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“But I know how, mysteries, it seems so simple, all this time…”

“Meda,” he murmured, and reached up to wrap his arms around my waist. My breath caught as Kalcedon dragged me down, pulling my body flush to the burn of his. “Stop talking.”

“But…” I wriggled up on my elbows. “Listen, the spell’s a cannibal, it’s beautiful. But it’s not anchored in anything to do with magic, it’s…”

“No,” Kalcedon said.

He rolled over, until I was pinned beneath him, until my lungs could barely draw a full breath beneath his weight. I could feel him, every contour illuminated by gravity. And I was on fire, divinely, and I didn’t think anything could compare to the feeling of cracking Tarelay’s spell apart, I didn’t think anything in my life would top that achievement, could surpass the knowledge that ran wild in my head.

But for a moment I forgot about the spell. For a moment I just wanted… him. On me; in me. Surrounding me. Not only the flood of his power but the warmth of his skin. His lips.

“Kalcedon,” I whispered, and dragged a hand along his arm—down his back—gripped at the meat of his thigh, where it nestled between mine.

“Tell me how smart you are tomorrow, Meda,” he whispered to my cheek, as his body tangled in with mine. “But now? Let me go the fuck back to sleep.”

Chapter 22

I woke to bright sunlight and Kalcedon’s soft footsteps as he entered the room, closing the door behind him.

“So, you’re awake.”

“You went out?” I asked groggily, sitting up. He’d broken the ward, smudged the ash on the door and the walls to break the sigils.

“For the necessary,” Kalcedon told me, with a look that said you’re prying. “The hall’s empty. Anyways, I thought you might sleep all day.”

“I was up late,” I informed him. A pang in my stomach reminded me our meals had been scant the night before. The fireplace was nothing but ash.

“I know. You woke me up.”

My eyes widened at the memory of how his body had fit against mine. At the press of him.

“Anybody sane would have been glad to get up,” I said, trying not to think about it. “What self-respecting witch would rather sleep than hear—”

“Did you really figure it out?”

I took a sip of water from the bottle in my bag.

“Yes. I did.”

“So, tell me.” Kalcedon dropped onto the edge of the bed, hands on his knees. His eyes danced with laughter, but his shirt was still torn and bloody at the shoulder, which rather dampened my mood.

“Um.” I rolled off the mattress. Padding to the fireplace where I’d worked, I picked up a sheet of paper from the floor and squinted at my own handwriting. I could barely read it. “Well, I’d have to see the other stones’ enchantments to be certain, but… there was a key. A way to undo it. Maybe not on purpose, but every spell has its holes. It wasn’t brute force that broke the stone. I mean, brute force can’t. There’s no spell you could throw at it because it would just shred the magic and swallow it up. It’s just so ridiculously clever, the way—” I was coming wide awake again just looking at the beauty before me.

“Meda,” Kalcedon groaned, drawing me back. “A key. What key?”

“Right. So, this phrase here?” I got up and sat beside Kalcedon on the bed, leaning close to him. He leaned in, too, and our shoulders touched. I could feel the heat of his magic enveloping me, a welcome comfort after an exhausting late night of work. But he was running cooler than usual after his healing, transformations, and powering our room’s shield all night.

I pointed to my original transcription of the stone, the phrasings that Tarelay had carved. “I’m reading this as kinship, inheritance, place. And this one next to it, well, it’s sort of like order, protection, birth. And next to it, here, that’s binding it all to the stone itself. He uses a similar structure to the one Xandi of Koraica proposed for major workings, although—”

He groaned and leaned back away from me.

“Horns, I don’t want an analysis. Just tell me what it all means.”

“It was tied to the royal family,” I said breathlessly. “Not the royals in general. The Sable-Pall family specifically. Think about it. Seven stones, seven kingdoms. Well, six kingdoms now, without Doregall. Each stone is tied to each family. It’s how he connected it to the land. And you know blood workings are strong. The only way to break something like that, a spell that eats other spells and is built on blood…”

“So it was the Princess,” Kalcedon said. “That’s where the iron on the ground came from. Blood sacrifice.”

“Sorry. What Princess?”