Seiren unfolded the request with trembling fingers. Myrtin's pained look left a sour taste in her mouth. Her jaw dropped.
'A new heart.'
Oh, no. Madeleine's voice conveyed all Seiren needed to know.
Seiren spun round and scooped up the runes she'd been doodling idly all day since she received yesterday's impossible task and shoved them into her dress pocket. She would rather have practised her chaos magic yesterday instead, but there was no Bonsie about and no Loren to anaesthetise anything. Instead, Seiren had stacked about fifty runes â mostly violets â that, when activated in sequelae, would create a dancing show of puppets. She was quite proud of that. Whimsical things, but she'd worked damn hard.
She didn't put her boots on, preferring to pad to Kori's room in her socks to not be found. She shot up the stairs with as much stealth as she could manage. The candles leading to his room on the fourth floor were all lit, flickering low on their stands. Even from the end of the corridor, she could hear his weak panting. She hurried over and pressed on the door. To her surprise, it eased open.
The candles bathed the room in a soft glow. The wind outside had died down earlier on in the day, with only the occasional rustle of leaves audible. The curtains stayed shut, turning day into night.
Kori sat at an incline on the bed, his eyes shut and his skin had taken on a shiny, grey pallor. His hands lay on his sides, still. His breaths came rapid, shallow, and his lips looked bluer than ever.
"Kori!" Seiren said in a hushed, horrified voice, rushing to his side. His eyelids fluttered, his eyes glazed initially before recognising her voice.
He looks awful, said Madeleine, strained.
"Seiren!" His voice was barely above a whisper and even the effort seemed to exhaust what little reserve he had left. "You're... here!"
"Oh, Kori. What happened?" Her heart thumped against her ribs. She clutched his hand. They were so swollen, the skin stretched just like his legs, the fingers icy.
"My heart.... It's not so good." He panted, his skinny shoulders heaving. He pursed his lips, each breath coming through with a whistle.
I think his heart's failing.
Don't say that, Seiren thought, vehement.
"Oh, Kori," said Seiren again, her own heart squeezing. She ran her fingers over his knuckle, biting her lip. What could she do? No amount of chaos magic â much less the little amount she knew â could give him a new heart. He looked so uncomfortable, each breath laborious. "What can I do? I can't heal you. I'm so sorry."
"Papa... if you can make... him less... sad." He nodded his head to the corner. With a start, Seiren spun around. She sighed with relief, seeing Professor Fernard fast asleep in the plush chair in the corner. He was dressed in the same tattered robes she'd seen him in two days ago when she passed him in the corridor.
"He's been staying with you?"
"He hasn't... left."
His face was half-submerged in darkness, but even from this distance, the bags under his eyes and prominent wrinkles were visible. Seiren felt a pang of sadness for the grumpy professor.
"You have... magic for me?"
Seiren swallowed a lump that had materialised out of nowhere into her throat. She nodded, her eyes prickling, seeing the tired, sallow look Kori had taken on. She shuffled back and knelt on the ground, producing the runed papers from her pockets. She arranged them in order before placing the human figurines Fernard had created from her designs. Seiren glanced up briefly, catching the weak sparkle in Kori's eyes.
She eased a breath out. Oddly, this gave her more pressure than any exam in King's. This had to go well. It had to.
Her eyes darted over the papers. They were in their respective positions. She snapped her fingers.
The runes glowed a mix of violet and red, the colours mingling and swirling below the moulded legs of the figures. Before her eyes, they jerked to life, marching back and forth on the stretch of paper, the red powering their movements and the violet allowing laxity in their particles to flex and extend. It lasted only five minutes, but their formations and swirling left Kori even more breathless, a pale pink glow in his cheeks, his eyes bright. He gripped the edge of his bed, grinning from ear to ear at the sight of the simple but coordinated dance. Seiren emptied her head at regular intervals, throwing small pops of magic through her fingers and producing tiny showers of sparkling light, all the while humming a soft tune to colour the show. The magic glittered the colours of the rainbow, the sparks thrusting bursts of brilliance, shining over the contours of the dancing objects. It was carefully calculated and released; Rowan might be proud if he saw this.
"Fireworks." Kori gave a breathless laugh and craned his neck, but he wasn't able to sit straight or lean over; he no longer had the strength. He followed each swirl and leap with wide eyes.
Eventually, the figures stilled and became normal again. For a solitary moment, the air was silent, pristine, magical.
