“Layered between two other fields. Try it.”
I swallowed and wrapped it around my wrist. I could feel where he had delicately placed the magic to soften the feeling of the null. But it was still a null cuff.
I could see him watching me, though he was pretending not to.
“I’m fine.” I smiled.
“As fine as you ever are,” he murmured.
Two hours later, my jitters had increased to the point where I was nearly vibrating in my chair. A small testing device was strapped to my upper arm, securing a light field around me that pinged when magic was occurring.
“Try that one,” Constantine said. I pressed my finger into the seventh iteration of the mold, and it wrapped easily around the null field and adhered my finger to the table. Neither of the previous two iterations had sparked as magic, but they’d also failed to keep my finger stuck. “How did you get the pads to spark so little magic?”
“The mountain rats,” he said. “Someone did a paper on them years back and detailed how they move.”
“You remember details from a paper you read years ago?”
“I'm a genius. And motivated. I started working with all sorts of things this term. Knowing.”
Knowing that we would end up this way. But he didn't have to be—
“Shut up, darling.”
“Stop listening in then. Did you build little winged boots, too?”
“If I had, the Department would shoot us from the sky,” he said idly.
“I'm surprised we aren't riding a...death pegasus, or something.”
“Anything magical larger than two meters is pushed back by their fourth ward field.”
“Worried some Awakening mage will fling themselves over the edge trying to catch a ride?”
“Yes.” He twisted a filament. “Getting in will be easy. Once we are in there, if we don't disable the fifth field, we won't get out.”
“That's where I come in,” I said, my leg jittering up and down on its own.
Constantine snorted. “I don't think that's the plan.”
“It is not,” Axer said.
I swiveled to see him standing in the trees, watching us. Something passed between the two of them, barbed and jagged, before Axer brushed it aside and walked forward.
He reached for my magic, checking my levels.
“It's been a little over two hours and it is still okay,” I said, touching the cuff. But we could all feel the backlash gathering beneath.
“Three hours maximum, then,” he said and removed the cuff.
Absolute relief took me, making my entire body feel limp. A cough bubbled up and I grabbed a storage paper, cupping it around my mouth. Paint splattered inside, and shrieking could be heard—like demon souls screeching from hell.
Constantine's mouth pinched. “If she gets separated from us—”
“Then we deal with it.”
“We”—Constantine pointed between them—“can take care of this without her.”
“Now wait a minute—” I pushed the edges of the paper together.
Axer’s gaze never wavered from his roommate. “This doesn't work without her. You know that.”
“It can.”
“Can it?” Axer’s voice was methodical.
“Told you.” I could hear Trick whisper through the mental feed Constantine had engineered, forgetting that Axer walking into the room meant they were back with us. “Too much ten—”
Constantine pinched and twisted the end of that thought and Trick swore. “Dammit, Leandred, I swear that—”
Constantine crushed the communication in a shaking hand, leaving the three of us alone.
“If she is separated from us—”
“Then we find her,” Axer said.
“She is all I have,” Constantine said, head tilting down to his chest.
My breath caught, and the paper crumpled in my hand as I tripped toward him, grabbing his forearm in both of mine. I tried to say no, that he had all the Bandits, too. He just had to reach out.
“You have more than that,” Axer said roughly. “You just don't want to see it. You didn't want to see it after Salietrex, and you don't want to see it now.”
Constantine stepped into his space without dislodging me. “Oh, I still have you, do I? Where were you when good old Stuart was ripping my life force from the inner fabric of our ancestry? Flaying me within an inch of my life?”
“I was at your door, trying to gain entry. I felt what he did to you. You know I did.”
“But you didn't stop it.”
“You barred me. I beat my hands and magic bloody against your shiving door. Only you could have barred me from entry.”
For one shining second, I could feel Constantine’s truth in his reaction to Axer’s words. I could see the gaping hole where Constantine blamed himself. Where he blamed himself far more than he blamed anyone else.
“You thought you deserved it,” I whispered.
He scrambled away from me. “No.”
“Con.” It was agonizing, the feelings he was trying to bottle. And I could feel Axer do something—ripping the bottle away so that Constantine was struggling to reach it.
“You aren't to blame,” Axer said. “Verisetti was to blame. Stavros. Your father for his misuse of your trust and life. Me for not stopping Salietrex. Not you.”
“Of course not,” Constantine said stiffly. “I fully blame you, and I always have.”
Axer stepped forward. “Not you.”
Constantine crossed his arms. “Of course not. Don't be ridiculous.”
But Axer, like the hunter he was, had caught the scent of blood. “Have you blamed yourself all this time? How did you hide that?”
“You gave me up,” Constantine said, attacking again.
“You forced me to,” Axer replied, but he was prowling now.
“You replaced me.”
“You left me. Broke every connection that wasn’t permanent. I spent a year trying to right things, throwing myself at every door. Do you know what that felt like? It was agony. I had to move on. My family forced it upon me until I realized the truth myself. And I was still absurdly happy for about five seconds when I saw you at the dorm’s door.”
“You’ve always been stupidly optimistic,” Constantine sneered, but it was the response of a wild animal backed into a corner.
“Have you blamed yourself all this time?”
And something shifted and fell in Constantine's soul. “No. I have not. Because then I would have nothing.”
Pain, anguish, ceaseless self-loathing bombarded our connection. My palm hit my throat as I tried to hold back my rising sob.
“I blame myself too,” Axer said, stepping closer still. “For her. For you. For not knowing what your father would do. For letting you push me—drive me—away. I hated you. I hated the mental torture you inflicted each time I reached out. I hated not having you there.”
“You let my mother die,” Constantine said, like a desperate man.
“And you tried to give up mine.” Axer's own face darkened. I caught flashes of it through my connections to both, the images and memories forming a triangle. The Department coming for Dare's mother. A young Kaine trying to subdue her on one of her clandestine visits outside the island. The nature and timing of such visits were only known to the island’s inhabitants and to Constantine. “You didn't succeed, but you tried. You willingly did that.”