Page 91 of At the Mercy of Midnight
For a breathless moment, he thought it might work.
The journal shuddered, the seals flickering, the glyphs glitching and stuttering.
A shriek tore through the air, a sound like metal tearing. The glyphs recoiled violently, the seal tightening, stilling against the leather-bound journal once more.
The force of it knocked them both backwards.
Each candle extinguished at once, leaving curling tendrils of smoke drifting upwards.
Silas hit the ground hard, stars bursting behind his eyes. Amelia rolled to her side with a groan, clutching her ribs.
The journal sat smug and untouched between them. The glyphs glowed again, steady, mocking, and resolute. A beating heart that would not still.
Silas dragged himself upright, breathing hard. “Well,” he muttered, “that went spectacularly.”
Amelia pushed hair from her face, scowling. “It reacted to our bond. I felt it.”
Silas pressed his palm to his chest, over the wild thudding of his heart. “There was a voice, a woman. Did you hear it?”
Amelia’s frown deepened. “I didn’t hear anyone.”
Silas stared at the journal, jaw tightening as unease crept beneath his skin.
“We’ll try again tomorrow,” Amelia said, voice like steel.
He leaned back against the wall, aching in places he didn’t know he could ache, watching her through heavy-lidded eyes. Her stubbornness sparked something deep in him, something steadying.
“You’re damn right we will,” he said quietly.
In the late afternoon, he returned to Amelia’s apartment alone to relook at his fathers’ journal in case something had been missed in the chaotic scribbles all over the margins, some overlapping each other. Amelia visited Halpert, promising she would return later with dinner.
He was tired of reading the same words over and over, yet each run-through he found something he hadn’t seen before. The insane entries caused nothing but a deep sadness.
His back ached by the time he contemplated giving up again for the day, when a few lines in miniscule writing stood out, rendering him speechless. He read the lines several timesbefore closing the cover. Silas sat back in the armchair, staring at the wall with an odd feeling coursing through him.
When the sun left the world in darkness, Amelia entered the room, toting a paper bag filled with food.
She nodded to him quietly before laying the food out on the ground.
“How was Halpert?”
She pulled a lid from a container, the contents steaming. “He’s been working on a new kind of rune for the lamp crystals,” she explained. “His research is very interesting. He was telling me he’s had a few meetings with the city mage. Sounds like an interesting fellow.” Amelia laughed slightly as she fetched some bowls for them.
“Mages usually are,” Silas responded.
“Mm,” she agreed absently, spooning some rice into a bowl, and handing it to him.
“Thanks.” He took the bowl, adding some vegetables from another container.
“Halpert mentioned that the mage had a hired mercenary with him.”
Silas glanced up. “Have more mages disappeared?”
Amelia shrugged one shoulder. “He’d heard that a mage in the south was reported missing…that would be three in last few months if the rumours are true.” She gave him a look.
“The south…do you think he meant—”
“Fabian Eros.” Amelia nodded, spoon circling around her bowl. “Yeah, I do think that. Hewasmissing. And the state of his place?”
