Page 24 of The Grip of Death
“The first time?” He scratched the back of his head. “Gods above and below, Jackson. I don’t know what you mean.”
11
No fewer thanthree healers arrived at the Halls of Making within minutes of Master Lobelia’s summons, each of them ending their inspection with the same conclusion. “Xander Wright will be fine.”
Plenty of bed rest, they insisted, and plenty of fluids, too, and he would be none the worse for wear. We moved Xander to Mystery Row as quickly as we could carry him. A deeper spiritual scan from one of the healers revealed that no actual damage had been done to his soul. Somehow he’d been spared a fate worse than Incandescence.
If I could ever bring myself to pray to the entities, I would have fallen on my knees in gratitude to Hecate. My prismatic talent had saved Xander, sure, but I knew in my heart of hearts that he wouldn’t have survived without her support. Divine intervention in the most literal sense, really.
Niko had encased the arcane engine in a sheath of enchanted glass, effectively sealing it, leaving it in quarantine while we figured out our next steps. There was talk of dismantling it and reclaiming the materials. Vikhyat, despite looking readiest of all to smash the thing open with his fist, had floated the very practical necessity of leaving it intact — for now. It was evidence,if nothing else, something to be stopped from happening again, something to be studied.
Lore had dropped everything — abandoned every household chore — the moment he realized what was happening. Literally. Every appendage, every tentacle that had been engaged in dusting, sweeping, or doing the dishes immediately switched gears to fluffing pillows and starting up a mean chicken noodle soup on the burner. Lore had rededicated his systems to making Xander as comfortable as possible before I even had time to climb up the stairs to our bedroom.
Whitby took a little longer to digest the events of the afternoon as we recounted them. Completely understandable. His soft response of “This all seems awfully familiar” resonated with everything Hecate had told me. Whitby went quiet after that. Again understandable. He was there at the blast and would need the time to process.
It was strange, knowing that the only few who now knew about the historical echo of the arcane engine were a goddess, an artificer’s intelligence, and me, possibly the most useless one in the bunch.
Even when we’d gotten Xander situated I still felt as though I’d lost control of my limbs. Part of me was afraid to touch him, as if the very act of placing my hand on his arm might be yet another way for me to unknowingly bring him harm.
Our friends crammed together in my bedroom, bringing it to capacity — Preston, Sedgewick, Niko, and Beatrice had all insisted on coming home with me, at least to help Xander to bed and make sure everything was all right. The masters had each gone their separate ways. Drama notwithstanding, they still had their own guilds to run.
Preston and I stood by the doorway, watching as the others sat by Xander’s side of the bed. Beatrice stroked locks of his hair away from his eyes, plucking at the curls like she wasmaking silent music. The girl could be awfully affectionate when it mattered. More affectionate than me at the moment, at least, and I was supposed to marry the guy.
I felt fine enough with them there to support us, but how would I feel later at night with all four of them gone? I would never intentionally try to hurt Xander, but it frightened me to even think of being alone with him. I’d fucked up so much already. What if I fucked up even more?
A huge, heavy hand settled on my shoulder, squeezing tight. Preston forced a smile, though it still made his mouth look more like a flattened line.
“This wasn’t your fault, little buddy. The schematics — we followed every last detail precisely.”
I sighed, unable to reply that it was precisely why everything had gone so very wrong. We’d essentially made a copy of the very machine that had blown up the Halls of Making. Frankly, it was a miracle that we hadn’t yet received a reprimand from Guildhall, or a terrifying visit from one of Eleanor Grouse’s inspecters.
Come to think of it, no one from SEER had made an appearance, either, which was odd considering how closely the Black Market’s enforcers liked to keep a tab on arcane activities within the dimension. Maybe letting Beatrice and the masters test the machine first had led any potential spectators to believe that we were producing extravagant magical displays on purpose.
Maybe no one had been close enough to hear Xander screaming.
Gods above and below, what a horrible thing to put him through. Never again. Yet it led to another awfully misshapen piece of the puzzle. Several pieces, in fact. Lobelia, then Kaoru, then Beatrice — none of them had experienced any measure ofdiscomfort from using the arcane engine, much less excruciating pain.
What made Xander so different from the others? He was a candidate for Incandescence once, but did that truly mean that he was so much more powerful a mage in comparison, even in spite of his youth? Maybe it had more to do with how his Grayhaven training had carved deeper and deeper wells of arcane essence within his body, smoothing out the channels and making him the perfect conduit for turning raw magic into purified elements.
There it was again. I had to stop the most vindictive parts of me from blaming Hecate for all this. Well and good — in her role as Madame Catherine Grayhaven, she was partially responsible for bringing Xander Wright to the height of his magical potential. That was the whole point of the academy, to forge the crude metal of young men so that they finished their education transformed into blades of the finest points, of the sharpest edges.
To Hecate, the entire purpose of the academy had been to test the limits of magic as wielded by humans, unadorned, unencumbered. No fancy wands or crystal balls or wizard staffs to focus and amplify their power, only the body itself. It was why she insisted on healthy diets for her students, strict regimens of physical and mental exercise.
Hecate might have known about the blast and the arcane engine’s existence in its first iteration, but she would have balked at the idea of using machinery to augment magic. It just wasn’t her style, and the Greek goddess of magic, to my knowledge, was all about style. And madness. And cryptic answers.
And no answer was more cryptic than what Giuseppe had told me himself about the arcane engine. He was too guileless to make anything up, simply didn’t seem the sort to trade incunning and deceit. I didn’t pry any further after the blast, leaving Giuseppe to fumble with his hands and shuffle back home, but something about his involvement with the engine still bothered me.
He had to have known. Preston and I together had made passable progress on the arcane engine on our own, but Giuseppe’s arrival had truly accelerated the machine’s development. It wasn’t just the addition of a third set of hands, either. Exponential, it felt like, how the days had whizzed by.
The side of me that trusted people and believed them to be inherently good tried to convince me that time had flown by because we were having fun reliving the old days of artifice. Now my gut insisted that the project came to completion so quickly because Giuseppe, whether or not he realized it, had helped build it before.
Xander groaned. I snapped out of my thoughts, taking a clumsy step forward, but Beatrice held up her hand, then shook her head.
“He’s dreaming, I think. At least it doesn’t seem like he’s in any pain. The healers said it would take a while for him to actually wake up.”
“Hours?” Sedgewick offered hopefully. “He might even be up by tonight with any luck.”
Niko patted his stomach. “I’m sure he’ll be starving by then. Thirsty, for sure. But you’ll want to have something easy for him to eat when he comes to.”
