Page 14

14

I combed my fingers through Xander’s hair, staring into his eyes as he held my other hand tight. We must have been in bed like that for several minutes.

“No chicken soup yet,” he’d said, wanting only a glass of water and some time to be. Just be, and exist, and live.

“It’s nice to be alive,” he said, smiling.

My lips pursed. “Don’t talk like that. You’re gonna make me cry.”

His hands were already healing, but half of his hair would always be white.

Xander chuckled. “We wouldn’t want that now, would we? Big, strong guild master has a reputation to uphold. Good thing we’re alone.”

Everyone had left not long after Xander woke up, the boys coupling off to go home, Beatrice heading back to her boutique to finish some work. That was why I loved my buddies so much. We might bicker, argue, and butt heads, but we all understood each other at the end of the day. And they knew well enough that I needed time alone with Xander.

“Yeah. Good thing we’re alone. Listen — I don’t know how else to say it. I’ve turned it over in my head so many times now. I’m so, so sorry for what happened.”

He shook his head. “You say that like it was your fault. Accidents happen. Maybe something in the arcane engine got knocked loose. Maybe I overloaded the machine. I am super strong in addition to being super handsome, Jack.”

I laughed softly. Burned, electrocuted, and potentially frostbitten alive, but here he was making light of what very well could have been a near-death experience. It was Xander’s training, talent, and conditioning that had helped him survive, I was sure of it. Most any other mage would have perished under the flow of so much raw magic.

“And that’s the other thing. I wasn’t around the whole time you were passed out, and I’m sorry for that. I ran into Reza and thought I could — I don’t know. Sherlock Holmes over here. I didn’t get anything done, probably just embarrassed myself in the process.”

The creases in Xander’s forehead deepened. Like his white hair, the lines in his brow only seemed to enhance his youthful features. There was such a paradoxical beauty to Xander Wright, his black and his white, all these intermingling forces that made him the wonderful man he was.

And I’d almost lost him. I swallowed back a terrified sob, afraid that I would break down crying. I owed Hecate a fruit basket, too. Hell, I was going to owe a ton of fruit baskets by the end of all this.

“Hold on,” Xander said. “Why are you apologizing? You’re not a healer and you’re not a doctor, unless you’ve somehow been sneaking off to med school behind my back. What were you supposed to do here?”

I shrugged, which must have looked funny while lying on my back. “That’s what I said. I dunno what else I could have done either, but I kind of got shit for it. Add to that the fact that I didn’t really find anything while I was away and it really makes me feel like I let you down.”

Xander squeezed my hand tighter. The bedsheets shifted as he slid closer, linking his ankle with mine. He was so warm.

“You didn’t let me down. You have never let me down. Our friends have a weird way of caring sometimes, but it’s only because they care at all. That’s a good thing.”

“Yeah,” I said, holding my pout for a little longer than necessary. “I guess you’re right.”

He moved even closer, his forehead almost pressed against mine. “And think about this for a minute. Imagine if we switched places, gods forbid. Do you think I’d be sitting by your bedside waiting for the exact moment you opened your eyes?”

“No. You’d be out there tearing the Black Market apart.”

Xander rolled his eyes. “Understatement of the century. I’d be out there tracking down the person who did this to you. I’d burn this dimension down to smoke them out, then cast a fireball straight up their ass.”

It was terrifying, but also oddly charming in Xander’s own way. “You’d roast someone alive from the inside out for me? Xander, that’s so sweet.”

“Hah. I’d do so much worse and you know it. But now you’ve got me wondering. Why are you so sure that someone else is responsible for what happened with the machine?”

I sat up straight, still never letting go of his hand. “I was going to save this for until after you’d rested up a little more. It’s a long story and I really think you should have some soup in you first.”

The blankets shifted again, tangling between Xander’s feet as he pushed himself up to lean against the headboard. “Okay, fine. Soup me.”

Finally, an appetite. I practically flew across the room, throwing the door open only to find a piping-hot bowl of soup already floating in my face. Suspended by one of Lore’s tentacles, in fact, and accompanied by Lore himself in his tiny crystal body.

“Oh, good,” Lore chirped. “I know that Xander said he wasn’t hungry yet, but I was going to insist. He absolutely must get his strength back, Jackson. And if it’s because he isn’t in the mood for soup, then I also have a fresh loaf of bread baking in the oven, and a batch of cookies, and a large pitcher of freshly squeezed lemonade, and — ”

“He’s ready,” I told him, beaming. “We’ll have a little of everything,” I added, because nothing pleased Lore more than when his organic charges used their tastebuds to appreciate the fruits of his labor.

