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When I pull my hand back, a ball of lava sits on my palm. As we watch, it flexes, glowing cracks in the black rock widening and narrowing. Flame drips through my fingers, but instead of burning the floor, it rolls into golden clusters. Gabe stoops and picks one up.
Darwin steps around the glowing Spellcase to look at what Gabe’s holding. He plucks a globe off the cluster and pops it in his mouth before I can do much more than squeak in protest.
He turns to me, chewing, and grins. “Goblin fruit.”
Goblin fruit’s what the fae feed mortals in Faery. It’s the perfect food, like ambrosia. Mortals don’t need to eat or drink anything else while they’re in Faery. It’s also perfectly addicting. Mortals who leave Faery need a lifetime supply, otherwise they waste away. The fae have built their wealth supplying goblin fruit, and I’ve never heard of it growing outside of theraointean òir, the golden vineyards of Faery.
My Da would, literally, kill for what Gabe’s holding in his hand.
I plunge my hand back into the Earth and release my handful.
Surprise ripples across Darwin’s face. “Teddy, wh—?”
“Have you ever heard of goblin fruit growing outside of Faery?” I ask as I stand, dusting off my hands. “Do you know any other spells that create it in the mortal realm?”
He shakes his head.
“Think of what someone like my Da would do with an unlimited, free source of goblin fruit.”
Charlie rounds the Spellcase in two long strides and wraps his arms around me. “Never,” he growls. “He never finds out about this. He never gets his hands on you again.”
I shake my hands back to normal before I slide one around Charlie’s waist. “No argument there, mate.”
We all look at the scroll Darwin’s holding warily.
* * *
I’mcareful to keep my promise to Doctor Prince.
None of us read the Acta Capricornis for more than an hour at a time. We take big breaks between study sessions. It’s not hard to find other things to focus on because finals are barreling down on us and I wasn’t having a laugh about all of us getting As.
It’s not about Charlie’s scholarship or me proving everyone wrong. It’s about our future. Whether or not I get into the summer program at Madavar, I want more opportunities like that. I want the privileges that come with being Doctor Prince’s TA.
I want the future my husbands told me about: my business grown all the way south to London, our teaching positions at Anadl Draig, Gabe’s unicorn herd in the Welsh woods.
And if there’s ever the faintest opportunity of me seeing my husbands again, I want to tell them I’ve done everything I can to fulfill the promise of what they showed me.
I want to make them proud.
We’re also careful to read the Acta at least in pairs. The spells are next level. That lava heart is just the first “stair” of Saturn’s throne. There are, predictably, twelve stairs. Each more powerful than the last.
Charlie’s reading of the third stair summons a fire drake, an Elemental neither he nor Darwin have been able to summon before. Thank fuck all four of us are together during that study session and we’re able to banish it back to its own plane before it burned down the Bladelaw.
My reading of the ninth stair turns Darwin to stone.
Our frantic calls to the Infirmary summon not only the three healers but also The Mr. Black, Dean Quinn, Doctor Prince, Madame Serpa, and Professor DeWinter. Together, they manage to coax him back to flesh.
I get a stern lecture about not reading from the Acta without suitable wards in place.
Not that any of us know what kind of ward could counter a blood-to-stone spell.
The healers want Darwin to stay in the Infirmary overnight so they can check on his revivified flesh in the morning. Since I’m the one who landed Darwin in the Infirmary, and the one who promised he’d never be alone again, I shoo Gabe and Charlie back to the flat and settle down on a cot next to Darwin’s bed. He’s been dozing on and off since becoming flesh again, even though he swears he feels fine.
Clearly spending time as statuary took something out of him.
I wonder what it would take out of my Da.
“You’re thinking very loudly, teddy bear,” Darwin whispers, his silver eyes gleaming in the Infirmary’s dim lighting.
