XII

T he court was in uproar.

Raphael had never seen such fevered activity among the supernatural factions. Every household, pack, and rag-tag alliance or group was making moves to advance themselves and tear down others. Seldom few chose to sit back and let the dice fall where they may in the aftermath of the Veles infraction.

The legion of demons was, of course, one of them, but in a far different way than the others.

They fed off the chaos like an all you could eat buffet. Raphael wished to partake, but it wouldn't earn him any points with Jax. As it stood, it had taken him the better part of three nights to spend time with him. He wasn't about to jinx his luck.

"Didn't you just pour that in?"

Jax's bowed head lifted at Raphael's inquiry, but his hands didn't stop their work. "No, this is—" Jax examined the bulbous bottle in his hand. His eyebrows scrunched together. " Literally what I just put in."

With a sigh, he placed the bottle off to the side and pinched the bridge of his nose.

Raphael hopped off the table he'd claimed as his own months ago. It gave him a perfect view of Jax at work and wasn't nearly as cluttered as the rest of his laboratory. Raphael gave a cursory look across the room, taking in the mountain of shelves filled with ingredients he couldn't begin to pronounce and the constant simmering of potions and tonics.

"Drink?" Jax asked hopefully.

"Always."

They moved to the curio cabinet nestled in the corner of the room, where he accepted a tumbler of Scotch from Jax.

"So, are you ever going to get this place cleaned? A dormouse or two would make quick work of this mess."

"This," Jax stated with a twist of his wrist, "is not a mess. It's organized chaos."

"Something purple is growing over there on the mantle," Raphael countered. "It's a mess."

Though he kept his tone friendly, the clutter made his stomach twist in disgust. He despised the messiness Jax so often worked in. It brought back too many memories of filthy junkie houses he'd pull his mum out of, and toward the end, his own home.

"I've been busy." Jax huffed before taking a sip of Scotch.

Raphael smirked. "No rest for the wicked, ay?"

A gruff laugh met his comment, and then Jax's shoulders sank. The beginnings of a frown lined his forehead. "How am I supposed to reverse Irina's curse if Jakob refuses to let me use my magic to its full potential?"

"Because acknowledging your power would be sacrilege to the vampyré elite and jeopardize their precious hierarchy." Raphael snorted and continued unthinkingly. "The last sorcerer with even an ounce of your power was the one who created vampyrés in the first place—"

Raphael stopped himself abruptly and took a long drag of his drink. Too far , he scolded himself. There's a difference between stroking an ego and fostering a super villain complex .

"No, it's not that." The corners of Jax's mouth pulled down as they usually did when he was in deep concentration. "He doesn't trust me."

Raphael sent a prayer to his Lord as relief swept through his system. This again .

"You say that, but I fail to see—"

Jax let out a short growl of frustration. "Nobody can! Except for me . Every exchange between us there's an undertone of cynicism and little references to the past." Jax ran a hand through his hair. His eye closed, jaw clenching in tandem with a grimace. "My entire life, I've given everything I am to the Vranas. Happily, too.

"Jakob, Sebastian, and Ruby gave me a life beyond what I could have ever imagined for myself. They gave me a family when I had none. Gave me purpose when I was nothing more than an outcast and orphan." His eye opened and shone bright with pain. "Everything I have done has been in the name of our family and its advancement, but the one time I seek to elevate myself? The one time I dare reach for greatness to call my own?"

Glass and metal rattled in the wake of Jax's growing unrest. Raphael stifled the urge to acknowledge the shift in the room's energy. Jax's anger had been at a constant simmer these past few weeks. The culmination of failed attempt after failed attempt to reverse Irina's curse building on top of so many other annoyances and paranoia. Typically, those tended to revolve around his crumbling relationship with Ronan and the Vranas supposed mistrust in him.

However, Raphael guessed tonight's tipping point stemmed from a different reason. The recent official announcement plastered around all the hallways that the sorcerers' edict would remain in effect until year's end.

"—and how can they expect me to succeed in lifting Irina's curse, if Jakob forbids me from trying anything remotely close to what caused it in the first place?"

