Page 20

Chapter twenty

D espite the sweetness of Antony’s words and a day spent in bed at the Sanctuary in an effort to cheer her up, Odelle woke up feeling lost. The moment she drifted into consciousness, she sat bolt upright, not hearing her alarm, and her heart pounding in her ears at the fear of being late for work. As her shoulders slumped with realization, beside her Antony blinked the sleep from his eyes.

As he sat up and looked at her questioningly, the way his hair was flattened on one side from the pillow while sticking straight up like a rooster on the other was almost enough to banish the heavy feeling from her heart. Almost.

“What am I supposed to do all day?” Odelle asked in despair, flopping back among the pillows with a soft whump. Her first thought was to start her job hunt, but she cringed at the idea. If she had been fired from the stunt on the Sears Tower, then chances were that none of the other local news channels would be interested in hiring her. She would have to look for a position in a smaller news market, or step away from television broadcasting altogether. The fact that her dreams of being an anchor on a national news station had been dashed by a few short sentences wasn’t something she was ready to face yet.

“Well, I have something urgent to do,” Antony remarked with a yawn, shaking his hair out to get it back into its normal tousled state .

“Oh.” Odelle deflated even further at the thought of spending the day alone with her thoughts. “I can get out of your hair then.”

She spluttered when a pillow hit her across the face. When she pushed it away, she found Antony grinning down at her.

“Don’t be ridiculous, you are involved in this urgent thing,” he said, before pushing out of bed and making his way over to the wardrobe. Odelle took the opportunity to admire the view from behind, since Antony extended the Greek tradition of nudity to sleeping as well. As he draped a purple peplos around himself with deft hands, she returned her attention to his words.

“I said that I needed to make you a weapon, and now you have the time to help me make sure it’s the perfect thing for you,” he explained.

Odelle raised a quizzical brow at him as she cast about for her discarded clothes. “What good is a weapon going to do for somebody with absolutely no idea how to use it?”

“If you can figure out how to throw a Shadow off the roof of a skyscraper, then I’m sure you can figure out the proper use for a sharp object,” Antony reassured. “And it would be good for my sanity to know you had a blade on you.”

“Well, how am I supposed to walk around carrying a weapon?” Odelle continued, “I may joke about my purse being a bottomless pit, but I can’t actually fit a spear in it.”

Antony waved a dismissive hand. “Spears are for Warriors in major battles. I have something far more subtle in mind. And little do you know, you already have the perfect place to carry it.”

“Does the dagger between the breasts thing really work?” Odelle looked down at her chest and frowned. She didn’t think she was well endowed enough to pull that off .

Antony chuckled and picked up one of her legs that had been kicked off and lying at the foot of the bed. The iridescent coating shimmered in the morning light, as Odelle was still wearing the ones he had made after melting the foot of her other pair. He slid his hand up the shin as if searching for something. Finding it, he hummed in satisfaction and pressed a hidden catch that Odelle hadn’t noticed before. She gasped as a piece of the leg slid out, revealing a compartment as long as her hand but very thin. The perfect size for a knife.

“I felt a dagger would suit you, and I like to make everything as multipurpose as possible,” he explained. “I had meant to make you something sooner, but I didn’t get it done before Christmas and then…”

“Ok, nothing screams sexy assassin more than hiding a knife in a prosthetic limb,” Odelle gushed, snatching the leg from him to inspect the compartment. She slid it shut and squinted, finding that she couldn’t even make out the seams in the material until she pressed the lever to release the hatch again.

“Maybe that’s your alternate career choice,” Antony teased as Odelle began fastening on the prosthetics so she could follow him out of the room.

He led her a short way down the hall to a larger room that she hadn’t seen before. Something that looked like the world’s largest fire pit dominated the center of the circular space, surrounded by workbenches at regular intervals. It struck Odelle as the type of forge she might see in a fantasy movie, but notably absent of anvils and hammers. Almost all the benches were devoid of any materials, but one in the far back was surrounded by tools and tongs and a few scattered bars of metal. Antony led the way past the empty workspaces, and her heart clenched at the thought that these spaces had once been occupied by his friends. Now he entered this workshop every day alone, walking past constant reminders of all that he had lost. Working in solitary silence for centuries.

Clanking echoed through the empty space as Antony shuffled through the contents of his chaotic workspace, surfacing with several chunks of metal that he placed into what looked like a charred bowl. Looking up, he spotted Odelle hovering a few feet away, and beckoned her forward.

“Hold out your right hand,” Antony instructed.

