Chapter 23

H e didn’t ask her to come to him again. It might have bothered her, except that by the third day in Den’olm, she was exhausted, often skimping on dinner if it meant that many more minutes saved for sleep. Zhenya and she managed a few words morning and night before seeking their respective beds or stumbling out the door. They never mentioned each other’s absences on the first night of the trip, and soon after, the sheer amount of work drove such trifling thoughts from Dae’s mind.

Their two weeks went in a flash, and, at least for Dae, it felt as if precious little progress was made. She crouched at the edge of a tainted patch of ground, digging in her bag for her notes to record the last measurements for this experiment-in-progress. The soil had already been purified once with fire, rows of wards sticking up like planting stakes at staggered intervals, each testing her enchantments for delayed release ice spells.

Resting an ungloved hand against the ground, she summoned magic into her fingertips, pulling on water from the nearby well to augment her waning energy. Only two full days left before she would have to pack up and return to the Valley, her research notebooks filled with pages upon pages of things that hadn’t worked. It was to be expected, Dae knew it, but she’d hoped that being in Rhell would provide an extra insight she had been missing at the university. Wishful thinking.

The tract of land she was using for her test bore the signature of Ezzyn’s magic, so familiar to her senses. She saw him every day, yet it felt like she spent more time with this phantom of him than the real man. The intensity Garethe had warned of all but consumed Ezzyn. He had to be reminded to eat, to rest. To relinquish a modicum of control because—though he tried—he couldn’t be everywhere at once. Especially not with the Sylveren group in residence, expanding the Den’olm mages’ reach. They’d managed to push the poison back to the safety threshold for the wells, but the fresh ground and its protections were too new to know if they would hold.

Ezzyn seemed intent on maintaining the line even if it killed him.

“You know we’re going back to the Valley in a few days, yes?” she’d said to him that morning. “Let the others get used to placing the protection spells.”

He’d ignored her.

At the edges of her senses, Dae felt tendrils of the poison dribbling back into the fire-cleansed land. It had only been a day since Ezzyn had cleared this stretch, too soon for any of the grovetenders’ plants to root and withstand another sweep of either fire or ice. Her ward had failed.

Sending her magic out, Dae latched onto the droplet-like grains of poison, the feel of them finally coming readily to mind. With the already cold ground, freezing the poison went quickly when she didn’t have plants or sensitive magical works to cast around. A bittersweet boon. Tired after successive, draining days, her spellwork was sloppy, the targeting spell bleeding out into what she’d normally consider an unacceptable amount of clean soil. A problem for another day.

Moving down her row of wards, each bearing different versions of her ice enchantment, Dae recorded the results. So far, none had managed to deploy her targeted icing spells in the way she’d envisioned. Too slow, or weak, or with improper range. Sometimes all three, sometimes simply a dud of an enchant.

The few water spells she’d managed to layer into wards hadn’t fared much better, either flooding the soil until the spell gave out, or attacking her icework until it melted, freeing the poison granules back into the earth.

Grim-faced, she went down the row, reaching the second-to-last batch with her pencil already tracing the letters for failure, the only questions left being how much and in which ways. Yet, the results here were different. One ward sent out gentle pulses of cold, a light breath of her magic spreading outward in a circle. Enlarged, ice-encrusted grains of poison dotted the surface, flushed to the surface by her water spell.

Dae stared. Her layered spells had worked. Had frozen the poison with minimal bleed into the surroundings. Targeted the poison first for ice, then for the flooding enchantment to float only the poison up through the soil to the top. The grains were tiny, visible because she knew what to look for, and even then she relied on the ice flashing as it caught the weak sunlight. The spread was only a fraction of what the ward should’ve covered, so minimal that Ezzyn’s slow-release fire ward caught only a smidgen of her successful zone.

But it had worked. Only one, but it had worked. Dae would need to refine the spells from the ground up, improve timeframes, get the ward to reproduce the effect with consistency … so many things before she could actually call it a true success.

Heat brushed across the ground. Dae turned to find Ezzyn doing his sweep, incinerating the ground with the failed wards.

“Ezzyn!” Dae ushered him closer, pointing at his fire ward allocated to her current zone. “That one. Boost that one.”

He frowned, light flickering in his hand as he fed the dwindling ward. “Why am I—” His brows went up. Light flared at the base of the ward, crackles intermittently heard as fire magic zipped across the ground, searing Dae’s ice.

“Flame snuffing … fuck.” He turned to her, shock on his face. “It…”

“Worked,” Dae said, a giddy exhale suffusing the word.

“Can you make more?” Ezzyn clutched her shoulders.

“There’s still so much—”

“Can you? Do you have any left?”

“Y-Yes, but it’s not reliable. This is the only one that—”

“It doesn’t matter.” Ezzyn let go of her and surveyed the rest of the field. “I’ll clear the southern quadrant. Meet me there once you’ve finished this section.”

He went back to the ward, walking over for closer inspection.

Dae glanced at the sky. Late afternoon already, darkness approaching despite the winter sun they’d enjoyed. Given how intensely focused Ezzyn was of late, she didn’t bother arguing. In Den’olm, unless confronted with physical evidence, it was difficult to convince him of anything contrary to what he’d already decided to obsess over.

A quick check of her final variations of wards revealed more failures, mostly of her ice and flooding spells attacking one another. Probably an error in her layering spellwork, but she could get Zhenya to help her with fixes later. Dae’s sole properly functioning ward used inscription techniques that she’d picked more for time-saving than belief in their viability. There wasn’t time to refine testing of them now since Dae was rubbish at inscription work, but she made a few notes before collecting fresh wards from the field tent.

