Chapter 15

There was once a candlemaker so arrogant that he used his knowledge of alchemy to trap a traveling god, a servant of Death. After taunting the winged god, the alchemist demanded a boon in exchange for the god's freedom. The alchemist would be given his weight in gold, and only then would the god be set free to return to his travels. Caring less about his own freedom than about the harm to his pride, the god transformed the candlemaker into a figure of solid gold, using his own alchemy against him. There the candlemaker's soul remains to this day, trapped inside his tomb of treasure, never to enter the Nothing. But so too did the god remain trapped, confined to the old candlemaker's shop until the candlemaker's humble son came looking for his father . . .

-Hecate's Guide to Arcane Philosophy

Rorick

F lying was nothing like riding a bicycle, as I had told myself in an effort to raise my confidence. Once I'd stretched the stiffness out of my wings, I found them significantly more responsive to my commands. Getting off the ground wasn't difficult. The magic that fueled them responded to my wishes. I took a few short glides up the road by myself. My landing on my return was rocky. I hit the ground and rolled forward into the gutter, knocking my bowler from my head, splattering my coat and trousers with muddy snow.

Quiet absorbed the wet muck off my clothing into her wand, then shot the mess down the sewage drain. My second attempt went better.

The third was nearly perfect. I didn't have the best control upon landing, but I was confident I could slow enough to set Quiet down safely before finding a snowbank to glide into. I scooped her into my arms and lifted us into the air.

"Rorick," Quiet said after a time, as we passed over Main Street, headed for the wilds.

"Yes, love?" I peeked at her, not wanting to take my eyes off the path before me.

"You could fly us a bit higher," she said pragmatically. "And a bit faster as well. You know, so my dress stops dragging the ground and we reach the castle before the next century."

"What are you going on about?" I demanded, concentrating very hard on the road before us. The buildings all felt too close to me with my feet off the ground. "This is a respectable speed."

"For a giant old tortoise, maybe."

I shot her a glare out of the corner of my eye. The rest of my attention was on the brownstone on our right. I didn't want to veer into it suddenly.

"Darling," she said, softening, "at this rate, we could walk there faster."

"If you're worried about the sun, we'll make it to Eckert in plenty of time. I'm not going to drop you from the sky."

Quiet snorted at that. "The sky?" she said, glancing down at the road just beneath us. "What's the worst that could happen to me this close to the ground? I suppose I could roll my ankle. And what of the geds? They won't be able to see your wings. They'll just think their duke is bobbing about out here. Let's refrain from becoming a spectacle."

"The geds have seen far stranger than me. Goading me into flying faster won't work." My jaw set. I clutched her to my chest, absorbing the warmth of her body through the wool of my coat.

"Chicken-heart," she teased, a secret smile in the corner of her mouth.

"Say that again and I'll set you down and make you hike the rest of the way," I retorted playfully.

"Go on, then. I'll race you." Her breath misted before my eyes. "And beat you at a steady walking pace," she added.

I gritted my fangs at her, refusing to take my eyes off the buildings that were getting too close.

"Oh, perhaps you're right," she said. "Teasing you isn't the correct tactic."

"What are you up to now?" I peered at her, full of suspicion.

She leaned in close. "You're doing so well, being in charge, perhaps I think you deserve a reward, too," she whispered sweetly. She slid her hand inside my coat, thumbing open the buttons at the top of my shirt. Her palm against my bare chest was balmy and inviting. "You should get me out of this cold before I turn into an icicle and am in no fit state to warm you."

Launching us higher into the air, I pumped my wings at a rapid pace, the steady thump of them reminding me of the heavy beat of a large heart. I ignored the way my stomach dropped as we climbed higher faster, images of Quiet's long legs wrapped around my waist all the courage I needed.

* * *

The strange alchemical bread worked on me very differently to Hecate's tea. Small images, instincts, and thoughts simply appeared like they'd never been missing. On instinct alone, I flew straight over the flying buttresses of Castle Eckert, to the western wing where a balcony loomed like a set of sharp teeth made of gray stone. I lowered Quiet onto it with ease. My muscles and the tendons in my wings had remembered what my mind had forgotten while we flew.

Upon landing, my wings—which were made of the same ethereal magic specters used in their illusions—faded from my back. I rolled my shoulders, getting reaccustomed to the loss of their weight.

The frame of the glass balcony door had been heavily painted. It wasn't locked this high off the ground, but the paint made the latch stick. I forced it open. Quiet hurried inside the master bedroom, teeth chattering. I shut and locked the door behind me to keep out the gathering wind.

Her gift of blood continued to warm me. Though I was no fan of winter's chill, it wasn't dangerous for me the way it was for Quiet. I sprinted to the bed, jerked the comforter off the curtained four-poster, and wrapped her up in it.

"Ugh. Thank you," she breathed, drooping against a corner of the sizable mattress to rest.

She produced her wand, poking it out through a gap in her blanket and cloak, extending it toward the fireplace. A bright blue flame that reminded me of the backside of her lightning beetles jetted from the dagger end. It engulfed the wood in the grate and caught.

