Page 64 of The Deadliest Candidate

“I can’t,” he said.

“Why?”

He hesitated. “I’m not good with… with poisons. It’s not deadly, anyway. It’ll paralyse my leg, then bleed out. I can walk.”

Fern was beginning to understand why Lautric constantly seemed on the verge of exhaustion and total collapse. His cavalier attitude in the face of this situation betrayed a shocking disregard for his own health and wellbeing. It was the last thing Fern expected from a Lautric, but then, this was becoming a pattern of sorts.

“We need to find Dr Essouadi—” She hesitated. “Or the Ferrows.”

Lautric shook his head. “Too far. No time.”

Fern let out a hiss of exasperation. What could she do? Unbidden, the image of the blood purgation symbol she’d chosen for the first assignment appeared in her mind. It was complex magic—even if she remembered the symbol, she wouldn’t have anywhere near enough energy to use it. Alchemy was too demanding an art, a magic of trade that never gave an ounce more than it received.

Not to even mention the fact that Blood Alchemy was morally reprehensible.

She looked up at Lautric. He watched her silently; his gaze had become glassy and glittering. Though he said nothing, it was clear that he was in considerable pain. And if Josefa was in the Arboretum, if something was happening to her, then they needed to be quick. Fern’s hesitation was already costing them precious minutes.

“I know how to get rid of the poison,” Fern said. “But I don’t have the… I can’t do it right now.”

Lautric studied her, then his eyes narrowed. He tilted his head, speaking thoughtfully. “You used a spell. Earlier. You used a spell—that’s what drew the Sentinels.”

Fern narrowed her eyes. Was he judging her? “I had my reasons.”

“I’m not saying you didn’t. I’m saying I can help.”

He bit the fingertip of his right glove and yanked, pulling it off. “Give me your hand.”

Fern drew back. “No—why?”

“I have something to give you.”

She hesitated, then gave him her hand. To her surprise, he took it in his, lacing his fingers through hers. A flame of heat rose to her face.

“What are you doing?”

“Shh. Trust me, Fern, now if ever. Here.”

He gazed at her, his eyes hooded, his lips parting. Even with the cut running through them, they were still pink and pretty as a woman’s. Agony looked beautiful on him; it moved Fern like a tragedy. She swallowed. His thumb caressed the inside of her wrist, feather-light.

And then it happened. A plume of something enormous and powerful rose through Fern, filling her up. It was nothing she had felt before: like the sky-filling light of dawn, or the overwhelming rush of a tidal wave.

Lautric smiled. She yanked her hand free from his, eyes wide.

“What did you do?”

“Try your spell.”

Fern hesitated, then began to trace out the blood purgation symbol on the stone floor at her feet. Power,raw and incandescent, glowed inside her. Her eyes widened—she did not even need the symbol. It appeared, rising in the air as though written in faint light, shaping itself to her thoughts.

She placed her palm over Lautric’s leg, close enough that she felt the heat of his skin but not close enough to touch. She gazed at the circle, its wheels and lines and triangles, its symbols: blood and iron, acceleration, purification,caput mortuum.

The powers inside her rose to obey the command she’d written, and the symbols shimmered silver as they channelled her will. She drew the poison like pulling out dead weeds from a garden bed. It seeped out of the wounds, rose, curled blackly and fell in a dribble of brackish muck, nothing more, now, than a useless substance, alchemical waste.

The symbol disappeared in a powder of shimmer, and Lautric sagged back with a half-moan. Fern raised an eyebrow. “Better?”

“Much better. If only you could treat all my wounds like this.”

“I probably could. I’ve never felt this much power in my life. What did you do?”

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