Raphael stiffened slightly as he tuned back into Jax's tirade. His cheeks were ruddy and red, and though the laboratory instruments were no longer rattling, Raphael knew he'd accidentally stumbled into dangerous territory. A territory he'd visited once before and had no desire to reenter. Especially because he wasn't prepared.

Months back when the trust between them had finally been established, Jax requested a favor: a sample of his blood.

Like any rational supernatural, he hadn't agreed immediately. Magic that involved blood was nothing to be trifled with, but he had eventually. After securing an enchanted knife that would spill the blood of another instead of his own from the tip of its dull blade. The blade reminded Raphael of some cheap magician's trick, but it worked as promised. Moreover, he "produced" enough blood to offer a small sample in front of Jax without raising any suspicion.

Jax's disappointment had been visceral after he tested Raphael's fake blood—and then came the rage.

He'd ruined half his laboratory equipment and nearly took down the walls. He couldn't comprehend that there was no demon blood to be found in Irina's, considering she carried partial powers of a demon of desire.

Raphael, on the other hand, had been thrilled, if not mildly scared, at the amount of power Jax had displayed. It had been his first means of sabotaging Jax's attempts to cure Irina, and it had been a smashing success. Jax had turned his search elsewhere, but now that he possessed the grimoire that he was convinced held the key to reversing Irina's curse…

Would he ask Raphael for another sample of his blood?

He didn't carry the blade on him anymore.

"Trying what exactly?" Raphael questioned softly, already preparing a myriad of excuses should Jax ask.

"Irina's curse is a mutation of the rabidus curse." Raphael nodded at Jax's carefully spoken explanation, waiting anxiously for the other shoe to drop. "And the rabidus curse was clearly a product of—"

"Dark magic," Raphael completed, catching onto Jax's train of thought before his eyes widened. He lowered his voice and leaned toward Jax. "You'd consider dabbling in dark magic?"

"Dark magic gets a bad reputation. Magic is magic. It's the wielder that people should be wary of." Jax shook his head once before setting down his glass and returning to his worktable. "Case in point: vampyrés. The very basis of their existence relies solely upon a magic they deem dark, blood magic. You don't see them being condemned. Hypocrites," he ended with a mutter Raphael almost didn't catch.

Raphael set down his glass as well and trailed after Jax. "It's not as if vampyrés can perform other magic," Raphael reasoned, walking around to the other side of the worktable.

"Can't they?" Jax rebutted. "If a vampyré bites you, you can become addicted to the pleasure of it."

"That's not what I meant. Vampyrés can't wield magic like a sorcerer or witch can. Neither can a shifter or even my kind. Yes, their bite is addictive, but besides that, what do they have? Their supernatural strength? Shifters and lycans can claim the same."

Jax glared at him.

"Whose side are you on?"

Raphael winked. "I'm the devil's advocate, mate."

Jax laid both his hands on the table and took a deep breath. "The point I'm trying to make is that every supernatural is wired for magic in some way. So why must one be deemed wrong above all others?" The flat of Jax's hand acted as a gavel to emphasize his point. Then that same hand rose to point a finger at Raphael. "It's not the magic; it's the person behind it and how they choose to use it."

"Then by your own logic, the magic you think you need to perform to reverse the curse isn't really dark at all." Their gazes met across the table and Raphael cocked an eyebrow. "Is it?"

Jax swallowed. "It isn't that simple."

"Why not? You only have Irina's best interest at heart."

"My views on magic aren't shared by my family." There was an odd finish to Jax's response. A hollowness that resonated like a lonely winter morning. Jax chuckled darkly beneath his breath and then he straightened, crossing his arms over his chest. "They aren't shared by anyone."

Raphael's gaze narrowed on Jax. "I wouldn't be so sure of that," he said. It was Jax's turn to raise an eyebrow in question, but Raphael didn't dare push the subject. It was better to let the sliver of insight sink and sit beneath his skin for a while. "My advice? Follow your instinct. Better that than continue letting all of them tell you what you can and can't do. You're better than that, mate.

"You shouldn't have to play by anyone else's rules other than your own. This is the Dark Court! You don't wait around for them to give you the go-ahead to do something—you reach out and take what's yours."

