“You have the gall to ask me that?” that voice hissed. “Do you think me a fool? Perhaps you think me as easy to manipulate as your ridiculous friends?”
“I don’t know what you––”
Another crack, and Bones gasped again.
“Your magic,” his father spat. “What did you do to keep me out of yourmagic,you sniveling, ungrateful, disobedient whelp? Why can I no longer access it?”
I realized I could feel Caelum, even now.
Some part of me must be straining for him, or connecting instinctively with that strange magic of his, but I felt his bewilderment at his father’s question, his confusion, as if from far away. I remembered his black, flaming, crystal primal, and closed my eyes. I reached for the sun that blazed over my head. Gripping my mother’s crystal tightly in my hand, I tried to see both things, to bring them closer together.
The sun burst out of the darkness first.
Tiny solar flares arced off the sides as it rotated grindingly in the aether. I focused my attention on Bones’s primal next, his real one, and, with seemingly no effort at all, the flaming, black, smoking crystal rose silently in the darkness. It sparked in front of me, entwined with the sun, as if somehow a part of my magic, too.
Something about that feeling closed my throat.
I felt him there, in the darkness, and a wave of protectiveness came over me, so intense I clenched my jaw, fighting to breathe.
I’d never felt anything like it, except maybe for my brother, and not really even then.
This was different somehow, in a way I couldn’t comprehend.
For a long-feeling few breaths, I just swam there, in that no-time space between him and me. I felt the vulnerability there, his inability to act for himself.
I didn’t understand it, but I felt it as real.
He couldn’t fight back. Hecouldn’t.
I fought to see why, but the reasons wouldn’t come clear. When I focused on his primal, I saw the sorcerer in the temple carving hieroglyphs in his chest, covered in another’s blood. I saw smoke swirl around him, heard the guttural chants ring in the air.
My eyes slowly refocused in the dark.
I found myself standing in the darkness again, trembling from the charge sparking over my skin, the green crystal clenched in my fist.
“Was it a ritual?” his father hissed. “Some kind of protection trinket one of your debauched friends found for you? I know it wasn’t Greythorne…”
There was a banging sound, then the sound of things falling, of glass shattering and other things breaking when they hit the stone. In my mind, I saw the looming form shove Bones into a table, or maybe his desk.
“How did you do it?” his father demanded viciously. “I was forced to go into the Sanctum Occulus without you last night, do you realize that? Do you have any idea what that could have meant? What was risked, in my being forced to accompany them without you? Do you understand, you ungrateful, irresponsiblechild,what the movement could have lost, had I been exposed, all because of you?”
My heart rose to my throat, choking me.
The Sanctum?
Had they taken Archie?
“We could not cancel,” he snarled next. “The plans were already in motion. Guards who changed the chimaera locks, who let us in… it would all be exposed, and we would miss our window. I had no recourse, and no way to reach you in time physically, so I had to operate the best I could. Several in our party werecaught,”he spat, his voice a growl. “They were pickedoff by the Sanctum Guard, and taken into custody. Do you have any idea what thismeans,you disobedient cur?”
“Sanctum Occulus?” Caelum spoke through gritted teeth, his voice hard. “I have no idea what you’re even talking about.Whatplans? I wasn’t aware I was supposed to be anywhere, or how I could havebeenanywhere, even if––”
“Silence! You traitorous little leech!” His father’s voice darkened in disgust. “You must think me a fool. I knew you would figure it out eventually, and obviously you have.” His words grew colder. “I would very much like to know howthatoccurred, too. Was it that needy little whore I found, sniffing around for you the other night? Is that how you pieced it together?”
There was a silence, and in it, I held my breath.
Caelum did know. He knew exactly what his father was talking about.
I felt the understanding there.
