“With a baton!”
“Put fifty thousand munits on the guy with the scar,” Patrick murmured to Asafa, and only because of their position behind Olivia, could I hear it. “Open market hit. I don’t like what he said about Givens’ and Tasky’s families.”
I started shaking. Constantine immediately put his knee against mine and I felt a giant pull from the combined force of his connections through me—magic that seemed to have grown since his forced refusal to use it these past days few days.
Will stumbled over his words. “We still don't know how the Department Awakened one mage, no less twelve at the same time, but we did gather data. A lot of data. Ren, you can't imagine the data. I've been luxuriating in it for days, the numbers—”
I started to collapse the ball.
“Tasky, shut up,” Patrick said abruptly, walking into the front of the viewing frame, eyes narrowed in on me. “Crown,” he barked.
Neph put a hand on Will's arm and I watched numbly as the rest jostled each other with hissing whispers.
“Crown, I'm only going to repeat this once,” Patrick said.
“I’m a danger to everyone. I know. I want you all to disavow me,” I said sharply.
Patrick smiled tightly. “And if you don't listen,” he said deliberately, as if I hadn't interrupted. “Then I will magically reinforce it.” I felt a twist along our distant connection.
“Campus has to be freaking ou—”
“Campus knows that though you do stupid things you are not hunting ferals to kill them and steal their magic, as per the Department party line. Campus knows that there is something rotten happening in Stavros's playpen. Campus remembers quite bloody well how he tried to kill all of us to get to you. Campus remembers that you saved us twice.”
“Okay okay.” My breath was coming in panicked waves. Neph looked like she was gripping the viewing ball so hard she was trying to figure out a way to dive inside. Her fingers were scrabbling, like she couldn’t figure out how to get to me. “Silent support! But you don't need to—”
“We are in this together,” he said darkly. “My stupidly thick connection lines tell me that this will be my grandest adventure—maybe the end of the world as Ludes wants, maybe the saving of it for the Queen. The bonds and ties of community, something bigger than all of us. You can want to keep us out of it all you want—we will defy you.”
Olivia stepped back into the front of the view. “You leave us out, we'll just do it on our own, but without your aid or protection. How do you feel about that, Ren?” Olivia said, voice steady, connection lines visibly pulsing with Patrick's next to her.
“Manipulated.”
Constantine's dark satisfaction nearly overwhelmed me for a moment, drowning out all else.
“Then we feel similarly on this.” Olivia showed a bit of teeth. “But since we are coming at it from the same protective angle, let's let it pass without apology and move on, shall we?”
“People are going to die,” I whispered, but let the connections in—a jumble of emotion. “I don't want—”
“None of us do, and yet, we all understand that if the underbelly of the Department gets their hooks into you, death might be the best outcome. The public might be hoodwinked by the head of the Department right now, but we haven't been so fortunate.”
No one said anything for a long moment. Neph bent her head over the viewing ball and I felt mine tip toward hers in aching reflection.
“So...” Will cleared his throat. “The Department targeted particular areas of the First Layer—close antipodean points, all—with a goal in mind. Not a good one. Something to note after a good long look at the data; it is possible that you may have saved the world by breaking it completely and resetting it.”
Olivia frowned. “Send me that data. Few will swallow the idea, but I'll get it to Bailey.”
Will nodded furiously, tapping something on his arm.
“The Origin Book saved the world,” I murmured, touching my pocket. “Not me.”
Will looked up, and his gaze softened at something he read on my face or in my voice. “I'm sorry.”
Next time the sacrifice would be me. I'd make sure of that. Neph’s head popped up, expression fierce.
“One of the Awakened mages in their custody is still alive,” Will said gently, touching the back of Neph’s hand in the way that I had seen her do to him a hundred times, without taking his gaze from me. “Rosaria Ricardo.”
My breath hitched. The faces of the other mages flew through my mind’s eye. I could feel them, my magic clinging to them in some form still, though I couldn’t locate them.
“Two others I touched are still alive, too,” I said.
“Ren...” Will trailed off, looking at me worriedly. Neph clasped her hand over his, and they gripped them together. “The Department displayed the bodies of the feral mages they captured aside from Rosaria, claiming all of them dead by your hand.”
Rage blew through me, but I grabbed it and held it instead of letting it have its way. With the faces of my friends in front of me, I clasped the edges of the supportive emotions that Constantine was feeding me from them and let those fill me instead. Then I examined the rage, understood that it was there, and let it settle to a simmer under a shell of hard acceptance.
Constantine stared at me in shock.
I looked around the sphere in my palm, charting expressions. The grimness in Olivia and pain in Neph and Will stood out most starkly, while sadness, high-strung anticipation, or darkness swirled in the others.
“The Department is lying,” I said calmly. “At least about the two I touched.”
Will nodded quickly in solidarity, eyes soft. “I believe you. They can say whatever they want about the others, but they couldn't publicly get away with saying Rosaria was dead. Reporters were on scene by the time you pushed her there and they saw her arrive alive—they showed it on live feed.”
“Good,” I said, a bit relieved.
“However...” Will rubbed the back of his neck, a sure indication of more bad news. “The Department is saying Rosaria will expire by the weekend due to the core magic injuries she sustained during the Mass Awakening.”
“Likely so they can sweep her under the rug and take her to wherever they've taken the others,” Dagfinn muttered. “Then to Villain Plan Next: Grab More.”
“And we still haven’t figured out how they do the activation.” Will shook his head. “I still don’t know—”
“Stavros knows how to use Origin Magic,” I said, flexing my fingers. “Maybe even without his Triumvirate casting it. And he is using mine.”
I could see them exchanging loaded glances.
“We can't handle twelve more Awakenings,” Will said quietly. “Without your direct involvement, we couldn’t have handled the five we managed. And elite squads in multiple countries have pledged to help—they are flexing their muscles in anticipation of you returning to the field.”
Part of me pulsed, wanting to flex my own.