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The heat of Laren's forge had followed her halfway across the district. Hileya was glad of the cool that waited inside the young master's lodging.
Whatever had happened at the Academy, Duren gave her no excuse to ease off. She had promised herself she would see his trials through to the end.
She stopped before the door.
A stain darkened the step, dried brown at the edges. She did not remember it that morning.
She pushed the door open, one hand on her dagger.
Vel sat at his desk, pen moving across the page, the same as she had left him. Nothing seemed wrong.
Then she saw the shape beneath the desk, by the foot of the bed. A small thing under a cloth, two stiff ears pointing out from beneath it.
A rabbit. It lay the way nothing living lies.
On the table by the door, the tray she had brought that morning sat where she had left it.
The food untouched.
"Master. I've just come back from the forge. They asked if you're doing fine."
He did not answer.
"Do you need anything, master?"
Nothing. He was too far inside the work to hear her.
Something had changed in him since he came back from the Artifex building. He hardly spoke now, and the hours he kept he gave to the same task, the matter of the Freznoria sisters.
She had learned not to crowd his silences.
"I'll prepare lunch now. If you need anything…"
"Can you take this letter to Moana?" The quill never stopped.
She did not ask what it was for. She crossed the room, took the envelope from the edge of the desk, and nodded, though he was not looking to see it.
The next day it rained.
A coat hung dripping by the door, the floorboards beneath it dark with water. He had been out, then. In this.
She was reaching for the handle when a loud thud sounded from inside, heavy enough to carry through the wood.
She stepped in.
His hair was still wet. The desk lay on its side, paper and parchment spread across the floor.
The rabbit was where it had been. Nearer the chair lay two birds now, small and just as still.
Vel stood in the middle of it, his breathing uneven.
"Why didn't it work…" The words were not meant for her. "What did I do wrong…"
He stared at the notes in his hand without seeming to read them.
"Maybe it was the sequence. Or the timing…"
The morning's tray sat untouched. Again.
"One of your friends asked if they can see you, master."
"I can't." He was already on his knees, gathering the fallen pages. He did not look at her. "I can't see anyone right now. I need to finish this."
His hands slowed over the parchment.
"Maybe I need a bigger subject. Something closer to the human body…"
She said nothing to that.
From where she stood she could see the shadows beneath his eyes. He had not even dried his hair.
She knelt beside him and gathered what had fallen. The desk, most likely, he had knocked over himself.
"You should eat something, master."
"I will. Later." He did not stop sorting. "This is more important. I need to keep trying."
She remembered the words he had spoken in that dark place.
We will not settle for "just enough."
At the time, she had heard only determination in them.
Looking at the room now, the dead animals and the circles drawn among the notes, it could almost pass for a sacrificial rite.
She wondered if his words had been a warning.
The day after, she came with the morning tray.
His words had stayed with her through the night. Something closer to the human body.
She opened the door.
The smell hit her first. Incense, sweet and clean, the kind burned to keep a room fresh. But beneath it sat something rotten, and the two had blended into a smell all their own, one that clung to the back of her throat.
No larger shape waited for her. Only rats, a dozen of them.
A wicker basket sat where the rabbit had been, its lid thrown back.
She should have been relieved. She was not.
Then she saw him.
Vel lay on the floor on his side. Nothing in the way he lay looked like rest.
She set the tray on the table and was at his side at once, kneeling, a hand on his shoulder.
"Young Master! Are you alright?"
For a terrifying moment there was no answer. Then his chest rose, a breath, and another, and slowly he stirred.
"Hileya?" His voice was barely above a whisper. "I'm… fine. Just…"
The sentence never finished.
"You really need to eat, Master. No one can work on an empty stomach."
"But the curse…" he murmured, his eyes drifting somewhere past her. "It won't stop…"
"If you collapse now, Master, no one else can stop it either."
He reached for the nearest page instead. "A little longer. I'm close…"
His hand dropped onto it. He could not lift it, only drag it toward him across the floor, and halfway through even that, the fight went out of him.
For a moment he only breathed.
Then he set a trembling hand against the floor and tried to push himself up.
Without a word, Hileya took him under the arm and lifted, taking the weight he no longer could. She brought him to the chair and eased him down into it.
"I brought you something to eat."
The porridge sat waiting on the table. He reached for the spoon, but halfway up, his hand shook, and it slipped free.
Hileya caught it before it hit the floor. The motion was so natural she barely thought about it.
For a moment she simply held the spoon. Then she looked up.
Vel wasn't even looking at her. His eyes remained fixed somewhere beyond the table. His lips were dry, his hair hanging loose, covering part of his face.
"Let me help you," she said, and took up the bowl, and began to feed him herself.
---
Halfway through the bowl, the door slammed hard enough to shake the frame.
"Vel! Are you in there?"
The spoon stopped halfway to his mouth. It was a voice he had never expected to hear outside his own room, and yet he knew it at once.
"Something happened to Clara! We need you there, right now!"
Hileya looked toward him only briefly before hurrying to the door, and the moment she pulled it open, Kein stepped through.
For a second Kein only stared, his gaze moving over the parchments strewn across the floor, the smell that hung in the air, and finally to Vel himself, who must have looked like he hadn't slept in days. Whatever thought crossed his mind vanished almost at once.
"We're running out of time. Clara is in critical condition."
The words drove away what little appetite Vel had managed to recover. For three days, he had been dreading this.
The curse had never gone dormant. It had been slowly tightening its hold the whole time, and while everyone searched for an answer, Clara was left fighting to keep whatever remained of her soul. No one knew what would happen when it finally reached its limit.
Vel dropped from the chair to the floor and began digging through the sea of parchments.
"Where is it…"
Pages slid aside beneath his hands. Failed calculations, diagrams of circulatory systems, notes on mana pathways, discarded theories. Then he found it, a diagram of a magic circle covered in annotations and hastily scribbled observations.
He folded it once, shoved it into his pocket, and pushed himself upright. The movement nearly sent him back to the floor.
Why is Kein even here?
"Where's Instructor Moana?"
"He's there. And several others stayed behind, doing what they can." Kein hesitated. "Since I was also there, and…"
He stopped himself.
"That's not important. They requested you immediately. Hurry up."
"Use my carriage."
For the first time since they met, Kein wasn't holding his composure in place. Vel could not sense even the slightest trace of nobility in his voice or expression. No superiority, no pride, no carefully maintained image. Only urgency.
They left at once. The carriage was already waiting outside, and within minutes they were racing through the streets of Lona.
Kein sat across from him, Hileya beside him. No one spoke.
Vel barely noticed the streets going past. His thoughts stayed fixed on Clara, on the curse, and on the possibility that the answer he had spent three days searching for might already be too late.