I circled the table, movements quicker now, more deliberate. Each pass of my hand drew a slightly different response, faint pulses, brighter flickers, the magic tracking me with increasing sensitivity. When I brought my injured hand closer, the blade lit more fully, a band of color sliding from tip to hilt and settling there, steady and thruming… like it was alive.
Putting the blood bag in my mouth, teeth tearing through the plastic so I could gulp it down as quickly as possible, I grabbed a pen and began scribbling across my notebook as I marked distances, angles, reactions. Ink rapidly scratched across the paper, my hand drawing a glare when the occasional blood smear got in the way.
Despite the blood seeping through the cloth wrapped around my hand, I could feel my skin knitting together with each new draw of blood. Much slower than it should be, which was also interesting.
Behind me, a low buzzing sound cut through the room followed my Rack’s cool, professional tone.
“Yes. Yes. I understand. He’s in front of me. Yes.”
Rack’s voice carried across the lab, cutting through the scratch of my pen and the faint hum of magic still lingering around the blade. His footsteps followed, solid and unhurried, echoing off the concrete as he closed the distance.
My right eye twitched. Didn’t he see I was working? Couldn’t he just take care of whatever it was? I didn’t look up. The pen moved faster.
“Here.”
The word came with a shove. His phone appeared in my line of sight, blocking the blade, the notes, everything that mattered.
My lip curled, and the empty plastic blood bag fell onto the table.
I started to lift my hand, fully intending to knock it out of his grip, when a familiar voice sliced through the speaker.
“Calix.”
That was all it took for the room to seem too still for half a second. Even Rack didn’t move.
“The meeting starts in fifteen minutes,” she continued, her tone precise, each word sharpened to a point. “If you’re not on that call, I’ll come down to that little dungeon you call a lab, flay your skin, and hang it in my office.”
I closed my eyes and reminded myself that she was not just my sister, but the head of the Syndicate.
The overhead lights pressed through my lids, red and harsh, but it was enough to cut the noise in my head for a second. My pen hit the table with a sharp crack as I dropped it, and I grabbed the phone from Rack’s hand.
There was a twinkle in his eye, and the side of his mouth tipped up as I took the phone. Fucking asshole.
I covered the receiver with my palm and leaned in just enough for him to hear me.
“You fucking traitor.”
His expression didn’t change. If anything, he leaned closer, unfazed by my scrutiny.
“She’s the only one you’ll listen to,” he said, voice calm and factual. “And you know how she is about these meetings.”
Yeah. I know exactly how she was.But he was stillmydamn second, not hers.
On the other end, a quiet exhale filtered through the speaker before she spoke again.
“With Aniyah and Nova mated, I’m already dealing with a brand of chaos I’m not used to.” I could hear her crack her knuckles before she followed with an exhausted breath. “It’s like herding two feral disasters who won’t keep their hands off each other.”
She paused, then whispered underneath her breath even though she knew I could hear her.
“So I need my absent-minded disaster to show up on time.”
Rack dragged over a stool and sat, elbows resting on his knees, watching me like this was a show he’d seen before. He flicked his hand, and a box with a large red X on it floated out of a drawer I never used and into his hands. He took advantage of the distraction to yank my injured hand over to him, unwrapping the bloodied fabric to a half-open cut. His brows pinched even further.
Yanking my hand back, I shooed him away, muttering into the phone, “Yeah. Those two are the true irresponsible ones.”
The blade’s faint shimmer had dulled again, its surface returning to stillness. My notes sat open, half-finished, ink trailing off where I’d stopped. I really wanted to get back to testing this thing.
Silence answered me. Not empty, just a tightness I could feel even over the phone.
