Her glow dims slightly, as she turns to float away, but a scuffle against the floor draws my attention past her, to where Dakari, striding closer with his hands balled into fists.
Has he come back to gloat? Or is he here for a more sinister reason? He’s been here the whole time. He’s had unfettered access to Kyrith and plenty of opportunity to talk her into magic-knows-what. Suspicion and betrayal ride in fast on the tail end of my shattered hope, and I glare at them both.
“Tell me, how much did he promise you to mess with the spell?” I demand, grabbing for my grimoire. “Or did he just have to take his clothes off like Lambert?”
Dakari puts himself between me and her like the loyal guard dog he is. “You’re out of line, Ó Rinn. That isn’t what happened, and you know it.”
The pity in his black eyes has me seething, and before I know it, I’ve swung.
A barrier forms between the two of us before my fist can connect, and I over balance as my arm slides along it like it’s made of jelly.
“Enough.” Kyrith’s voice is like a blade, cutting through my hiss of rage. “Leo, go home and cool off.”
An arched door two shelves away springs open, and before I know it, I’m being shoved through, my papers and charts flung after me. They litter the wooden floor like the useless pieces of shit that they are as I rush back to the portal…
Only for it to slam shut in my face. Hard.
“Ad Arcanaeum!” I yell at it, slapping my fist against my closet door until I know my hand will be black and blue by morning. “Ad Arcanaeum! AD ARCANAEUM! Fecking let mein, damnit!”
But it doesn’t work.
Of course it doesn’t. Kyrith isn’t masochistic enough to put up with some eejit arcanist mouthing off at her.
It’s only an hour later, when the anger-fuelled adrenaline begins to wane and I’m sitting, staring dully at the way my glowing curse mark now lights up the walls of my own bedroom, that I realise just how badly I fecked up.
Kyrith didn’t do anything wrong. She used the runeform I created. I double checked her pronunciation. She’s too fucking proud of being impartial to ever let the Talcotts influence her.
I shouldn’t have suggested it or pushed her away so harshly.
“FECK!” I curse myself, slamming my bleeding fist into my mattress. “Stupid, fecking eejit.”
My head falls between my palms, and I squeeze at my temples, trying to assuage the splitting headache growing there. It does nothing. Futile.
Getting Kyrith to help me again is now impossible. And it’s not like I have much time to regain her trust.
Her cracks are getting worse. It doesn’t take a genius to realise a ghost cracking is bad. I might’ve judged her stable, but it only takes one slip from any of us for her to decline further.
My best chance is literally shattering… and she likely won’t forgive me before more ‘accidents’ steal her away.
Against my will, my eyes travel to the portrait on the shelf beside my desk. My parents stare back at me. My mother—with her long blonde Winthrop hair that she bequeathed my brother—grins as she holds me, but beside her, my dad stares down the camera like a man condemned. It was only a few years after that when it all went wrong for them.
My chest constricts, and I screw my eyes shut.
I have to beat this. I have to.
I glance at my desk and the piles of papers there. I’ve split my time evenly between trying to save her and myself. I’ve read more on necromancy than most arcanists my age would ever dare to in an effort to understand her condition.
I thought I was onto something with the lich idea, but she dismissed it, and looking into it more, I agree with her. There are hundreds of spells needed for an arcanist to separate themselves from their magic and form a soul vessel. It’s not the sort of thing that can happen without planning and intent. It also doesn’t explain her nightly death reenactment.
Which means I need to start again from the beginning. More work that will pull me away from dealing with the curse that could detonate at any moment.
It’s a distraction I can’t afford, but I don’t want to abandon her. Losing Kyrith has somehow become just as awful a concept as losing Lambert. I owe both of them so deeply, and now it seems like the universe is forcing me to choose between a world without her quiet company or one without his playful banter.
Winthrop would collapse all over again at the loss of a second heir to the Ó Rinn curse. But without Kyrith, the Arcanaeum will never be the same. I promised to try to protect it, but I’m one man. There are five other families who will fight over it the second she’s gone.
How am I supposed to choose? What if I choose wrong and fail, anyway?
Taking deep breaths, I try my best to shove all of my panic and terror deep down.
