Chapter 25
TASK
SFS POLARIS
He’s shirking his duties today, asked one of his men to watch over Ambassador Remulus for him.
He strides down the hallway, praying he doesn’t run into Voss or Caelinus — or Odite help him, Alexander Caden — on his way to the library.
Kit wasn’t in either of the labs, or the quarantine ward, so his best guess is that she’s there.
Maybe that she’s been there since last night.
The door slides open as he enters, the soft light of the vaults of digibooks casting a bluish glow over her face. She doesn’t look up as he enters, seems to be entirely lost in her world of science and facts and figures.
He drops down in the leather chair next to her, watching her elegant fingers as she scribbles something into the notebook in front of her.
She’s intently copying down figures from her Prism screen, diagramming some process that Task cannot fathom wrapping his brain around.
He is made for war and pain, not alchemy and magic.
He finds it refreshing that she’s writing, that she has a notebook — artifacts from a different time.
Artifacts he feels a certain pull toward, that he also keeps for himself.
He’s here because he wants to help her. Her brother is sick, and every day he’s seen her, she looks worse and worse. As if she is withering away along with her brother.
It’s the least he can do before he kidnaps her.
He can tell she is on to something, and while he should be standing guard alongside the ambassador or reviewing the latest missives from his second back on Nexarium, he reasons that this is more important.
Saving an entire planet from certain death is arguably a worthier cause than identifying rebel holdouts on Nexarium.
Task is startled by the thought; he’s never, ever placed any mission higher than those that Draven has assigned him, and the fact that he’s actively choosing to disobey him makes him feel queasy. If Draven ever were to find out, he’d see it as undermining his authority.
Task pushes the thought to the deepest recesses of his brain.
He feels Kit shift in the seat next to him, her thigh lightly brushing against his.
He feels a jolt of energy run through him that is completely divorced from the pain he usually feels, and has to take two steadying breaths to calm himself.
Every time he’s next to her, it’s both a blessing and a curse.
She will be his downfall, he thinks. He isn’t thinking straight when he’s around her, is making choices he wouldn’t otherwise make.
And although he’s trying to bury his feelings, compartmentalizing them as he’s done since he manifested his power, the more time he spends with her, the harder they’re becoming to ignore.
He tries to refocus on what he’s reading, a digibook covering rare ingredients and minerals found within the Consortium.
Although he comes from Nexarium and has transported many VIP shipments of pink salt across the galaxy, he doesn’t know much about it.
He’s aware, of course, that it’s highly coveted because of its multipurpose nature, including to draw out black magic.
Beyond that, the pathways it binds to, the way it works, is entirely beyond him.
Pink salt isn’t rare, though Draven does control its excavation and shipment. The mineral he’s reading about — pagadium — is. He swipes to the next page, ingesting the words quickly.
Pagadium is a magical healing mineral found on Aquidium, in the deep trenches of the water-covered planet.
Because of how challenging it is to access, only a few have ever been able to experiment with it, but a trial undertaken by a Luminary permanently stationed on Aquidium a decade ago had yielded interesting results.
The Luminary had been attempting to heal a patient infected with a curse.
Normally, a high enough dose of pink salt would draw black magic out from the blood, but in this case, the pink salt wasn’t enough and the patient continued to worsen.
The Luminary had seen Aquidian healers working with the magical mineral in their infirmaries, often used in place of the limited pink salt.
He wondered whether combining a dose of pink salt with the pagadium would be enough to draw the tendrils of black magic out — whether the pagadium would in some way amplify the pink salt’s properties.
His hypothesis had been correct. When he’d brewed a potion of pink salt and pagadium, the infection was drawn out, the patient ultimately cured.
Task’s heart races as he reads; this could be something Kit could use. He looks to her, her eyes still moving back and forth across the digibook she has open in front of her. “Kit,” he says, breathless in his excitement, “read this.”
Kit turns to him, her eyes bloodshot, the deep, purple circles under her eyes more pronounced than he’s ever seen them. “You found something?” Even her voice is hoarse.
Task shrugs. “I’m no Luminary, but this seems promising. Look here.” He gestures to the lit paragraph, double tapping it to make the text larger. Kit’s eyes scan it, her eyebrows shooting up and her lips curling up at the edges. He needs to quit looking at her lips.
“Task,” she murmurs, looking back to him once she finishes reading, eyebrows pulling together as she presses a hand to her mouth. “This could be it.” She smiles, breathless, and he can almost hear the hope in her voice. Something he’d given to her, that he’d helped her to find.
He tries to keep his features neutral, maintain his careful mask.
He doesn’t smile; it tends to ruin his image as a fierce Guardian.
But as he looks at her, the way her smile illuminates her face, it’s like a ray of sunshine breaking through the cracks in his stone facade.
He finds himself grinning back at her, laughing a little bit, his pulse racing, his pain far away.
Kit
The next morning, Kit is certain that the pagadium is the missing ingredient, the thing that will amplify the effects of the pink salt.
She’d stayed up all night in the library, combing through the text that Task had found, trying to better understand the properties of pagadium, and why when mixed with pink salt, it managed to draw out black magic.
She’d managed an early morning call to Luminary Ellsworth when they’d traveled past Etharia and their comms signal was stronger, asking her if there was any way she could get her hands on a sample of nixos.
Somehow, she had, and she’d forwarded on images to Kit, the energy pathways illuminated in a bright purple.
After looking at the newly infected cells of those that had been brought into the medical bay after the breach of the quarantine ward, and studying the viral particles themselves, cross-referencing the images of nixos Ellsworth had sent through, she’d confirmed it.
The magical signature was an evolution of nixos, something far more powerful than nixos alone.