A half-hearted scowl pulled down Jax's features fueled by a tiredness that he couldn't quite keep out of his eye.

"It's not as if they're doing it out of malice. They want to keep me safe… and Jakob wants to keep Irina safe. He wouldn't risk her life for the sake of my beliefs toward dark magic." Jax's shoulders sank. "I doubt he'd place any of my beliefs above the family."

Raphael waited patiently for Jax to tear his gaze away from the tabletop and back to him. But with each passing second the task became more and more difficult. It was the first time Jax had voiced such doubts. Raphael couldn't let it go to waste, but how to play it?

He rearranged his expression into one of slight embarrassment when Jax's hazel eye finally drew up to him. "Er, I was actually talking about the sorcerer edict and the court as a whole's view on dark magic."

The color leached from Jax's face as he averted his gaze.

Got you.

Raphael was positive he could push Jax a little further away from the Vranas with a few casual sentences, and in the process, a little closer to the demons, but something held him back. A tightening in his own chest that squashed the high of victory. Guilt. Raphael cleared his throat to hide his internal stumble.

"So, what was that ingredient you were going to double-down on earlier?" Raphael snagged a random bottle from the desk, ignoring the noise of strangled distress that came from Jax as he manhandled it. "Draught of Cannon." He frowned and tilted the bottle this way and that, enticing further sounds of asphyxiation from Jax.

"Be careful," Jax demanded, snatching the bottle from him. "That will blow you to pieces if shaken too much."

"And you were going to put that in Irina's cure?"

"No," Jax huffed and shelved the bottle nearby with care. "It was for something else. What I almost doubled was the amount of Shepard's Tonic." At Raphael's bland look, Jax explained. "It's a tonic of my own making. Something to help anchor her through the transition back to what she was. Too much could potentially leave her comatose, too little and the pain would crush her from the inside out."

"Let me get this straight. This book—"

"Grimoire," Jax interrupted with a groan. "It's a grimoire , Raphael. Say it with me, grim- oire. "

Raphael smirked. It was a bit of a running joke between them, Raphael's refusal to call anything by its proper name, despite Jax's sometimes painfully long explanations. "This nifty book of spells you've got, told you to make your own potion—"

"Tonic."

"Whatever," Raphael said on the back of a laugh. "You're saying it told you to add something of your own to the mix? This gibberish?" He gestured toward the runes painted across the pages.

"Truth is, I can barely read this gibberish, as you so eloquently put it." The lighthearted atmosphere drained away with Jax's next sigh. "These runes have been coded somehow, meaning someone went to great lengths to keep its secrets hidden. I don't know if I can decipher it by the end of the month."

"You can," Raphael said firmly. And that's the problem .

The storm cloud that threatened to darken Jax's mood dissipated at Raphael's assertion. "Thanks," he said with a small smile. "It's good to know I have at least one person in my corner."

The tightness intensified around his chest.

Raphael opened his mouth to reply, but between one breath and the next, something plopped onto his shoulder. He froze, as did Jax. Shifting his gaze only to his shoulder, his upper lip curled to see a wad of slimy green trail down the front of his shirt.

" What. Is. That? "

"Oops." Jax's face flushed scarlet. "It would seem my enervo fungi has started to secrete."

"You're what fungi?" Disgust roiled through Raphael. "Never mind. I don't care. Just get it off."

"Just let me get a vial to collect—" Raphael's furious glare cut Jax off. "You know what? You're right. Best to just get it off."

Jax took up his walking cane and brandished it in Raphael's direction. No magic words were spoken, but a moment later, a puff of shimmering purple smoke emerged from the cane's end and sailed toward Raphael. It consumed the foreign substance upon contact accompanied by a discreet hissing noise.

"Much obliged," Raphael said through gritted teeth, inspecting his shirt for any lingering traces of fungi juice and thankfully finding none.

"You know, on second thought… it is a tad bit messy in here."

Jax turned his back to Raphael and rapped his cane against the floor once. A warm phantom breeze blew past him and then the laboratory came alive.

Bottles and vials flew overhead into their proper places. Workspaces cleared themselves of their miscellaneous tools and objects—ribbons of snakeskin, syringes, petals of Gods only knew kind of plant—to leave no distractions in the way of the distilling stations and bubbling cauldrons at work.

