Page 106 of Arcane Entanglement

“Yes. I found something like this next to your father!”

Viggo stiffened beside him. “What the—there’s a second one?!”

Evander followed his gaze to a sketch on the ground next to William.

It showed an object in the shape of a pocket watch, its edges covered in intricate engravings that made up complex runes. Two vials sat in the centre of the device, amidst a web of delicate gears and springs.

A buzzing sounded in Evander’s ears.

“William, did your father write down the design of those two vials and the purpose of the artefact?” he heard himself say from a distance.

“Yes, I think I saw something scribbled down somewhere in his latest notes.” William searched his father’s paperwork. “Here it is!” He snatched up a page. “Father wrote ‘I believe they intend to use the red vial to absorb and store the raw life force…of…magicless individuals.’” He faltered, face turning ashen. “‘The blue vial—’” He stopped and swallowed hard.

Evander’s heart thumped painfully against his ribs as he took the note from William’s shaking hand and finished reading out what he could not.

“‘The blue vial, being a stabiliser and refiner of energy, will turn the accumulated life force into a more potent, stable form’,” he quoted numbly. “‘I think their true purpose is to make the device act as a reservoir of life energy that can fuel and augment magic. This would theoretically allow mages to grow their powers and have an almost infinite source of magic at hand to draw upon.’”

Rufus finished reading the rest as Evander lapsed into silence.

“‘The device is fashioned in such a way that both the absorbing and the stabilising components are essential for it to function as it should’,” the inspector mumbled in a voice full of horror.“‘Without the stabiliser, theBlood Siphonwill be dangerously unstable and prone to exploding’.”

The curse that left Viggo turned the air blue and made them jump.

“That bastard Renwick is planning to use this thing on thralls?!” he snarled, face dark with fury.

Evander clenched his jaw. Considering dark mages’ agenda as a whole, that fact did not surprise him.

Still, a crime of this magnitude would go beyond what the War of Subjugation intended to accomplish. This won’t just be genocide. This will be the mass extermination of an entire race of humans!

He stared at the note in his hand, blood pounding dully in his skull.

Alastair Millbrook’s final actions on the night he died had just become blindingly apparent. The blue vial had not ended up in the alley accidentally. He’d removed it from theBlood Siphonlikely moments before Caine Renwick had broken into his workshop to collect the device and kill him.

William sagged, his face slack with disbelief. “Did my father really make such an awful invention?!” He stared unseeingly at Evander and his companions, as if begging for anyone to tell him he was wrong.

Evander faltered. “I don’t think that was his intention. I believe once he realised what it was he’d created, it was already too late.”

Rufus placed a gentle hand on William’s shoulder. “Part of his motives for completing this project may very well have been to protect you and your mother.”

Evander dipped his head in agreement. “Besides, he said he’d started making a countermeasure.”

“Is this it?” Viggo said in a hard voice.

They turned.

The Brute had uncovered the cloth-wrapped bundle in the box. A half-finished pocket watch sat in his palm, metal gleaming in the bright rays piercing the overhead canopy.

The pocket watch on Millbrook’s workbench flashed before Evander’s eyes.

Was that one a prototype?!

William unfroze and hastily shuffled the diagrams and notes scattered around him. His expression turned triumphant.

“This is it.” He showed them another schematic, this one a mirror image of the incomplete artefact Viggo held. “This is what he was making.” His fingers traced the diagram and the matching notes, his lips moving silently as he deciphered the complex engineering language. His face brightened, relief rendering him weak. “It says here this artefact could cancel out the effects of theBlood Siphon.”

The ramifications of everything they had uncovered in the glade made Evander’s head fairly spin.

“By the way, how come you can read those drawings?” Viggo asked William.