a rune.” Her voice drops. “Elmo, your apartment is right against the strongest line.”
“Yes.”
“Can you do another?” she asks. “Other parts of the District?”
“I can, but I need to eat first.”
“Of course you do.” She slaps a hand against her forehead. “You had two mouthfuls at breakfast. Come on, Thea. Let’s find her something to eat at the restaurant below.” She passes the pad to Cáel and ushers Thea towards the lift. “Back in a moment. Don’t go anywhere.”
The doors close behind them.
Cáel studies the drawing. When he speaks, his voice is low. “The detail is remarkable.” He tilts the pad towards the light. “So this is why you don’t live there—because they’re trying to kill you.”