Page 142 of At the Mercy of Midnight
THIRTY-TWO
The fire crackled in the hearth, flames casting flickering shadows across the carpeting, tables, and chairs of Brinkley’s common room.
It had begun to look less like a common room, and more like a war room, with the people huddled there, and almost every surface covered with piled-high tomes and little pyramids of bound scrolls sitting on maps and hand-drawn rune illustrations.
Brinkley sat in a chair, arms folded as his eyes moved around the room, taking in the strange cohort of people congregated in his home.
Amelia and Silas stood near the fireplace, standing next to teetering piles of books, topped with ink-stained pages that had been pulled from important journals.
Sitting in another wingback chair near Brinkley, was an older man, a scholar. Someone that Amelia trusted with this secret. Halpert. It had only been a handful of days since she had last seen him in Ivory City, yet he somehow looked older as he waited patiently, hands folded in his lap, brows heavy with thought as he glanced around with quiet curiosity. He was responsible for over half of the books that had arrived that afternoon from the Spire, Amelia’s apartment, and his own private library.
A woman stood near the window at the front of the cottage, peering out at the moon as it glowed brilliantly, almost full. Aurora, Silas’ sister, seemed subdued. Amelia had briefly expanded on what Silas had already told her back in Lunarian, and while she had agreed to join them in their research and adaptation of the Midnight Rite, she was also not very tickled by the prospect of losing her only brother.
The third person that Amelia had invited to the cottage, was the oddest of them all.
Looking more himself once again, flamboyantly dressed in deep magenta robes, Fabian Eros sat on the rug near a groaning bookshelf, legs crossed and a pleasant smile on his face. Brinkley kept flicking his gaze to the young mage, eyes curious.
Amelia stepped forwards, hands trembling slightly. Not from fear, but from the sheer weight of what she was about to request.
They had each been briefed on their time in the Rift, the true story. Now, she had to explain what she hoped to achieve.
“This ritual,” Amelia said quietly, “the one that Lyana and Bane tried to perform and failed…it isn’t just ancient. It’s cruel,and it was written to consume. And unless we find a way around it, it will end with Finley—” Her voice caught, but she steadied herself to continue. “—Being given over, entirely. Body and soul will be taken, consumed. Gone.”
She whispered the last word. Silas looked away from her, jaw tight.
The others said nothing, but the tension in the room drew taut like a wire ready to snap at the slightest vibration. Aurora’s eyes darkened, while Brinkley’s fingers tightened around a mug of steaming cinnamon tea.
“I don’t believe it has to end that way,” Amelia continued. “We’ve been studying the details of the ritual, the old glyphs, incantation patterns of the mirrored soul equations that Bane had found in ancient texts. They all operate on the principle of consumption to complete the bond. The sacrifice is meant to unify the pair bond, to bring the magical components of both Monoliths together…by erasing one of them.”
“But what if,” Amelia said, voice growing strong and steady despite her fear lingering beneath it, “we could unify without destruction? Not by one soul consuming another, but by becoming joined, fully. Willinglyandmagically.”
Silas drew in a slow breath from next to her, and she could sense his eyes on her.
“I’m proposing—”
A small snort cut her off, and Amelia looked over to Fabian, who was chuckling softly to himself. His sparkling green eyes met hers before he looked to Silas and back again.
“Apologies, just a rather amusing choice in words.”
“What?” Aurora asked angrily from next to the window. “What’s possibly funny about anything she’s saying? This is my brother’s life we’re discussing here.”
“No, yes, understood,” Fabian said, clearly trying to hide his smile, but failing. “It’s just, she said ‘proposing’, and she’s doing literally that. Proposing to the lad.”
Amelia stared at the mage, before shifting her gaze quickly to Silas. He stared at Fabian with a look that clearly implied he was a lunatic.
She drew in a slow breath. “He’s right,” Amelia confirmed, and in her periphery, Silas’ head whipped towards her. She ignored it. “I’m proposing a fusion of magic and reweaving of the core spell. Instead of ending in a siphoning and a sacrifice, it will end with a different kind of union. A soul-bonding ceremony. A marriage.”
With all the words out there for everyone in the room to take in and chew on, she finally turned her head, meeting Silas’ stunned gaze. He blinked at her. “A marriage?” he repeated slowly, as if he couldn’t have possibly heard her correctly. “As in…”
Amelia swallowed, keeping her focus on him as she answered. “As in a sacred joining of intention, body and soul,” she said, “sealed through an ancient magic, which I found in the Spire’s restricted archives.” Amelia tugged out the tiny book she had found, handing it to Silas. He took it stiffly, glancing down at the front cover which read ‘Magical Marriages: A Look at the History of Soul-Bonding’ before glancing back up. The fire reflected in the stark blue of his eyes. “I have to believe that this kind of connection would be embedded in the original architecture of the first pair bonds…that this is what it meant for bringing them together in the first place. This ritual Bane describes, this sacrifice, has been created as an archaic version of it, something that should never have existed.”
Silas’ jaw worked, his focus on her intense and disbelieving. “I…so…if we layer this on top of the ritual’sfoundation, it might allow us to complete the stabilisation without a sacrifice?”
Amelia bit at her lip, heart beating a little faster as Silas began to understand. She nodded.
“You want to make an attempt to redirect the energy exchange,” Halpert said slowly, and they both turned to look at the scholar. He sat forwards in the armchair, a hand rubbing across his chin as he stared into the fire, deep in thought. “You want to redirect it from consumption to concordance.”
“Yes,” Amelia said eagerly. “I don’t think the Monolith’s mean to just consume, that their original purpose is connection. I think a balance could be struck at the fulcrum between them, to achieve the same outcome.”