Raphael studied Jax prowling the alleys between workspaces calmly, sometimes waving a hand to redirect an object's path. When everything was tucked into its rightful place, all Raphael could do was stare in amazement. Another sorcerer would have had to keep up a constant stream of incantations and wand movement to oversee the task. Not Jax, who was smirking with all the smugness of the cat that got the cream.

Showoff is what Raphael meant to say. Instead came, "You're fucking incredible , mate." A blush stole onto Jax's cheek, but once the words were out, Raphael couldn't seem to stop. "You don't know what I'd give to have powers like yours."

"I can hardly take credit," Jax said. "It's all because of Anubis. He's a gracious God. I'm proud to call him my patron." Raphael held back surprise at Jax's humbleness.

"Gracious how?"

Jax paused his prowling. "I suppose the biggest would be that my magic isn't bound fully to a totem or magical instrument. I don't need my cane to perform magic, but it does provide extra strength and potency to the magic I do."

"And other sorcerers can't perform magic at all without their wands or staffs?"

Jax's shoulders lifted in a perfunctory shrug. "I've yet to meet one."

Curiosity buzzed through Raphael. They spoke of magic often, but mainly in the context of whatever potion Jax was working on. Everything else was surface level, partly because Jax associated so much of his magical education and progress to the Vranas' funding. But now that they were inching ever closer to the tipping point…

"How did you get your magic?" Raphael asked, leaning against the worktable. "Struck by lightning? Dipped into a magical river as a child, but you have weak ankles consequently?"

Jax snorted. "Nothing quite as dramatic as that I'm afraid. I just… I happened to catch a God's eye."

Raphael echoed the snorting noise, making sure to be louder. Jax's eye rolled heavenward. "You're right, it's hardly impressive or dramatic to catch the attention of a God." Jax chuckled. "So, what'd you do then?"

"I don't know. I've always chalked it up to chance. At the start of one summer, I was being bullied and tormented, and by the end, I was displaying small bursts of magic I couldn't comprehend or understand. Hell, half the time I wasn't even aware that the strange things happening were because of me.

"But there were times when I swear I felt it in the air. It was like this energy or vibration pulsing around me. Besides those moments, everyone else seemed to know I was different . The bullying stopped and everyone kept a wide berth from me."

"That's all? A chance of fate?" Jax smiled at Raphael's incredulous tone.

"For some sorcerers and sorceresses, yes, that's all it is. But for the majority, it has to do with proximity. If you're exposed to a sorcerer clan and allowed to prove your dedication, there's a higher chance the God or Goddess you worship will gift you with powers."

"But even then, it's not guaranteed?" Jax shook his head and Raphael let out a low whistle. "I think I would have shit myself as a boy if I'd discovered I could do magic." Jax's head tipped back with laughter, when he composed himself, he speared Raphael with a boyish grin.

"I think you would make a good sorcerer."

Raphael rolled his eyes. "I like being a demon." The look Jax shot him, told him he believed the opposite. "What? I was made to be bad."

"Keep telling yourself that, but when you get tired of how your entire kind spits in your face, I'll put in a good word with Jakob for you."

A tense silence blanketed them as their eyes met. Raphael knew by Jax's grimace he hadn't meant his words to come off so harsh. In fact, a part of Raphael felt grateful for the offer.

However, it was swiftly snuffed out by a fresh surge of guilt.

"I didn't mean—"

Raphael waved a hand dismissively at Jax and shoved away his growing conscience. "Don't worry about it. Same offer goes to you. Whenever you get tired of being jerked around by that golden leash you wear, I'll put in a good word with the demons. They might not like me, but they'd kill for the chance to work with the Jax Vrana."

For a seemingly endless moment, Raphael wondered if he'd gone too far as a new silence thickened the space between them. A cold sweat broke out onto the back of his neck as a ton of stones bottomed out his stomach. If I fail now, then —

Jax's weak chuckle interrupted Raphael's spiraling thoughts. "I suppose we're at a stalemate then." Jax sighed and looked at his worktable. Cleared now of all its miscellaneous tools, only the grimoire and the small cauldron he'd been measuring ingredients into remained. "I need to get back to it."

