Page 9 of Amethyst and Iron
Cassius’ words to me the other day played on my mind.
“How are you burying all of that?”
“It’s called high-level compartmentalization.”
“It is incredibly taxing, especially to maintain. Especially when you are seriously ill. It would require magic to hold so powerfully.”
Itwasincredibly taxing. And it was only growing more so.
To maintain my heavy compartmentalization, I really needed to shut down emotionally and draw back some of the magic I was using, just enough to lessen the mental strain.
But if I did that, it would hurt Lazriel and Velra. Cassius too now.
It would hurtus,what we were building together.
Lazriel had read me the riot act before, so I knew how things needed to be, what they required from me.
“You can’t have it both ways. You want this closeness, you’ve gotta let us in. No more closed-off bullshit.”
As much as it complicated things for me, what he’d asked for had been beyond fair.
And more than even that, I wanted to be that way with them—at least to a great extent. They knew I had my secrets still, but I wastrying. I was trying hard to bring them in more.
Just not when it came to this new state of my sickness that Kai and I had determined very recently.
The problem was, knowing I only had months left to live now—and less if I used my magic in extreme ways with massive expulsions of power—was putting me on edge, making me gravitate toward rash decisions and strategies.
Cassius had already noticed and pointed that out, for fuck’s sakes.
It might not be long before Velra and Lazriel did as well.
The new urgency was fucking with me.
Lazriel brushed his thigh against mine and gave me a gentle smile.
I stroked his hand as he was scribbling away taking notes as Cassius spoke. Copious notes at that.
He was really into it. Not that I didn’t think for one moment that part of it was due to his growing closeness to Cassius of late.
I leaned in and kissed his cheek, and his breath caught.
I registered Cassius glaring over at us thinking we were about to put on another smoldering display.
“Relax,” I mouthed to him, as I eased from Lazriel and sat back in my chair.
I didn’t take notes.
I absorbed—or didn’t. After all, I’d been sent here as a punishment, as containment, the Guardian Movement’s attempt to reel me in and quell my vigilante activities. I already had a knowledge base that eclipsed what was being conveyed in my classes. They were just refreshers to me.
Even the Celestial content that Cassius was teaching now as Guest Lecturer ofRitual Ethics & Celestial Lawfarewas known to me for the most part, some of that from my own research and the rest from Kai’s, along with his firsthand knowledge by having Ariana Martel as one of his loves, somebody intrinsically linked to all of that.
I tuned back in as Cassius continued to discuss the four types of Celestial beings that had once existed.
“Visionaries were prophets, seers. With those abilities at their disposal, they often questioned doctrine. Healers drew power from instinct and empathy. Because both could function without structure or discipline, they came to be viewed as uncontrollable—a great threat to the Celestial Plane. So they were erased.” He shook his head. “So much insight and potential lost in favor of paranoia and an extreme version of control. And, let’s be frank, totalitarianism operating under the guise of sanctity and moral superiority.”
I could see it in his eyes, the vehemence with which he spoke the words, that he wasn’t just referring to the Celestial Plane.
Without making it obvious to the other students, he was also referencing a current day enemy that hadn’t been severed from our reality and stopped in its tracks like the Celestial Plane had.Puritas.