“Say no more,” Lore pronounced. A thunderous clatter of activity boomed from the ground floor as his appendages sprang into action. The bowl of soup, buoyed by a tentacle, zoomed straight into the room and toward Xander’s side of the bed. A second tentacle zoomed past me, daintily wielding a single spoon.

Even more tentacles snaked up the stairway, each bearing another gift for our newly arisen hungry prince. The bread and cookies and beverages that Lore had promised were all delivered promptly and without spilling a single drop or crumb.

Even better, Lore had brought up plenty of servings for me as well. What a bro. One tentacle paused long enough after its delivery to muss up Xander’s hair, very much like a parent rubbing a beloved child on the head. Xander laughed, trying to swat away the tentacle with a spoon.

“Hey, Lore. Quit it.”

“It is so good to see you back with us in the land of the living,” Lore said.

I frowned. “Don’t say that, Lore. There was never any doubt. The soup is delicious, by the way.”

His little crystal body sparkled in an array of colors. “Why, thank you, Jackson. Whitby assisted. In fact, he ran an analysis of all the reviews and ratings of myriad chicken soup recipes that we found online and selected the very best one. Empirically, that is. Optimized for flavor and nutrition. The internet truly is a wonderful thing.”

He zipped toward the staircase as if he was about to descend, but he stopped abruptly at the top of the landing. “Oh, and Jackson? My apologies, I should have mentioned it earlier. You have a visitor waiting for you downstairs.”

I swallowed a mouthful of Lore’s creamy, delicious concoction, then stopped eating. Xander had also paused his whirlwind of consumption. Probably for the best, wouldn’t be good to suddenly shock his system with so much food.

“We weren’t expecting any guests, were we? Besides, I didn’t hear the door open at all.”

“Oh, no,” Lore said. “They came in through the floor.”

I blinked. “I’m sorry?”

“Yes. She materialized from a crack in the floor, and she’s sitting on the sofa waiting for you right now. Very kind person, actually, quite polite despite her inability to knock on doors or use them at all. Very much enjoyed the cup of tea that I served her.”

I frowned, my suspicions mounting. “What does our special guest look like, Lore?”

“A pale woman in black robes, with eyes as black as night.”

I glanced at Xander. He swallowed. “Hecate? What’s Hecate doing here?”

“I don’t know, but you and I both know that we shouldn’t be in the habit of leaving goddesses waiting.” I pressed a kiss against his hair. “You wait here. I’ll be right back. I’ll just go and see what she wants.”

And Hecate was there waiting on the sofa, exactly as Lore had said, presently drinking another cup of tea — not with her mouth, of course, because she just had to be creepy like that. She held one hand suspended over the rim of the cup, somehow drinking the tea through the palm of her hand. I tried not to shudder, keeping my discomfort on the inside.

“Oh, wow. Hi again, Hecate. We weren’t expecting anyone tonight.” Was that too rude? I had to hope it didn’t sound too rude. “I hope I didn’t keep you waiting too long.”

“Nonsense,” the goddess said. “Your little jewel of a friend here has been so accommodating. Such delicious drinks and dishes he has offered for us to sample. Fascinating, what your kind has done with the melding of magic and machine. This discipline of artificing has always intrigued us. You might say that the curious results of your craft are the very reason you are still permitted to practice your unusual arts.”

Permitted, as if I needed to be reminded that the entities — and Hecate, most of all — would always be watching. Yet even there I could sense her cryptic tendencies, the way she liked to layer meaning in her words. The arcane underground had always gatekept artifice, natural-born mages especially looking down their noses at those who could only make magic with tools and technology.

And all at once it confirmed what I had hoped for: that the goddess herself was not involved in bringing Xander harm. As much as she liked to obscure her motives, Hecate spoke the truth. The goddess of magic saw the art of artifice as something amusing, a curiosity.

Maybe she didn’t raise the boys of Grayhaven to augment their magic with implements, but a goddess who also moonlighted as a principal at an arcane academy would certainly be interested in observing new developments in artifice.

It was just as she’d quietly hinted. If we artificers overstepped our bounds and threatened the fundamentals of magic, or reality itself with our inventions, she would gladly crush our machinery. Just as easily as Xander could crush an empty can of his favorite orange soda.

