Page 105 of At the Mercy of Midnight
Silas watched the empty doorway for a moment, chest heaving, his body slumping forwards with a sudden surge of fatigue. Despite the aching tiredness, he tugged on the runed chains around wrists, trying and failing to shift his legs. He grunted as he used every last vestige of his energy to pull against the bindings before he felt his consciousness begin to blacken, his eyes falling shut. His head dropped, darkness consuming him.
An ache in his chest jerked him awake, eyes blinking slowly open. Something had awakened him.
Panic, he felt it in his blood. Fear that was not his own.
Rage, it simmered there within him, an echo of someone else.
He gasped and came fully awake, head shooting up.
Silas’s wrists burned where the cuffs bit into his skin, not from friction, but from the runes etched into them. It seemed as though the more he fought them, the more they drained him.
His breaths were shallow, tight with exhaustion.
Footsteps echoed.
The leader entered with the calm of a man strolling through a garden. This time, his face was visible, mask gone to reveal his identity.
Recognition hit him like a punch to the chest.
It was Demetrius, the man from the conference who had shown just a little too much interest in them.
“You,” Silas breathed.
“You’ve stopped struggling,” Demetrius said lightly, like they were acquaintances, not prisoner and captor.
Silas met his gaze. “Doesn’t mean I’ve stopped fighting.”
Demetrius offered a thin smile. “Good. You wouldn’t be the one I want if you had.” He stepped closer, eyes sharp as blades. “Do you know who I am, Silas?”
He gritted his teeth. “You were in the Spire,” Silas said. “You called yourself Demetrius, a scientist. I knew that was bullshit. You’re a zealot who thinks he can use me in some crazy ritual.”
Demetrius smiled, like he had a secret.
“A partial truth,” he said, “but not the heart of it.” He knelt beside the chair, and for a moment, his voice dropped into something quieter. “I go by many names, but you can call me Demetrius, of the Gemino tribe. The last living descendant of those who forged the Midnight Blades.”
Silas stilled.
Demetrius reached into his robes, pulling out both blades, now set into handsome leather sheaths. He licked his lips, face pulling taut as he looked down at them. “These have been kept hidden for so long.” A shadow passed over his face, something dark and foreboding. His eyes lifted to Silas. “I must thank you, and your father, for finding them for me.”
He tensed against his restraints. “What do you want with them, with me?”
Demetrius placed the daggers away with the careful treatment of someone handling delicate china. “Such a rare thing, to be chosen. Both you and Amelia. I don’t think you understand what you truly happened across.”
“We never asked to be chosen,” he said, voice rough.
“None of you did. And none of you learned enough to fix anything, to right the magic,” Demetrius said with a glint in his eyes. “I wondered, briefly, if you and Amelia would do it. Both brilliant, both so stubborn…but here we are.”
Silas studied his expression until he understood it. “Why do you look pleased by that? That we never figured it out?”
“Ah,” he said with a half-grin. “Talking about it won’t help you. The ritual awaits. You and I will become more acquainted soon enough.” Demetrius stood with a low chuckle.
“Wait. What is this ritual? What…what are you going to do?”
He stopped by the door, looking back with a look of contemplation.
“Please,” Silas tried again. “I’m curious. Scientist to…fakescientist.”
He sighed quietly. “The ritual will make everything right, if done correctly. It requires a sacrifice, an offering, between two people who have been touched by magic—”
