The Doctrine of Seven had given only half-formed reasons for the ritual’s structure, but it was working; of that much Jane was certain. The changing of the egg each dawn was proof enough of that. But as she chewed, she wondered if all the details were exactly right. After all, the concepts she’d read in Augustine’s texts had seemed haphazard, cobbled together from a thousand disparate threads. Perhaps the rules were not actual rules, not in any immutable sense. The ritual, after all, only guided the magician’s force of will. Perhaps there were acceptable deviations. Some were obvious, and she had already taken advantage of them; there were no specified portions of the ritual meals, or the bog moss, or the grave dirt, and she had adjusted to use less and less of each. And she had crafted her own sigil, when she could not make sense of the moth-eaten, senseless instructions provided her. Could she push at others? Accelerate the timeline, so that Augustine would not be trapped for quite so long without food, without water, without warmth?
By midnight, she was back in the kitchen, counting out the remaining eggs. She had more than enough to finish out the rest of the mornings.
She could afford to experiment.
Intention and knowledge were everything. She had to be careful. She had to keep in mind, at all times, the truest depiction of what she was doing, why, and how it would happen. So Jane held Augustine （healthy and whole and waiting for her, with that light in his eyes when he wanted to kiss her, with that sureness in his hands when he saved his patients） foremost in her mind as she gathered her supplies.
His study, more than any other room, provided specific details and vibrant memories upon which to anchor herself. Her warning, too, was writ large across the shelves. It was the perfect place to work. The rug she’d pulled aside when she cowered from Orren was still heaped against the couch. Her first faint lines of chalk still stood out against the wood. She redrew her circle and knelt there, inhaling the scent of him, the resonance. She lit the candle and placed one hand over where she had scrawled his name upon her arm. She remembered his hands holding hers beneath the surgery faucet as she spoke the dawn invocations. She pictured him standing just outside the study door, flushed from kissing her, as she cracked the egg.
When the shell gave way, it revealed a half-formed chick, eyes bulbous and skin fuzzy with the beginnings of feathers. The yolk was smaller than before, and spidered full over with red.
“Yes, yes!” she cried, falling back onto her heels and clasping her hands over her mouth. Another component moved into place. She could work the rituals in sequence without caring for the time of day, and she could get to him soon. Soon! She looked to the clock that sat upon the desk. It had been less than five hours since she worked the dusk ritual. In another five, she would put the moss into her mouth again, and sequentially reduce the time between until either they ceased to progress, or she completed the sequence. At most, it would take forty hours.
Just two days. Less than two days until she reached the end of the path and saw where it had taken her. Even her earlier failings had been but lessons; every new step was new knowledge, blossoming inside of her.
Nascent feet pressed against her esophagus as she swallowed down the chick. She choked it down, the sharp, small barbs of early feathers scratching at her throat. Her eyes watered, her lips twisted.
Just a little longer. Just a little—
“Jane.”
It was not the sound of the pipes creaking, or of muffled pleas through unbreakable stone; Augustine’s voice was clear, and gentle, and tired, coming from just outside the study.
He stood in the doorway, correct in every feature as he sagged against the frame. His clothing was rumpled from long days and nights sleeping in stone hallways. He watched her, pale and worn, relieved.
How?
She had swallowed down a half-formed chick, yes, but there were still four more iterations to go. She had not left the study. She had not stood before the crypt wall and willed it down. So how was he standing here, now, looking at her with such joyous desperation?
He needed food. He needed water. And yet she could not make herself leave the safety of the circle. She had already imagined this once, knew what it meant.
If he was here, and the door below still stood, then there was only one way:
She was already too late.
“Stay back,” Jane whispered. Her stomach soured and lurched. She trembled. All her haste and experimentation, for what? He was dead. It no longer mattered.
He lifted his hands and did as she said. “Jane,” he repeated. “You’re still here.”
“Stay back, and be silent,” she hissed.