Page 47 of At the Mercy of Midnight
Silas woke to a chill that had him wanting to crawl deeper into his bed. No more than a minute later, a swift knock had him sitting up quickly. His first thought was of Amelia. Whipping his blanket away, he padded quickly to the door, throwing it open.
His disappointment was visceral, discovering one of the staff standing primly in a handsome suit, holding a silver tray with a folded sheet of paper out to him.
“Message for you, sir,” he said.
“Thanks.” Silas took the paper with a grateful smile, closing the door again. Shaking it open, he found an elegant scrawl that he recognized as his mothers’. His heart raced as he read.
Silas,
I once worked with a mage in the city by the name of Fabian Eros. He claimed to have had a vision on a past pair bonded couple and how they broke their connection. If you truly want to find a way to sever your bond with Amelia, begin there.
Veralind
Silas read the words thrice, confused. Veralind had seemed insistent on ignoring them since their supper, and now she was trying to help? It was puzzling, but as he had suspected, his mother knew things that neither Silas nor any easily accessible book would know.
Dressing quickly, layering his clothes for a frosty morning, he shoved the note into his pocket. He fixed a holster around his waist, one of a matching pair that they had crafted in his lab the day before. Silas carefully fitted his blade into the holster, throwing the side of his cloak over it to keep it covered. They had agreed to keep them on their person unless conducting a test, for safety and secrecy.
Silas entered the hallway and knocked softly on Amelia’s door.
He heard her shifting around, before calling for him to enter. Silas pushed open both doors, finding her buttoning up the dark winter cloak given to her. Amelia looked up, fingers pausing at the buttons.
She looked a little sheepish in the thick cloak. “It’s freezing in here.”
Silas spied the dark, cold fireplace and frowned. “You let your fire burn out.”
Amelia looked at him with exasperation. “Finley, as you’ve pointed out many times, I come from warmer lands. I’m not used to dragging myself out of bed in the middle of the night to feed a fire.”
Silas scoffed, walking to the fireplace. Next to it were baskets filled with wood runed with fire magic. “That’s not necessary. You simply place the denser logs onto the fire before you sleep. They’ll burn low and slow all night, leaving enough embers to restart the fire with kindling in the morning.”
Her arms fell to her sides. “Oh.”
He sent her a humoured look. “My my, this is a rare day.”
Amelia lifted a brow, daring him to continue.
“To actuallyteachyou something is a rarity, indeed.”
She rolled her eyes, turning away. He watched her wind a scarf around her neck before taking sections of her hair to easily braid a thick rope down the centre of her back. His heart thumped. Silas could watch her complete mundane tasks all day.
“What’s on the agenda this morning? I was thinking about testing the blades’ interaction with other substances…liquids, and gases?” Amelia asked.
“Actually.” Silas pulled out the note, handing it to her. “Mother has decided to be useful, after all.”
He stayed quiet as Amelia read. Finishing, she looked up with a frown, dark eyes sceptical. “A mage? Most ‘mages’ are crackpots,” she said indignantly. “A true mage is rare, and I don’tbelieve I’ve heard of any living in Lunarian. There’s one working in the Spire, and another further south.”
Silas shrugged, not bothering to disagree. Mages, even the true ones who could wield magic freely, were oddities. No one, not even mages themselves, knew how they came to possess such power, just something they had been born with. Speculations ran rampant with theories ranging from the mother giving birth in a star-soaked field at the stroke of midnight, to the mage having been conceived during a half-moon at the precise moment a celestial alignment appeared in the sky. It was all madness, but only one truth lay behind it: every generation, a handful of true mages were born who could tap into the Monoliths’ magic as though they were the formidable spires themselves.
Possessing such power equalled a responsibility to the people. They produced runes and created magical trinkets, like arcane lamps, and structures like the Waystones, that formulated the modern society they led today.
“I agree,” he said, “but with my mother’s penchant for discovering sources for her research, we’d be silly not to explore it.”
Amelia pulled gloves onto her hands with a sigh. “Alright, I suppose it can’t hurt to see him.”
Silas opened the door for her. “Let’s grab a quick breakfast, and then we’ll go.”
The streets were slick with frost, the frigid wind biting at his nose and cheeks. An early drift of snow began as they walked, little flakes swirling lazily through the air, coating the stones with a sheen of white.
It was nothing new to Silas, though Amelia’s soft gasp caught his attention, finding her with a wondrous expression,face upturned, the snowflakes landing in her eyelashes and the curved smile of her lips.
