Page 143 of At the Mercy of Midnight
Brinkley sighed softly. “But that fulcrum is so unstable,” he muttered with a frown. “The Rift is growing so quickly that half of East Town have packed up and left. The corrupted magic is bleeding through into almost everything.”
“And if we do nothing,” Amelia said, “we lose everything. If we do it the original way, we lose Finley.” She glanced at everyone in the room, one after the other. “But if we attempt this, there’s a chance we both survive,andthe land stabilises.”
Fabian stood from his cross-legged stance, brushing down the fabric of his robes. “An intriguing concept. Do you know what happens if it fails?”
It was Silas who answered, almost immediately. “We get pulled through to the Midnight Realm. Together.” His answer was sombre, serious. “And the magic will continue to spiral, the Rift will continue to grow, and that collapse will only accelerate.”
Amelia sent him a mild glare.
Silence ensued again, with only the sounds of the fire, the wind against the side of the cottage, and the distant hooting of an owl from somewhere in the night.
Aurora shifted, voice hushed. “Then we help you.” She looked at her brother. “Because I am not losing you, too. Not to that place, not like our father.”
Silas sighed through his nose, eyes cast down.
Fabian gave a slow, measured nod, eyes moving around quickly with a quiet smile on his face. “I’ve rewritten spells before. Not like this, but…I can help. We’ll need a lot of parchment, some stabilisation salts, and likely access to the Spire’s language vaults for translation and extrapolation.”
“I have access to the language vaults,” Halpert said with a nod, “and I can assist with the incantation patterns. Neither I nor my students have ever done anything quite this mad, but it’s worth a try.”
Aurora sighed. “I guess I’ll be on research duty, point me in any direction, give me a topic, and I’ll find it.”
Brinkley blew out a long breath. “And I suppose I’ll allow you all to take over my home and will need to go to the market in the morning. You lot have already drank up all my tea and eaten all my biscuits.” He said it with a humoured gruffness which pulled Amelia’s lips into a grudging smile.
Fabian chuckled lightly, Brinkley’s eyes swinging to the mage with a tinge in his cheeks.
“Where will the ritual take place?” Halpert asked.
Amelia looked at Silas. “Lyana and Bane were heading for the Rift, but they didn’t make it before their time ran out.”
“We want the best possible chance,” Silas chimed in, “and that’s at the convergence site, the place where the magic will be at its absolute strongest.”
Amelia opened her mouth, confused, but in the next moment, she understood what he was saying. “The Ruins,” she said, while Silas nodded. “The epicentre between the Monoliths.”
“Indeed,” Fabian said with an emphatic nod. “Indeed…that is the fulcrum.”
Each face looked around with heavy contemplation, before everyone was nodding, stirring, and sitting forwards as though ready to help.
Amelia looked around at those gathered in the room. For a moment, her throat closed with emotion. She felt Silas’ soft graze of the back of his fingers against her arm, a gentle touch.
Amelia turned to look at him. His smile was small, tentative, perhaps hiding a small measure of hope.
“We have only two days,” he said softly, but loud enough for all to hear.
“Then we’d best begin tonight,” Fabian said, clapping his hands before moving to a pile of books that threatened to topple near Brinkley’s chair.
Aurora cracked her knuckles before reaching for a book herself. “Will we need wine for this?”
“Absolutely,” Brinkley said at once.
Silas smiled faintly from next to her, and she felt it in her own chest, blooming like a fragile flower.
Hope.
The hour was late, weariness filling the room. Books lay open across every surface, scrolls unfurled across carpets and half-filled mugs of tea and wine glasses lay forgotten among the ink and food-stained pages.
The furniture had been pushed to the edges of the room, with a wide, low table now sitting in the centre. The fire in the hearth burned low and steady, casting long shadows across the floor strewn with scraps of parchment covered in notes.
Silas leaned over the table, brows furrowed, sleeves rolled, and ink smudged across his left cheek. He was copyingsections of an old incantation loop for marriage ceremonies from an old tome, eyes flicking between the thick book and his own mad scrawl across the parchment.
