Page 39 of Wolf's Bane
No response.
Miles was alone in the drawing room, sprawled back on the settee. His skin appeared glossy. She pressed the back of her hand to his forehead. The fever had not broken in the slightest.
“What happened to Jase?” she asked gently, exchanging her kit for the bowl of water and cloth. She soaked the cloth, wrung it out, then placed it against Miles’ forehead.
He jerked forward, his hand clamping around her bad wrist. His grip was tight, but not painful. “Oh. Apologies.” He released her. “I’m not myself.”
“You’re having a bad reaction to more than the bite, I think. Were you stung by anything? Eat anything?”
“Nettles? I cannot be sure. Is that a difficulty?”
“Less than ideal,” she said. Normal nettles were unpleasant but would not induce such a reaction. He could have been stung by an insect or pricked by a plant mutated by the nexus energies.
“Any difficulty breathing?”
He shook his head, then shivered. “No. I’m cold.”
Finally, a bit of luck. If Miles were having an allergic reaction, his throat would be swollen and he’d be quite blue.
Solenne pulled the footstool to Miles and sat before him. Taking his arm, she ordered him to remain still. She swabbed the bite area with the disinfectant. It bubbled and fizzed. Miles watched, fascinated.
“It’s funny,” he said.
“Oh, this is a very humorous situation, getting yourself turned into a chew toy.”
“No, the nexus. People say it’s magic, but it’s not. It has rules.”
“How so?” She dabbed away the excess with the clean cloth. “Tell me,” she prompted, content to let him lecture if it kept him still while she picked out the bits of leaves and grass from the wound.
“It’s on a cycle. We’ve known that for years and years. And it only happens in certain places, which is weird. And things come through, we know that, but mostly what comes through is energy. We have our own form, of course. It’s in the background, harmless to us. But what comes through the nexus, it waxes and wanes, but it doesn’t go away. It changes. But that’s what energy does, like heat. I use the heat from fire to transform metal.”
“And the nexus energy does this? Can you harness it?”
“We tried, you know. Or others in the past tried. They built machines, but those didn’t work. They failed. The energy is not compatible. Which is a shame, because it’severywhere. So we have this raw energy, like the heat from the sun or the wind, and it doesn’t vanish. It forces mutations in plants.” He paused. “In people.”
Pausing her work, she gave him a serious look. “Miles, the bite carries a virus. It’s not raw cosmic energy. This was the work of tooth and claw.”
“Energy can’t be destroyed. You can contain it or transform it, but never destroy,” Miles said, as if he did not hear her. His head lolled back. “Transform is the wrong word. Disperse? Dissipate? Expend. Yes. Contain or expend.”
Those words were familiar. She had heard them before. “Mother’s journals,” she breathed.
He nodded. “I have them.”
“You stole them?”
Amalie had been an artificer, much like Miles. The older tech fascinated her. She spent countless hours trying to repair or recharge the artifacts in the vaults below the house. One such endeavor cost her her life.
“No, you misunderstand. She loaned them to me a fortnight before her death. I did not know how to return them. I feared—”
“I always thought Father burned them,” she said.
Miles nodded. “Exactly. I fear Godwin would destroy them. Your mother had a marvelous mind. Are they still there? Below ground?”
“Probably. The only items we’ve bartered away have gone to you,” she said.
“No. The batteries. The containment banks for—”
Glass shattered inward. Solenne raised an arm to shield herself from the flying shards.
