Page 70 of A Tower of Half-Truths
“What do you mean?” she asked.
But her question went unanswered. His eyes closed, his breathing slowed, his fingers trailed down her cheek as his hand fell, coming to rest between them. At long last, he was asleep.
She wondered how much of this exchange he would remembercome morning. One thing wasfor certain: this would be the most restful sleep he’d had in ages. To reverse some of the damage he’d done to himself over these past weeks, he would need more than a single night. But this would be a start.
Lying on this soft and spacious bed, she became aware of her own exhaustion. The familiar, dull aches in her body reintroduced themselves. Her arcana would continue to lie dormant, not even the faintest ember, until rest replenished it.
She would close her eyes for a brief nap, enough to restore her strength for the walk back to the boarding house. As sleep took hold, her thoughts drifted to the loose floorboard directly beneath her, and the box she’d once been so determined to uncover.
It had been the furthest thing from her mind.
Twenty-Two
Adistant crash roused her from the depths of sleep.
It took her a few seconds to remember where she was: not on her tiny cot at the boarding house, but on Alain’s double bed. Stars dotted the night sky, thick clouds obscured the moonlight. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she felt around but found only an empty bed beside her.
“Alain?” she called.
Silence.
“Etero rah mira shah.”
However long she’d slept, it had been enough to recover her arcana. She shivered, then winced as an orb of light appeared above her palm. Her excitement from remembering the incantation vanished when she confirmed that she was alone.
She tossed aside a thick blanket that she couldn’t recall covering herself with, then slung herself off the bed. The orb of Ether followed her into the main room. She flicked her wrist and sent it to the ceiling, where it cast the space in white light.
“Alain, are you in here? What happened?”
The clock on the mantel said it was a quarter to midnight. She’d been asleep much longer than she’d anticipated, though it wasn’t surprising; she couldn’t remember the last time her arcanahad been drained so completely.
Aside from the clock ticking away, the apartment was eerily quiet at this time of night. The air itself was more stale and stagnant than usual. She looked to the front door, and her stomach lurched. Most of the wards had vanished. All that remained was the blue aura of the protective ward—the one that was anchored to the stone inside a desk drawer. She looked down and found Alain motionless across the tea table.
“Shit!”
She rushed to his side, dropped to her knees with a twinge of pain. She grabbed his shoulder, but he didn’t respond. His body was warm but unnaturally still, lacking even the most minute movement.
“Oh, no-no-no, don’t you fuckingdare…”
When she pulled him from the table, he landed on the floor like a felled tree. She rolled him onto his back. His skin was even more pallid than usual, his lips were tinted blue, his widened eyes lacked any semblance of warmth. No breath, no heartbeat, but no sign of what had killed him. The only thing out of the ordinary was a thin book that had been pinned beneath his body. Its crumpled pages were covered in Etherean runes. Though Mavery couldn’t make heads or tails of the text, she knew this had to be one of the spells Kazamin had given Alain to peer review.
Why he’d decided to resume this sort of work in the middle of the night, effectively by himself, gods only knew. Allsheknew was that something had gone horribly wrong.
Mavery hoisted herself off the floor, then hurried back to the bedroom with her orb of light trailing behind her. As she’d done nearly two weeks ago, she removed the rug, then the loose floorboard. This time, she snatched the long, thin box.
She laid out the box’s contents: a syringe with a needle so thick and severe looking, it made her skin prickle; a thumb-sized vial filled with silver liquid; three pairs of surgical tweezers in various sizes; a folded paper withRead This Firstwritten upon it; and a bundle of potins.
Her own heart nearly stopped upon realizing how thick that bundle was. But she put it aside and unfolded the paper. Theprotocol instructions were written in Alain’s most elegant script.
In case of fatal accident:
1. Remove any clothing covering the heart area. If necessary, use tweezers to remove foreign objects that may pose a lethal threat upon revival.
2. Fill syringe with one vial of resurrection serum.
3. Aim syringe directly over heart.
Below that step was a sketch of a torso; an X indicated the exact spot to insert the needle. He’d said his instructions would be straightforward, though Mavery wished he’d informed her of the details. Still, she’d seen worse than this not long ago. Fennick’s slashed throat flashed in her mind’s eye as she forced herself to continue reading.
