Chapter 30 #2
Luc beckoned her to follow him, and Lila rose to her feet. He led her through a room filled with ceramics and into the forge. There, he picked up his cooling, unfinished sword and indicated for her to look closely.
When it was completed, the sword would be double-edged for unpredictability, with a significant range for thrusting and parrying, every strike doubling as a block.
It would be a heavier sword than most, and slower, but Luc was balancing it at the tip so that it could be wielded as if feather-light.
Its long hilt would make it usable in two hands as well as one; fashioned from jadeite, the hilt would be white with swaths of green.
The blade itself would have a flat hexagonal cross-section and a fuller running along one-third of its length; it would be slowly tapered to retain both good thrusting and good cutting capacity.
At last, a spherical gold pommel would serve as a counter-weight for the weight of the blade.
But presently, Luc wanted Lila to notice the veins of black woven into the silvery material and the thin black smoke that wafted over the blade’s surface.
“Is that…?” Lila swallowed and didn’t finish her thought.
“The Void. Contained in this sword.”
“But…but why?”
“Because I have a theory, and if it is correct, we will no longer have reason to be frightened by the Void. And once that happens, the Council will have to reinstate me. They won’t be able to deny the value of this.”
A lie, of course. Luc had no interest in rejoining the Council. But he didn’t want to tell her his real intention. Not yet.
“You think this will help you regain your position.”
“I think this will render the warriors obsolete.”
“You mean you think it will render Michael obsolete.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, come on. Your feud with Michael is legendary, and everyone knows he’s the one who put you under lock and key. But you know, you’ll only be inviting a fight. Next time, with weapons instead of words.”
At this assertion, Luc studied Lila’s face for any sign of duplicity—any sign that she was plotting against him—but Lila’s eyes remained clear.
She was stating a fact, not judging his choices.
She didn’t care what he did to Michael, beyond the fact that she thought whatever he was planning wouldn’t work.
“If Michael wants to come at me with a sword, then I will come at him with a sword.”
“You can’t beat Michael. He’s the best warrior there is. Have you even practiced sword-fighting since lessons?”
“Of course. I test swords whenever I make them.” Which wasn’t often, but she didn’t need to know that.
“Please don’t tell me that means you swat at the aether.”
“Look, does Michael have a sword that can repel more darkness in a single stroke than a hundred warriors combined?”
“A sword that might repel darkness. And the best warrior can do much with little at their disposal. I should know. I’ve been taking advanced sword-fighting.”
“Yes, I’m aware. You never could give up being a student, could you?” Amused, Luc smiled despite their argument.
“Not all of us have been occupied with Earth for the past aeon.” She arched an eyebrow, then dropped her gaze to the sword.
“Anyway, I hope this gets you back into the Council’s good graces.
Though I think it likely you will further alienate yourself.
Clearly, they’re not much for new ideas. But what do I know?”
“You know more than you credit yourself with,” Luc assured her. It was true. She knew more than most, even if she didn’t know everything. Even if most of what she knew was supposition.
For the first time since she’d entered, he really studied her—the profile of her oval face, her short nails, her bare fingers.
She’d pulled her dark hair back into her signature braid, but delicate earrings of gold wire and pearl flowers dangled from her ears, gleaming as they danced against the reddish-brown backdrop of her skin.
Her inventions, most likely. They were elegant and bold. Like her.
“Here.” Luc crossed the room and selected a steel bar from his private store, five inches in length and a quarter inch in diameter. He held it out to Lila. “You should make something. Use the other anvil.”
You should make something.
Luc’s words teased Lila, as they’d always done, with the possibility of more. With the foolish suggestion that she could have more or be more than what her lot in Heaven allowed.
“Oh, I haven’t…I don’t do much with metal now,” Lila evaded.
“I just make hair pins occasionally.” Her gaze landed on his sword again.
She’d never worked with os lucis; that was a privilege reserved for the blacksmiths who fashioned the warriors’ swords.
Students never got to touch it. She wanted to ask Luc if she could have a bar of the intriguing silver substance instead of the steel, but she held her tongue.
“Then make a hair pin,” Luc coaxed.
