“And now let's discontinue this conversational direction.”
“—play and had the loveliest pair of—”
I used a sliver of magic to seal his lips together just long enough to stop the flow of words. “I'm going to save us further embarrassment and cut you off there.”
He started laughing, caramel eyes twinkling in the rare way he sometimes allowed, and his lips peeled the magic away with a smile. “All you had to say was—”
The dust coating the floor slowly rose into the air, twinkling in the rays of light brokenly piercing the poorly-sashed window coverings.
I heard Constantine sigh wearily in stark contrast to the dark excitement suddenly flowing through him. He flicked the rock on his signet ring and a shield activated around him. It was always strange to me how much he loved watching me use and fight magic, but hated watching me fight the Department. As if he only considered one of them a true threat.
I threw another shield around him, and dove to the side.
The dust swirled into a chromatic tornado and I thrust out my palm, sucking the vortex into my skin and holding it just beneath the surface.
“Don't move your feet!” I yelled and dove to the other side as I felt the world shift the slightest bit. The wards warped inward, then pulsed outward.
Constantine rolled his eyes, but continued to keep his lower body still as he pulled a device from his long coat and held it out. We'd gotten good at these types of defensive maneuvers when we'd first created world-changing paint—before we’d quite gotten the paint right.
I grabbed the device in a sprinting slide, channeled the magic from my palm into the device then cast the device at the floor. Blue lines pulsed outward, mapping each point from where the magic was originating.
A slice of magic cut through the air and I used a puff of air to vault over the top.
I plucked a second device from Constantine's other hand.
“Remind me to record this next time, so your boyfriend can view it,” Constantine said, picking a nail with the thumb of the same hand as the magic tried to attack him under the erected shield. “He will be so proud.” He lifted a third box from his pocket and held it out in his free hand.
I pulled it from him and used it to capture the rest of the magic event.
The magic was sucked inside in a long intake of sound. I flipped the lid and all sound ceased—the dust motes the only players left in the air. Just fighting the magic had made me feel better—like the enchantments held a dual purpose as a warm-up for an Origin Magic purge.
Constantine looked at me through his lashes. “Now the question is...what are you going to do with that box?”
“Very funny.”
“Only to you, darling,” he said silkily. “To everyone else, each one of those boxes you fill grows closer to priceless. Just like those lovely little gifts you keep giving each rescued feral.”
I looked at the box wrapped in my fingers and felt the weight of it in my hands. “The Department, Stavros, all the ferals' magic...” I looked up at him. “What do you think he is using it for?”
“Nothing good.”
I nodded grimly, stepped forward, and stuck the box in his pocket.
He stared at his pocket, like he always did when I gave him magic. He looked up, finally, when his expression was suitably bored again, hiding his true feelings—though they could never be secret from me now. “All done with your feats of glory?”
“Yes, you can stop being the damsel in distress.”
“With the shield we constructed wrapped around me? Hardly,” he scoffed. He twirled a hand and the shield wrapped around his ring finger again like a living signet of swirling copper and turquoise, then sunk inside.
He lifted his foot and I looked at the floor in front of him.
“Wait!”
He froze. The easy lines of his body were absent for the first time since we'd entered the house.
I bent down and nudged the small beetle to the side. “Okay,” I said cheerfully.
He stared at me for an intense moment. “It is possible that I might do the house's job and murder you myself.”
I lifted my bag. “What do you mean?” I turned to hide my smirk. “There was a bug. It was innocent.”
“Murder, darling.” He began checking the nooks and crannies of the place. With only a single room, it didn't take long. “Well, at least it is lacking surprises.”
I handed my shrunken portal pad to him. He lifted a brow. “Setting up for success?”
“Just in case.”
I considered pulling a table into existence, but the floor was strangely calling to me. I set my bag on the floorboards and pulled out the carefully designed insert Constantine, Stevens, and I had created. It was made of a soft canvas Stevens had provided and Constantine had enhanced. I opened the drawstring bag so that it lay flat on the dusty scarred oak revealing my supplies. I removed the brushes and opened my palette box.
Leaving everything on the drawstring canvas bag meant that I could secure everything for emergency travel with a pull of the string and a swing of it around my shoulder. Everything was designed to be wrapped up quickly, if needed.
I couldn’t afford to leave anything behind for Stavros to find. That had been another perk to the book swallowing my paintings.
A thin but massive pocket that was enchanted not to crinkle its contents ran the width and length of the bag and held my specially made paper. I pulled out a twenty by twenty piece.
Constantine had seen me paint before, but I didn't paint in front of people often. There was an unmasking in it. This was me, the Origin Mage, showing my true self without a shred of barrier, showing my power in the most defining way.
I had figured out almost immediately after escaping with Ori that painting did something that nothing else could accomplish after I used Origin Magic. It somehow allowed my mind to reorganize itself and pull the overwhelming information that I absorbed from the universe into a pattern that kept my mind and magic sane.
I looked over to see what Constantine was up to, but he was already reclining on the seat he always carried in his coat—a thin piece of wood angled up his back, and a small curved area to sit anchored it at the bottom, forming a sixty-degree angle for his body, and letting his legs stretch comfortably on the floor. It was exquisitely created, and the two pieces separated, so they fit in the long wool coats he loved to wear—or were easily depressed into a storage paper.
He lifted a brow, fingers wrapping his thin rope polymers in complicated patterns, like he was challenging a cat's cradle to the death. But lines of color and texture extended from every part of him, connecting to me and anchoring me in place.
And he had the portal pad. He could get away, if things went terribly wrong.
Satisfied, I looked down and examined the canvas. What to paint...
Death, destruction, suffering.
No.
But it was still there, on the edge, no matter what I tried.
But Constantine was still there too. The feel of community was still there. Neither removed the endpoint—I was going to paint something horrific. But I'd be okay.