Page 126 of Architecti
“I’m sorry, Interitus.I didn’t mean it.Just… Just be careful.The mirror.”
Her neck cords.
“Interitus, please, it’s older than our bloodline.Don’t do this because I said the wrong thing.I’m sorry.”
I call the Crowned Moth to me, desperate to weave any future that isn’t the one unfolding before me.But I’m too late.
My moth isn’t fast enough.
I reach for her starry wings, but my magic is panicking.She’s producing too many futures and none of them are in my control.She sinks under the weight, as possibility spawns thousands of Architect moths from her wings.
Interitus, with her hand still buried inside the mirror, clenches our fate in her fist.
The sound is hideous.A creaking like nails clawing at a chalkboard prison.Like metal shrieking against metal.Like the howling of a mother losing her baby.
I clasp my hands to my ears.
The mirror wobbles, its surface bulging and flexing.
“Please don’t destroy it.”I get on my knees and beg.
“I will not have my future determined.Not by you or the elders or the fucking gods.”
She rips her hand from the mirror, and it bursts.A million, trillion futures erupt.Stars and fate and futures scatter around the room in light and dust and screams.
The mirror bleeds life onto the floor.I scramble up, desperate to stand it up.Desperate to grab my moth and weave a future where the mirror heals and fixes itself.But my moth is exhausted.My panic overwhelmed it.
I scoop up the pieces and furiously try to put them back into the frame.But it’s too late.The Mirror of Fate is broken and I can’t fix it.
“What have you done?”I whisper.
“You did this,” Interitus says.
“No,” I shake my head.And it’s the first time I’ve openly disagreed with her.“You did this.You went too far this time.”
She smiles.I’ve always loved it when someone bestows a smile upon me, but hers, I’ve grown to hate.
She picks up a piece of the mirror and hands it to me.
“And what do you see now, sister?”she asks.
I can’t answer, because as my eyes draw down upon the mirror, I am sickened.But more than anything, I’m terrified by the singular looping future I see before me.
38
Lucy
Helena’s cremation is a simple affair.We bury her in the campus cemetery two days after the incident.Her celebration, like all funerals in Ora, begins in Church Vitalis remembering her life and ends in Church Mortis where we remember her death.
The professors are muted, the energy on campus dimmed compared to the loss of Malifax.He was a traitor, Helena was beloved.
And it’s my fault.She died in my place.She died because of me.
Because the Societas are convinced I can somehow resurrect Architecti.But they’re wrong.They’re so fucking wrong, but only Father and I can prove it.
It doesn’t matter how much he tries to convince me otherwise, it’s my fault she’s dead.
I take a couple of days off teaching to get some headspace, to think, to torture myself with the contract.It vexes me.I have tried every contact I have to see if there are any codexes or former professors who could translate angelic runes.But there are none.The ones that can still read it—and they are few and far between—are reluctant to engage with anything celestial for fear of the Societas.Those I dared to show snippets of the contract to said while they could read some celestial runes, this was beyond their skillset.
