Chapter 14 Fenrik #2
“I am not finished,” I said, turning back to the anchor. There was still a smear of something dark on the obsidian, either my blood or the sludge of corrupted magic. I scratched at it with a fingernail. “It’s not clean. The connection is still... gritty.”
Mrs. Crane moved. She didn’t retreat up the stairs as she should have. Instead, she stepped between me and the stone, the silver chatelaine at her waist chiming like a warning bell. She shoved the silver tray laden with a covered bowl and a heel of crusty bread towards me.
It smelled like roast chicken, rosemary, heavy cream. My stomach cramped. I hadn’t eaten in... three days? Four? I couldn’t remember actually.
“Move, Helda,” I warned. The beast inside pricked its ears, sensing a challenge.
“No.” Mrs. Crane’s deference had vanished.
“You are scrubbing at that stone as if you can erase the magic.” Her knuckles were white where she gripped the tray, shielding the anchor from me.
“Your father had the same manic look in his eyes before the ley-line collapse, he was convinced if he just worked harder, if he just bled a little more, he could hold the sky up with his bare hands.”
I flinched. The memory of my father the tall, broad-shouldered, invincible man right up until the moment he was ash, slammed into me. “My father died trying to save this estate. Do not speak of him.”
“I will speak of him,” she said. “I watched him pace the library until the rugs wore thin, convinced that the manor’s survival rested solely on his ability to endure pain. He was wrong. And you are doing exactly what he did.”
“I am keeping us alive!” I roared. The shadows surged up my neck, freezing the air, radiating a darkness that should have sent her running. The lantern flame flickered blue, dying down to a terrified spark.
She didn’t run. She didn’t even flinch. She stepped closer, the tray pressing against the chest of a creature that could snap her in half.
“You are killing yourself!” she said. “Do you think I don’t remember, Fenrik? Do you think I have forgotten the summer you were fifteen? When you tried to re-weave the greenhouse wards alone because you were too proud to admit they were failing?”
I froze, the shadows stalling at my jawline.
“You blew the glass out of every pane in the west wing,” she said, her eyes wet but unblinking.
“I spent three hours picking shards out of your back while you sat there, shaking, refusing to cry, refusing to tell your parents because you thought you had to be strong enough to fix it yourself. You have always believed that if you suffer enough, the magic will obey you.”
The beast snarled in my head, but it sounded... smaller. The memory of her tweezers, the smell of antiseptic and her steady, gentle hands on my teenage skin, cut through the red haze of the curse. She had been there. She had always been there.
“You couldn’t fix the greenhouse then,” she said, her voice dropping to a plea. “And you cannot fix the ley-line now by starving yourself in the dark. You are not just the master of this house, Fenrik. You are its heart. And if the heart stops...”
She let the sentence hang there.
My hands, still raised to push her aside, trembled. I looked at the tray, then back at her steel-grey hair, the lines of worry etched deep around her mouth—lines I had put there.
“Put the tray down, Helda,” I rasped, the fight draining out of me, leaving only the exhaustion.
“Eat,” she said, setting the tray on a crate. “Or I will fetch the girl and tell her exactly why the master of the house looks like a corpse.”
The roast chicken broth was rich, thick with cream and rosemary, and every swallow felt like swallowing a glowing coal that burned its way down to my empty stomach.
Mrs. Crane stood over me with her arms crossed, watching every mouthful with the scrutiny she reserved for dusting the chandelier crystals.
“Better,” she noted. I was relieved to see her shoulders dropping an inch.
I wiped my mouth with the linen napkin, the tremors in my hands subsiding. “I am perfectly capable of—“
Heavy boots thudded on the stone stairs, cutting off my protest. Thorven Greymount didn’t knock; he descended into the gloom with a heavy canvas bag slung over one shoulder and a grim set to his bearded jaw.
“East wing anchors are shuddering,” Thorven said without preamble, ignoring the tray of food to fix his squinting gaze on the obsidian slab behind me. “Saw the fluctuations from the courtyard. The ground is sweating, Sir.”
“I secured the primary rivet,” I said, standing up. The sudden movement made the room spin, grey spots dancing in my vision, but I forced my spine straight. “The overflow needs somewhere to go.”
“It has somewhere to go,” Thorven grunted, dropping his bag with a metallic clatter. He pulled out a heavy iron chisel and a mallet etched with runes. “Up. Through us.”
