5: Aethertrue

Time meant nothing to Emrhys, not anymore. There were only the hours with Corvus Sevens, and without.

“Thallium, thorium, thulium, tin, titanium…” Emrhys paused, shaking her head to clear away the cobwebs. The damage from the wards was getting worse. Her heartbeat thundered erratically, and sweat covered her brow, a slow sludge of terror pooling in her stomach. She could swear that her body was breaking down. Her bones ached, sharp as needles one moment, a dull fire the next. The leymagic wards surrounding her slogged through her veins like a poisonous spell.

This prison was killing her.

“Truesilver, truespirit, truesteel, tungsten.”

Emrhys repeated the Table of Known Elements to keep from losing all sense and reason. If she didn’t say the familiar words, hear them aloud in her weakening voice, she would lose herself to darkness and pain. Sevens wasn’t here tonight (at least she thought it was night) to distract her. Corvus Sevens, the tall guard in black, but the shining light in her world of darkness, was the most unexpected sort of hope. How had the somber, deadly Highguard become such a light to her heart and soul?

Emrhys tried to remember what came after tungsten, but her mind went blank.

“I’ve known these since I was five. How could I possibly forget any of them?” Frustrated, Emrhys stood and paced. More than the wards contributed to her forgetfulness.

I can’t stop thinking about him.

Corvus had gotten under her skin in a way Emrhys had never dreamed possible. He was gentle at a time no person would even look at her. He alone had shown her mercy, although she should have been terrified of him. Everyone in Imperium knew the rumors about soldiers who wore all black. The Dominar’s own assassins and operatives. The ones sent to clean up The Dominion’s nastiest messes.

“Am I one of those messes?” She whispered to herself, voice cracking. In her heart, she suspected the answer, but did not even want to form the words in silence, let alone speak them aloud like a death knell. It did not matter to her that Sevens was frightening. He was the most intriguing mystery she had ever experienced in her life. His light brown eyes narrowed in concentration; his quiet intensity, his cool demeanor masked so much more than was obvious. It was a blankness that she knew from studying her own face in the mirror.

He was like her, as impossible as it seemed. And if he was like her in how she thought, broken in the same horrible ways⁠⁠⁠—

“But that can’t be true. I’m supposed to be the only one,” she blurted out, then swallowed the rest of her thoughts as Guardsman Petrov suddenly appeared at the end of the hall outside of her cell for his duty shift. A tall, gangling man with deep-etched frown lines and red-rimmed, watery blue eyes, he always listened to her ramblings, though he pretended not to. It was as if he were taking careful mental notes, making observations of a wild creature in a zoo enclosure.

He could not look her in the eye.

Emrhys retreated to the back of her cell, her mind wandering away from scheming, forever-frowning guards, forgotten elemental tables and back to Corvus Sevens. Darkly lovely Sevens. He was achingly handsome in that buttoned-up military way, his smooth black hair tied at his neck, his skin light brown against the velvety black of his uniform. Powerful, precise even in his tiniest actions, he moved like a predator. When he made his way from down the hall to her cell for his guard shifts, Emrhys could not help but admire the sureness in his soundless steps.

He was not like the other guards. He was all business. But with her…

Emrhys shivered. He was frightening to others, yes. Petrov always flinched away from him when he arrived at duty postings. But Sevens was not at all frightening to her. He was beautiful. Emrhys observed him for the next few days and noticed something terrible, something that fluttered her heart with icy fear every time she thought of it, and cemented her worst suspicions.

The way he would sometimes wince in pain while standing guard. The way he would stop mid-sentence, expression clouding as whatever words he wanted to say faded into obscurity and confusion. There was too much evidence to ignore.

The wards were affecting Corvus Sevens, just like they were affecting her. If this were true, he truly could not be normal. He had to be like her.

His eyes were shadowed with exhaustion by the end of his last duty-shift. Though he did not show weakness, there was something in his gaze that spoke of pain.

Despite his own suffering, he was kind to her. Yesterday, Sevens had stopped by even though it was not his shift just to give her the journal she’d asked for, along with news of Lenore’s wellbeing. He’d even smiled a little as he handed the packet to her through the slot used to deliver her meals.

The news of her sister and Sevens’ gift had made Emrhys smile, too—the first genuine joy she’d known in weeks. The packet contained her journal, with the metal latches removed, and soft charcoal writing sticks. Nothing that was weaponizable. Inside, a piece of standard-grade parchment marked her place between her last written notes and a blank page. Written on it in a stiff, spiky hand was Corvus’s name, and a tiny symbol in Canrish magescript, scribed far in the left-hand corner: aethertrue.

First on the Table of Known Elements, the substance common to all leymagic binding spells and magic used to forge connections.

Emrhys thought about Sevens’ gift as she gazed out at Petrov, who was industriously scratching his nose and trying not to look conspicuous.

What Dominion soldiers know about Canrish mage-script?

Only Dominion academy-educated leymages used Canrish, the language of a place she would never see. A land of arid deserts, sprawling valley cities nestled along the banks of winding rivers, and of ancient and powerful leylines. Was Sevens trying to communicate something that was unsafe to say aloud?

And if he was like her, that meant there might be more. Her father’s work had been cruel and terrible, but effective in shaping those it affected. Soul-fission—her stomach churned at the thought. To split oneself, to fracture the very essence of being—no magic came without cost, and the cost of her father’s experiments was steep indeed. She and Corvus would be clear evidence of such magic’s high toll.

Emrhys shivered. The blanket from her sister’s priory wasn’t enough these days. The wards were freezing her blood, fuzzing her mind even as they broke her body.

Surely Sevens had not meant the Canrish script as a message. And surely he was not suffering from proximity to the wards, too.

Surely, he is not like me.

—

Corvus did not notice the cold.

He lay in his lonely room in his narrow bunk, the coverlet pulled to his neck. In his mind, dancing over closed lids, images played out. Images he had never allowed himself, or even thought to dream up.

What would dancing with Emrhys be like? At one of the Dominar’s magnificent galas, an entire series of ballrooms, all lushly decorated with rare flowers and shimmering magelamps, and with Emrhys at his side… Did she know how to dance? She was the daughter of a noble family before ending up in this nightmare world, after all.

What would it look like, she and he so close together? Corvus sighed.

She would reach up, resting her hands on his shoulders.

He would circle his arms around her waist, placing his hands ever so lightly on the small of her back. Might he be able to feel the warmth of her body even through the gloves he would undoubtedly wear? Even nobility wore gloves to such occasions as a matter of fashion and honor. Would she lean close to him, her shining silvery hair glinting in the magelamps? What would he see in her eyes?

She would see only what I feel. She would see me falling.

Corvus could scarcely wrap his mind around such a scene as the one waltzing through his consciousness. To dance without care, with no bars between them, with no threats hanging over either of them.

To serve Emrhys delicate foods like sugared lemon candies or chocolate cake, banishing her gauntness. To nestle in cushioned chairs under shimmering magelights, pulling Emrhys close so she would feel so warm and spoiled and safe. What heaven such a thing would be!

He wasn’t sure why, but Corvus had impulsively scribed the Canrish symbol for aethertrue (how he had known this was a mystery) on the slate he’d given Emrhys. A symbol of binding, inextricable connections. A symbol of truth.

Perhaps not that much of a mystery. Corvus sighed into the darkness, the visions fading behind his closed eyes as he lapsed into the oblivion of sleep.