I touched the dirt and drew up a lotus. I tucked it into the crook of his elbow. “You have reason to be angry with me, and I’m sorry for it,” I murmured. “But don’t hurt yourself.”
He looked at the flower then me, gaze bored, internals conflicted. The flower wasn’t doing what it was supposed to do. I frowned at it, then on impulse pulled in a bit of Axer’s magic and mixed it in.
Light immediately filtered over Constantine’s skin. His expression didn’t change, though the shock and panic beneath did.
“How do you look so bored but feel everything so strongly?” I asked, touching the flower and imbuing more mixed magic.
“Practice,” he said, disengaging my fingers with some difficulty.
I watched him try to pretend to work again. “Will you forgive me for these choices?”
“Constantine Leandred doesn’t let go of a grudge, didn’t you know?” Axer said studying the interior blueprints again, keyed device on the table. “Not for anyone.”
Well, there went the mixed conflict. Constantine’s emotions straightened into a singular line.
“Most people aren’t worth it,” Constantine bit out. He turned to me. “Sacrifice someone to save yourself, then I’ll forgive you.”
I gave him my most unimpressed look.
“Sacrifice him.” Axer thumbed at his roommate. “That’s what he’s planning anyway. Everyone wins.”
“You’d like that plan,” Constantine said darkly.
Axer didn’t outwardly react. “And yet, you’re still sitting there, intact.”
“Yikes,” I heard Saf mutter.
“It’s like a telenovela. I need popcorn,” Patrick whispered back.
“Shhhh!” Dagfinn sounded like he thought Axer was going to reach through and end them all.
A ping sounded above us and we all looked up. I winced.
“You need to stop allowing people ways to control your creations,” Constantine said harshly at the reminder.
“No,” I murmured. I walked to the edge and pressed my hand against the magic. Those outside were still many hours, days, away from cracking it, but they would. “I’m giving people ways to skirt around my magic in case someone else gains control of me.”
He looked sharply at me. “You are plotting. You were already plotting.”
“Preparing, Con. Preparing.” I let my forehead rest against the barrier. “I, too, know how this will likely end.”
I let my head tilt to look at Axer. “So, if we were doing a military campaign…”
He looked at me steadily. “I only said Crelussa wasn’t one.”
I nodded slowly.
“Great,” I heard Mike mutter while Constantine started cursing. “Just great.”
*
The media was playing the same news songs on loop. I hadn’t missed listening to the news reports while traveling, and I much preferred the boys’ selective updates. Still, it paid to be aware of what was happening, so Bellacia’s favorite news spells were being put to work.
Thus far we had been correct to assume that the Third Layer would keep the news of the dome’s activation under wraps. That didn’t mean there weren’t other things to report in the search for us.
“A joint task force has been formed linking the intelligence agencies of fifty countries in the Second and Fourth Layers with the Department and Citadel. The Fifth Layer has an active loop to capture any mage who enters. On advice from the Department, the Fifth Layer has closed its borders completely, though sources close to the Department worry that the Origin Mage will find a way to supersede those measures, if motivated. However, her age and inexperience give us hope that she will be brought down quickly.”
Closed? I flexed my fingers.
“No.” Axer didn’t pause in the spells he was weaving on his cloak, but his magic briefly wrapped around me, then released. “Finding Stavros will be easier than subverting the Fifth Layer magics. One impossibility at a time.”
Constantine shifted angrily, head bent over the eye lenses he was enchanting.
Excelsine was having a campus-wide, mandatory meeting on Top Circle, so the three of us were alone for the first time since Constantine had activated our communications, and so instead of having their chatter in the background, the news was repeating instead.
A reporter interlaced her fingers solemnly on the feed. “All but one of the feral mages have been killed in the Awakenings. Our layer—all layers—mourn the loss of lives just born to magic.”
Axer extinguished all the feeds with a clenching of his fist.
“The other two...” I cleared my throat. “They are still alive.” It was a sticking point for me. Stavros’s thieves had switched tactics sometime after Bloody Tuesday. They’d started taking the Awakening mages alive.
Bloody Tuesday was the day Stavros had discovered me. It was in no way a coincidence.
But far too late for Christian. If only they'd taken him alive, if only there’d been no body to bury.
I closed my eyes tightly. Unhelpful thoughts. Forward—forward with what could be changed, and who could be saved. I thought of Bellacia’s path. “If we can get recordings of what is happening—make people see—”
Axer shook his head. “Stavros won’t admit his crimes on national newsfeed. Even the minuscule admissions you got for Bailey the first time in Corpus Sun aren't repeatable. Not with the defenses he has put into place.”
“We could find a way around them.”
“He doesn't make the same mistakes.”
I chewed on my lip, fingers caressing the thin spine of a war abstract that had been in Frost Viper’s apology gifts. “Maybe he could, though. If he thought he'd won.”
Axer examined me closely, suddenly intent. “Do you know what would have to occur for him to think he's won?”
“Terrible things,” I whispered.
“Nope,” Constantine said, dripping a compound onto a rune-filled slide.
“Helpful,” Axer said, pushing his cloak to the side, eyes still narrowed on me as he mentally worked new plans.
“At keeping her from being a mindless automaton?” Constantine carefully dropped three twigs into the cauldron, then twirled an unused stirring rod before folding the spun magic into the new mixture. “Agreed.”
“I have to do the unexpected.” I knew what that meant, in the abstract, in the same way I knew what sacrificing someone meant. Nightmares and unreality.
“Can you?” Axer asked.
“I don’t know.” I forced myself to maintain eye contact. “Maybe it’s not a can. Maybe it’s a must.”
“Absolutely not,” Constantine said blandly.
“The easy play isn’t available,” Axer answered ruthlessly, without looking at him. “It’s all hard choices from here until the end.”
“Oh, there are a few easy ones,” Constantine said, far too pleasantly.
I tapped my pen against the table, mind churning over data. “My brother, and all those before him. All the Awakenings that have been covered up over the years, with the feral population dwindling to such a low as to be almost a myth at Excelsine. The hunter in Spartine Prison who killed Christian—he had orders. Those orders changed. He received both sets of orders. Maybe that’s our in.”
Constantine examined me—pushing aside the lenses he was crafting and giving up his pretense of not paying attention too. “Do you want to confront the man who killed your brother?”