Before I could answer, the air pressure in the room plummeted.
My ears popped painfully. The silence of the dungeon was shattered by a high-pitched, harmonic whine that seemed to emanate from the marrow of my bones.
The ley-line beneath us was bloody convulsing.
A shockwave of pure, unadulterated magical potential slammed into the walls, and the obsidian anchor I’d bled to fix began to scream.
“Get out,” I snarled, as the shadows surged up my neck. “Both of you. Now!”
Mrs. Crane stumbled back as the lantern flared, glass cracking. But Thorven didn’t move. He planted his feet, gripping the mallet white-knuckled.
“I’m here to reinforce the binding,” Thorven shouted over the rising whine.
“It’s going to blast!” I roared, shoving Mrs. Crane toward the staircase. “Thorven, get her out! If that anchor blows, this entire cellar becomes a kill box!”
I lunged for the anchor, intending to throw my own body over the fault line, to let the beast inside me drink the explosion before it could tear the foundation apart. But a heavy shoulder slammed into my chest, knocking me sideways.
Thorven had thrown himself between me and the exit, but not to leave. He slammed his shoulder against the heavy oak doorframe, effectively blocking the only way out—and blocking me from pushing him to safety.
“I am not leaving you to ride this out alone!” he shouted, his face flushed, veins standing out on his neck.
“You defy me?” The beast in my chest reared up. My voice distorted, layering with a growl that wasn’t human. “I am your liege lord, and I gave you an order, Hearthcleft!”
“I don’t give a damn about your title!” Thorven bellowed, shoving me back when I tried to grab his collar. “We lost three men the last time you tried to contain this thing alone—good men who trusted you! I won’t let you add yourself to that count!”
The words hit me to the gut. Three men.
The memory tore through the haze of the curse, the blinding flash of light, the smell of charred meat, the silence that followed the explosion in the lower ward three years ago.
I had thought I could hold it. I had been arrogant, desperate, and solitary.
And the magic loved it. The curse latched onto that spike of self-loathing.
The shadows exploded from my skin, lashing out at the walls, at the stone, at the friends trying to save me.
I was losing the shape of the room. The stone floor dissolved into a slurry of grey mist and silver sparks, my vision tunneling down to the terrified, defiant face of my groundskeeper.
My spine elongated, cracking audibly as the phantom wings sought to manifest in flesh and bone, tearing at my shirt.
Then, from three floors above, a scream tore through the stone.
High, reedy, and vibrating with absolute terror. It was the wyrmling, my Kirion.
The sound hit the bond between us and time blurred as well in my head. I wasn’t in the dungeon anymore. The dank smell of mold vanished. Rain hammered against my back, soaking my tunic to my skin. I was nineteen. My hands were shaking, coated in mud that looked too much like blood.
“Stay with me,” I begged, my voice cracking.
In my lap lay a tawny-scaled hawk-dragon, one of the sanctuary’s favorites. But where my hands touched its flank, trying to knit a broken wing using the raw power of the ley-line I’d foolishly tried to channel, the scales weren’t healing. They were turning grey.
“No, no, stop.”
I tried to pull the magic back, but it poured out of me like venom.
The dragon whined and dissolved. Literally dissolved.
The vibrant gold and brown scales turned to ash under my fingers, crumbling away until I held nothing but dust and bone.
I had tried to save it, and my unchecked emotion had turned the healing energy into entropy. I had loved it to death. Murderer.
The memory slammed into the present. The grief from that rainy afternoon merged with the panic of the dungeon, and the beast inside me roared in triumph. It drank the pain. It feasted on the guilt.
“The rivets are popping!” Thorven’s shout dragged me back, though the overlay of ash still clouded my sight. He was hammering the chisel into the groove of the anchor, sparks flying. “Sir, stop flooding the line! You’re choking the flow!”
“I have to hold it!” I snarled, the voice layered and distorted. “The magic is tainted!”
“You’re not understanding the mechanics, you stubborn fool!
” Thorven abandoned the chisel, grabbing my shoulders with daring force.
The heat radiating off me should have burned his hands.
“Listen to me! The ley-line is a river of power running under the house. The anchors—these stones—are the pilings. They are designed to let the torrent surge past, that is what secures the foundations!”
“The flow is erratic!” I watched the obsidian anchor glow a furious, blinding white. “It destroys everything it touches!”