I shoved my hands into my pockets to keep from reaching for her again. “I’ve got more work to do at home.” Giving her the easiestsmile I could manage, I tried to come up with an excuse. “I’ll probably grab a blood bag and hide in my lab for the rest of the night.”
She nodded absently. That little smile she’d been wearing all afternoon faded slowly at the edges, and something in my chest tightened painfully in response.
I closed my eyes for half a second.
Don’t react to that. You don’t get to react to that. Focus on what you can do.
Manshu. The fae-magicked gun. Vengeance for her death.
I didn’t have time to wallow in my own misery. Not now. Not when Olivia’s life had already nearly been stolen once.
I needed answers. Needed to understand how that magic worked. Needed to find a way to destroy it before it destroyed someone I cared about.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Olivia absently stare at the elevator numbers ticking upward, and all I could think about was how badly I wanted to build a world where she never had to look over her shoulder again.
A world where she could invent ridiculous little robot dogs and laugh and exist without fear clawing at her heels.
That was something I could give her. Safety. Stability. Protection.
The rest belonged to Rack, and realizing that felt like someone quietly splitting my ribs open from the inside.
21
CALIX
“Shit!”
The curse ripped out of me as heat slammed into my face, and I shot backward. Black smoke filled the space, swallowing the lab whole. Coughing, I sped to the wall. My hand slapped against the emergency hatch controls, hitting the exhaust button hard enough that the metal dented beneath my palm.
A deep mechanical groan rumbled overhead, and the vents kicked on.
Smoke spiraled upward in violent streams, dragged out through the ceiling little by little until the room slowly came back into focus.
I stood there, breathing hard, staring at the emptying haze like it was taking the last scraps of my patience with it.
Twenty-four straight hours. Twenty-four hours of testing, burning, breaking, adapting, and still nothing. The blade sat on the table untouched, provoking me.
I’d blasted it with enough force to level concrete walls, but the damn thing absorbed the impact and brightened like it enjoyed it. I submerged it in enchanted water, but a translucent barrier formed around the metal before the liquid could even touch it.
Every rune I knew had failed. Every rune I created on the spot had failed harder.
This magic didn’t behave. It evolved. Adjusted. Reacted like it was fucking alive.
My hands braced against the edge of the table while frustration crawled hot beneath my skin.
Rack and Olivia had both come down at different points during the night.
Rack had crossed his arms and leaned against the doorway with that calm, unreadable expression he used when he thought I was being an idiot. Olivia had hovered behind him holding blood bags in both hands, her brows pinched every time she looked at the state of me.
Neither of them liked that I wouldn’t leave. Neither of them understood why I couldn’t, but this wasn’t just about someone trying to assassinate me anymore. This wasn’t just about Manshu and his idiotic grudge with me.
If weapons like this spread, if this type of magic started getting integrated into modern weaponry, everything would change, and not in a way the world we knew would survive.
Dragging both hands through my hair, I dropped heavily into my chair, exhausted with everything I’d been doing, yet unwilling to give up.
This wasn't just about the threats of assassination or the war coming for my family. If these people were able to make more weapons like this, advanced weapons with this kind of magic, this was going to change everything… and not for the better.
There might be some supes that disagreed with the Syndicate, didn’t like the way we ran things or handled our business, but at the end of the day, there was order. Each incident, each rule breaker was dealt with, not the species as a whole like the humans would do.
