“I need a glass of water,” she said to him.
Calin didn’t move. Tes nodded at the open spellwork in her hands, even though they couldn’t see it. “It’s for the persalis.”
Calin huffed, and straightened. “Since when am I a fucking babysitter?” he said, grabbing the jug of water.
“Go and say that to the lord,” said Bex. “No, on second thought, wait until he’s here, I’d like to see his face. And yours, after he breaks it. Oh, wait,” she added, “he already did.”
“And you?” he grumbled, slamming the pitcher onto the edge of Tes’s worktop. “How’s your hand, Bex? Can you still see right through it?”
Bex rose from her chair. “Calin. I mean this with absolute sincerity—fuck off and die.”
“Will you both shut up?” snapped Tes, trying to hold the spell with one hand while drawing a tendril of light from the water with the other.
“Oh, look,” said Bex, “the pup has teeth.”
She drifted to the table. Tes could feel her watching, but she didn’t look up, couldn’t afford to drag her attention from the work. But the crimson lines of Bex’s power danced at the edges of her sight.
“Back up,” she said. “Your magic is distracting.”
The clock’s hands lay cast aside like used matchsticks on the table. Bex took one up and waggled it, clicking her tongue. “Tick tick tick,” she said. “I’d hurry up, if I were you.”
“I’d work faster,” she muttered, “if I wasn’t dying.”
“Perhaps you should have thought of that,” mused Calin, “before you refused his lordship.”
At that, Tes paused. There was an edge to his tone, and it wasn’t directed solely at her. She looked up, meeting Calin’s watery gaze.
“If I fail,” she said, “what happens to the two of you? Will that vestra let you walk away?”
The killers said nothing, but she could tell she’d struck a nerve.
“You have the antidote,” Tes went on. “You could give it to me now, and give us all a better chance of living through the night.”
For a moment, she thought they’d do it. Calin’s hand even twitched toward his pocket. A muscle ticced in Bex’s jaw. They shared a silent look. But then the bootsteps sounded in the hall, and they flinched, and she knew they were more afraid of defying the nobleman than dying at his hands.
Tes dropped her head and went back to work as the vestra reappeared.
“Bex,” he said. “We have a guest downstairs. Go and keep her entertained.”
The mention of someone else in the house made Tes look up, and when she did, the air lodged in her throat.
The nobleman was burning.
Before, his magic had been only a dim coil. Now, the air around him shone with iridescent light—as if he’d gone out a man with little power, and returned an Antari.
It made no sense.
Until she saw that he was wearing a new ring. Before, his only jewelry had been a polished silver ring, sculpted to resemble a feather. Now, on his thumb he wore a golden band and every strand of his new power stemmed from there, blooming out, and winding up around his limbs like silver-white weeds.
Bex disappeared into the hall, as if grateful for the excuse to get away, as the nobleman looked to Tes, and the box open on the table. “Is it done?”
“Almost,” she lied. He seemed about to speak when the silver in the air around him gave a little pulse, and his eyes cut to the open door. The vestra cocked his head, as if listening to a music only he could hear, and then he smiled, if anyone could call it a smile. The faintest tic at the corner of his mouth.
“It appears,” he said, “I have another guest.”
With that he turned, and swept out, pulling the door shut behind him, leaving Tes alone with the half-finished persalis—and Calin.
“The antidote,” she tried again, but the assassin crossed his arms.
“First, you finish the work.”
Tes swallowed, and forced herself on. A pain had started somewhere in her chest. She tried to ignore it. She had gotten good, over the years, at working through the hurt. But moments later, a shiver ran through her and she slipped, nearly dropping several threads. She bit back a frustrated sob. One wrong move, and she could ruin the entire spell. One wrong knot, or missing string, and the doormaker wouldn’t work at all. Or worse, it—
Tes’s hands stopped moving. Her fingers hovered over the delicate web, waiting for her mind to catch up. And then it did.