Page 22 of This Dark Descent
“Would it bother you if I had?” he asked. “They’re Kelbra men.”
Mikira’s jaw set, the nervous shaking of her leg ceasing. “That doesn’t make it right. People can’t just take people off the street.”
“Apparently they can.” Reid tied off the last of Ari’s bandage and released her hand. “Good riddance to them.”
Mikira cast him a narrow-eyed glance but didn’t respond. Instead, she started for the door. “I have work to do at the ranch. I’ll be back in the morning.”
Ari debated if she should follow, but in truth, she didn’t want to be alone right now. The events of the day had left her feeling swept away. Instead, she watched as Damien took apart and cleaned his revolvers, and Reid hunched over the microscope at the desk, making notations in his journal. She half expected them to ask her to leave, but they absorbed her presence without so much as a batted eye, and she wondered if this too was a move on Damien’s part, a carefully calculated decision to make her feel more comfortable.
“What will you do with those men?” she asked, thinking of the Anthir sergeant.
Damien looked up from carefully wiping down the outside of a revolver. “I’ll let them go in the morning.”
The thought of them being on the street again where they could hurt her made Ari’s chest tighten, but what had she expected? For him to keep them imprisoned forever?
Damien’s sharp eyes missed none of her reaction, and he set the gun down on the cloth laid out before him. “They won’t come near you again. You’re under my protection now. You’re safe.”
Safe. She almost laughed at the thought. She hadn’t been safe since the day she fled her home with nothing but the clothes on her back and a book she couldn’t be rid of no matter how hard she tried.
“From them, perhaps,” she said. “But you won’t be the last to figure out I’m unlicensed. The Anthir will come for me eventually.”
“If you’re referring to the enchant dealer I spoke of, he won’t be aproblem.” Damien picked up his whiskey. “We’ll make sure he understands his discretion is appreciated.”
She shivered but didn’t protest. Her gaze shifted to the dismantled guns. She wanted to be able to protect herself, to not have to depend on the Adair name to shield her. She was tired of relying on other people, of bending herself to their whims. Perhaps Damien wasn’t like the haughty nobles who’d sneered down at her, but he still wielded immense power, and she did not.
She was going to change that.
A servant knocked and entered. “Lord Adair, the materials you requested have arrived.”
“You can put them in the study,” Damien replied.
Reid’s head snapped up as workers began carrying in barrels of dirt and water to the open door to his left. “You’re putting her in my workshop?”
“Mikira will see if she’s out here, and I’m not shutting her in some faraway room. Besides, you only ever use my desk.”
“The light in here is better!”
“Then what are you complaining about?”
Reid muttered something unintelligible in response and rose to follow the workers, his annoyed instructions floating out from the other room. Damien had told her that Reid knew the truth of her powers, but it still made her uneasy to hear them discussed so openly.
By the time the last of the materials had been delivered, Reid was pale-faced and overwhelmed. He sunk onto the chaise with the world’s largest teacup and his cat in his lap. “There’s dirt on my floor,” he grumbled at them. “Dirt.”
“We’ll leave you to grieve in peace.” Damien invited her toward the room with a nod. She followed him inside, where the workers had organized the materials into sections: dirt and water for the golem, verillion for the magic, and powdered gemstones to bind the spells. The room itself was spacious, with a built-in desk along an entire wall hung with anatomicaldiagrams and landscape sketches. The bookcases on the opposite wall were a neatly organized assortment of glass tea containers, scientific equipment, and tomes thicker than her fist.
Another door led to what looked like Reid’s bedroom, now nearly blocked by the barrels of dirt.
“Do you have everything you need?” Damien asked.
“I think so.” She dragged forth a stack of buckets. “I’ll need to make the clay first.”
Damien had changed into fresh clothes after the Anthir left—a silver waistcoat over a white shirt—and he removed the waistcoat now and rolled up his sleeves. “If you tell me what to do, I can help you.”
She instructed him on the ratio of water to dirt and the means of mixing, after which the buckets would be left to sit to allow the clay to separate from the sediments in the dirt. They worked alongside each other in silence for some time, Ari being careful of her injured hand as they prepared bucket after bucket.
“Will you build the horse and then bind the enchantments or bind them to the clay before crafting it?” he asked as they neared the last of the buckets. He had mud splattered on his white shirt and caked along his forearms that stood in stark incongruence with his neatly styled hair and fine clothes.
“I’ll fold the verillion and gemstones into the clay, then build the horse and bind the enchantments before bringing it to life,” she replied, each word stranger on her tongue than the last. She’d never talked about creating golems with anyone before. It was a task she did alone in her workshop, with the knowledge that should anyone discover her, it would mean her life.
