Chapter 31 #2
I shuddered as I touched the body, started at how cold it was. I could sense with my Siphon that Dupont had truly done it. Every Archetype was here in this vessel.
“You’ve implanted every Archetype… just like Maxence.”
He nodded, chin lifting in pride.
“But there’s something missing, isn’t there? The heart.”
I was starting to put things together. There would be a final surgery. He had admitted as much in the recordings. That was why they were preparing a blood transfusion, why this body had machines pumping fluid into its chest…
“But why?” I asked. “What power is linked to the heart?”
“Not just a power, Nina.” His hands stretched and clenched in his bloody gloves “An individual. A divine by any mortal standard. The greatest engineer this world has ever known.”
The only divine the world had ever known had existed centuries ago. He was dead and gone, though rumors lingered that someone had preserved his heart.
His heart.
“You have the heart of the Architect.” I shook my head, disbelieving, even as the truth fumbled from my lips. “You’re making him a new body with the power of every Archetype.”
Dupont smiled wide. “Finally, you understand. You can see the true value of your work smuggling these bodies from the slums.”
“But the heart is a myth. And even if the myth were true, then it would be hidden somewhere in the Academy. Why would the Magister give it to you when you’ve been conducting forbidden experiments in secret?”
He laughed. “You really think I started this project without the Magister’s approval?”
“You’re working for him.”
He scoffed. “Everyone works for the Magister, Nina.”
My jaw loosened.
Everyone works for the buyer, Nina.
The buyer was the Magister.
That missing piece pulled together the entire picture. Why else would he have promoted Dupont to Governor? Dupont had been his right hand, completing this secret project on the side. The Academy had sent enforcers to protect him… Magister Reven had been in control this entire time.
The realization must have been obvious on my face, because Dupont frowned.
His assistant shoved the pole aside. “You idiot! You just admitted—”
Dupont turned sharply, lifting the hatchet to send it flying toward the man’s face. It struck him between the eyes, embedding into the topside of his skull to split his head in half.
The Governor whirled back at me, pulling something from another pocket in his apron. A sharp scalpel.
“Now, Nina,” he rasped, “there is still time to see your mother again. Reven gave you the option long ago, remember? Go to the Academy. The Magister would accept you with open arms, and you could be with her. No more hiding.”
No more hiding. I swallowed the bile rising in my throat as I touched the body, wincing at its cold, sloughing skin. He had no idea who I truly was.
“I’ll ask you once more, Dupont.” I siphoned Glamour from the body, forming a thread from my thoughts to Dupont’s. “What do you know about my mother?”
“She…” His body loosened, falling with a sigh. “She holds a code the Architect wants.”
“A code?” I repeated.
He nodded once. “She possesses a bloodline that is strange, undocumented. We’ve been looking for her for so long.
She was so weak, though, and we have not been able to decipher it.
So she will wait for the Architect, and he will explain to us what she is.
” He took a step closer, adjusting his grip on his gun.
“When he returns, we can create a better world. One where there is no pain, no evil, no murderers or thieves or liars. We can build a utopia… together.”
I tugged on the leash between us. “You’re a liar. Such a world will never exist with men like you in it.”
“It is already beginning, Nina,” he whispered. “The Magister is on his way now with the heart. Once the procedure is complete, we will raise the Architect from death, and he will bring lasting order.”
It all depended on the body beside me. So many people had died or been desecrated so this body could be born.
My grip tightened on the cadaver. It wasn’t unlike the finger bone I had used to unlock the gate. There was no life, no fuel, no heart to circulate Sophie’s blood without outside intervention.
“Why… Why did I tell you any of that?” Dupont murmured. “How did you make me confess? You have… a bloodline?”
My lips quivered, trying to smile in the face of my most damning truth. “My mother’s bloodline is weak, Dupont. Mine is not.”
It was overwhelming, siphoning every Archetype from the body all at once.
I’d never drawn on more than one before, never had a medium besides relics and bones—and even those had restrictions, an end to their essence.
There was a surge of power that was euphoric for a moment, then it burned, then it squeezed my bones until I thought the weight of so many bloodlines would fracture me into pieces.
I braced both hands around cold flesh, sensing a great pool on the other side, and slipped beneath it, taking it all into myself so there would be nothing left for the Architect.
“What are you doing?” The Governor’s shouts were a world away. “You’re ruining it!” A hand snatched my arm to pull it from the body, Dupont’s glove, but the essence in my veins lashed out through the new channel, and it released immediately.
“Nina!”
Max’s voice found me, but it was only in my head.
Pain bloomed everywhere—my bones, my joints, the space in my chest. My blood was a turbulent rush in my veins as each slamming pulse oscillated my ribs.
This was going to kill me. I was sure of it.
These Archetypes had been separated on purpose.
Together, they were overwhelming, surging into me like an overflowing cup.
I was drowning… until another channel eased the burden.
This one didn’t flinch. The essence didn’t flare or fight. Instead, it spread, using me as an artery to flow somewhere else. I siphoned the body’s magic and shoved it into the casing of the relic in my pocket, easing some of the burden on my own stores.
The body within my grip softened beneath my hands, falling quiet with the last ounce of essence drained away until it was given up to decay.
My own posture could barely hold me up, still laden with the weight of the bloodlines and their essence stores. My pocket burned where I kept the dice, and I fell to the floor, crawling on hands and knees to pull them from my pocket.