When she did as he asked, Antony took her wrist gently in his grasp, running the fingers of his other hand over her palm. Odelle warmed at the touch on her pulse point and the featherlight brush of his fingertips.

“You have surprisingly long fingers,” he mused. “You’ll be comfortable with a wider grip than most women.”

“I’m not sure I’ll be comfortable with any weapon,” Odelle countered.

“I never was either, but I will feel better knowing that I’ve given you a way to protect yourself in a pinch,” Antony explained, turning away to start a fire in large pit. As he stoked it higher using a handheld bellows, a thin sheen of sweat formed on his forehead, shining along his delicate collarbone.

“We could find you a more modern furnace if you wanted one,” Odelle mused, propping her hip against an empty table and admiring how Antony’s biceps flexed as he worked the fire. No wonder his wiry muscles were so pronounced, despite his insistence that he shied away from the more physical aspects of the Eteria’s war with the Shadow.

Antony shrugged. “Adam has offered before, but I don’t think I could give this up. Smithing—it’s become a lot harder since it’s now more difficult to use the Light. But this part, this is still the same as it was before the Defeat. These few quiet moments are some of the few times I feel truly connected to the way things were before. Like I could look up and see my fellow Smiths across the workroom at any moment.”

His comment reminded her of something Seraphina had said earlier but had brushed off in her concern for Adam.

“Seraphina mentioned that she thinks it’s becoming easier to use the Light again.” Odelle’s tone was questioning.

Antony nodded, keeping his attention on the forge before him. “I think we’ve all noticed it a little in our own ways. Most of us even expected this would happen, as the Shadow becomes more active again. Light and Shadow are two sides of the same coin, and one cannot grow without the other. It’s likely why Nora was able to tap into her latent ability to channel the Light last year. Still, the Eteria is far from able to access the full well of our power.”

Odelle nodded, foregoing thinking about the implications of that revelation for now to focus on the wonder that was Antony at work.

Antony picked up the weathered bowl of metal in a long pair of tongs and placed it over the fire. It was now so intense, Odelle could feel hot air prickling the skin on her face even as far away as she stood. He took a moment to wipe the sweat from his brow with his forearm after setting the tongs down.

“So how do you forge weapons without hammers or anvils?” Odelle inquired.

“That’s the trick; you don’t forge bronze, you cast it,” Antony announced proudly.

Odelle frowned. “Forgive me if my metallurgy is a little rusty, but what exactly is the difference?”

“When you’re thinking of a blacksmith hammering a hot piece of metal into the shape of sword, folding the steel over and over to make it stronger, that’s forging. Casting involves pouring liquid metal into a mold to shape it,” Antony explained, glancing into the fire to check on the progress of the melting metal.

Odelle looked around for the mold Antony would use for her dagger but came up blank. “What do you use as a mold?”

Antony offered a conspiratorial smile. “That’s what we use the Light for. Traditionally, casting has many disadvantages. The shapes you can make are limited, and you often have little tabs leftover from the molds to file off. If you make a mold out of the Light though, what you can make is only limited to your imagination—and I guess your ability to picture what you want to make in negative.”

“So is that why you use bronze instead of steel, or something stronger?”

Antony nodded. “Using the Light as a mold actually gives us more control than most forging techniques would. Not to mention, when you hold the molten bronze in a container completely constructed of Light, some of the power seeps into the metal, making the protective layer that allows the weapons to endure through the ages. Down the line, starting with a small amount of innate Light makes the objects easier to imbue with special powers. It acts as a glue for the additional Light to grab onto.”

Odelle pointed a firm finger at Antony. “No special abilities for my dagger. You’ve overexerted yourself too many times in the past several weeks as it is. I’m honestly not sure I should even let you do this ‘mold made out of Light’ scenario either.”

“I can manage this part just fine,” Antony assured with a dismissive wave of his hand. “A dagger is small, so I shouldn’t have to channel too much Light,”

Maybe not a lot for him, Odelle mused as she pictured an entire salt flat of shimmering gold .

Appearing satisfied with the consistency of the melted metal, Antony closed his eyes and held his hands out in front of him. At first, Odelle didn’t see anything happening, and had the unsettling thought that maybe Antony was more exhausted than he seemed. Then, she noticed tiny filaments of Light spilling from his fingertips. The sparkling fibers, barely more noticeable than a single hair, came together into larger strands of gold, which in turn wove to create a solid sheet. The glimmering material began to fold in on itself, forming what looked like a box, although through the translucent iridescence, Odelle could just make out a long thin shape if she squinted.

Antony’s brow furrowed in an expression of immense concentration. Since she could no longer see any changes in the glimmering figure before him, she speculated he must be making small changes to the shape of the knife in the mold. A single drop of sweat rolled down the cords of his throat.

