Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
The botched repair lines remain visible.
Cheap rune chalk.
Chalk I can work with.
Chalk can be scrubbed away.
We will not risk adding more magic with cleaning spells, so it has to be solvent and elbow grease. That means somebody on the buffer, and it means as few bodies as possible inside a building that may be about to come apart.
Everyone leaves except Cáel. I stand beside him, cleaning solution in hand, trying to keep my hands steady.
“Where do we start?” I ask. “Do we clear the surface mess first or go straight to the real damage?”
We stare at the floor.
He stands close enough that I can feel the warmth of him through my coat.
“Straight to the source,” I decide. “The gap.” The half-foot-wide strip where the new rune-work misses the original anchor entirely.
Even now, knowing far more than I did before, I can’t follow the logic of whoever attempted this. As though a suppression grid more than fourteen hundred years old could be repaired by drawing runes somewhere near the correct location and hoping for the best.
Then again, desperate people do desperate things.
They use whatever they have and do not always stop to think.
I understand that better than most.
“Go for it, then,” Cáel says.
We work close to the anchor and ignore the outer mess. I pour solvent over the misplaced chalk while Cáel follows with the buffer. He has the steady focus of someone competent at everything he attempts, even when ‘everything’ means scrubbing the floor of a condemned freight site.
I pour.
He buffs.
The lines begin to vanish.
Not quickly enough.
All the while, the magic screams. It rises through the floor like sound through bone, floods my skull and drowns out everything else.
The failed working throws pressure across the gap. It agitates the true rune without ever joining it and drives the anchor closer and closer to disaster.
The network becomes the only thing that exists: vast, furious and straining against itself. The power has nowhere to go, and the anchor is seconds from exploding.
It will take us with it.
This is not working, and we are running out of time.
Then, beneath the clamour, a clear thought surfaces. The connection does not have to run in only one direction.
If the government marks allow magic to use my body as a route, perhaps I can use that route in reverse—not into the network, not into the anchor, but into the botched repair.
Drain the charge from the chalk.
Make it harmless before it pushes the anchor any further.
Cáel, still scrubbing behind me, does not see me drop to my knees.
I press both palms to the concrete and reach for the rune energy trapped in the chalk.
Rotten, overloaded power surges into me like bitter, ice-cold water, fouled by misuse, panic and whatever desperate spellcraft they forced into it.
The pain arrives a fraction of a second later, ripping through my nerve endings all at once.
I have never felt anything like it.
It pulls at me from the inside out.
Some distant, still-functioning part of my mind registers that if I keep holding on, I am going to die. But if I do not hold on…
My hands are shaking against the concrete. I press them down harder—flatten my palms, push through the trembling—because if I let them lift even an inch, I will tear them away entirely and it will all have been for nothing.
I want to scream. I keep my teeth clenched and my mouth shut.
It is not the anchor itself, I remind myself. Not quite. Hold on.
My nose starts bleeding. Blood runs over my lip and fills my mouth.
I am one woman, and far too much stolen force streams through me. If I can hold it for a little longer—
Until Cáel scrubs away the chalk.
Until the anchor stops reacting to the rogue working.
Then the overload will settle, and the network will not cascade.
The buffer falls silent.
Cáel sees my face. In a heartbeat, he is beside me, cradling my head between his hands.
His mouth moves.
I hear nothing.
I blink slowly, my eyelids heavy.
“What did you do?”
The words reach me as though through deep water.
“I had to.”
The chalk is only chalk now.
We fixed it.
“Can I heal you?”
“Please.”
His magic flows into me, warm and clean, easing the foul pressure I have absorbed.
He works in silence for several moments, his jaw set hard.
Then he speaks, his voice tightly controlled.
“Burst capillaries in your nose and around your eyes. A small bleed in your brain.” His fingers tighten against my temples. “What did you do?”
“I pulled the charge out of the repair chalk while you scrubbed away the runes.”
And worse, some buried part of me knew how.
“Only for a moment,” I add. “Until you finished.”
It was long enough. I do not ever want to do that again.
“You must never do that again.” He draws back enough to look directly into my eyes. “Do you understand?”
“It was only a few seconds.”
“Elenora, a few seconds caused bleeding in your brain. A minute could kill you.”
My strength gives way.
He catches me and pulls me against him.
“I know.” My voice cracks.
He holds me as he wipes the blood from my face with a folded tissue. I close my eyes and breathe through the metallic taste coating my tongue. I beg myself not to cry.
“The anchor isn’t screaming any more,” I say.
“You could hear it?”
“Yes.” I swallow. “It will be all right.”
He neither agrees nor disagrees. He only tightens his arms around me. “Is the network stable enough for my team to finish clearing the floor?”
“Yes. The chalk is inert.” I look at the concrete. “Though a filthy slab is the least of anybody’s problems tonight.”
“Good.”
I try to stand, and before I can manage it, Cáel lifts me to my feet.
I ought to object on principle.
“I don’t need babying,” I grumble.
“I know.” His voice remains gentle, but his arm does not loosen around my waist. “You need Thea.”
For once, I cannot argue.