Raphael eyes followed Jax as trudged about to grab this ingredient and that before rejoining him at the table.

"Will you try using dark magic? For Irina's sake?"

Jax didn't speak right away. When he did, it was in a low, defeated voice Raphael was unused to hearing. He shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot.

"I'm tempted," Jax confessed. "More and more each passing night. It makes sense that dark magic would be the key, but I don't even know where to begin. I already feel like I'm wasting time trying to decipher this, and my stock of ingredients isn't endless."

"Looks to me like you're fine in the ingredients department. Need I remind you of your leaky spore?"

Jax huffed. "Half the ingredients in here are rare and extremely difficult to come by."

"I fail to see what possible good could come from adding bats wings to any potion or otherwise." Raphael's nose scrunched and he studied one of the nearby shelves. "Lunaria? Hmm, is it bottled up moonlight?" He picked it up and gave it an experimental shake, but all he heard was a gentle rustle of something .

A smile was already tipping Jax's lips up. "No, not bottled moonlight. It can be made into a tea to extract the truth. It also happens to be the name of someone quite special to me."

Jax went quiet suddenly, and his lips pulled down.

"Are you all rig—"

"Shut up," Jax snapped and held out a hand. Raphael froze in shock. "Sorry," Jax rushed on to say, "but please, just, be quiet. I think… I think I have something." Ice ran through Raphael's veins, and for a flicker of a second, his fear slipped past his carefree facade. " Gods ," Jax went on, sounding breathless. "I can't believe how stupid I've been. It's been in front of me all along."

Raphael took a wary step toward him, steeling his expression to convey one of eagerness instead of dread.

"Go on then," he encouraged. "What is it?"

"My eye. My powers." Jax laughed with a dazed and astonished look painted across his face. "Lunaria! I've been such a fool searching for answers in here—" he gestured to the grimoire "—when I've had it all along."

"Still lost here, mate."

"Right, er." Jax ran a hand through his hair, coaxing the strands to shoot off every which way. "Did I ever tell you how I lost my eye?"

"No." Raphael stopped his approach as Jax took up pacing.

"About twenty years ago, give or take a year, I was sent to help Irina's pack stateside. They were engaged in a standoff with a rival pack, and war was imminent. They hoped I could help tip the odds in their favor and lessen what bloodshed might occur."

"Did it?"

Jax's gait staggered slightly. The small hiccup was the only indication of something amiss. "Not at all, as it would happen. I was taken, along with a fairy—"

"A fairy ?" Raphael perked up, but Jax sent him a swift glare that sent his lips sealing shut.

"Yes, a fairy and a lycan, by the rival camp which just so happened to be working with a clan known as the Stormrow's. A clan which I'd also infiltrated previously. They were, as expected, ecstatic to see me and showed their love by taking my eye."

Raphael rocked back onto his heels. "Shit. That's awful, mate."

Jax looked away, his throat bobbing as he kept up his strict pacing. "While we were their prisoners, they devised a way to weaken us and siphon our power through an amulet. I can replicate the siphon and cure Irina. That's it. That's the answer."

This development was… unfortunate for Raphael. Of course, Jax would find a way around the grimoire to free Irina. Raphael needed to act fast, derail him from this path or at least learn what he was planning to do so he could sabotage it.

"That's great, but didn't you say it weakened you? You really want to leave Irina defenseless?"

The question brought Jax to a halt for a moment, but then he was shaking his head and moving with renewed purpose around the laboratory. He began to gather ingredients in his arms.

"I'll modify it," he said confidently. "It will take some balancing and testing… but if this works, then maybe, maybe , I can fix what's broken between us."

Raphael's gaze sharpened. "Between whom?"

Jax startled, almost dropping half the load in his arms as he refocused on Raphael. "No one," he rushed to reassure with a false grin. "I meant fix Irina. This is it, I know it, Raphael, I can feel it in my bones."

Raphael pasted on his own smile as Jax emptied his treasures onto the worktable and made a second lap around the lab. He worried it was the answer, too.