She rushed the enchanting, figuring since it was more to test the basics of her ice spells and dial in Ezzyn’s magic in seeking out the iced poison that it wouldn’t matter. Precise timing and range could be experimented with by the Den’olm mages.

Garethe stuck his head in the tent. “Anadae, have you seen Ezzyn?”

“He’s out in the field. I was just going to meet him.” Dae held up a ward, a tentative smile on her face. “I think we might’ve finally had a bit of luck.”

“That’s great news,” Garethe said, looking back over his shoulder. “Tell Ezzyn to get to the main hall. The Restorers are already arriving, and he’s late.”

Garethe disappeared before Dae could respond. Disquieted, she gathered her slapdash wards and went to the south quadrant.

He wasn’t there. She checked the rest of the zone, but the trials there hadn’t yet been refreshed. When she asked the researchers assigned to the area, no one had seen him. Dae backtracked, but he hadn’t returned to the tent. Perhaps Garethe had found him. Ezzyn hadn’t mentioned a meeting or any “Restorers” coming to Rhell. Odd, seeing how dutybound he felt about his homeland, but he rarely said anything that wasn’t directly related to an experiment these days.

Thinking she’d take a final look at her last batch for the trial before writing up thorough notes, Dae went back to her test area. At the far end of the row—the opposite end of town from where he’d said to meet—Ezzyn sat in the dirt, surrounded by a pile of spent wards. She sighed, trying to expel her exasperation before she reached him. It was a good thing they were leaving soon. Ezzyn was focused at Sylveren, but not obsessively so as he was here.

“What are you—” Dae’s step faltered as she caught sight of his hands. “Ezzyn, stop!”

Lost in his task, he gave no sign of hearing. His skin had an ashen quality to it despite the light flaring from his hands. Through that light, Dae spied a trickle of red as his skin cracked.

Dae knelt in front of him, gingerly taking his face between her hands. “Ezzyn. You’ve got to stop.”

“I can’t,” he mumbled even as his magic stuttered and went out. He blinked. “Where are your wards?”

“I left them with the team at the south quad. They’re not ready. I’ll work on them more at Sylveren. I want to consult—”

“No! We need them now.” He shook out of her hold. “Shit. I need to check the south—”

“You need to rest. Your hands…” Dae plucked at his sleeve. Cracks spidered across the backs of his hands, trailing bloody lines. “You’re going to kill yourself if you don’t—”

“It doesn’t matter. My hands are fine.”

He’s exhausted. He doesn’t mean it. The flippancy of his words unnerved her. Dae ignored the sense of dread curdling beneath her skin. Tempers were running high all over camp. Ezzyn’s shortness was natural. “Garethe is looking for you. Something about Restorers?”

Ezzyn groaned. “It’s that godscursed Rhell Accord.” He scrubbed at his eyes with a dirty sleeve. “Can you refresh the spells on your wards? I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Dae bit back a sigh. They’d achieved a small, small success. A glimmer of hope that containment was within reach, and if they could secure that, then a resurgence in belief of a cure would follow. But she’d lost some of the heady excitement from that night at the lake. Grown out of her naivete, at least a little. So many questions now shaped her enthusiasm. How to power the wards, how to draw on water to feed the spells long-term without desertification, how to afford everything.

“There you are.”

They looked up to find King Jeron striding toward them. Dae scrambled to her feet and bowed. “Your Majesty.”

He gave her a stiff, distracted nod. “The formality isn’t necessary, miss…?”

“Helm. Anadae Helm, Your—er, sir.”

Recognition dawned on the king’s face. “You’re the one Ezzyn’s been talking about.”

“I—” Dae hesitated.

Jeron had already moved on, tugging Ezzyn to his feet, grimacing at his condition. “Swear on the gods, you’re worse than Gaz. The investors are here.”

They bustled off, Dae trailing in their wake. Several new carriages had arrived, all stationed around Den’olm’s meager town hall. They were not simple supply caravans, nor were most of them in the sleek, trim lines of Rhellian design, but the larger, elegant vehicles favored in Grae Port.

A group of mostly Graelynders were gathering outside the hall. Jeron went to them after shoving Ezzyn in the direction of the menders’ tent. He gestured for the group to make their way into the building, voice too low for Dae to hear more than vague noise at her distance.

Before she could go toward her temporary lodging, a voice caught her ear. One tinged with familiarity, her name followed by a too-charming laugh, helped by its tendency to carry.

Dae turned around. She knew that dark blond head, the beard. His voice.

“Anadae!” Brint Avenor waved at her, nudging his companion, an older woman of Radiant Isles descent dressed in the work robes favored at Sylveren. Dae’s hand spasmed in a semblance of acknowledgment. Brint exchanged a few words with the Radiant Isles woman that Dae couldn’t hear before strolling toward her.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, voice low.

“Avenor Guard is always open to expanding our horizons,” Brint said. He leaned in to hug her. If he noticed how she stiffened in surprise, he didn’t show it. “Father has a lot of friends involved with the Restorers.”

She supposed that could be true, though his silky reply about the company’s business interests didn’t match her recollection. They were a security company, and while Dae knew protection needs were evergreen, Brint had always resisted her suggestions for involvement in Rhell.

“Avenor, are you coming?”

Turning to face the speaker, Brint’s arm went around Dae’s shoulders as he gestured with his other hand. “Seleste! You remember by old friend, Ana Helm?”

A blond woman in an immaculate dress cut in the long, full-skirt fashion of Central District nodded. “Miss Helm.”

“Anadae’s fine,” Dae mumbled.

“We should go inside,” Seleste said. “Depending on the terms of the Accord, I should like to speak with you both later about outfitting for our transports.”

“Excellent,” Brint said. “I’ll catch up with you later, Ana.”

Dae stood there, poleaxed, as Brint waved again before following the others into the hall.