"Come now. You can do better," Quiet said to the fire in the same gentle tone she used to encourage her tiny assistants, and the flames grew.

Soon it was warm enough for me to remove my overcoat and roll my shirt sleeves up to my elbows.

Written in faded chalk in my handwriting was a message on the wall. A message to myself, I sensed. Death gave me wings .

I read it again and again until I believed that I understood it. I reached up, fingering the letters, smearing the bone dust chalk onto the pad of my middle digit.

"What are you thinking?" Quiet asked. Her nose and cheeks were still pink from the cold. Her braid was wind-whipped. Loose hairs pulled free of it to tangle along the contours of her face.

"I'm thinking about why I wrote this." I stared through her at the four-poster she perched on. It had once been transformed into my sick bed. All those extra cushions had been added later. In my mind's eye, I watched concerned servants carrying them in one at a time to tuck behind me, trying to make me comfortable as I thrashed and whimpered.

Quiet glanced over her shoulder at the stacked pillows, trying to see what it was that I saw there.

"I was losing my mind," I said, my voice softening. "But I was desperately trying to keep it. Trying to remember. I chalked all sorts of things in a secret compartment across the wall here . . . and then I forgot how to access it . . . I started chalking nonsense across the walls instead, nonsense that Alex and Penance would erase."

I paced the length of the room, stopping beside an end table with a heavy pewter lantern. I tried to pick it up and couldn't. It had been secured to the wood somehow. I opened the glass front, sensing it was important.

I felt the magic that swirled about the lantern, covering my fingers in an invisible fog.

A click sounded and a segment of wall the length of my spread arms came loose and revolved, revealing a chalk board on the underside. The board was full of scattered equations and notes, some of which were nonsense.

"What is that ?" Quiet demanded excitedly, rising off the bed and scurrying to my side, the heavy comforter dragging behind her.

"Told you I'd give you math." I squinted at my work. Some of it was incoherent. My mind had been slipping, but some of it seemed less like nonsense . . . I'd scribbled important things. Hard-earned bits and pieces of my life's work right there so my ambitious nephew couldn't steal my mind from me completely.

"This . . . this is alchemy, isn't it?" she guessed, squinting at the rows of symbols.

"If you're worried, know that for most of my life I was more of a theorist than a practitioner," I said comfortingly.

Pulling the blanket up over her shoulders, she stared wide-eyed at my work. "Magnificent," Quiet said of my equations in a voice that wasn't all that different from the one she used when we were in bed together.

"Control yourself, woman." I grinned at her.

Quiet let the blanket slip from her shoulders. It pooled at her feet.

There was affection in her gray eyes. It sent a pang of fondness straight through my dead heart. I'd endured a great deal in my long life. I was only beginning to understand all that I'd gone through to get to this place, this moment with this woman.

A sinking sense of despair put a pit in my stomach, chasing away some of the warmth she inspired in me. According to Hecate, Quiet and I were doomed to be separated from each other, and I still had no idea how to stop it.

My face fell.

"Hey . . ." Quiet reached for me. "Where'd you go in that head of yours?"

There were too many things I could have said in response. They jumbled together on my tongue, overwhelming me until words just wouldn't do.

I took her in my arms instead, pushing fingers through her wind-swept hair. Her eyes searched mine, but she didn't pry. I pressed my lips to hers, claiming her mouth. She let me back her toward the bed. Removing her cloak, I added it to the discarded blanket on the floor.

She untucked my shirt from my trousers. I loosened the thong from around the bottom of her hair and freed the strands from her braid. Along the way, we unhooked fastenings and pulled loose laces until we were skin to skin at last and she was on the bed under me. Dark hair splayed across the linens, a shock of beautiful onyx against the white. There was heat and thunderous determination in her storm cloud eyes when they met mine.

I cupped her jaw in my hand. "There isn't anything I won't do to be with you. You know that, don't you?"

She hooked her long legs around my waist, tugging me closer. "I know that."

Her words rang with sincerity, but I sensed that this kind woman whom so many mistook for being difficult and contrite deeply underestimated exactly how far I'd go to make sure nothing—and no one—kept me from her. There was no limit. No line I wouldn't cross, no matter whom such transgressions might upset.

Even the gods.

Even her.

I scooted my knee up between her legs. She kissed me, rubbing her sex along my thigh until she was wet and whimpering. Holding her eyes, I slid between her legs and buried myself inside her with enough force to scoot her up the bed.

"Nothing I wouldn't do," I panted.

She clung to me, nails pricking gently down my back. "We'll stay together," she breathed.

The hope in her voice was intoxicating. "You promise? Where I go, you go, until we see this through?"

She started to nod her head, but my next thrust was ruthless. Pleasure bowed her back, and she cried out. Her body squeezed and fluttered around me.

"Promise," I demanded, driving in hard, granting her no reprieve. Overwhelmed by the threat that loomed around us, I needed desperately to fill her with all that I had to give.

"I promise," she gasped, running fingers reassuringly down my face and my throat, following the dips and grooves of my biceps. Her touch was a constant reminder that she was there, right there, still with me. Locked around my hips, her thighs tremored. "I promise you, Rorick. I'm not going anywhere you aren't."