15. Saying Too Much #2
“So you’re saying he might have put a chimaera around only the dungeon?” I asked. “Something specifically designed to lock me out?”
“Or prevent you from being inside,” Nyx interjected. “He could have built a chimaera that would do something to you if you appeared inside Bones’s cell. Maybe the part of you that can phase knew that, and just… avoided it?”
“Or got you as close as it could,” Luc muttered, glancing at Nyx.
“It could be targeting blood type,” Alaric added. “Or even specific Magical signatures. He wouldn’t need to do everyone, since most would be kept out the regular way.”
Everyone looked at Alaric again.
His theory made sense.
It also seemed to fit everything that happened.
Malefic would never risk that I might abscond with his favorite toy.
“So we’re theorizing my magic,” I began slowly. “Has got some kind of built-in survival instinct?” I met Alaric’s gaze. “That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it? That it knew how to not put me in a deadly situation?”
I thought about that.
“Bones told me pretty much the opposite,” I remarked, folding my arms. “He told me phasing had a tendency to swerve towards situations that put him at risk.” I glanced around at the others.
“He said it nearly killed him, multiple times. It jumped him into a dragon’s nest once, when he was only eleven years old.
It jumped him to the rim of a volcano… and into a wild monocerus herd… ”
I glanced at Jolie, who’d been unusually quiet. She was watching me with worried eyes, her mouth pinched.
“Maybe Cal had a less finely-tuned survival instinct?” Alaric suggested.
We all glanced at him, and Alaric quirked an eyebrow, shrugging. He set down his mug of chocolate, his voice matter-of-fact.
“Cal wasn’t a happy kid,” he stated, his eyes flickering around our circle. “It’s possible his inner voice was a bit more––”
“Suicidal?” Luc broke in drily.
Alaric returned his look, and shrugged. “Possibly.”
He looked between Nyx and Jolie, and then at me, and flinched.
He immediately made his voice apologetic. “I just wouldn’t rule it out, sweetness. He had good reason to be fucked up at that age. Not to mention everything his father did to his magic, which may have warped his more healthy instincts.”
I nodded, thinking about his words.
I understood. I even he was probably right. Alaric didn’t need to apologize or explain, but it hurt to hear his say it anyway. Bones told me he’d already agreed to at least one of his father’s demands. I still didn’t know if he’d meant the vow ceremony Blackstone and I witnessed, or something else.
Leave it alone, love, the familiar voice murmured. It doesn’t matter.
My jaw hardened.
“He warned me,” I said, still staring into the fire. I wiped my face with a hand, biting my tongue to control my expression. “He’s still warning me. Bones. He won’t shut up about it. He doesn’t want me phasing at all.”
They all stopped and stared at me after I spoke.
That’s when it fully hit me what I’d said.
“You’re… talking to him?” Luc asked in disbelief.
I felt my face grow hot. I looked at Luc and nodded. “Yes.”
When they all remained silent, I glanced around, and found four sets of eyes staring back at me. They all looked startled, but maybe Alaric and Nyx looked a little less startled than Luc and Jolie.
“Not all the time,” I clarified. “He doesn’t always answer me.”
“Can you ask him things?” Luc asked.
He’d recovered enough to click back into practical, scientist mode. His lemur primal peered over his shoulder at me, looking at me with large, orange, unblinking eyes.
“Can you ask him how to control the phasing?” Luc asked next.
I exhaled in frustration. “I have asked him that. I just told you. He doesn’t want me doing it at all. The last thing he’s going to do is help me.”
“Convince him,” Luc said, sharper.
Meeting Luc’s annoyed stare, I scoffed. “You think I haven’t tried? He’s… resistant. And maddeningly stubborn. He just yells at me that I’m going to get myself killed.”
“So how would he have us get into the Tower?” Nyx asked, snorting. “Should we knock on the gate like the Praecuri did? Ask if Malefic will pretty please let us in?”
“He doesn’t want me getting into the Tower at all,” I said drily. “He tells me to leave him there. To stop trying to get him out.”
“He wants you to… leave him there?” Nyx asked in disbelief.
I looked at her. “He thinks I’m going to get myself killed, so yes.”
“Are you sure that’s the reason?” Jolie asked, a touch more cynically.
I bit my lip. I opened my mouth, about to answer, then closed it.
Slowly, I shook my head.
“No,” I admitted. A pain hardened in my chest. “I’m not sure that’s the reason. That’s certainly not the reason he gives me. But that’s what it feels like.”
“You think he’s lying to you?” Nyx asked, her voice more gentle.
I combed my free hand through my hair, and shook my head, but not exactly in a no.
“Bones?” I asked wryly, grunting. “Do I think Bones is lying? Yes, I think he’s lying. I’m just not sure which lies I should listen to, what the lies are meant to cover, or exactly what’s he’s afraid will happen if he tells me the truth.”
At the return of their silence, I glanced around, feeling my face heat.
“Obviously, he’s afraid of his father,” I said.
“He thinks his father will catch me, or kill me, or kill both of us, maybe enslave us both into working for Dark Cathedral. I believe him that he doesn’t want me anywhere near the Black Tower, but he’s given me a number of different reasons for that.
” I gave Jolie a flat look. “Including calling me a whore who’s ruined his fucking life.
Including threatening to kill me if I get anywhere near him. ”
Jolie’s eyes flinched, but she didn’t look away.
Alaric flinched too, then frowned.
“None of his reasons feel exactly true,” I added cynically.
“Or maybe they all feel true, and it’s more like he’s leaving something out.
There’s definitely something he’s not telling me.
I just can’t tell if it’s more on the personal side…
” I flushed, glancing at Luc. “…Or if it’s strategic, along the lines of him guessing what his father might do.
Knowing Bones, he thinks the noble thing to do is to turn himself into a villain… let the Praecuri kill him.”
Luc scoffed under his breath, probably at the idea of Bones being “noble.”
No one else did.
“Who hit you, Leda?” Jolie asked, quieter.
I turned, puzzled, and she aimed her worried eyes back at me.
“Out by the fountain,” she prompted. “Someone attacked you. That’s how you phased, isn’t it?
Someone hit you while you were walking by the Fountain of the Furies, and knocked you into the stone base.
” She paused, maybe for me to say something.
“Can you remember anything? A flash of color? A smell? A voice?”
“No,” I said, exhaling.
“Does Caelum know who it was?” Nyx asked.
I looked at her, and slowly shook my head.
“I have no idea,” I admitted. “But he did try to warn me.”
Luc glanced up sharply. “He warned you? So he saw them.”
Again, I could only exhale a sigh. “I don’t know what he saw. I mean, clearly, he at least sensed something. He told me to run, so presumably he knew they were hostile. If he knew exactly who they were, he didn’t tell me.”
Alaric frowned. “Did you ask him?”
“No.” I suddenly regretted bringing up any of this. I combed my fingers through my hair and leaned my forearms on my thighs. “I haven’t really talked to him since.”
When they all looked at one another, I reminded them, “He goes quiet sometimes. I told you that.”
“Have you tried to contact him?” Luc asked.