“I—”
“You’re already here, and we both know you’ll never come again, so you might as well stay awhile.” Luc cracked a crooked smile. His silver-gray eyes gleamed, a combination of fire and ice, if such a thing could exist.
Luc would say that it could. And even though Earth had been taken from him…from them…perhaps he was right.
Hesitant, but weakened by his smile, Lila took the bar from him, swallowing as his fingers brushed hers, and rolled the smooth steel between her fingers.
Adrianna’s words returned to her.
You will forever chase things that are out of your reach, yet fail to grab them when they’re offered to you on a gold platter.
“All right,” she agreed. “Just one pin. Then I should go.”
They worked silently for a time, save for the high peal of metal banging metal.
Lila worked herself into a rhythm, making straight, downward blows against the face of the anvil, while Luc hammered up and down his heated blade.
Inevitably, Lila’s rhythm began to clash with Luc’s, her hammer striking on the heels of his, but Luc didn’t mind the discordance.
Occasionally, he paused to inspect his work, and when he did, he glanced at Lila’s small project.
A brief look at her sketch, which she’d displayed on a nearby table, showed him her piece would be a straight pin, long and tapered at both ends, with a twist in the middle and a curl at the top.
A simple design, like something she might have made during lessons.
“This reminds me of our group projects,” he commented. He’d stuck his unfinished sword inside the forge and was waiting for it to heat up again, having decided to let it cool completely this time in order to smooth the grain.
“Oh?” Lila took her pin out of its vise; she’d completed her twist. She set her wrench aside and inspected the pin in her palm. “I thought there was more shouting.”
“Should we have a shouting match right now, then? For old times’ sake?”
Tearing her eyes from her pin, Lila assured Luc with a smirk, “You would lose, like always.”
“No. You would be a sore loser, like always.”
“Well, I do like to win. As someone who’s won at everything, surely you can appreciate that.”
“Not everything.”
“Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“It’s fine.” Luc set his mouth in a firm line, though of course it was not.
Perhaps Lila sensed it because she added, “I never imagined the Creator would give your world to someone else. To not even give it to the angels…I don’t understand.”
“Who can understand the Creator? Didn’t we have this discussion before?”
“I suppose.” Lila creased her brow. “It’s just…this decision…” She trailed off, and the emotion faded from her face. It became as impassive as ever.
Luc retrieved his sword from the fire.
When he returned it to the anvil, Lila was staring down at her pin.
She looked as if she might say something else but closed her mouth instead.
She brushed past him on her way to the forge, and Luc watched her place the rounded end of her steel bar in the fire.
He observed the red-hot glow build in her metal as it faded from his.
With her back turned, it was easy to imagine they were back in lessons. It was easier still for his next words to tumble out of his mouth, grasping and impulsive.
“If you don’t like this world, I’ll build a new one. I’ll build it so far away that no one will ever find it. I’ll build it so that no one can cross over there, even if they want to.” The words cut across Luc’s tongue. “No humans. No Creator. No Council. Just us.”
Lila removed her bar from the fire. When she turned, she seemed equally curious and hesitant.
“And just how do you propose to do that?”
“I’ll find a way. I always do.”
Lila shook her head as she made her way back to the anvil. She set her bar down and let out a sharp laugh.
“Even as you are, you’re the same,” she commented, and Luc had no idea what she meant by that, but he knew she wasn’t taking him seriously. And this was serious. He would take her with him when he left. Her and no one else. If she wanted him to.
“I’m not joking. I’m going to leave this place. I’m going to leave all of it behind.”
Luc’s voice was fevered, impatient, hungry…the way it had been when he spoke of Earth. All conviction with little proof.
He never grasped the reality of the situation. Time had taught him nothing. And he hadn’t lived in his current cage long enough to know what it was like to be a creature that moved and breathed at the command of another.
So Lila inhaled his words, held them on her tongue, then exhaled, angry at his hope.
Luc was the brightest angel, but he was only an angel. She didn’t know what world he lived in, but in her world, in the real world, humans tended the garden she’d shared with the lover in her dreams.
“Please stop,” Lila answered. Mentally, she recited her next steps: square off the heated end of the bar; taper it; form the curl; brush and straighten the pin; finish it with wax; wait for it to cool.
“Stop what?” Luc laid his hand on top of hers.