Page 22 of Strength of Desire

“Simple enough, right?” he said, his eyes bright. He no longer seemed suspicious of me. Rather, he was enthralled with his subject matter. “It’s an incredible piece of spellcasting. And it is, of course, an honor to be asked to be one of the wardkeepers. If only it didn’t take—”

He cut off abruptly and shook himself, like he’d only just realized what he was about to say.

“If only it didn’t take what?” I asked.

“What? Oh, nothing. No, I just meant, um—well, it’s not important, just a small detail of the spell.”

I wasn’t sure I believed him. After all, he’d just spent the past fifteen minutes telling me every detail he could think of about the spell. Why clam up now? But he clearly wasn’t going to tell me.

“Right,” I said, nodding towards the book. “So, the additional layer of enchantment you added this week. Was that…covered somewhere…in all of that?”

“Ah! Yes. Well, no. I merely meant—that is—I was simply—”

“Hans, take a breath,” I told him. “It’s okay. You don’t have to explain everything perfectly. I’m not going to judge you.”

“Right. Yeah. Of course.” He shook his head. Sometimes he seemed as young as the students. “I was just excited. I don’t get too many chances to talk about advanced spellwork, especially since I’m stuck teaching underclassmen. I never thought you’d be interested.”

“And I never thought I’d have four moraghin pay a visit to one of my freshmen combat classes,” I said wryly. “We’re living in unprecedented times.”

“You can say that again. Well, as I was saying, no, I didn’t describe the additional layer yet.”

“Is it going to take another thirty pages in that thing to do so?” I asked, looking at the grimoire.

“No, this one’s even simpler. As you know, Autumn, Teresa, Sheridan, and I are wardkeepers. Traditionally, this has meant that we maintain the wards through regular ritual, perform periodic assessments, and keep everything in good working order. And until now, there’s never been a problem. But until now, everyone also assumed that the wards were impregnable. The fact that the wards could be breached without our direct knowledge is worrisome.”

I nodded. So far, so good. I had actually understood all of that.

“To avoid that occurring again, we decided it made the most sense to add four additional nodes within the enchantment for capacity stimulus, artifact debugging, and energetic cleansing, and to connect those nodes to this planar instantiation via in vivo implantation. This should not only augment the potency of the enchantment and assist in perpetuating the soundness of the instrument, but also ensure instantaneous cognizance of any malefic intent or supernatural rifts in the fabric of the incantation.”

I sighed. He’d been doing so well.

“So that means—”

“It means that the spell now flows through each of the wardkeepers themselves,” said a voice behind us.

Hans and I turned to see Autumn standing in the doorway.

“The spell gains power and keeps itself in proper working order by using our bodies as focal points,” she continued. “And if there’s another attack, our bodies will be attacked as well.”

That sounded gruesome. But maybe that was what it took to strengthen the wards.

“Autumn!” Hans said. “I didn’t know you were here.”

“Of course you didn’t, I just got here.” She grinned. “Besides, you wouldn’t notice a herd of elephants walking right in front of you if you were in the middle of explaining a spell.” She walked around the star to join us. “Hey, Noah. What brings you up here?”

“Hans was just showing me how the wards work,” I said, doing my best to sound innocent.

And I was innocent. I wasn’t doing anything. It was all perfectly reasonable, me being up here with Hans. And Autumn didn’t seem suspicious…did she?

I suppressed a sigh. I really wasn’t cut out for this spying thing. I was much better at dealing with straightforward violence. Not playing around with secrets and lies.

“Yeah,” Hans chimed in. “Noah just wondered, what with the moraghin going to his class and all. I figured it couldn’t hurt to tell him.”

He sounded as nervous as I felt. Moreso, actually. He’d been perfectly normal, if confusing, until Autumn arrived. Now he looked like he expected a firing squad to pop up behind her and take him out.

“Completely understandable,” Autumn said. “I can’t imagine what that was like.”

“Count yourself lucky,” I told her. I glanced over at Hans, who was clutching the grimoire with both hands like a shield. Were those beads of sweat on his brow?

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