This was no longer simply a virus, but the melding of magic and DNA, creating an entirely new entity.
She’d also discovered a book on pink salt in a distant library in Vermaxian, one that she was thankful Ellsworth made sure she had access to.
Libraries on Vermaxian were reserved for the bilibras, those who were responsible for overseeing information flow between all the planets in the Consortium.
And yet, she’d been able to pull this book as easily as if she was there, running her fingers over the spines of ancient hardcovers.
In it, she’d found a paragraph that described nixos and its interaction with pink salt. She’d committed it to memory.
Pink salt is hewn from deep below Nexarium.
A hearty mineral that makes up much of the planet’s core, pink salt can be used to prevent or counter the impacts of black magic curses.
When laid in a circle around a person, pink salt acts as a barrier, preventing nixos from entering.
If the person has already been infected, pink salt can be used as a purifier.
When ingested, pink salt draws out the black magic that makes up nixos, countering the impacts, and if dosed regularly, ultimately curing infection.
Even though her sleep had totaled only thirty minutes, the discovery had left her feeling hopeful.
She understood now that the pink salt acted as a barrier or a purifier, and coupled with a confirmation of the magical signature of the Fever, that was a lot.
It wasn’t enough, certainly. The Fever wasn’t responding to pink salt alone, but maybe if it was paired with the pagadium, their luck would change.
Now, sitting in the mess with Wynstann, her eyes are scratchy.
She squeezes them shut and blinks them back open, trying to focus on the healer across from her.
He’s shoveling what looks like a bowl of dehydrated white yarn into his mouth.
It makes Kit want to gag, but it’s not as though the breakfast options are particularly plentiful.
“Are you alright?” he asks, through a mouthful of it.
They are about to be on duty in the quarantine ward, and Kit doesn’t know if she’s prepared for it.
As much as being away from her brother has been torturous, seeing him lying in that bed, pale, blood trickling out of his mouth and nose, is almost worse.
“Just tired,” she sighs, leaning forward on her palm. She doesn’t want to reveal the extent of her emotional turmoil to Wynstann, though she’s sure he can guess.
She senses him before she sees him, and she snorts to herself.
How ridiculous it is that she’s somehow developed a sixth sense for Task.
But they’ve spent an inordinate amount of time together over the last six weeks, and her body is attuned to him in a way she can’t explain.
She refuses to turn around, knowing he’ll make his way over to where they sit.
“You look horrible,” he says, striding up to their table and sitting down next to her, nodding at Wynstann.
“Good morning to you too,” she grumbles. “I hope that’s for me.” She gestures to the second coffee on Task’s tray.
He hands it to her, lips tilting up. “You’re welcome, love.”
Wynstann shoots Task a look, eyebrows raised.
Kit feels her cheeks flush, unable to stop her body’s reaction to the pet name, despite her exhaustion.
She wants to kick herself, knowing she has more important things to worry about.
She needs Wynstann to go, and she racks her brain for an excuse, something to get him to leave the two of them in peace.
How does she always find herself in this position, trying to get Task alone?
But before she can think of anything, Task is leaning over to Wynstann, muttering something under his breath to the healer. Wynstann stands, tray in hand. “I’ll see you in a bit.” He walks away, leaving only Task and Kit at the table.
Kit’s heart pounds in her chest. She’s not sure if it’s because she’s alone with him or because of what she’s about to ask him, but it feels as though she might pass out.
“What did you say to him?” she manages to get out.
Task shrugs. “Doesn’t matter.” He takes a sip of his coffee, his gaze fixed on her. “I wanted you alone.”
Kit swallows, her mouth suddenly dry. Lately, she’s found herself taken by the things he says, by things she never would have entertained previously.
She wonders what is wrong with her. She straightens, forces herself to get a grip.
She needs to ask him about this. “Well, good. Because I wanted to talk to you about what we found yesterday. I stayed up doing more reading, looking into the mineral —”
“So that explains this.” Task gestures towards her crumpled outfit, her two-day old hair.
“We can’t all wake up looking like gods.” Kit rolls her eyes.
“I did get good genes,” Task teases, light dancing behind his eyes. Then, more softly, “What did you find?”
“We need the pagadium,” she pauses, bracing herself to ask this favor of him.
“The pink salt alone isn’t working, and I think if I can recreate the potion, it could be the thing that breaks it.
Pagadium is highly reactive to nixos. Combined with pink salt, I think it could amplify the salt’s barrier effects, trapping and killing the virus altogether.
I need it. I need to do this. For Knox.” The part she doesn’t say is that she also needs to do this for her mother, to make up for failing her so immensely.
If she can save Knox, maybe she’ll stop carrying around this guilt with her.
Maybe it will be enough. She feels a lump in her throat, tears gathering behind her eyes even as she tries to stop them. “Is there a way we can get it?”
His eyes scan her face as he thinks. “There’s always a way. Though it won’t be easy.”
“But you can do it?”
Task nods, firmly. “I’ll get it for you.”
Kit wants to fling her arms around him and squeeze him tight.
But she doesn’t. She’s remembering all too well the hug from the other day, the way she pressed her body to his, the way she wanted to linger there, wrapped in his arms. Instead, she wraps her hands around her mug, trying to keep herself contained, a hope she hasn’t felt in weeks bubbling to the surface. “Thank you.”
Task drains his coffee, pushing himself up.
Kit notes he doesn’t have his surge-saber strapped to his back.
“I’ll try to have it to you in two days’ time.
” He picks up his tray, gaze on her. “And Kit,” he says, so quietly she almost can’t hear him, almost can convince herself she imagined it. “You always look beautiful.”