Page 52 of Chaos and Crowns

As he sat up and looked at her questioningly, the way his hair was flattened on one side from the pillow while sticking straight up like a rooster on the other was almost enough to banish the heavy feeling from her heart. Almost.

“What am I supposed to do all day?” Odelle asked in despair, flopping back among the pillows with a soft whump. Her first thought was to start her job hunt, but she cringed at the idea. If she had been fired from the stunt on the Sears Tower, then chances were that none of the other local news channels would be interested in hiring her. She would have to look for a position in a smaller news market, or step away from television broadcasting altogether. The fact that her dreams of being an anchor on a national news station had been dashed by a few short sentences wasn’t something she was ready to face yet.

“Well, I have something urgent to do,” Antony remarked with a yawn, shaking his hair out to get it back into its normal tousled state.

“Oh.” Odelle deflated even further at the thought of spending the day alone with her thoughts. “I can get out of your hair then.”

She spluttered when a pillow hit her across the face. When she pushed it away, she found Antony grinning down at her.

“Don’t be ridiculous, you are involved in this urgent thing,” he said, before pushing out of bed and making his way over to the wardrobe. Odelle took the opportunity to admire the view from behind, since Antony extended the Greek tradition of nudity to sleeping as well. As he draped a purple peplos around himself with deft hands, she returned her attention to his words.

“I said that I needed to make you a weapon, and now you have the time to help me make sure it’s the perfect thing for you,” he explained.

Odelle raised a quizzical brow at him as she cast about for her discarded clothes. “What good is a weapon going to do for somebody with absolutely no idea how to use it?”

“If you can figure out how to throw a Shadow off the roof of a skyscraper, then I’m sure you can figure out the proper use for a sharp object,” Antony reassured. “And it would be good for my sanity to know you had a blade on you.”

“Well, how am I supposed to walk around carrying a weapon?” Odelle continued, “I may joke about my purse being a bottomless pit, but I can’t actually fit a spear in it.”

Antony waved a dismissive hand. “Spears are for Warriors in major battles. I have something far more subtle in mind. And little do you know, you already have the perfect place to carry it.”

“Does the dagger between the breasts thing really work?” Odelle looked down at her chest and frowned. She didn’t think she was well endowed enough to pull that off.

Antony chuckled and picked up one of her legs that had been kicked off and lying at the foot of the bed. The iridescent coating shimmered in the morning light, as Odelle was still wearing the ones he had made after melting the foot of her other pair. He slid his hand up the shin as if searching for something. Finding it, he hummed in satisfaction and pressed a hidden catch that Odelle hadn’t noticed before. She gasped as a piece of the leg slid out, revealing a compartment as long as her hand but very thin. The perfect size for a knife.

“I felt a dagger would suit you, and I like to make everything as multipurpose as possible,” he explained. “I had meant to make you something sooner, but I didn’t get it done before Christmas and then…”

“Ok, nothing screams sexy assassin more than hiding a knife in a prosthetic limb,” Odelle gushed, snatching the leg from him to inspect the compartment. She slid it shut and squinted, finding that she couldn’t even make out the seams in the material until she pressed the lever to release the hatch again.

“Maybe that’s your alternate career choice,” Antony teased as Odelle began fastening on the prosthetics so she could follow him out of the room.

He led her a short way down the hall to a larger room that she hadn’t seen before. Something that looked like the world’s largest fire pit dominated the center of the circular space, surrounded by workbenches at regular intervals. It struck Odelle as the type of forge she might see in a fantasy movie, but notably absent of anvils and hammers. Almost all the benches were devoid of any materials, but one in the far back was surrounded by tools and tongs and a few scattered bars of metal. Antony led the way past the empty workspaces, and her heart clenched at the thought that these spaces had once been occupied by his friends. Now he entered this workshop every day alone, walking past constant reminders of all that he had lost. Working in solitary silence for centuries.

Clanking echoed through the empty space as Antony shuffled through the contents of his chaotic workspace, surfacing with several chunks of metal that he placed into what looked like a charred bowl. Looking up, he spotted Odelle hovering a few feet away, and beckoned her forward.

“Hold out your right hand,” Antony instructed.

When she did as he asked, Antony took her wrist gently in his grasp, running the fingers of his other hand over her palm. Odelle warmed at the touch on her pulse point and the featherlight brush of his fingertips.

“You have surprisingly long fingers,” he mused. “You’ll be comfortable with a wider grip than most women.”

“I’m not sure I’ll be comfortable with any weapon,” Odelle countered.

“I never was either, but I will feel better knowing that I’ve given you a way to protect yourself in a pinch,” Antony explained, turning away to start a fire in large pit. As he stoked it higher using a handheld bellows, a thin sheen of sweat formed on his forehead, shining along his delicate collarbone.

“We could find you a more modern furnace if you wanted one,” Odelle mused, propping her hip against an empty table and admiring how Antony’s biceps flexed as he worked the fire. No wonder his wiry muscles were so pronounced, despite his insistence that he shied away from the more physical aspects of the Eteria’s war with the Shadow.

Antony shrugged. “Adam has offered before, but I don’t think I could give this up. Smithing—it’s become a lot harder since it’s now more difficult to use the Light. But this part, this is still the same as it was before the Defeat. These few quiet moments are some of the few times I feel truly connected to the way things were before. Like I could look up and see my fellow Smiths across the workroom at any moment.”

His comment reminded her of something Seraphina had said earlier but had brushed off in her concern for Adam.

“Seraphina mentioned that she thinks it’s becoming easier to use the Light again.” Odelle’s tone was questioning.

Antony nodded, keeping his attention on the forge before him. “I think we’ve all noticed it a little in our own ways. Most of us even expected this would happen, as the Shadow becomes more active again. Light and Shadow are two sides of the same coin, and one cannot grow without the other. It’s likely why Nora was able to tap into her latent ability to channel the Light last year. Still, the Eteria is far from able to access the full well of our power.”

Odelle nodded, forgoeing thinking about the implications of that revelation for now to focus on the wonder that was Antony at work.

Antony picked up the weathered bowl of metal in a long pair of tongs and placed it over the fire. It was now so intense, Odelle could feel hot air prickling the skin on her face even as far away as she stood. He took a moment to wipe the sweat from his brow with his forearm after setting the tongs down.