I rip a section off the bottom of my shirt to wrap the wounds on my arm. "Too bad you're not a necromancer, or you could heal me and be done with it."
He scowls, scanning the area as if the dead trees or bones littered outside the compound will overhear his secret—that magic manifested in his blood when he was six years old. Surprisingly strong magic, at that. If Amadeus finds out, Felix will be treated like all other manifested casters in the Nether:killed in a dramatic ritual and brought back to serve as a lich. Those fiends are a personal favorite of Amadeus's.
Felix has been carefully keeping his magic hidden for seventeen years.
"Thank the gods I'm not a necromancer," he mutters. "Nasty things. That type of magic is not for me or for anyone who happens to have these pesky things calledmorals."
Thank fuck I don't have those weighing me down anymore.
Felix pulls out the fae translations on parchment, and his face lights up again. "Send Lillian my thanks again for helping me learn fae. It's been unbelievably useful for figuring out complex healing magic for my mother."
"How is she?"
He blinks up at me, startled. "Uh…do you actually care? Not trying to be rude, I just didn't think that was even possible, considering your lack of heart."
Word spread quickly throughout the Nether about the way Amadeus decided to officially turn me into histelum. The monsters who come to take innocents away from the compound must have been gossiping because these humans know I'm no longer one of them.
Although they're still kind whenever I show up, they fear me much more now.
They're smart like that.
"It's called small talk," I parrot before moving on. Pulling the shard from my pocket, I hold it up.
He makes a face. "You brought a piece of glass?"
"It's not glass."
"Yeah? Looks exactly like it. How do you know for sure that it's not?" he challenges with a smirk.
"Because I pried it out of Amadeus's crown."
Felix's smirk dies immediately, and he swallows hard. "Are you serious? You must be insane."
"Yes to both."
He rubs his face. "Oh, gods. I'm not sure that was the wisest course of action. Isn't he going to look for it eventually?"
Amadeus is already looking for the culprit. If he finds out it was me, I'm sure my fate will be eternally worse than death. I almost admire how creative my self-appointed "father" is with punishments.
He keeps his intricate adamantine crown locked up in his extensive quarters behind several extremely heavy protective spells, which I tampered with so I would leave no trace when I left. Within the crown, three pieces of this substance were embedded.
When I saw it for the first time, I knew they couldn't be glass. Something about the transparent, flawless element drew me in, so here we are.
I toss the shard to Felix, who barely manages to catch it. "Tell me what it is."
He grumbles as he tries to study it in the dark lighting. "Not sure. Maybe if I could see it in the morning with a bit more light, I could figure it out. I mean, it wouldn't make sense for him to have clear quartz or something cheap stuck in his crown. It would have to be something incredibly precious, like?—"
He cuts off suddenly, gawking at me. "Hold on. Holdon, what if…shit. That must be it. Oh, mygods, I can't believe it."
"I'm not the kind of monster who can read minds," I pointedly inform him.
Felix has forgotten about controlling himself again and is now animated with excitement. "Okay, I'll back up. Did you know this compound is made out of the ruins of a fae castle from thousands of years ago—from before the Entity came along and turned the Nether into a realm of death?"
"Did you know I didn't come here for a history lesson?"
"It's relevant, I promise. Over the years, I've dug up countless old, broken slabs of stone engraved with ancient fae writings and illustrations. I think they had an impressive library here long ago. That's what I've been studying to learn magic. There's so much to learn from the fae about agriculture, arts, diplomacy, folklore, and especially their unique ways of crafting minerals and?—"
Gods. Who knew this guy had such a hard-on for knowledge?
