ThaliaisInteritus.
“Midnight, for fucksake,” Ignatius shakes me, but I’m utterly mesmerised by the sight in front of me.
The handful of Societas members that haven’t been injured work with Interitus to clear the way for wraiths to charge after students and professors.Bodies scatter and scramble.
The hole in the Veil throbs as if it has its own heartbeat.A beat that instead of pumping blood, floods our mortal city with death and monsters.
We are so fucked.
Especially because you can’t repair the fabric where none exists.I recall Alistair teaching that early in one of our classes.
Ignatius stills beside me, his gaze on Finis Tower, mouth ajar.Architecti hovers there, her wings fluttering, streams of magic flowing from her feathers and fingers.
Bricks lift off cobbles and slot back into place.She unleashes a deluge of Architect moths into campus.They plume and blossom everywhere her magic shines.More and more burst into existence with every drop of possibility and influence she exerts.
“She’s repairing the tower?”I breathe.
“Yes,” Ignatius says, equally awed.
Piece by piece.
Brick by brick.
She repairs damage while Interitus creates more, and I have to wonder which one of them is the real villain.
Societas members battle against professors.“End fate!”one of them bellows as he charges with a set of blades.
More students join in, doing what they can to pull magic from the campus and wielding it like swords.Ignatius jerks into action, swinging fists and ribbons of demonic magic at wraiths and ashspawn.His magic has a redder tone to it compared to the thick black ribbons I use from Finis.It’s more potent too.The impact on his victims, cleaner, sharper and more final.
I stand there motionless.Realisation slamming through me over and over again: Lucy is dead, I’m alive, and I’m the one that killed her.
She made me reap her.
More bricks lift from the ground and float back into place.The campus repairs itself faster and faster, the Veil, however, does not.For all Architecti’s benevolence in repairing the tower, she blew a fucking hole twenty feet wide in the Veil and obliterated the fabric.
Heat boils and bubbles in my gut as my fists ball.Architecti can fix the tower, but I can’t bring Lucy back.She’s gone but what I can’t fathom is that that’s what she wanted.My palms tingle with the sensation of Lucy’s warm essence nestled against the cold blade that stole her soul.
I inhale again.Sharp air kisses my throat with a caress that burns.I thought receiving demon magic would hurt, that it would make my body curl and contort.Instead, a weight settles against my bones, heavy like the richness of red wine.It rumbles like it wants to get out, like it wants me to use it.
But I can’t, because I'm still breathing, and she isn’t.
If I use her magic that means she’s really gone.
Ignatius stumbles past me, a wraith dropping at his feet and disintegrating.He slaps my cheek wrenching me back to reality.He raises his hand to strike me again, but I grab his wrist stopping him.
“We’re not leaving.We have to fight,” I bark and shove him out of the way of a stumbling ashspawn.
We might be in the middle of a fight, but I don’t trust him not to take my soul at the first opportunity.
It’s a debt owed.A debt that has to be paid.But for now, I’m still here.And if I’m still here, I can still fight.
I have time.
Time?I want to laugh.The very fucking thing I’ve craved for so long.Chased and hunted as if it were prey, when really I was the victim waiting for my predator.
But it hasn’t come.
Did I change my fate?I didn’t think that was possible.What happens to a deal when it’s not fulfilled on time?I haven’t learnt that in contracts class yet and Lucy isn’t here to ask.
