Page 17 of At the Mercy of Midnight
She frowned, looking down to the blade he had left on her table. He was right. The glow that had exuded from both was now gone and the faint thrumming of magic they had both been able to feel the moment they had entered the temple seemed snuffed out. She trembled slightly at what they had done.
Amelia swallowed. “For all we know, something might happen at midnight. The earthquake last night…and having these with us now, we don’t know what we might have just unleashed on ourselves.”
He fell silent at that, the unspoken threat of midnight hanging in the air between them. The wind whistled menacingly outside, pulling the canvas of her tent walls taut over and over, the noise distracting. After a beat, Silas moved away, taking the dagger with him. “I’ll take this one. We should get some rest.”
“Yeah,” she nodded, only because there was nothing else to say. Absently, she brushed at the necklace sitting in the centre of her chest and felt the warmth of it. Amelia looked down at it, noting the swirling tempest on the Stormglass. She sighed. “It looks like there’s a storm coming.”
Silas was at the entrance to her tent and paused to glance back at her, eyes questioning. He saw what she held and tilted his head to the side, and she readied for his lecture on how unlikely the accuracy of the magical trinket was in the middle of the Rift. Instead, all he said was, “you are the storm, Winslow.”
It was a vain effort, but Amelia still pulled out her Wayglass, and tried to call her closest friend. She spoke clearly into the Wayglass, hoping it would connect to the one she had all the way in East Town. But the glass merely rippled before returning to its mundane reflective surface.
She sighed, not expecting it to have worked so deep in the Rift, but she’d had a sudden urge to speak to someone. Not for comfort. No, Amelia was not one to trust in others for comfort and understanding. Amelia wanted scientific and academic support, someone to tell her she was doing the right things.
Placing the Wayglass aside, she thought it was for the best that the magic was too unstable to have worked. She had promised Silas that they would keep it a secret for now. The problem being, it was a secret she was sharing with Silas Finley, of all people. Amelia barely trusted anyone, let alone the man who had plagued and rivalled her career for so many years. He was someone Amelia had never been able to get a clear read on. It was difficult to trust him with something so monumental, something that could impact not only her entire career, but her life.
Midnight was approaching quickly, and Amelia paced about, on edge. She kept her blade covered in the fabric, hoping that she was wrong, and midnight would have no more of an effect than it had the night before, which had been bad enough.
Amelia stepped out into the torrent of wind with only a few minutes left of the day, flinching when the cold air blasted against her skin, her stray hairs whipping around her face.
Everyone was in bed, but she could see arcane lamps lighting each tent, proving that they were all still awake and awaiting midnight just as she was.
The fire flared and died with the ebb and flow of wind, but it crackled furiously on, giving her a small sense of comfort.
Hank and Frank were stoically walking the perimeter of the campsite, huddled against the strong winds, their guns slung over their backs.
The first sense Amelia had that something was about to go very wrong was the sharp sting she felt on her left hand. She flinched at the sudden flare of pain and looked down at the shadow of a cut she could see in the darkness.
She looked up to find Silas stepping out from his tent, his eyes finding hers immediately. Even from across the campsite, she could tell he felt the same onset of pain as she did, his face pinched with it.
The low rumbling started in the distance, the sound now worryingly familiar to Amelia. Her body braced for the quake.
The others began to emerge from their tents, faces wary, bodies tense.
A perimeter lamp burst into a shower of sparks, and then died altogether.
The group’s eyes grew wide as one by one, each lamps’ golden glow cracked with a sound that seemed impossible over the thunderous noise of the quake, the mutinous roar of thewind. A darkness descended as their sources of light died, Amelia’s blood chilling in her veins with each one.
A feeling of pressure in her chest began, and she pressed her hand there, her sense of panic escalating.
Then everything went very wrong.
The wind stopped blowing with the sound of a vacuum, the erasure of noise in her ears was like a warning of what was to come.
The world began to shake.
The pressure on her chest eased for a breath, only for her body to feel like it was shattering apart. Her vision went black, every nerve ending in her body flaring with a sudden burst of pain. Amelia couldn’t feel the ground beneath her anymore, and she had no sense of where she was in space, like her body was being flung through complete darkness.
Then, just as suddenly, her feet slammed against the ground and there were a pair of arms around her, holding her upright. Someone breathed heavily into her ear.
“What the—” It was Silas’ deep voice in her ear.
Amelia tried to pull away, but the ground was still quaking beneath them, making her stumble. Silas kept her steady with a hand to her arm, but she felt anything but moored.
When she looked down, she found they were in the middle of the campsite, only feet from the fire beside her. Her last recollection was standing outside the entrance of her tent.
How did I get here?
She looked wildly at Silas, who seemed just as shaken as she felt, his wide eyes darting around and pausing on her face.
