Page 114 of Serpent and Shadow

My stomach clenched, but I kept it off my face. “No.”

“But it’s been weeks since you saw him. He’s got to be feeling it, too.” Alaric paused, as if waiting for me to acknowledge this. When I didn’t, he plowed forward. “I thought you said the two of you couldn’t be separated for very long, that it would actually make him sick. Or crazy. You said before you got sick even if you went a few days––”

“Yes,” I cut in.

I didn’t look up from the paper.

Alaric frowned, gauging my face. “Isn’t it worse for him?”

I bit my lip, shaking my head. “In theory, yes. Maybe. I honestly don’t know. It’s not like he’s ever been particularly forthcoming about that kind of thing.” I swallowed. “Everything I know is from those books. Other examples. Other people.”

I cleared my throat when more students walked down the steep aisle to my left, taking their seats a few rows down and on the other side of the aisle.

They continued talking together cheerfully after they’d taken their seats, but I lowered my voice and leaned closer to Alaric, anyway.

“Maybe he’s found another way to cope with it,” I murmured.

There was a silence while Alaric thought about my words.

He let out a highly-skeptical snort, once he understand what I’d meant.

“You think he’s in the Black Tower, living it up with Dark Cathedral nymphs?”

I shrugged. “I honestly have no idea. I’m just saying… it’s not unlike his father to get creative with that kind of thing.”

“He hurts other people,” Alaric pointed out. “Even if he wanted to, you know it’s unlikely he could be doing that. His magic hurts people, Leda. I’ve seen it.”

When I didn’t answer, he continued to think aloud.

“And I can’t imagine he’d get much out of it, would he?” he went on skeptically. “Not if he’s forced to suppress his magic the entire time, even if he could control it for short periods. Isn’t that what he was doing before you? When he was dating around? It clearly wasn’t working. He was a bloody mess, as I recall.”

I fought not to think about that, not to picture it, and shook my head, maybe to dispel the images that wanted to rise, anyway.

“Like I said,” I murmured. “Malefic is creative.”

Alaric slumped deeper into the seat next to me, and when I glanced at him, he frowned, returning my sideways look. I saw the reluctance there, mixed with something like empathy, but in the end, he could only sigh.

“You’re not wrong,” he admitted sourly.

When I didn’t answer, he reached over, and gripped my hand tightly in his.

I decided I needed a night off. It was Friday, so I felt slightly guilty about that, but I couldn’t deny I needed it.

Fridays were usually the nights I stayed up late working with the others, either in Bones’s room or in the laboratory downstairs. Sometimes we even met in Frumpy’s, since common areas tended to be emptier on weekend evenings.

Of course, that had changed over the past few weeks, with fewer students willing to go to Bonescastle to sit in a pub all night, or even to mirror back home to see family, friends, boyfriends, or whoever else.

With the news filled with headlines about Dark Cathedral raids, nearly one a night now, no one felt particularly safe, even in the invisible city. After all, everyone knew Bones could come here whenever he wanted. Many seemed to think it was only a matter of time, and they weren’t keen to be caught in the cross-fire when it did.

The government hadn’t been attacked directly yet, but everyone was waiting for that to happen next. When headlines weren’t shouting about the raids, newspaper columns were increasingly full of arguments between the Magus Imperius and the Parliament about how to deal with the attacks, and with Malefic Bones. More and more, it seemed a faction of those groups wanted to negotiate a truce, and not fight his Dark Cathedrals at all.

None of the articles suggested it outright, but it was pretty obvious what I’d heard in the Black Tower corridor was right: a lot of loyal Malefic supporters worked in those offices.

In the meantime, however, the fighting continued.

The Praecuri, G.O.R.E., and even the Warlock-run military had been sent out to counter the raids. There was talk of full-blown battles across different parts of England, the most recent being in the outskirts of Manchester. Forsooth told me they’d managed to hold off Dark Cathedral when they got too close to the Palace of the Lions, but Blackstone told me later, when it was just the two of us, that casualty reports were being suppressed, and the military and the Praecuri were taking the brunt of it.

Magical England, the official side of it, anyway, was losing.