I took my place on the couch next to her. I stretched my arms out, appreciating the tug in my joints, the loosening of my muscles. Hecate just watched, perhaps amused by my reaction to her presence, or the brazenness of me plunking down on the cushions so close to her.

So bizarre how I’d gone from having zero interactions with entities not so long ago to now having a goddess show up at random in my living room. As novel as it seemed, I didn’t really want it becoming a regular event. I mean, even Preston and Beatrice texted me before coming over.

“Um, thank you? It was my dad who created the AIs. Stands for ‘artificer’s intelligence.’ Was there something you wanted to talk about? I have to be honest. It’s been a really long day, and Xander just woke up.”

“Ah. Excellent news, then. That, at least, is a relief. What concerns us is how very little we have learned since we last spoke.”

I frowned. In retrospect, I should have guessed that Hecate’s use of the royal “we” would trip me up some day, but it had happened far less than I’d expected. This was probably the first time.

“And by ‘we’ do you mean that you’ve learned little, or were you referring to the both of us?”

She parted her hands in exasperation. “Both of us, of course. We’ve been known to leave humans to their whims, fleshling, but this is a very serious matter indeed. With the right leverage, the right amount of power, this arcane device of yours might have catalyzed a detonation to reach even beyond the walls of this dimension.”

A blast that could take out other dimensions, or maybe even leak into the real world? Gods above and below. What mechanical monstrosity had my parents created?

“The only thing I’ve learned is that this whole thing involves sabotage of some kind. But whoever’s responsible, I wish I could say. I barely have any kind of lead, and I even brought Reza Arshad with me.”

“Ah. One of our very best students, and yet nothing. It mystifies us, fleshling. Few things can hide from our watchful gaze. Few things indeed. This perpetrator must do well for themselves to have the power to cloak their presence from a goddess of the old world.”

Someone with a spell of concealment, then, and someone powerful. But that could be anyone! The guild masters were among the strongest mages in the entire Black Market, but there were plenty more among the citizenry, not to mention those who lived in the rest of the known cosmos.

“Where would we even begin to look?” I asked, my head in my hands. “I’m lost, Hecate. Someone has it out for us. I don’t want Xander to ever go through this again.”

She rose from the sofa, gliding as she crossed the floor. “Perhaps you can start by consulting one of your crystalline oracles.” Her midnight robes pooled by her feet as she knelt by the large hunk of crystal on the floor. “Hello there, little one. And what manner of creation are you?”

The crystal pulsed with a bashful pink light. “Whitby, ma’am. I mean, my name is Whitby, Your Royal Goddessness.”

Hecate laughed. “There’s really no need for honorifics. You may call me friend. Did you know, little Whitby, that wizards of old have always used gemstones and crystals to store all kinds of information? It’s a way to put away spells and enchantments for later use.”

“Yes ma’am, Ms. Goddess Friend. I believe that the practice is still common today. Why, it’s the binding premise behind the entire guild of jewelers right here in the Black Market. Marquise & Empress draw much of their power from ensorcelled jewelry.”

“Ah, but those are mere trinkets and baubles. You, dear Whitby, are far more special, quite like your little friend Lore.”

Hovering nearby, Lore’s crystal body performed a quick, proud, sparkling pirouette. “Brought sentience and intellectual independence by the Prydes. Quite a marvelous feat of artificing.”

I folded my arms, wondering where this was going, but also feeling a swell of pride for the Prydes. What was Hecate up to, fluffing up our entire clan like this?

“With your permission, Whitby, we would like to examine your wealth of information to see whether there is something that might help your good friends Jackson and Xander. Perhaps there is something we’ve missed.”

There it was. Good old Hecate, thinking in our favor even when it seemed initially sinister and creepy.

“Absolutely,” Whitby said, his mainframe twinkling with pinkish trust.

Hecate whispered to herself as she pressed one hand against the hunk of crystal. Within seconds Whitby had begun projecting holograms into the air: glimmers of the echo he once showed us, the exact same sketches from the schematics we’d printed, and sped-up recordings of Whitby’s voice bank. But nothing new, or nothing we’d overlooked.

“I didn’t know you could do that,” I told the goddess.

She shrugged. “Neither did we.”

“It was worth a shot. Thanks for trying, Hecate.”

