Page 77 of This Dark Descent
Damien spun the signet ring around his finger. “This is a replica. I lost the real one, though I’ve begun to suspect it was actually stolen. Until I know why, I don’t want to commission a new one.”
“I see.” She studied the dark outline of the Racari on his desk.
His gaze followed hers. “I’ve made some new discoveries you might be interested in.”
Is one whether the effects of magic include losing time and a voice you can’t tell from your own?Her hand tightened around her teacup. Maybe they’d been wrong about the impact of verillion on enchanters. Maybe it did poison them, just in another way. She hated the idea that the same power that had quieted her fear threatened to bring it back to life. She didn’t want to lose control again.
“Arielle?”
“Yes, sorry. What did you find?”
Damien tapped his notebook. “The Racari talks of a fifth gemstone capable of conducting enchantments: bloodstones.”
Her brow furrowed. “Meaning more types of enchantments?”
He nodded. “Though I haven’t quite deciphered what kind. The application of magic was once much greater, and new discoveries are still being made. For example, did you know Iziri shadowglass is supposedly capable of holding enchantments to be used later?”
“I didn’t.” Yet another thing lost in the Burning. But if they could discover what the stone did—she met Damien’s eyes and found them alight. That information could make House Adair far more powerful than it already was, could take her magic to an entirely new level.
Ari joined him at the desk, and Damien folded the Racari closed, tapping the red and green stone at its center. “This is a bloodstone. Do you sense anything from it?” He was in his shirtsleeves again, and the definition of his forearms pressed distractingly against the white fabric.
Ari ran one finger along the cool stone, sensing the faint buzz of magic. “Yes.”
It pulled at her, drawing her in, and she snatched her hand away.
“Does the book say anything about the effects of enchanting yourself?” She leaned against the desk, his eyes tracking her movements. He was so very aware of her when she was near. She liked to pick out the tiny flex of the muscles in his jaw, the flick of his eyes across her face. His fingers curled into a fist on the desk, as if to keep from touching her. So controlled. A part of her longed to make him give that up.
“Not exactly.” His voice betrayed none of what his face had. “It only warns against holding too much verillion without burning the magic as it may cause physical damage.”
“Nothing else?”
The slightest furrow formed between his brows. “Why? Is something wrong?”
She lifted off the desk. Just the other day she was chastising him for keeping things from her, and now she was doing the very same. But she worried what telling him might do. Would he look at her differently if he knew the truth?
“Arielle?” She heard him approach, felt his hand settle in the curve at the base of her neck.
Ari had spent so very, very long keeping secrets. What she’d done to her Saba, what she was capable of, her magic—for once, she didn’t want to handle this alone. She turned into his touch, his fingers sliding down her arm, and she captured his hand in her own.
“I’ve been hearing a voice,” she told him, and he did not flinch. “At first, I thought it was just my own thoughts, the voice in the back of my mind. But it’s been growing stronger each time I use my magic, and the things it says… They’re not me.”
Are you sure about that, little lion?whispered the voice.
She pushed it away, focusing on Damien’s steel-steady gaze. “I think it’s the book. I think it’s…talkingto me.”
The strange feeling she got when she held it, the way she never wanted to put it down and couldn’t be rid of it. There was no denying the voice grew stronger each time she used her magic, and it had only appeared after the incident with her Saba, but over the last few weeks, it’d been getting worse even without using magic.
She expected Damien to dismiss her, but instead, his eyes grew wide with realization. “That’s it.”
He released her hand, returning to the Racari. “There was a part Icouldn’t translate, but I think I know what it is now.” She joined him as he flipped back several pages, scanning the words she couldn’t read. His finger stopped on one. “Here. It’s the same word twice, and I thought it a mistake. But it actually has two meanings: ‘stone’ and ‘bond.’ I think it means tobindthe stone. I think the bloodstone creates bonds between things.”
“That’s why I can’t get rid of it,” she said. The Racari wasboundto her. Had her parents known? Was that why they’d kept it hidden, why all her life their neighbors had been wary of their family? Had they known all along what she was?
Do you?asked the voice.
“Damien,” she asked warily. “What happened to the Heretics?”
“No one knows for certain,” he replied. “Most believe that they died in the explosion of the Cataclysm. Why?”
