I remain quiet and still in the face of this revelation. “When did it first happen?”
“Back at the fae castle. I woke up with these claws and then discovered I could put them away. I told myself I wouldn’t use them.” He looks away, his hair falling across his face the way he used to hide his wolf’s features. “I don’t want to be a beast anymore.”
My heart hurts. “Did I do this to you when I removed the device?”
He nods. “You must have. I couldn’t control my wolf’s features before that.”
I remember my thoughts in the moment before I pulled the mechanism from his heart. I’d commanded the remaining metal to come away and leave him whole.
I could have ripped the wolf from him, but I didn’t.
I’d asked for wholeness.
I consider the tree now standing to my left and all the branches and sapphire leaves, how strong and healthy they are.
Creation is in my bones.
Fight the old and find the new.
That impulse… Was it mine all along?
“I’m not afraid of what you can do,” I say. “You have a choice now. Freedom to use your strengths when you want to. Or not.”
“You gave me freedom,” he says quietly. “What I wanted for you, you’ve given to me.”
When he remains where he is, I hold out my hand to him. “Don’t stay away from me, Erik.”
He approaches slowly, dropping to a kneeling position beside me. His clothing is torn in places, but like me, his wounds appear shallow.
As he lowers himself down, he extends his right hand and unfurls his fist.
Another titanium device rests in it.
“I ripped this from the bear’s heart,” he says.
First, I press my hand to his cheek, reaffirming what I said. He closes his eyes briefly and accepts my touch.
Then I focus on the bloody mechanism in his palm.
It’s like the one I pulled from his chest to the extent that it has many finely-crafted parts, but instead of wolf heads, it’s in the shape of bear heads facing each other.
Like the device from Erik’s heart, this one has become dull, its energy depleted. Lifeless metal now.
“Another device,” he says. “Styled differently. More intricate. Certainly a different Blacksmith’s work.”
If I weren’t so horrified at what the device achieved, I’d have to admire the skill it would have taken to create it.
“The bear absorbed my power and created more energy from it,” I say. “It was like pouring water onto a thirsty plant.”
I shiver a little. When Erik was dying, I avoided using my raw power on him, but now I wonder… Would he have reacted the same way the bear did? Would my magic have fed the darkness of the device embedded in his heart?
I’ll never know.
Erik nods. “This particular design must have also allowed the bear to stifle its heartbeat and breathing. I didn’t detect its presence until it rose up from the snow.”
I nod. He would have warned me otherwise. “There must have been a device like this in the tree, too.”
Judging by the design—a bear design for a monstrous bear, just as the device in Erik’s heart was a wolf—I wonder if the device within the tree is in the shape of a spider.