Finally, he opened his eyes, and Odelle had to suppress a gasp once more at the golden color of his irises, holding the same ethereal glow they had when he had made the portal. He used the tongs to lift the bowl from the fire and carefully poured the liquid metal into the top of the mold. Odelle watched, mesmerized by the way the bronze rippled in its molten form.

Once the mold was full, Antony closed his eyes once more and was still. Odelle bit her lip, wondering how long he would have to channel the Light until the weapon had hardened. She inched forward not wanting to distract him, but also afraid of watching him crumple with exhaustion once more. Still, while his breath came slightly quicker, he didn’t seem as if he was exerting himself beyond what he would for a light jog. After several short minutes, his eyes drifted open once more, the gold ebbing from them like smoke on the wind. He held out one hand as the mold in front of him dissolved into golden tendrils and a gleaming dagger fell into his upturned palm.

Odelle hissed, expecting the still-hot metal to burn Antony’s hand, but he grabbed it by the hilt and inspected his work as if it were nothing. With a satisfied smile, he beckoned Odelle closer. When he offered the knife to her, she picked it up gingerly between her thumb and forefinger and was somehow surprised to find it cool to the touch despite Antony’s casual handling of it.

“I didn’t think a purely utilitarian weapon was really your style,” Antony explained as she turned the weapon over in her hands.

In fact, calling it a weapon seemed inaccurate—it was a work of art. A lethal, leaf-shaped blade the length of her hand gave way to a hilt that fit into her palm as if it were an extension of herself. Along the grip were engravings of crashing waves, frothing towards a decorative pommel in the shape of a shell.

“The symbol of Aphrodite?” Odelle questioned as she brushed her fingertips over the detailed conch.

“It might be predictable, but the more I’ve thought about the Goddess of love being married to the blacksmith of the Gods…” Antony trailed off, scuffing one sandaled foot on the ground as a blush spread to the tips of his ears.

Odelle wasn’t one to complain about being compared to the Goddess of all things beautiful, no matter how cliché others might find it, but it hadn’t even occurred to her that Aphrodite had been married to Hephaestus in classic mythology.

“I didn’t think they had a happy marriage,” Odelle remarked.

“Depends on who you ask,” Antony said with a lopsided shrug. “But I like to think they were happy, and if Aphrodite strayed, it was just in her nature as the Goddess of desire. ”

“Well, you’re one of the handful of living people who heard the original myths, so I think they went however you say,” Odelle declared, before continuing more gently. “And something tells me Aphrodite and Hephaestus were happy together too.”

The smile Antony gave Odelle was positively incandescent. “Try it in the secret compartment in your leg.”

Odelle did as he requested, and to nobody’s surprise, the dagger slid into the narrow space perfectly.

“I always thought a knife sheathed on the thigh would be the ultimate dangerous accessory, but I think you’ve proven me wrong.” Odelle admired the way the weapon slid seamlessly out of its hiding spot in her shin whenever she pressed the hidden latch.

“You gave me the idea when I heard you used one of your legs as a club when the Agent captured you in November,” Antony said.

“Yeah, my microphone just didn’t have enough weight to it.” Odelle thought back to that day, and some of her exuberance at Antony’s incredible gift faded. Who knew if she’d ever be out in the field, reporting on a blizzard again? Granted, she preferred avoiding extreme weather, but she’d give anything right now to be back out on the streets with a camera man and a microphone. Maybe there was still something she could do to salvage her career.

“Odelle?”

A concerned look pinched Antony’s features as Odelle blinked back into the present and realized he had been talking.

“Sorry, just thinking about my job—or lack thereof.”

Antony reached out and brushed his fingers down her forearm, his expression forlorn. “I wish there were something I could do, but I don’t have much to offer when it comes to the modern world. I don’t think there are many job openings for magical blacksmiths either, if that makes you feel any better.”

Antony’s attempt at levity warmed Odelle’s chest, even as her mind kept returning to what she might do to salvage her career.

“Well, when I’m looking for job openings, I’ll let you know if I see any for a toaster repairman. You seem to have a knack for that,” Odelle commented. “But really, I should see if there is any damage control I can do. Feeling like I’m trying to fix the problem is the only thing that will make me feel better.”

Antony nodded solemnly. “I should discuss an alternative strategy for tracking the Shadow’s movements with the others anyways. Figure out how to find the crown.”

Odelle winced internally at the lemon Antony’s words squeezed in her wounds. Her unemployment was affecting more than just her own life.