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Fenrir stoked the coals until sparks flew, then lowered the clamps and watched the steel glow. Mercer didn’t correct him at any point, but Fenrir had a feeling he was testing him to see what he’d learned. When he pulled the clamps from the fire and turned to the anvil, Mercer didn’t offer to help secure them to the vice. He stood aside and let Fenrir do it all himself, and even if he was doing it wrong, Fenrir was grateful he at least got to try without someone fussing over him the entire time.

He liked the hammer best, he found.

“You’re strong,” Mercer said after Fenrir had swung it down a few times. The steel was mostly flat by the time it cooled. Fenrir opened the vice and placed the clamps back into the coals. “Guess swinging a sword’s not much different.”

“You want to stab with a sword, not hack.” Steel glowing, he put the clamps back in the vice and started hammering again. “But it feels good to do something physical. My right arm was my dominant, I’m still getting used to my left.”

“You’ll adjust fast,” Mercer said with so much casual surety something hot as steel and sharp as a sword stabbed into Fenrir.

By the time he’d gone through six pieces of steel—all of which were subsequently tossed into a scrap pile to be melted down later—the shadows were growing long again, and his guards were hovering closer than ever.

And Fenrir was out of breath.

“Not bad for your first day,” Mercer said, moving the workhorse to the side. “Tomorrow I’ll show you how to shape ‘em.”

Fenrir blinked. “Tomorrow?”

“Said you wanted to help, right?”

“…But the palace.”

Mercer rolled his eyes. “Claremont’s an idiot and a thief. He’s making plenty of money selling the gutter juice he calls wine, don’t let him convince you otherwise.”

Fenrir laughed, chest full and belly deep. “Any other sage advice?”

“Tell me what they’re complaining ‘bout and I’ll let you know then. Consider it payment for yer time, can’t afford the coin, not in the crown’s budget.”

Again, Fenrir laughed, and again, Mercer smiled. Bigger this time, with teeth. Genuine. A real smile blossomed across his face.

When Fenrir finally stepped through the Gilded Palace’s gates to the sounds of crickets and the scent of an evening’s meal, he found he wasn’t nearly as tired. That, at some point throughout the day, the very simple act of moving his body had returned some of the strength that had been sapped from him over the last handful of weeks. That he wasn’t out of breath so much as he was reinvigorated, wasn’t shaking in the knees so much as pleasantly tired, that his breath wasn’t coming short and sharp but rather even and full.

“Where have you been all day?” Vera snapped when she caught him in the hallway outside his room. “Why do you smell like a furnace?”

He left his door open and headed for the bed, flopping bonelessly across it. Vera followed him in, nose scrunched.

“I think I found a way to help everyone.”

Mostly, he thought he’d found a way to help himself.

Chapter XXIV

The Second Spell

Curiously, the solution came in one of his strange dreams.

He’d begun to like it there, within his twilight realm. This time, his dream spat him into a chasm fjord, mountains rising all around, glassy cliffs reflecting the burning violet fires that frothed mist like it was water. He walked along one such crevice, pale mist curling around his boots like it meant to drag him under. Orpheus resisted its temptation, following a path along the shore that brought him to a flat expanse broken by an orchard of petrified trees.

Crystal leaves budded their branches, young little blossoms that unfurled iridescent flowers into the night. Orpheus approached carefully, attention drifting over the cracked ground he stood upon, little wells of Netherflame threading one root system to the next. Where death reigned over Netherflame’s Earthly clutches, here in Hell it was simply nature, the wheel at work within a system that depended upon its cold fire.

In Hell, Netherflame gave life, instead of taking it. A source of power like the sigils he’d ignited, the machines he’d summoned to impossible life. And like a man come home, Orpheus walked amongst it now, breathing in the icy scent of lightning and ozone, feeling the echoing vibration in the blood pumping through his veins.

You belong here, a voice whispered, you are welcome.

Ahead, a tree stood removed from the others, gray where it should be black, buds dim where the others leaked light. Orpheus reached for one, pale fingers brushing along a desiccated branch, thorns catching at his skin, but not breaking.

Beneath his feet, dust collected, the violet well broken by a stretch of ashen, cracked shale.

The Netherflame can’t reach here, he realized, and the tree had gone dormant without its connection—its source.