“Are you sure?” Axer asked him, stepping around the table.
“Yes.” Constantine put on his ultra-game face—which let me know exactly who he was calling—and turned his head.
Axer immediately started opening wards using Mussolgranz's magic.
Cognizant of the many stares—some surreptitious, others not—from the hundreds of trapped gazes, I turned and walked to the tool aisles. Guard Rock jumped to the ground and padded alongside me. If I returned to the Awakening cells, I was going to release all of them, and damn the consequences. I looked over the assembled horrors. Jars, devices, incubators, conduits, and tools were lined up on shelves. I wandered through the first aisle of shelves numbly.
Dark shadows danced along glass containers and terrarium domes in the second aisle. Shadows like Kaine's. I peered closer. Each vessel contained something slightly different—experiments at different stages of completion.
I wondered if this was how Kaine had been created. Had he been one of these small shadows? Had they fused a shadow onto a child's body? Had he been created from nothing? Had he grown from a shadowy wisp into the monster that he now was? Or had a Shadow Mage been taken as a child and experimented on?
My hands trembled in my pockets at what Stavros and Mussolgranz were capable of. Of what they had bred or destroyed to make Kaine. At what they would be doing next.
I closed my eyes and let the emotions come. Let them happen. When I opened my eyes, one of the jars on the lowest shelf had clattered closer, as if it had felt my emotions and was reacting to them.
A small shadow was inside. Thin, almost ephemeral. But there was something about it...
I crouched to peer closer. It pressed its tendrils against the glass with small, thin arms. The appeal in the gesture was apparent. It was a bad idea to reach out, but natural curiosity and empathy pulled me closer.
Guard Rock gave the glass a tap with his pencil.
The shadow pressed harder against the glass, pleadingly.
I looked at the other shadows growing and shifting in jars above and around it—malevolently or seductively pressing against their containers. Spiky, empty. Maybe replacements for Kaine. Maybe new beings to add to his army.
I looked back at the one that had captured my attention, and realized I was looking at my palms, and the container had somehow found its way into them. My fingers cradled the glass. Small, trembling tendrils pressed against the glass, reaching toward the heat of my palms and entreatingly toward my face.
I looked at Guard Rock, who shrugged and nodded.
“Ren?”
“Yes?” I called over my shoulder. The tendrils of shadow picked up speed, pressing, reaching for me, begging.
“They've arrived.”
I stared at the jar, at the pleading tendrils. I tucked it into my cloak as I rose. “Coming.”
Axer stared at me as I rounded the shelves, an expression on his face like he knew that I had touched and taken something. I swallowed and looked to Constantine, expecting him to start yelling, but he was focused on the entrance.
Stuart Leandred stood in the doorway. Grim-faced, he walked inside the space, ten mages wearing hazard gear trailing behind him.
Bellacia and Roald Bailey entered next. Bellacia's eyes were half-lidded and triumphant as she locked gazes with me. “Ren, my dear, dear, overpowered magelet.”
Her fingers ran along my arm as she passed, spells flying to absorb every detail. “This, well, I will be processing this debt to you for years.”
Her gaze paused on Constantine, then moved on. “You have your vow on that front and then some, as well,” she said to me, without a second look his way, already working through fifteen different stories as she walked.
Roald Bailey studied me with dark, intelligent, dissecting eyes, and I felt a sense of unease.
“Now, Daddy, what did I say?” Bellacia called, without looking back.
“I'm still uncertain this is the way to go, Bella.”
“Trust me,” she said, gaze taking in everything. “Trust me.”
He gave me one last look and followed her, powerful recording magic flinging from him in a burst of light.
Marsgrove came through next. Several officials followed in his wake, and immediately scrambled for defensive spells when they saw me, then scrambled even harder when their gazes landed on Axer. Marsgrove absorbed their spells in one raised protection spell and sighed. “Why are you still here, Crown?”
His voice implied that we should have disappeared the moment we opened the doors.
My eyes strayed to the Awakening mages. “I...I can't... We are going to stop whatever Stavros is doing, but I need...I need the Awakening mages safe.” I needed to be able to think of other things, knowing they were safe.
“We will gather them,” Marsgrove said, voice far quieter than I had heard it.
“But Stavros—”
“Stuart,” Marsgrove called over his shoulder, looking steadily at me.
Stuart Leandred turned from where he was engaged in a tense conversation with Constantine. “Phillip.”
“Permission to move the Awakening mages to Itlantes. They have facilities freshly prepared by some strange accident of fate.”
Stuart's gaze went to Axer, who looked back with a calmness that was entirely false.
Stuart's eyes grew distant for a moment, “Permission granted by a 5-2 edict from the Council, though the two dissenting members are scrambling to repeal the decree, citing that we have been bamboozled by a Conquering Mage.”
Marsgrove turned unimpressed eyes on Axer. “You've been upgraded. Congratulations.”
Axer looked at him steadily, then turned to watching the proceedings. I noticed that he had removed his cuff.
Marsgrove flicked his fingers at an assistant, who was now punching codes in the console. The cells around the Awakening mages flickered and started to move.
I raised my hand, and Rosaria, Samuel, and Makali raised theirs. The cells turned, lined up end-to-end and shot through a tube.
There were a few tense moments, then, “Arrival complete,” Stuart reported.
“They made it,” Axer affirmed, gaze connected to mine.
Tension uncoiled in my gut and I gave a high-pitched laugh. “All of them?”
“Every single one.”
Saved. I wrapped my hand around the edge of a shelf and let my chin drop to my chest, closing my eyes and letting the dark spots creeping over my vision blend into full black.
“Ren?”
“It's okay. Do your thing.” I opened my eyes once the blood rushed back and focused on the floor. I could feel Axer casually step closer anyway.
They'd be fine. They'd be fine. Everything was going to be okay. The ferals were saved. Saved. And Stavros and his Basement unmasked.
“Crown. You did... You did well.” Marsgrove touched my shoulder, then slipped away to supervise.
“Ren?” Olivia demanded.
I slid to the floor as all the Bandits' voices cut back in—Marsgrove's people raising communications to the outside world—and overriding the “mute button” that I hadn't realized I'd engaged.
“They are safe. Saved. Alive.”
“We know,” Olivia said softly. “You did it.”