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Carver wore a tired smile. “There is no stopping the Eldest. We can stem the tide of their horrors. We can erect spiritual dams that will hold them, keep them at bay. We can put up walls. But everything erodes in time.” He pushed his finger into the space between his brows, massaging it, shaking his head solemnly. “I think it’s time I told you, Dustin. It saddens me to confess that I’ve been holding something back about my identity.”
I didn’t know if my mind could handle more surprises. I gripped the edges of my chair tight, and kept perfectly still as I waited for Carver to speak again.
“Once, a long time ago, I served the very things that we are now trying to keep away from our reality.” Carver sighed, his body seeming to grow so small and so old as the air left him. “Once, a long time ago – I was a priest of the Eldest.”
Chapter 13
I chuckled, somehow managing to keep the unease out of my voice.
“Aww, come on, Carver,” I said, half-laughing. “You remember how to joke, right? You can’t have been post-human for that long. This is the part where you throw in the punchline.”
He hadn’t moved a muscle. Carver only kept staring at me, his eyes unbearable and searing, cat-like and as flaringly amber as the jewels on his fingers, as those set around his stone desk.
“There’s a reason I’ve selected this name for myself,” he said, his voice flat, and remarkably bereft of humor.
I watched. I waited. He wanted me to ask exactly what lingered on my mind.
“You told me once that you were a lich,” I said, my tongue stinging at the mention of the word. It’s what he was, a sorcerer who had done the unspeakable to extend his life far beyond its natural limits. That, and this new confession about his alias swirled in the back of my mind. I was sure I wasn’t going to like the answer. “What – what did you do?”
Carver pinched the bridge of his nose, as if this was the first that he’d experienced any real discomfort in a long time. The way he was winding up, it also felt like this was the first he’d speak of this in ages.
“I took lives. I placed innocents upon altars, then I carved out their hearts. I keep this name as both a reminder of my crimes, and as penance.”
The dread building in my body was transitioning into horror. My eyes began flitting around his office, searching for shadows I could vanish into. Just – just in case. Just to be safe.
When I opened my mouth to speak, I realized how very dry it was. “Did you do it for the Eldest?” I croaked.
“At first. Ritual magic changes very little even when it is done for things that are not of this earth. But later I did it to extend my life, because I wanted to fight back. I wanted to repent, to make my existence worth something.”
He sat his hand flat in front of him, palm up, then motioned in the air, as if lifting the lid off of a box that only he could see. He motioned again, like he was grasping something from out of the ethers. I gasped when I saw it. A verdigris knife, made of old, tarnished bronze, with dark garnets set into its hilt. Like Vanitas.
Like the dagger that Thea had used to kill me.
I leapt out of my seat, every muscle in my body straining to catapult me towards the one shadow I spotted by the side of Carver’s desk. He gritted his teeth, spat out a single word, then flicked his wrist. Pale amber fire snaked from his fingertips, wreathing around my hands, then my ankles, then tightening, forcing me back in my chair. I opened my mouth to scream just as more of Carver’s pale fire wrapped across my lips, sealing my voice in my throat.
My heart slammed against my chest in a horrible, frantic tattoo. Carver and I sat frozen there together, me out of a lack of choice, him still with one hand around the previously concealed dagger, and the other outstretche
d, every finger linked to the pulsing flame that restrained me.
“If you promise not to scream,” he said, “I will unbind your mouth.”
I glanced at my feet. There was a shadow right there. I could have melted right into it instead of leaping off the chair, and so I decided to escape through it then. But try as I could the connection to the Dark Room wouldn’t hold. Carver’s restraints weren’t only binding my body. They had blocked my magic too, nullified it.
What choice did I have? I nodded, slowly, the sweat trickling from my brow to the tip of my nose. He waved his hand again. Cool air rushed over my lips as his fire receded.
“I have many questions.”
“Of course. But you must know that shadowstepping away from me was completely unnecessary.”
“The way that you should know that restraining me with your magic was unnecessary.”
Carver cocked a single eyebrow. “But was it? You were planning to run away as soon as you saw the dagger.”
“Touché,” I grumbled.
Carver whispered, then the flames shackling me crept back to his fingers, fading into nothing. I rubbed my wrists, scowling.
“Oh, don’t be such a baby.”
