Page 14 of At the Mercy of Midnight
Impossible.
Amelia stepped over a displaced boulder and manoeuvred around the split in the earth until she reached Silas. She set the dark blade on the stone step and took his hand, pulling it towards her roughly. A matching thin line, welling with blood, sat there on his palm.
She looked to the light blade in his other hand, the streak of red across the edge of the silvery-golden metal glistening. Amelia let him go and stumbled incredulously away from him.
“How…” she started, the words sticking in her throat, “could this have happened?”
It was only then that Silas saw her own palm, which she held out between them.
He grabbed for her hand and inspected her small wound, his face morphing with dawning horror.
He swore viciously and let her go again.
“What do you think will happen?” Amelia asked, voice wobbly from shock.
Silas shook his head. For once, there was no arrogance, no smugness on his face. Just the same creeping dread that was tightening in her own chest. “I have no idea. This is as unprecedented as it comes. We need to research this at once, in case…” He broke off to sigh heavily. “In case there’s any significant impact to us.”
Silas knelt to the ground, placing his blade carefully down before pulling open his pack. He tugged out a spare shirt and promptly tore it in half with one swift movement. He handed the torn fabric to her, and she took it uncertainly. Silas picked up the blade gingerly, wrapping it securely in his half of the shirt. Amelia got to her knees and took up the other, also wrapping it as carefully as she could, steering clear of the sharp edges.
“It’s so strange,” Amelia said slowly, “I swear I didn’t touch the blade, yet…”
Silas packed both blades into his pack, shifting them carefully until he was satisfied with where they lay. “I don’t recall being cut, either.” He looked up to her. “Let’s just get out of here before another quake hits, and then we can worry about this later.”
Amelia shouldered her pack and stood. Silas held the arcane lamp, walking the perimeter for an escape.
Thankfully, they located a staircase on a far wall that led upwards. There was a small cave-in to one side on the way up, but they were able to climb over it to continue ascending through the temple.
The stairway exited into a dark passage through a narrow opening in the wall. It was when Amelia saw the weatheredartwork in front of the opening, that she realised they weren’t far from the exit.
Amelia breathed freely for the first time in what felt like hours when they stepped out into the heat of the late afternoon sun. They had only a few hours of light left, so Silas and Amelia barely spoke to each other as they hustled through the central ruins for their campsite.
When they stopped for a brief pause, it was Amelia who suggested he clean the blood from the side of his face, lest they be bombarded with hundreds of questions on their return. Silas used his water canteen to wash the dark stains from his skin and hair, and they agreed on a story of him tripping over and knocking his head to cover for the small wound that dissected through his right eyebrow.
They continued onwards for their camp.
When they came into sight of the lamps surrounding their camp, Silas stopped them and faced her.
“Let’s keep this to ourselves for a beat,” Silas suggested. Amelia opened her mouth to argue, but he interrupted her before she could. “We don’t know what we’ve found, or what the cuts will do to us. If the information falls to the wrong ears, a lot of people might come for the daggers…or for us.”
Her eyes widened. “You think they’ll want to run tests on us?”
Silas nodded, eyes imploring. “Perhaps. I wouldn’t put it past some of the factions out there that look for magic in everything.”
“We don’t know it will do anything at all to us,” she reasoned.
“Let’s be sure.”
She sighed but relented. “Fine. We conduct our own research, but if we find nothing, we’ll consult Halpert at the very least.”
Amelia turned away from him before he could argue with her, and headed back to the camp, her hand fisted tightly around the wound on her palm. The feeling of the magic after being cut had subsided, but there was a strange undercurrent of something else Amelia could sense that had her feeling sick with the unknown.
In history, those who had tried to touch the Monoliths had all died in the process, overcome by surges of power that their bodies couldn’t cope with. Amelia and Silas had just each been cut by pieces of it.
The simultaneous wounds seemed an impossibility, leading her to ponder whether the daggers’ magic hadmeantfor something like that to happen. Amelia’s heart fluttered as she wondered what they had just awoken, and what more the magic might want to claim from them.
FOUR
The evening drew in quickly, bringing with it a chilled wind that whipped at the sides of their tents and had them fearing for the longevity of the fire. It had also brought a solemn energy throughout the group when Amelia and Silas had explained they had discovered the temple, but nothing of more interest.
