I called a marble to my left hand and abruptly pulled the tornado into my palm, collapsing the magic inside the glass and forcing everything floating in the room to land softly.
Axer eyed the marble as I tried to calm my racing heart. “Not even winded this time,” he mused. He looked at me. “You are getting better.”
“Yes,” I said, and for the first time, I meant it. I felt better. Even after Stavros tried to rip out all the parts that made me, I had been stitched back together. I looked around me. I could always be stitched together if I had them.
I looked at the canvas.
A world was forming, blooming into different worlds of possibility, both creation and destruction—but for the first time, I controlled what the product would be.
“Stavros will know. All of our plan. He'll be able to read my mind. Our expressions. We need to get rid of his powers.”
“How?” Olivia demanded.
Axer dipped the same painted finger in the line that was Constantine on the canvas. He lifted it and watched as the paint glittered, changing the properties of the magic always around him—properties he'd have to change back—but for now he just watched the changes. Like Constantine, he, too, had been touched by Origin Magic. Died repeatedly from it and worked up a resistance.
He looked at me in question. I shook my head. “It didn't help me last time,” I said. “Stavros has to have an immunity.”
Constantine prowled closer, as if called. “Not to everything.”
“Not to something temporary,” Axer agreed.
Constantine looked at the paint on Axer's finger, then turned his head to look at his roommate. “Tears of the Fallen?”
Axer nodded. “Tears of the Fallen.”
“I love that one.”
“I know.” He smiled and wiped the paint on the back of Constantine's hand.
Constantine immediately turned and strode to his makeshift lab.
“Wow. Great. So happy I left for fifteen minutes.” Olivia tossed the test glasses onto the table, hands going to her hips. “Phillip said the sight lasts five minutes, then the magic ends. He wished us good luck.”
Satisfaction swelled, as did hope, and I began duplicating the finishing touches in the other pairs of glasses and on the storage papers with the paint. “Five minutes is all we need.”
Chapter Twenty-seven: Unsealing the Devil
By the third morning of our library stay, the news reports outside had started to shift.
“What happened at Crelussa? This is a question burning every feed this morning. The Department has firmly denied all evidence and witness accounts in favor of the Origin Mage, and against the Department, claiming the Origin Mage responsible for all negative events. But there have been enough conflicting reports now to render questions that even the staunchest Department acolyte can’t ignore.”
I could see Bellacia’s delicate touch and devious mind in many of the different news reports. Seeding in bits and pieces about people being unnerved. Not dripping in the evidence, dripping the emotional components attached to them.
I flipped to watch the recording of the news conference that Bellacia had sent. Shelle Fanning looked tired. Morven Jance was visibly riled.
“We aren’t returning the magic to Crelussa,” Jance said. “Absurd. Not while the Origin Mage is still active and ensuring that we, the safety and security of this layer, can not enter. It is for the safety and security of the entirety of the Second Layer that we capture her before returning the magic to its former place. I entreat each of you to do your part. Furthermore, fifteen thousand troops from a cross-section of patriotic countries have formed a barrier of magic around the sanitarium. Nothing is getting inside.”
“And nothing gets out. Neat and tidy,” Baxter Roberts, Bellacia's favorite reporter said.
“I dislike your tone, Mr. Roberts.”
“But what about the strengthening rumors that the Origin Mage is the one who saved the site. That the Department triggered the destabilization. That the Department set the terrorists upon the site in order to take charge of the containers.”
“Absurd.”
“There is, in fact, some evidence that this is not entirely conspiracist in nature. There were recordings—”
“Manufactured by a mage capable of such dangerous things.”
“Vincent Godfrey Junior—”
“Is a terrorist.”
“This administration has a record of—”
“Keeping this layer safe? Agreed.”
“You can’t keep the magic away,” a man in the crowd said. He was wearing medals and seals of state. “Our country stands with the others in wanting the Origin Mage leashed, but we do not accept the Department’s hiding of five tons of Awakening magic.”
“It is not hidden, it is secured.”
“You have provided no coordinates for the individual security councils to ascertain—”
“Why would we do that? Why not just give them to the Origin Mage?”
“With all due respect, Secretary Jance, we—”
“This is a matter of layer security and you will respect that.”
A reporter touched their throat. “Secretary Jance, Secretary Jance, we've just received news that Priority Five has been halted. Senator Leandred—”
“No more questions.”
Olivia muted the hologram.
“The media is turning,” she said. “Public opinion will be next. And Priority Five has been halted indefinitely. Senator Leandred is a force, make no mistake.”
“Bellacia has a full interview with Godfrey Jr. where he says that agents of Enton Stavros gave them the information on Crelussa and the go ahead. That the terrorists were set up. The Baileys are pushing for a full audit of the Department. And people are coming on board.” There was something in Olivia's eyes that had been missing for weeks too—that same insidious emotion, hope. “We might get a political solution.”
Patrick muttered something in the corner.
She whirled on him. “We need a political solution. At least partially.”
Patrick closed his eyes. “I know. But you aren't going to get everyone on board.”
“We don't need everyone.”
A few of the more vocal supporters of Stavros had been working the media feeds, too.
“It isn’t a surprise to find Bremia, Tu, and Koghslov working with Stavros,” Olivia said. “The heads of those countries have always had their own plans. And whatever Stavros is planning to do—working with him as a head of state ensures that your country stays as limited in the cull as you want. Get rid of your enemies inside, but keep the rest of your people safe? A huge win for leaders who don’t mind making ‘hard’ choices when it comes to lives.”
It's what Stavros had offered me—a choice dripping with blood.
“Such choices only work when people who agree with them are in power, though,” Mike said. “No one making these types of choices is thinking of how they would feel if it were their enemy's finger on the button.”
“Let's go destroy the button.”
*