Page 60 of Serpent and Shadow

Quicksilver fell silent, but I didn’t feel him back down, either.

I held his openly cynical stare.

“I recognize I don’t have proper control over it yet––” I began stiffly.

He scoffed louder.

“––I’ll remedy that,” I went on, making my voice louder. “I won’t wear it publicly until I’m certain I know all of the commands and situations that could trigger it. I’ll keep it out of sight, and only use it in a contained environment. I won’t even wear it to our lessons anymore. I’ll use it in here alone, if you think that’s safer.”

My jaw tightened.

“But I’m sorry, I’m not handing it over to you,” I repeated. “Nor to anyone. Not even Forsooth. I’m not stupid enough to believe I’d ever see it again if I did, and not only because it was likely an expensive bauble, even before Bones spelled it.”

A silence fell over the Experimental Magic Shed.

I watched Quicksilver stare at me, weighing his next move. For a tense few seconds, I wondered if I was going to have to fight him for it, after all.

“Fine,” the professor growled. “Hold onto your bauble for now. I’ll discuss it with Forsooth. And Corvid, since he’s the resident expert on dangerous magical objects that should be locked up and mysteriously aren’t.”

He didn’t hide his hostility, and that time, it didn’t feel aimed solely at me.

I logged that information away, as well.

So Blackstone and Quicksilver weren’t exactly pals.

That might be good information to have. And was one of those “dangerous magical objects that should be locked up” meant to be Bones himself? The thought was there and gone, but it brought up a ripple of unease.

Just how many people knew about Bones’s condition?

Was it more than me, Blackstone, and Forsooth?

Was Bones wrong? Were there people other than his father who knew in Dark Cathedral, too? Bones had seemed certain Malefic would have trusted no one with that information, not even his closest allies, but had one or more put it together themselves?

Careful, love, a softer, much more familiar voice murmured.

I shivered.

Then I pushed the thought deeper into my mind.

It continued to burn there, though, worrying me.

I fought to push that worry away as I made my way back to Bones’s Tower.

I wanted a shower and a change of clothes before meeting up with the others. Luc wanted to test the next batch of spells I’d dug up in my research in the hopes we could trigger the phasing ability.

I’d tried those spells already, of course.

I wasn’t supposed to be conducting magic alone. Forsooth lectured me about it, so had Luc, Alaric, Jolie, Blackstone, and even Nyx. But I wasn’t about to ask my friends to stay up every night working the way I was. They were giving me enough of their time, especially Luc, who more or less abandoned the other areas of his project to focus on this.

He’d justified it by calling our project “related research,” but it was only barely that, and only if I succeeded in phasing.

We’d been fairly loose with our meeting times over the break, but I knew they’d all head to my place in time for dinner. Alaric would show up first, likely before six o’clock. He’d been spending most of his days in the library or Frumpy’s, and timed his arrivals so he could talk to me before the others got there.

He usually had something he’d found––lately, he’d been obsessed with Bones’s collar, and the possibility of reversing the vow, which I’d finally told all of them about.

I’d been genuinely worried they’d want to stop after I told them.

I’d been relieved when it only seemed to motivate them more.