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Not that me reiterating that to Vorzyr had helped any. It was the animal in him, that territorial and protective instinct rising up in regard to our Halo.

Kai was also feeling something similar, but his was rooted a lot more in concern than territorial instincts, because I knew he was now at ease with where we all stood with Ariana. Hefelther with him, with us. I’d seen it in him. And while Vorzyr had been responding with agitation, being in a piss-poor mood, and also earning a warning from Professor Halloway for bursts of aggression during his class, Kai had been expressing his uncomfortableness with the whole Cassius-Ariana training thing through entering one of hisobsessive states.

“Yes. Right there. More,” I heard him uttering from around the corner. “Don’t stop, V.”

The tone he was using really didn’t seem to match his words.

What was going on?

I found out for myself the moment I rounded the corner and saw him and Vorzyr standing near the corner. Kai was floating some white magic infused with blood, while Vorzyr’s red magical flame was attacking it. The blood was bubbling while the magic was dissipating, being basically annihilated by Vorzyr’s power.

“Wow, you’re doing it.Sowell,” I exclaimed.

Vorzyr maintained his streaming, while turning to give me a wink, then uttering, “Yeah, Kai being a relentless shit these last few days with his teachings finally paid off. Who knew?”

“Please,” Kai said. “We all know that me being arelentless shithas benefitted all four of us several times over.”

Vorzyr and I chuckled.

Kai eyed me. “I’m glad you’re back from Crossborn. You can resume working on the Celestial ward spell.”

Yeah, the former cloaking spell that we’d been trying to develop to keep Ariana off the radar of the Celestial Plane had now morphed to attempting to create a special ward that could repel both Celestial Plane interference and keep actual True Celestials from breaching it. Things had shifted now that we knew Cassius wasn’t the threat, and that there was very likely another True Celestial somewhere on this plane instead wielding Draco’s sword. According to Ariana’s intel that she’d obtained from Cassius, that monstrosity of a thing was actually calledValkrith.

Now we had Cassius’ blood—and yeah, Kai had actually stolen some of his magic in the process too—Kai believed it was more possible than ever to create the ward. It would just take a lot of trial and error, and a lot of finicky work that he didn’t have time to attend to, as he was working on so much else.

Training Vorzyr to wield his Primal Celestial Resonance properly and trying to unlock its full potential, determining how that Hellfire bomb device that had also been able to knock out the magic of everyone in its vicinity had been made, trying to create a failsafe weapon that could blow back any True Celestial except for Ariana, and also trying to figure out what thatmanufacturedCelestial magic that Ariana had mentioned could truly be,howit could be.”

He spun his right hand, his magic briefly sparking, and a glass vial materialized. He levitated it to Vorzyr. “Fill this upwith the essence of your Primal Celestial Resonance in its active state.”

“What? How do I do that?”

“Exactly as you are now, just without Cassius’ blood and power to fight and dominate.”

“All right,” Vorzyr said, shifting his weight, then beginning the process.

As he did, Kai strode to his large stone worktable where my equipment was laid out.

“Did you obtain any intel from Velra regarding Sorin? Now we know he’s her older brother, thanks to what Ariana overheard, Velra is a fount of information that could help us to track that motherfucker down and figure out how the shit Ariana’s coercion magic was able to be drawn from him and used on Caius.”

“As I told you, she’s my friend. I’m not going to extract intel from a friend, Kai.”

“You could do it in whatever way you like, but it needs to be done.”

“With Crossborn being relocated to the Chief Sanctuary Zone within the ward that Ariana put up, there’s not a lot of room. We’re all in close quarters with supernatural hearing in play.”

“What about at least reading her?”

“I couldn’t.”

“What?”

“I can’t read her anymore. She’s… blank. Something’s obviously shifted, some sort of side effect from Cassius healing her. Besides, we know from Ariana that Cassius is going to deal with Sorin for Velra.”

“And you think relying on somebody we barely know, somebody who’s only just been ruled out as a severe threat to Ariana, should be trusted with this?”

“Hell, no,” Vorzyr called over from what he was doing.

“Ithinkthat we need to draw on whatever resources we can right now.”