Her ill health pushed the marriage further away until Evrett, eager to go on the expedition, decided to wed Tonio and me after the festival and its enormous aftershow party. He didn’t put it on hold anymore because of Claire.
Over the week, I copied as much as I could from Vanna’s grimoire. It was full of rituals and correspondences like ‘Rosemary - purity. Chamomile - peace’ and her personal diary entries. I stumbled upon an incomplete chapter.
She wrote three pages about something she called the dead element. ‘Dangerous’ was splashed across the pages alongside my grandfather’s name. The way she explained the dead element was similar to my experience when I walked around in the woods or descended to the Underworld. The most prominent sign was the throbbing vibration.
Veymor had appeared twice since then, telling me to hand over the grimoire but I couldn’t let him have it and lied that I needed more time to copy it.
Meanwhile, I planned my escape by clearing the safe, returning the books, reading new ones as fast as I could and buying a map from a retired Captain I’d met at the harbour. I walked past him every day while searching for Deg’s ship.
He stopped me and asked if I was an adventurer or just a stranded Southerner, unable to find home. I told him I was both.
“Me lads and I, were in constant motion, just like ye,” he said and offered to give me a compass, a tool that would help me navigate if I came to chat with him the next time. He reminded me of my grandfather, or the illusion of him, more than my own grandfather did.
Dead element, power and most of all, dangerous. I could not figure out what he was trying to do with it but my gut ached when I thought it over. What if he learned to locate the Underworld and collected its potent particles?
Impossible.
If Magicians conjured light, what would Gerogy be able to form out of dead energy? The speculations scared me and I had to acknowledge that he was using me. I would not allow it to go on any further. There was no future where I would hand over the grimoire voluntarily.
On the day of the festival, I washed the chalk off the floor and packed my belongings into a bigger bag. My plan was to disappear after the party, while everyone else slept. I stuffed the grimoire between pieces of clothing, ready to betray my God once again while reassuring myself that I was doing the right thing.
Afterwards, I joined the tents in front of the night tower and took part in the show Bloum had coordinated for the new students.
Elvora’s neck burned red when Tonio announced our engagement during the presentation of our own potion. The teaching staff praised us for brewing a liquid that would power Tonio’s heavy bike. That way it could drive on its own.
Soon after, engineers approached him but he rejected every offer and declared it as sold, exclusively, to the Amari forge.
“You won’t get away with this,” Elvora whispered into my neck, “no matter how strongly you bewitched him.”
I was no longer scared of revealing my witchiness. I was a Volkov, and soon wife to one of the most influential males of Roness—if I stayed that is. Getting rid of a merchant’s daughter would be a minor inconvenience for a woman in my position. She allowed herself to behave like a child because she knew of her political immunity. The day neared, she seemed to forget, when her position would not be enough to outweigh her tantrums.
This semester, Tonio and I sat in the first row again, watching the athletes compete, and I missed the cheerful flapping of Claire’s arms.
After another victorious race, Bryon offered me a ride to the manor while he was still a panther. Tonio and Kress took the bike.
“I won’t forgive myself,” Tonio said, “if something happens to you, because of that machinery.”
The three of them had worked many years building the skeleton of the bike, unsure of how to power it. Until the liquid fuel came to be, the radiation of magic was their main lead. The power of magical products, like light orbs, differed with every new creation. The generator would either explode or not start at all. Also, you had to have a high-grade Magician at hand to conjure fuel, which would be necessary every other hour. Altogether the concept flopped until Evrett revolutionised their thought with the comparison between machines and a human body, that is ‘often fueled by medicine’. We distilled explosive potions many times, before regulating it into a recipe.
The first machine fuel.
Bryon brought me into Claire’s room where she slept hugging a pillow. He shifted back to his human form and laid himself beside her, combing through her hair. “She’s really attached to you,” he said.
“Not as much as to you.”
Bryon laughed out loud. “First time I’ve seen her since she ended things, because of you, I think.”
“Not because of Kress?”
He laughed again and shook his head but silenced himself quickly. “You don’t know? He’s the one who made me visit her.”
“But why? It doesn’t make sense,” I said.
“He doesn’t like girls. He thought Claire would run off to Fellis if she’s not satisfied. You came along and he accepted it, too.”
“Doesn’t matter now,” I said, “tomorrow she will be my sister.”
“You don’t have to see things as black and white all the time. You know, sometimes, there’s grey.”
It would’ve been fun to get dressed up with her, put warpaint around my eyes and colour our lips, to laugh and fall in love again. There it was again, ‘love’. I forgave them.
That’s how the inner circle operated. Cold-blooded, with nothing but agreements and profit in sight. I was more of an outsider now than on the first day in Roness. It wasn’t my world and nothing would be
