He’d rather feel anything but his father’s bloodletting ring digging into the center of his arm, ripping through pale skin andflesh, nicking an artery enough that the blood started to flow hard, steadily, covering his chalk-white skin.
The magic began as his blood flowed on the stone.
Soon after, his father’s blood joined his.
Then the blood of the sacrifice, the wide-eyed unmagicked who lay on the stone. Three of them, a magic number, his father had said. Two adults and their child.
Each cut was worse. The child was so much worse.
He watched, paralyzed, followed his father’s hands in their intricate movements. He stared at the circle his father drew painstakingly with green powder and flame, the circle in which he encased all of them, forever bonded in blood and horror and pain. An unbroken circle, the one he’d never escape. His father next began drawing hieroglyphics on his chest with the knife, followed by symbols Caelum didn’t know.
Malefic’s voice never stopped murmuring in the dark.
You are linked to me now, Caelum,he muttered angrily at one point, still casting sealing incantations under his breath.Does that settle this question for you finally? Will we stop with these pointless power struggles now?He spat words at him between spells.Do you finally see whose will is stronger, whelp? It is mine. Always mine.
Caelum choked.
He stared down at their mingled blood where it sparks, then ignites.
Blue flames surrounded them in seconds, fueled by Bones blood, by the blood of the unmagicked whose screams still echo behind his eyes.
This bond can never be broken,his father hissed coldly.If anything happens to me, it happens to you. If I die, you die. If you try to kill me with your magic, if you dare to attack me ever again, you insolent, ungrateful, disrespectful, uncivilizedanimal,to protect your mother or anyone else, it will be visitedupon you tenfold. I will take this wretched body for myself, and I will own it forever. I will take this magic, magic you do not deserve, did not earn, and I will use it in your stead. I will use this body to kill everyone you ever cared about. Including that disloyal cunt who spawned you, if you ever put her above me again––
Caelum choked, but couldn’t make any other sound.
He couldn’t move.
He breathed in the cold stone, stared into the darkness.
He lied there for so long, time lost all meaning. Days. Weeks. Months. He still didn’t know how long it had been, how close to death he’d been. His mother surely thought him dead. He didn’t remember being fed. He didn’t remember water. He remembered rats, insects, pain beyond anything he’d thought he could stand.
He fought to control his mind. He could do nothing else. He fought to keep some small portion of it his own. He needed it. He needed to know there was something, anything, that still belonged to him. He couldn’t be certain, even now.
Gods, he just wanted it to be over.
He wanted all of it to be over, to be––
“Cal!” A face hung over his.
He could still hear it. Thedrip, drip, dripof blood on the stone.
He smelled the burning flesh of his chest.
“Caelum!” the voice snapped. Someone shook him. He felt numb, like boneless meat. The face turned to look at someone else. “What should we do? Should we call someone?”
“Who?” another voice asked. “It’s four o’clock in the morning. Do you think we should carry him to the hospital wing? Wake one of the teachers?”
A third voice asked, “What were you doing, when he passed out?”
Caelum blinked, tried to focus his eyes, to stare upward.
He didn’t immediately know the face that hung closest to his. His hand shot out without thought. His magic uncoiled, boiling hot in his chest. He didn’t remember moving, or making the decision. He blinked, and then he had him.
He gripped the dark-haired boy by the throat.
“Bones!Eye of Ra!Get him off!” The words choked off.
Panic. Sheer panic. Another voice, another set of hands.