Seiren lined the figures back against the toy box and then leaned back, herself also breathless, magic tingling at her fingertips. She looked up, grinning â only to see Kori lying against his large pillow that swamped his frame, his breathing stopped. No, wait â he hadn't stopped yet. As she watched, he took in few small breaths, his complexion matching that of his bedsheets. He grimaced, his lips pursing. Her blood ran cold.
"Kori...?" She leaned forward, reaching for him. No response. She placed a hand on his chest. She could feel the heaving, beneath, of a worn-out, overlarge heart fighting to beat.
Hesitating, she imagined her glowing white hands over Bonsie's gash running from her chest down to her belly, exposing the fat and muscle layers beneath: how Bonsie's wild energy spun around away from her reach at first, how she aligned hers with Bonsie's once she thought of something positive â triumphing in burst magic over Rowan Woodbead â how the wound stitched back together, how the skin sealed almost without a flaw until a long pink line remained.
She reached out tendrils of her own energy, seeking Kori's. Perhaps she could at least ease some of his distress. There was no way she could do anything of significance, not when he was so poorly, but maybe, maybe if she just aligned the energy away from the distress and to his head...
Her hands remained the same normal fleshy pink. No energy pushed back at her. Aside from the weakening thump-thump-thump of Kori's wrecked heart, nothing else pressed against her fingertips.
"Get the hell away from him!"
Seiren leapt to her feet, startled. Swooping in from the shadows like a monster from the deep. Ebanon Fernard crashed upon her, his face purpling with fury despite the fatigue. His steely hand shot for her, no doubt about to clamp upon her wrist again.
Seiren threw up a small amount of burst magic, enough to create a flicker of a flame, encased in her palm. Fernard flinched.
"Don't touch me," she snarled. She sidestepped him, blood pounding in her ears. Fernard brushed past her and crouched beside his son, clutching his hand. For a moment, he lost the rugged, stiff posture of an angry, irrational professor and became a simple concerned father. Seiren hesitated, glancing at Kori, who was obviously unconscious now. Her heart panged. He looked so pallid, almost dead. His cheeks and eyes were sunk in, his whole body so still. Even the tiny breaths he took at more and more prolonged intervals became tinier.
She turned and marched from the room. She almost crashed into Myrtin outside.
"Mage!" Myrtin looked horrified at the sight of her. "Whatâhowâyou shouldn't be here!"
Seiren pushed past him, her eyes burning. The hallway passed in a blur, but Ebanon Fernard's fury radiated onto her back like a flaming meteor. At the top of the stairs, she whirled round, night skirt floating up, and matched the professor's blazing gaze with her own.
"I did nothing wrong," she spat.
Whoa, way to defuse the situation.
"What did you do to him?" Fernard growled. If looks could kill, Seiren would be dead.
"You asked me to do fireworks, right? I did fireworks," she said, scowling. "Or did you want to claim that as your own work, too?"
His pallor took on a dull aubergine, his eyes shining. She'd hit a nerve.
"You watch your place, Nithercott."
"What are you going to do?" Seiren's lips curled, her hands gripped into fists. "You're so obsessed with death you're consumed by it. Your own son is dying in there and all you care about is blaming me for what's happening?"
The next thing she knew, Fernard had grabbed the front of her dress and dragged her upwards. Her dress ripped at the armpits, the collar tightening around her throat. His eyes bulged outwards.
"Then use magic on him! Bring him back!" His hands tightened around the bunch of material. Seiren gasped, blood pounding in her ears. The world began to fade. "Isn't that what mages always boast about â how powerful magic is, how rules and limitations don't apply? Mages create energy and matter out of nothing, and yet when I try to bring Kaia back to lifeâ"
He stopped, catching himself. He lowered his arm. Seiren's feet touched the ground and she sucked in a first sweet breath. The place stopped spinning. She reached up to yank her collar from his hand only to realise he was shaking â all over.
"What happened?" she said in a small voice.
He turned his back to her.
"It was an abomination. Life and death are the same part of a circle. It should be easy to step back. But no. She was Kaia... except she wasn't. Perhaps her soul had already gone to the beyond and all I dredged back was some demon to inhabit that rotted body of hers." He shuddered. She could only imagine what he saw; the nightmares of Madeleine's mutated corpse gave her plenty of disturbed nights. "I tried to destroy it. Word got out. I was summoned to the council of king's mages."
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