Page 23 of Blood Currents
“Whatever you need.”
10
Marigold
By the time night fell, I felt like I’d spent an entire day wearing someone else’s face.Every class, every conversation, every polite smile for someone who still thought Keane was a traitor—I’d been performing.Holding myself together with sheer force of will and the desperate, gnawing need to get back to Keane.
Elio wore this kind of mask so easily—too easily.And now that I was the one pretending, I hated how natural it had started to feel.How easy it was to fake normal when your whole world was crumbling beneath you.
No wonder he disappeared into his roles.They were armor.Addictive.
We’d finalized the plan to look for the lab at lunch.And now here we were, in the early evening, descending into the tunnels beneath the auditorium.I’d been down here before when I’d come to see the wellspring, but tonight everything felt different.The stone corridors that had once seemed mysterious now felt oppressive, heavy.
Even the wellspring—once warm and thrumming with steady power—felt wrong now.Off-kilter.The pulse of magic was jagged and arhythmic, like a dying heartbeat.Keane’s corruption wasn’t isolated.It had roots down here too, coiling through the very veins of the academy.And it was spreading.
Scout clung to my shoulder, his claws gripping the fabric of my sweater and his glowing eyes darting toward every flickering shadow.Even the dead things—my constant, quiet sentinels—had gone silent.Not curious.Not wary.Afraid.
The wrongness had depth to it.Shape.Presence.
“The air feels thick,” I murmured, more to Scout than anyone else.My voice sounded too loud.“Like walking through invisible smoke.”
Cyrus moved ahead of us, his fire flickering along the damp stone walls.“This way,” he said, his voice low but certain.“I remember where we saw them before.”
Every step echoed too loudly in the tight corridor, as if the very walls were listening.
“The wellspring’s near,” I murmured, my pulse quickening.“But it doesn’t feel right.It’s like… it’s in pain.Struggling.”
Elio’s illusion magic glimmered faintly around his hands, silver veils ready to drop at the first sign of danger.“It’s fighting them,” he said grimly.“Fighting back against whatever they’ve done down here.”
I didn’t ask how he knew.I could feel it too—that push and pull in the air, like the wellspring was trying to breathe through a poison fog.
We reached the section of corridor where Cyrus and Elio said they had seen Keane and his uncle disappear months ago.The wall looked perfectly ordinary, just old stone and mortar, the same as everything else down here.But the moment I pressed my palm against it, my magic snapped back like a struck nerve.
Pain lanced up my arm, cold and wrong.My necromancy, which usually unfurled like ribbons from my fingertips, coiled inward with a hiss.
“Something’s behind it,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.“Something that hurts to touch.”
The wrongness wasn’t just magical.It was emotional.It clung to the air like mold and old blood.Fear was soaked into the stone, soaked so deep it felt fossilized.Desperation hummed beneath my feet like a trapped scream.My stomach twisted as my thoughts drifted—unwanted, unstoppable—to Keane.To whatever they’d done to him just beyond this wall.
“Glamoured,” Elio confirmed, his fingers tracing patterns I couldn’t see.“Old magic.Council-made.”
He stepped closer to the wall, his illusions flickering around his hands as he studied the concealment spell.“This is sophisticated work.Layered.They didn’t want anyone finding this accidentally.”
“Can you break it?”Cyrus asked, his flames casting dancing shadows that made the glamour’s edges more visible.
“I can try.”Elio’s voice was grim as he placed both palms against the stone.“But whoever cast this knew what they were doing.It’s going to fight back.”
He placed both palms flat against the wall.The illusion magic stretched forward, delicate strands seeking seams in the spell.He wasn’t ripping through it.He was slipping into it, like a whisper sliding into a lie.
I watched as the silver threads burrowed deeper, searching for weak spots.He was sweating now, his jaw clenched and fingers trembling ever so slightly as the glamour resisted.
“There,” he said hoarsely.“I can feel the anchor points.But this is going to hurt.Whoever made this spell tied it to… to pain.To suffering.As if they used anguish itself to strengthen the concealment.”
A sick shudder rolled through me.My necromancy flinched hard, recoiling as I tuned into the threads of death that lived in the very stone.
He was right.
The glamour wasn’t just a veil.It was a parasite, fed and reinforced by anguish.Every scream, every wound, every broken mind—woven into the structure of the spell like barbed wire.The pain wasn’t incidental.It was the foundation.
