Thio knows I’m pushing him toward something but he can’t see what yet. And I hate that I’m doing this to him. That there’ll be a before and an after.
“Chalk to draw sigils, and iron from a lock,” he says.
“No,” I snap. “No. You only need iron to break a ward. It being from a lock is semantics. It isn’trequired. You can force the spell towork through it, like with chalk and drawing sigils; it just helps you focus. But you don’tneedany of that. You only need iron.”
He looks appalled. As he should. “That isn’t how magic is done,” he hisses, not at me, at the situation. “That’s—there arerules. Forcing magic to use components like that could damage the wizards who do it or result in the spells recoiling dangerously—”
He cuts himself off. I know he’s thinking of his mom, how her experiment recoiled; but that’s how dangerous magic can be. That’s how volatile. And now here are two instances of the Touraels being behind the advancement of magic, whatever the cost.
“Where can you get iron,” I whisper, “if you’re trapped in a room without any components? Just you. And your partner. Where can you get iron?”
His face drains of color.
“They’d been testing us for years,” I say. “Leaving us in barren places, telling us to do this spell or work out this problem with whatever we had on hand. Forcing us to use what we had available, in the most extreme, stark situations. They called it an ouroboros partnership. It was why we were paired up. Every wizard has most of the components they need—if they have access to a person.”
Thio collapses back into his seat. “No. That kind of magic is illegal.Highlyillegal. Not even necromancers use human remains in spells.”
“It isn’t human remains.” The words come and I’m separate from them. “Not if the person’s still alive. Not if they give it up willingly. An ouroboros, symbiotic; a snake eating itself. That’s why they had us work on our bond, so one of us would be willing. The instructors rationalized it—it wasn’t crossing legal boundaries if it was a new form of wizardry. They were sculpting an exclusive type of arcane soldier.”
I don’t need to pace anymore. I don’t even need the numbing pain of scratching at my arms. I go limp, staring at Thio.
“Orok and I both refused to do that to each other to get out of that room. Then they started pumping in water.Your parents signed the waivers,they told us.Accidents happen.”
Pathetic.
This was wasted on you.
No one else could handle this program either. Are you going to let this be a failure? You could change the rules of magic. You could be a pioneer. The first ouroboros partnership.
You had such promise, Mr. Walsh. Mr. Monroe.
I touch my shoulder. The place where Orok dragged his nail through his own skin, tore it open.Use it, Seb. Fucking do it!As frigid water lapped at our thighs and we shuddered head to toe.
His blood was sluggish. Because of the hypothermia, the malnutrition. I had to drag it out, focus on the iron in him andpull.
Tears drip down my cheeks. I scrub them away with my thumb and cut my eyes up to that massive chandelier. That massive chandelier that the Touraels paid for, in this massive apartment they own.
“I got us out,” I tell Thio. “And while Orok was in the infirmary, unconscious from blood loss, and the instructors were congratulating me on doing such a good job, I told them I was done. I wasn’t going to graduate. I wasn’t going to be their elite wizard pet. They… did not like that.”
I smile at the memory of their shocked faces, how they were unable to comprehend why I’d say nonow,when I was done. Why I hadn’tvoiced concernsyears ago.
I had. Over and over. To them. To my dad.
Gods, I’d been so certain he’d save me after that first summer. I’dknownhe’d help.
My smile grows. Grows too big. I’m bent double, laughing at things that aren’t funny.
“And then that stupid iron box,” I wheeze to the floor. “At the challenge today? We had to leave our component belts, too. And the iron was missing. Theiron. I probably dropped it, but gods, Thio. I was back there and they were making me do it toyounow, and I—”
He’s sitting perfectly still in his chair, eyes wide, face deathly pale.
I’m on my knees in front of him before I can process why. My hands rest on his thighs, and I look up into his face.
“I dropped out of Camp Merethyl,” I tell him. “I dropped out and became the disgrace of my family, and they think I’m an immature screwup who couldn’t cut it as a real wizard. Now my father is going to run that place—”
Thio jolts. I hadn’t told him that yet.
“He got the job, he’s going to be the next director, and—and part of me is glad for it. He’ll have access to the records, won’t he? He’ll see what they did to me. He’llknowthat I wasn’t lying. That it happened,he let it happen,and it washorrific.”
