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Darien stood at the foot of Loren’s bed, arms folded across his chest, as he surveyed Roark, who stood facing him in the small room.
The Red Baron’s wings were tucked away with a spell tonight, no trace of them visible. His distant, icy expression was exactly what Darien had expected from someone like him, but there was something about the man’s aura that Darien had not predicted—an emotion his sixth sense could barely pick up on, that was how buried it was.
Roark Bright was hurting—for the girl lying behind Darien on that cold, uncomfortable bed. It was such a rare emotion for a man like Roark that Darien wondered if he was reading him correctly.
He decided he would allow Roark’s next move to answer that question. Darien hoped, for the Red Baron’s sake, that he had something to say that was worth his time, something worth the small but dangerous flame that had sparked inside his chest the moment Max had uttered that handful of words.
Roark thinks he knows how we can wake Loren up.
Fuck, if that wasn’t enough to get his heart going again. This was the most alive he’d felt in ten days, and the contrast between now and before was staggering. Since the night Loren had said his name for the very last time, Darien had been on a downward spiral to madness, and now…now, he didn’t know what to think.
Every day that passed was harder than the one that came before it. Whenever Darien inhaled, it felt like he had a bunch of glass in his lungs. Now that she was gone, everything hurt—hurt so much more than it ever had in the years before he’d met and fallen for her. Physical pain was a drug for him—same as killing. But this? This glass-in-lungs sensation, this…this fucking raw, peeling soul…
He had no words for it.
Darien’s attention flicked to Max, who entered the room next, followed by Dallas and Tanner.
“Shut the door,” Darien said.
The hacker, looking equal parts intrigued and confused, closed the door and leaned back against it with crossed arms. Dallas took up position beside Max, her eyes bright with hope.
Darien’s next command was for Max. “Spells, please.”
Max acknowledged him with a sharp dip of his chin. A single, heavy blink darkened his eyes with the Sight as he pushed a wall of magic outside of his body, forming a sound barrier around the room.
Darien checked the magic for apertures with his own Sight. Only once he was certain that no one could hear them did he risk speaking to the Red Baron.
“What’s so special about Yveswich?” Darien demanded.
“Caliginous chambers,” was Roark’s only reply. No elaboration—nothing. His amber eyes flicked to the monitor displaying Loren’s heartbeat.
Darien drew a calming breath. Once he’d leashed the monster stirring inside him, the thing already hungering for more blood, he said, “Caliginous chambers are for draining magic.”
Roark tore his attention off the array of equipment keeping Loren alive. “Those chambers are the most common, yes.” The reply was loaded, and the time it took Roark to expand upon his statement made Darien’s palms itch with the need to strike something. But he waited, every beep of the ECG machine cooling his blood.
For Loren. He had to stay level-headed for Loren. If he fucked this up, there was no telling if Roark would speak to them again.
“There is…another type of chamber,” Roark finally explained. “One that has been kept secret from the general public.” He drew a deep breath and clasped his hands before him. “While the most common type of chamber is used to drain magic, there is another that does the opposite. It funnels magic into a person’s body instead of drawing it out.”
“For what purpose?” Darien had a solid idea, but he was tired of guessing. And this man, who had been known as Elix Danik in a different life, had made them guess way too many times.
“The Fleet has utilized these chambers during wartime. As you can imagine, a person’s magic gets spent very quickly when on the battlefield. The chambers have proven useful in helping restore depleted magic levels, allowing us to fight longer—”
“Wait,” Darien interrupted. The monster inside him stirred again, and he felt a warning prickle up his spine, the edges of his vision flickering with the threat of a Surge. “Loren’s human. Her body isn’t built to handle magic.” He gestured behind him with frustration—at the girl whose every breath tore him the fuck apart.
Breathing, but not living—that’s what this was. And Roark spoke of Fleet soldiers, the most powerful people—aside from Darkslayers—in all of Terra. Not a mortal girl.
That glass-in-lungs feeling was back, but this time the shards were on fire.
“Right.” Roark spoke with a surprising level of patience. “Which is the number one risk to trying this. Even magic-born people can have trouble with this chamber. If their body isn’t strong enough to handle the chamber’s supply of magic, their heart can give out.”
Loren’s body already couldn’t handle magic, which was how she had gotten into this mess in the first place. She’d used her magic to seal the rip into the realm of the dead, and the amount it had demanded of her had stopped her heart. But…
He thought it through.
There had never been anyone like Loren before. She was human, sure, but she was also born from the Arcanum Well. And if there was even the slightest chance that this would work…
Darien needed her. Call him selfish, but he needed her more than he needed anything. She was his sun, and if he didn’t have her, he’d be swallowed by the dark.