“Nothing appears to be amiss, fleshling. Perhaps this was all accidental after all. ‘To err is human,’ isn’t that what they say? ‘To forgive is divine.’ Though this goddess, in truth, is not very quick to forgive. Our brightest student and one of our favorite fleshlings nearly obliterated in the same mechanical mishap.”

I really was one of her favorites, then? I sucked in my cheeks, inhaling my smile and trying not to look so pleased with myself. “I appreciate the vengeful sentiment, Hecate.”

“But of course. And this isn’t to say that Hecate will stop looking. A culprit, if there is one, should meet all the appropriate consequences. Punishment is still due.”

Occam’s Razor, right? Maybe the simplest explanation actually was the correct one. It was a bitter pill to swallow, but Hecate was right. Faulty wires, a loose screw. Failure was only human, and as much as I loved and looked up to them, Octavian and Luciana Pryde were as capable of failing as anyone. It was just unfortunate that their failure happened to be so very catastrophic. I choked down the bitterness, stowing it away in a small, shadowy part of myself to deal with later.

Hecate stroked the tips of her fingers along the top of Whitby’s mainframe. She was so gentle with him. I’d never really seen this side of her. “But allow us to thank you for your efforts all the same, little one.”

“Oh, that really won’t be necessary, ma’am. I’m always happy to — oh. Oh, my goodness.”

The surface of Whitby’s mainframe rippled wherever Hecate touched, as if transformed into liquid. Her fingers moved in a blur, infused with eldritch grace as they mapped out a spell. Something shifted in the room, the air tingling with divine magic. Out of the liquid mainframe rose a crystal, pointed at the bottom and the top, a perfect, translucent copy of Lore’s tiny crystalline body.

I gasped. Lore gasped. From the base of the stairs, Xander, who’d apparently felt left out, also gasped.

“My body,” Whitby said. “It’s down there, but I’m also up here. I’m free! I’m flying. Oh, my goddess. Thank you. Thank you, Hecate!”

Hecate flipped her hand at the wrist. “Think nothing of it. This was always within your power, little one. You only needed the right nudge.”

As it was with Lore, except that Lore’s awakening had involved a Chrysanthemyst-related possession that almost demolished the entire Pryde house. This was way better.

“Thank you, Hecate,” I whispered, my chest so full.

She shook her head, a rare genuine smile on her lips. “A small gift for the little one, and a small gift for you.”

Xander slipped himself between us, his arm draping over my shoulder. “What makes the AIs happy makes us happy. Thanks, Madame Cathee. I mean Hecate. I mean — you know what I mean.”

Lore and Whitby trilled excitedly, their matching bodies spinning in a glittering spiral of crystal and light, their tiny fanfares playing in harmony.

“Oh, Whitby, this means you can attend the wedding after all!” Lore chirped. “Jackson won’t have to load your mainframe on a trolley to wheel you down the aisle anymore.”

“Oh no,” Whitby said, his light dimming. He paused in the air, then zipped to stop a few inches between Xander’s face and mine. “Jack, Xander? I know this looks bad now that I have a floating little body and I have no excuse, but I’m still so anxious about participating in the ceremony, and I — ”

Xander raised his hand. “We completely forgot to tell you, Wit. We convinced another friend to take over for ring bearer duties. You’re off the hook.”

Whitby heaved as big a sigh of relief as an artificer’s intelligence could muster, then zipped off again, leaving a trail of “Thank you thank you thank you” behind him, one meant for each of us, but especially Hecate.

“Then we’ll just be going now,” Hecate said, dusting off her robes as she rose to her full height. “It appears you have much to celebrate.”

“And we’d love for you to celebrate with us,” Xander said. “Right, Jack?”

I grinned. “Absolutely. I hope it’s not too late to invite you to our wedding, Hecate. Where can we send the invitation?”

Hecate’s smile gleamed, as sticky and sweet as the honey she loved as an offering. “Leave it out in the rain, or set it on fire. It will find a path to us either way.”

And without another word, Hecate collapsed into a pile of robes. Then the robes disintegrated, the dust slipping into the cracks in the floor.

“She’s so creepy,” I muttered.

“Super creepy,” Xander said. “But I kind of love her now.”

I watched as Lore and Whitby spun and zipped around the living room, crystalline twins delighting in their shared freedom.

Yeah, I couldn’t disagree. Hecate was a weird-as-hell goddess, but she was our goddess.